The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History

by John Ortved

  BRENT FORRESTER: A writer on Judd Apatow’s critically acclaimed The Ben Stiller Show before being nabbed by David Mirkin to work on The Simpsons in 1994, Forrester wrote scripts like “Homerpalooza” before moving on to write for HBO’s Mr. Show. Since 1998, Forrester has taken chief writing roles on King of the Hill and the American version of The Office. His next screenplay will be produced by Apatow.

  RICKY GERVAIS: Since he exploded onto the BBC as David Brendt in The Office, which he created, Gervais’s brand of discomfort-turned-hilarity has produced an American version of The Office, Extras on HBO, and won him three Golden Globes, two Emmys, seven BAFTAs, and a Peabody. He has appeared in films, written a series of children’s books (Flanimals), and hosted radio shows and podcasts. A champion of animal rights, Gervais has publicly demanded that the British government replace the bear fur in the hats worn by the Royal Guards, taken from Canadian black bears, with synthetic.

  CHARLIE GOLDSTEIN: Former executive vice president in charge of production for Fox Television. When The Simpsons was being established as a series, Goldstein was one of the go-betweens for Fox and Gracie Films. It was his job to watch over the production of the series for Fox Television, which was paying for The Simpsons.

  JONATHAN GRAY: A professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University. Gray’s thesis for his PhD (from the University of London) became his first book, Watching the Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality. When we spoke, Gray had just returned from collecting data about media consumption in Malawi, where, he said, Dolly Parton is huge (he met several children named Jolene).

  DEBORAH GROENING: Deborah dated Matt Groening while they were both at the LA Reader in the early 1980s, becoming the driving force behind the cottage industry of mugs, calendars, and other products that the couple built around Life in Hell. The couple were married in 1987, and divorced in 1999.

  MATT GROENING: The alternative cartoonist whose Life in Hell strips in The LA Reader (eventually syndicated in more than two hundred newspapers) caught the attention of James L. Brooks in 1987. Brooks was looking for someone to draw cartoons to fill in time between sketches on The Tracey Ullman Show. Groening came up with a family based on his own, named The Simpsons.

  SHERRY GUNTHER: Gunther took over from Margot Pipkin in 1990 as Klasky-Csupo’s animation producer on The Simpsons. She ran up against producers at Gracie Films and the execs at Fox; it was ultimately Gabor Csupo’s refusal to replace Gunther that led to his animation company’s loss of the show.

  AL JEAN: With his writing partner, Mike Reiss, Jean worked on The National Lampoon, The Tonight Show, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, and Alf before joining the original writing room at The Simpsons in 1989. Jean ran the show with Reiss for its third and fourth seasons, and then on his own from 2001 to the present. He was an executive producer on The Simpsons Movie.

  HARRIS KATLEMAN: President of Fox Television from 1980 to 1992. He oversaw the production of such shows as M*A*S*H, LA Law, Doogie Howser, M.D., Dynasty, and The Simpsons.

  JULIE KAVNER: Voice of Marge Simpson, Patty, and Selma. Havner’s history with Jim Brooks goes back to the series Rhoda, where she played Brenda Morgenstern to much acclaim (and an Emmy). Her success prompted Brooks to ask her to join the cast of The Tracey Ullman Show, where she took on the voice of Marge and a host of other live-action roles. A Los Angeles native and former stand-up, Kavner has appeared in seven of Woody Allen’s films, Dr. Dolittle, and Click, as well as several comedic roles on TV shows like Taxi, Lou Grant, and Tracey Takes On … She has been nominated for ten Emmys (winning twice) and four Golden Globes.

  ROB KENNEALLY: Kenneally was twenty-six and VP of development at Fox Television (the studio) when Barry Diller coaxed him to Fox Broadcasting to oversee programming in 1987. Kenneally went on to become president of television at Rysher Entertainment, producing shows like Oz and Sex and the City. He now works in the television department at Creative Artists Agency and is a reserve deputy with the LA County Sheriff’s Department.

  JAY KOGEN: The son of Arnie Kogen, a writer for MAD magazine, Jay reconnected with his friend Mark Wallace Wolodarsky on It’s Garry Shandling’s Show in 1986 and the two began writing together. In 1987, Kogen was hired as a young writer on The Tracey Ullman Show before being drafted by Sam Simon to work on the first season of The Simpsons. After he left in 1992, Kogen, who has won five Emmys, wrote for Newsradio, Malcolm in the Middle, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Frasier, which he ran.

  BOB KUSHELL: Former Simpsons writer/producer. Originally a scribe on the HBO series Dream On, Kushell was a writer on The Simpsons for two seasons under show runner David Mirkin. Kushell went on to co-executive-produce 3rd Rock from the Sun and, more recently, Samantha Who?, with Christina Applegate. If you look up Kushell’s name on YouTube and Hulu, you will find some very funny videos.

  STAN LEE: There is no person more important to the world of comics than Stan Lee. Born in 1922, he cocreated X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Captain America, and The Incredible Hulk on his way to becoming chairman and president of Marvel. Lee made his mark on the medium with his complex characters, by giving writers and designers conspicuous credit for their work and by influencing a reformation of the Comics Code Authority. In 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

  JANE LEVINE: Levine was the publisher of the LA Reader from 1977 to 1984, serving as a mentor to Matt Groening’s future wife, Deborah. Levine went on to work on the business side of the Chicago Reader, retiring from publishing in 2004. She cheerfully credits Craigslist with the death of free weeklies.

  COLIN A.B.V. LEWIS: Lewis was a PA on Ullman, but Sam Simon brought him over to The Simpsons when Ullman went down in 1990. Lewis was worked in ADR, helping to record the voices.

  TIM LONG: Long worked at Spy magazine in the early nineties and wrote for Politically Incorrect and Late Night with David Letterman before arriving at The Simpsons in 1998. While not a showrunner, he has been credited as an executive producer and one of the head writers (he is now a consulting producer).

  SETH MACFARLANE: Creator of Family Guy and American Dad. Despite its cancellation (twice) in the early 2000s, Family Guy returned to the airwaves in 2005 and has become a billion-dollar franchise. MacFarlane, who has two Emmys and an honorary doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design, recently signed a contract with Fox, making him the highest paid writer/producer in TV history.

  TOM MARTIN: Former Simpsons writer/producer. A stand-up comedian with a few TV writing credits, Martin interviewed for The Simpsons in 1999 and hit it off with Mike Scully, staying on staff until 2001. Martin has since written for Nikki, The Showbiz Show with David Spade, Clone High, and Still Standing.

  MICHAEL MENDEL: Former Simpsons associate producer and postproduction coordinator, Mendel reluctantly moved from Ullman to The Simpsons when it got its own series. Mandel was essentially a line producer—he worked between Gracie Films and Fox Network to make sure everything came in on time and on budget. Mendel left the show in 1992 and returned for the fifth through tenth seasons.

  GEORGE MEYER: One of the members of the original writers room. Though Meyer had written for The Harvard Lampoon and Late Night with David Letterman, he came to Sam Simon’s attention with a small comedy zine he was publishing out of his apartment in Boulder, Colorado. Credited with providing the series with its signature voice, Meyer is legendary among comedy writers. A committed environmentalist, he lives with his wife and daughter out west, but not in L.A.

  RUPERT MURDOCH: The CEO of News Corp and by far its largest shareholder. Rupert Murdoch’s holdings include the newspapers the Times of London and the New York Post and the television networks Fox and Sky One in Britain. He is ultimately the man to blame for The Simpsons, American Idol, and Bill O’Reilly.

  BILL OAKLEY: A former editor in chief of the Harvard Lampoon, Oakley served seven years in The Simpsons’ writing room, two of them as showrunner, with his writing partner,

  Josh Weinstein. Afterward, he and Weins
tein created the animated series Mission Hill and worked on Matt Groening’s Futurama. They are currently developing projects, including the sitcom Business Class.

  CONAN O’BRIEN: To be as famous as Conan O’Brien, one Simpsons writer told me, you would have to shoot a president. One of television’s best-known personalities, the host of his own groundbreaking late-night talk show since 1994, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Conan took over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno in 2009.

  JOUNI PAAKKINEN: Unofficially, the biggest Simpsons fan on the planet. An early contributor to the alt.tv.simpsons newsgroup, the Finnish Paakkinen maintains the Simpsons Archive on the Internet, which has 1.5 million page views every month and 50 maintainers, and is a veritable library of Simpsons info. His book about The Simpsons is available in Finland.

  GAVIN PALONE: A major figure on the business side of comedy, Palone represented many Simpsons writers, including Jay Kogen, Wallace Wolodarsky, Al Jean, Mike Reiss, George Meyer and, most significantly, Conan O’Brien. Eventually, Palone stopped making money only for other people; he has gone on to executive-produce series created by his clients, including Curb Your Enthusiasm and Gilmore Girls.

  GARY PANTER: A member of the late-seventies music scene in LA, Panter defined punk art style with his drawings for Slash magazine and numerous album covers. His cartoons have been published in The New Yorker, Time, and Rolling Stone, and he has won two Emmys for his set design work on Pee-wee’s Playhouse. In 2006, Panter, along with Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, and Robert Crumb, was acknowledged as one of the Masters of American Comics by the Jewish Museum in New York City.

  DARIA PARIS: Sam Simon’s assistant during his days at The Simpsons and then afterward as president of Gracie TV. Paris is animated as Barney’s redheaded date in the Christmas special premiere episode. After The Simpsons she went on to be Brett Butler’s assistant and then a production coordinator on Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place.

  ROBERT PINSKY: The poet laureate of the United States from 1997 to 2000, Pinsky has published nine collections of his poetry and edited several anthologies. As poet laureate he started the Favorite Poem Project, which fosters the reading and sharing of poetry among thousands of young Americans. Pinsky is a professor at Boston University and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the PEN award for poetry. His translation of Dante’s Inferno has been critically lauded and is widely read throughout the Englishspeaking world.

  MARGOT PIPKIN: The first animation producer for The Simpsons when it was still shorts on Ullman. It was her job at Klasky-Csupo to produce the bumpers, and eventually the series, as well as balance the animation budget. Pipkin—who was pregnant with her son—left after the first season.

  POLLY PLATT: With her partner and then-spouse, Peter Bogdanovich, Platt began her career in Hollywood under the guidance of Roger Corman. She wrote the film Pretty

  Baby and was a production designer on Paper Moon, A Star Is Born, and The Last Picture Show, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Art Direction for Terms of Endearment. While she had no official title at his company, Jim Brooks described her as the “mother” of Gracie Films.

  DOMINIC POLCINO: Hired by Klasky-Csupo to draw the second season, Polcino worked on character layouts and storyboards before being made a full director in 1994. He has been with Film Roman ever since the show moved, and is currently directing Family Guy episodes, like the famous Star Wars parody, Blue Harvest. His adult comic, Lovesick Fool, is available at www.shadycomics.com.

  GYORGYI POLUCE: Former Simpsons color designer and the genius behind The Simpsons color scheme. Poluce had worked with Csupo at a Hungarian film studio, where she had colored a cartoon called Hugo the Hippo (an animated musical about hippos and Zanzibar, narrated by Burl Ives; Marie Osmond was also involved with the project).

  DAVID RICHARDSON: Richardson had been writing for Empty Nest when the people at Gracie read his work and asked the young writer to join David Mirkin’s writing room. Richardson worked on The Simpsons for a year before moving on to Gracie’s ill-fated series Phenom. Afterward, he wrote for The John Larroquette Show and was co–executive producer of Ed and Malcolm in the Middle.

  BRIAN ROBERTS: An editor and postproduction coordinator on The Simpsons from the early days at Ullman until he left the show in 1992 (the voice actors recorded him a rap song when he left), Roberts wrote one of the early episodes, “Brush with Greatness.” He went on to a successful career directing sitcoms and other programs, including The George Carlin Show, The Drew Carey Show, Lizzie McGuire, Everybody Loves Raymond, and most recently Little Mosque on the Prairie (in Canada).

  PHIL ROMAN: In 1948, when Roman was eighteen, he was inspired by the film Bambi to move to LA from his hometown of Fresno, enlisting in the only art school he could find that taught animation. After the Korean War and a stint with Disney, Roman worked with Ralph Bakshi and animated Charlie Brown TV specials. In 1984, he founded Film Roman, animating Saturday morning cartoons and eventually prime-time series like The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and Family Guy. He currently runs Phil Roman Animation, an independent studio.

  GARY ROSS: Ross and his cowriter, Anne Spielberg, submitted their script for Big to Gracie Films, which James L. Brooks had set up to be a welcoming environment for writers in the feature film business. Ross and Spielberg were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1988.

  DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: A humor writer and media expert. Rushkoff’s books include The GenX Reader and the graphic novel series Testament. Rushkoff does commentaries on NPR’s All Things Considered and was involved with the documentaries The Merchants of Cool and The Persuaders on PBS. He is a lecturer at NYU, where he runs the Narrative Lab, and his website is www.rushkoff.com.

  BILL SAVAGE: A television, media, and pop culture expert, Savage is a member of the faculty of Northwestern University’s English Department, where he lectures on twentieth-century American literature and popular culture topics such as baseball and animation. His essay “So Television’s Responsible!” was included in Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture.

  HARRY SHEARER: Voice of Mr. Burns, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, and others. One of the industry’s most varied and prolific talents, Shearer has worked in the performing arts since 1950: acting, singing, playing music, writing, directing, and working in radio. He was first cast on the Jack Benny Program when he was seven years old and has gone on to act in films as varied as Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, Serpico, This Is Spinal Tap, and A Mighty Wind. He’s written music for films like Waiting for Guffman; has appeared on TV shows like Saturday Night Live and Dawson’s Creek; and has hosted a weekly radio program, Le Show, since 1983, first on NPR and now on Sirius/XM. He has won three Emmys and two Grammys.

  SAM SIMON: The third leg of the tripod responsible for The Simpsons (Groening and Brooks being the other two). Simon was a veteran TV writer and producer, with Taxi, Cheers, and The Tracey Ullman Show on his résumé when James L. Brooks asked him to run The Simpsons. Simon and Matt Groening fought over creative differences and, eventually, financial issues. The president of Gracie Films Television, Simon left the company acrimoniously in 1993. He now runs the Sam Simon Foundation, which rehabilitates abused and abandoned dogs and trains them to help the disabled.

  YEARDLEY SMITH: Voice of Lisa Simpson. Raised in Washington, D.C., Smith (her first name is pronounced “yard-lee”) used her acting talent and unique squeaky voice to land her small roles on and off Broadway, as well as on TV (Brothers) and in film (Heaven Help Us) in the mid-eighties. For Lisa, whom she has voiced since the shorts, Smith won the voiceover Emmy in 1992. She’s since appeared in films like As Good as It Gets and sitcoms like Dharma and Greg, has written and starred in a one-woman show off-off-Broadway, and has authored a children’s book.

  ART SPIEGELMAN: Art Spiegelman, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, is the first cartoonist to win a Pulitzer Prize Special Award for Letters. His comics, detailing his father’s experience
s in Nazi Germany and then Auschwitz, Maus and Maus II, are considered among the great achievements in the genre. He knew Matt Groening through their mutual friend Gary Panter as “Gary’s punk rock friend.”

  ANNE SPIELBERG: One of the writers who, in the eighties, worked with Jim Brooks and Gracie Films to produce films where the writer’s role in developing the script was considered paramount. Big, which she cowrote with Gary Ross, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1988. Her brother Steven is also involved in the film business in some way.