Since I was there in the very beginning, I know the history of the characters. So, I make comments about the tone and sometimes remind the writers that we’ve done that before.
On ‘The Simpsons,’ I will say that we definitely like to comment on what’s going on in the world, and we try to be funny. If we can figure out a way of being funny about it, then we’ve gone part of the way of accomplishing our task.
The nice thing about ‘Futurama’ for me personally was that it was a way to honor some of the traditional ideas in literary science fiction, not so much movie or television science fiction – although we have that too, obviously. Our situation, a workplace comedy, led to all sorts of stuff.
Humor does depend on surprise, and the things that people remember as the funniest things in the world, you look at later and you go, “What? What was that all about?”
The really great thing about having two TV shows going on at the same time is that I can go to one and say that I have to go and visit the other, and then I can just go home, and they don’t know.
Nihilism in American comedy came along way before ‘The Simpsons.’ There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to ‘Saturday Night Live,’ for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.
My father was a really sharp cartoonist and filmmaker. He used to tape-record the family surreptitiously, either while we were driving around or at dinner, and in 1963 he and I made up a story about a brother and a sister, Lisa and Matt, having an adventure out in the woods with animals.
If I have one technology tip of the day, it’s this: No matter how good the video on YouTube is, don’t read the comments, just don’t, because it will make you hate all humans.
I’ve loved science fiction ever since I was a little kid, mainly from looking at the covers of science-fiction magazines and books, and I’ve read quite extensively as an adult.
You just have to keep in mind that the important relationship is the relationship with the audience. That’s what I try to do. Everything else is secondary.
I want it to go on, but I want us to go out on top.
Don’t have a cow, man.
I think in daily newspapers, the way comic strips are treated, it’s as if newspaper publishers are going out of their way to kill the medium.
I would prefer to listen to a French classical composer like Olivier Messiaen than to the pop hits of the day.
Because good writing in a TV cartoon is so rare, I think the animation on The Simpsons is often overlooked.
Basically, everything I try to do is to present an alternative to what somebody else is doing.
As astute followers of ‘Life in Hell’ will notice, Akbar and Jeff wear the same striped T-shirt as Charlie Brown. ‘Peanuts’ was very important to me.
Cartooning is for people who can’t quite draw and can’t quite write. You combine the two half-talents and come up with a career.
The conundrum that I face on a daily basis is that I have two sons who have grown up watching ‘The Simpsons,’ so they know exactly what buttons to push. They know how Bart irritates Homer, and they use these lines against me to tell me that I’m not funny anymore.
A lot of American shows don’t last for as long as 12 episodes. They get cut after one. But certainly one of the great things about The Office in particular was that there was a beginning, a middle and an end.