Speaker 1: Four Finger Discounted.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, welcome to four Finger Discount. With this week,
Speaker 2: we're very lucky to be joined by a man who
Speaker 2: wrote the episode. We're going to be discussing it's Last
Speaker 2: Exit the Springfield. You may know his podcasts. Don't be Alone,
Speaker 2: it's Jay Cogan. Don't be alone with Jay Cogan. How
Speaker 2: are you going, sir?
Speaker 1: May be with Jack Cogan.
Speaker 2: Hat there you go.
Speaker 1: It's all about the merch guys. Do you have the
Speaker 1: four Finger Discount merch?
Speaker 2: Now we've been doing this podcast for ten you still
Speaker 2: know merch. We need to get merged merch. The thing is,
Speaker 2: we used the Simpsons font with our logo back. We
Speaker 2: know before people care about things and now looking I go,
Speaker 2: if we do this, Disney going to be angry.
Speaker 1: It's all a big last suit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just we need to create a new logo.
Speaker 2: But then it's like we've had this logo for ten years,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: People don't like change, they don't.
Speaker 3: They certainly do not.
Speaker 2: I'm one of those people. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm usually on my podcast Don't Be Alone with Jake Cogan,
Speaker 1: and we normally discussed. We've discussed a lot of Simpson
Speaker 1: things on my podcast, but never, we never, We're not
Speaker 1: dedicated to the Simpsons. So this is fascinating. And of
Speaker 1: course last exit to Springfield has been a People seem
Speaker 1: to love this episode, so I'm glad they do, and
Speaker 1: I like it okay, But but everybody else seems to love.
Speaker 3: It absolutely the case. By the way, a little bit
Speaker 3: of self deprecation to begin, because it's always a tasty spice.
Speaker 3: But I saw the title of your podcast, Don't be
Speaker 3: Alone with Jay Cogan. I thought that is heartwarming and sweet.
Speaker 3: This is a message that everybody needs. Don't be alone,
Speaker 3: you know, create, you know, nourishing, nurturing social circles. Then
Speaker 3: I re read it's like, oh yeah, don't be alone
Speaker 3: with Jake Cogan exactly.
Speaker 1: Both, It's both.
Speaker 3: It works on so many levels.
Speaker 1: You're it's like a Simpsons joke. You look at it
Speaker 1: and then you look at it again. Oh, I get
Speaker 1: the other one.
Speaker 2: Who's the first per in the site I'd be alone
Speaker 2: with Jack Kagan?
Speaker 3: Was it Wally Woollodowski?
Speaker 1: Wow, don't belong with Jack Cogan. It may be my
Speaker 1: first babysitter. I'm not sure. But now Wallywalladerski is not afraid,
Speaker 1: clearly after all these years, not afraid to be alone
Speaker 1: with Jack Cogin. That's not that is not a problem
Speaker 1: for him.
Speaker 2: Were you guys a team when you were on because
Speaker 2: you were both pas for Gary Shanling's show. When did
Speaker 2: it become the duo that we now know in love?
Speaker 1: Well, Wally and I were very good friends in high
Speaker 1: school and we used to get each other jobs for
Speaker 1: when we were over the summer. So if I was
Speaker 1: working at a movie theater, he'd go work with me
Speaker 1: at a movie theater. A record warehouse, he'd go work
Speaker 1: with me at a record warehouse. And uh, I got
Speaker 1: a job as a production assistant on its Scary Shaling show.
Speaker 1: And then there was an opening and I called him
Speaker 1: and said he had just graduated from college. And I
Speaker 1: called him and said, you know what, there's a job
Speaker 1: over here, and he is being completely and constantly out
Speaker 1: of work. Said okay, I'll come do that, and he
Speaker 1: worked as a production assistant on the show with me,
Speaker 1: And while we were there, he said, you know what,
Speaker 1: let's take a chance at trying to write one of
Speaker 1: these episodes, a spec version of the show, and then
Speaker 1: we did, and they loved it, but they refused to
Speaker 1: buy it. They said, okay, well we'll have you write one.
Speaker 1: Oh man, we'll have to be assigned a script that
Speaker 1: they'll like. Well, they never did that, so then we
Speaker 1: wrote another script and then they like that even better
Speaker 1: than the first one, but also didn't buy it. But
Speaker 1: that's the script that I showed a producer who was
Speaker 1: on the Tracy Ollman Show. It was on the Gary
Speaker 1: Shaling Show. Was also on the Tracy Ollmen Show. And
Speaker 1: he said, ah, I think I can get you a
Speaker 1: writing audition with the executive producers of the show.
Speaker 3: And we did.
Speaker 1: We pitched a bunch of sketches. They picked one.
Speaker 3: We wrote one.
Speaker 1: They liked it enough and said we're willing to hire
Speaker 1: you at the minimum amount of money that the show
Speaker 1: business pays anyone.
Speaker 2: Never change. And you said we'll take it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll peg itt. So we did that. But so
Speaker 1: why and I his name at the time was Mark Wallace.
Speaker 1: He changed his name to Wally Walladerski when he became
Speaker 1: a professional writer. And so we've been buddies since we
Speaker 1: were fourteen years old.
Speaker 3: Can I talk about the logic or maybe like thereof
Speaker 3: of change your name from Mark Wallace to Wallace Wiladoski. Mely,
Speaker 3: Wally Wiladowski does have a ring to it, but kind
Speaker 3: of it. I'm thinking of the olden Knights of Hollywood,
Speaker 3: when Bernie Schwartz had to become Tony Curtis.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting you say that, because his father, Irv
Speaker 1: Waladererski had to change his name to Irv Wallace to
Speaker 1: get work in show business as as an assistant director.
Speaker 1: So he went from the you know, the old country
Speaker 1: name to the americanized name, and Mark, being sort of
Speaker 1: a good liberal boy, said I'm changing it back reclamation,
Speaker 1: so that he went back with his name legally became
Speaker 1: Mark Wallace Waladarski. It was always Mark Wallace. Now it's
Speaker 1: Mark Wallace, Waladarski and Waladwallerski alliteration. Oh yeah, memorable, Mark
Speaker 1: Wallace kind of boring.
Speaker 2: Have you ever told him that?
Speaker 1: Oh? He knew.
Speaker 3: I'd like to ask you about the process of writing
Speaker 3: with a working partner. I mean, how similar and dissimilar
Speaker 3: you have to be in your strengths, in your weak spots,
Speaker 3: and your preferences and your tastes. I mean, is it
Speaker 3: like two people lifting the same couch. Is it one's
Speaker 3: driving ones navigating?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: How do you discover you work well together?
Speaker 1: Like two people licking the same catch?
Speaker 3: What'd you say looking the same cat? That's exactly what
Speaker 3: I said. This is a common Australian metaphor. We do thing,
Speaker 3: it's differently down here lifting the same couch?
Speaker 1: Shall we lift in the same couch? It is? I
Speaker 1: would say, it's not like lifting the same couch. It's
Speaker 1: like any it's it's like figuring out where you want
Speaker 1: to go for dinner. You know, it's like some people
Speaker 1: are easy going and want to go where you go,
Speaker 1: some people don't. Sometimes you're in the mood for Chinese.
Speaker 1: So here's what happens. The very best version of this
Speaker 1: is you like each other okay, and then you appreciate
Speaker 1: each other's taste, and you think each other everybody the
Speaker 1: other person's funny, and you're willing to listen when they
Speaker 1: tell you, I don't think what you just said is
Speaker 1: very good. In fact, I think it's not very good
Speaker 1: at all. And you have to go like, okay, that's
Speaker 1: fine and not be hurt. So if you know, basically
Speaker 1: Walawadski knows I love.
Speaker 2: Him, is that Wally Colling you Van Yah.
Speaker 1: Now it's my dad, my dad. But wallywas knows that
Speaker 1: I love him very much. And you know, we've been
Speaker 1: buddies' best friends for years and it was the best
Speaker 1: man of my wedd So when I say to him
Speaker 1: that sucks, he knows it's coming from somebody who actually
Speaker 1: thinks he's funny most of the time and and and
Speaker 1: cares about him. And when I hear Jay, that's the
Speaker 1: worst piece of shit you've ever thought of, it's also
Speaker 1: coming from love with a.
Speaker 3: Little sprinkly of something else on top.
Speaker 1: Maybe when partnerships go sour, it's usually like a marriage
Speaker 1: is going, so you don't think the underlining respect is there,
Speaker 1: and so things can go haywire at a certain point,
Speaker 1: and they often do. But the other good thing about
Speaker 1: partnerships is you don't want anyone in the room who
Speaker 1: thinks exactly like you do. You want somebody who think
Speaker 1: a little bit differently, so that you have two minds
Speaker 1: conquering the same problem from slightly different points of view,
Speaker 1: and you're apt to get something interesting going on. You
Speaker 1: want paint about it and chocolate right, and that way
Speaker 1: we both lock the same cat. You know teams in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: they proliferate mainly because you get two writers for the
Speaker 1: price of one, and Hollywood loves a bargain, so their chance.
Speaker 1: The fact that Wally and I were a team, I
Speaker 1: think is one of the reasons we got hired on
Speaker 1: The Tracy Owens Show because we have got two bodies
Speaker 1: for the price of one, and so two writers in
Speaker 1: a writer's room, we're basically doing the work of we're
Speaker 1: not the two of us aren't doing the work of
Speaker 1: one writer. When we're in a rear room, we're doing
Speaker 1: a work of two writers. But they get to pay
Speaker 1: us half as much money.
Speaker 2: So you paid a single income for the two of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah wow, okay, so you're hired as a team.
Speaker 1: Or hired as a team. We split our salary right
Speaker 1: down the middle and that so it's a big bargain
Speaker 1: for them, and we got to leap frog off for
Speaker 1: other really much more talented people who were much more expensive.
Speaker 2: So do you think of raising that doesn't exist? Or exist?
Speaker 2: It didn't exist as much as it probably should have,
Speaker 2: just the grade on the person's behalf because they didn't
Speaker 2: want to split their money, or is it? How does
Speaker 2: it work?
Speaker 1: I mean, when you get to a certain point in
Speaker 1: your life where in your career where you're commanding more
Speaker 1: money and you're a team, and you're commanding more money
Speaker 1: than you're not you're splitting. You're not splitting the minimum.
Speaker 1: You're getting as much as any individual writer, and then
Speaker 1: sometimes more. And then the line of writers lighting teams
Speaker 1: do split up eventually because they want A they want
Speaker 1: creative autonomy and B they want the full salary. So
Speaker 1: that happens a lot. And when Wally decided to split
Speaker 1: off from writing television with me, I was very sad
Speaker 1: that he didn't want to do that anymore, didn't want
Speaker 1: to work on TV. But I was happy to think, well,
Speaker 1: if I ever get hired again, I'll get the full price.
Speaker 2: What point did that happen was that after you left
Speaker 2: the Simpsons? Correct?
Speaker 1: Yes, we got a development deal after we left the Simpsons,
Speaker 1: and we worked for Universal for a while, and that
Speaker 1: development process really took a lot of joy out of
Speaker 1: both of us. But Wally sort of decided I'm going
Speaker 1: to be He always wanted to bake movies, and so
Speaker 1: he says, I'm going to be exclusively movies, and I
Speaker 1: want to do my own thing. And there was like,
Speaker 1: I of course said what but then then right after
Speaker 1: that I said, I for do what you need to do,
Speaker 1: of course.
Speaker 2: But I think it was similar with with Michael reson
Speaker 2: Nolo Jean. Right, they left to do the critic and
Speaker 2: then they just sort of they realized that it wasn't
Speaker 2: as much fun as the Simpsons.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, Mike wanted to stop and Al never wanted
Speaker 1: to stop. Yeah, so that's just a life choice, you know.
Speaker 1: It's like Mike likes to travel with his wife. He
Speaker 1: likes to do stuff. Al does not workhorse. He just
Speaker 1: likes to work and work and work and work.
Speaker 2: And he didn't stop until this year. Last year.
Speaker 1: In fact, Al is the guest and this week's Don't
Speaker 1: Be Alone with Jay Coogan, Al Jean is my is
Speaker 1: my is my guest on this week's episode. Yeah no,
Speaker 1: I mean you can ask Al any question you want.
Speaker 1: Is uh, he'll be very nice about it. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: much more likely to say bad shit about people, but
Speaker 1: Al will not. But the thing about it is, uh, yes,
Speaker 1: we people. People burn out, People get tired. Al Jean
Speaker 1: worked on the Simpsons for thirty years, I mean, an
Speaker 1: unbelievable amount of time. On one show. Uh and and
Speaker 1: and I think most writers, if they said, hey, you
Speaker 1: could work on one show, even as a show as
Speaker 1: good as The Simpsons for thirty years, a lot of
Speaker 1: writers go, I don't know, I'd like to try to
Speaker 1: do other things.
Speaker 3: I was bad to say. I mean, given the sort
Speaker 3: of the spectrum of material that you've worked on of
Speaker 3: the course of your career, I mean, does that feel
Speaker 3: more like a full body creative workout as opposed to
Speaker 3: just working one muscle as he might be doing on
Speaker 3: The Simpsons, even though the Simpsons would probably offer you
Speaker 3: a fair bit of scope creatively speaking.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could do a lot of things on
Speaker 1: the Simpsons, because it's a cartoon, and you can parody
Speaker 1: things and do a lot of fantasy things and all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. But I liked working in live action.
Speaker 1: I liked working in single camera. I liked working in movies.
Speaker 1: I like working into a lot of things. So animation
Speaker 1: is just one of many things that I wanted to
Speaker 1: try in my career. So I was interested in working
Speaker 1: in animation and also in many other things. I got
Speaker 1: the opportunity when I got the chance to leave the Simpsons.
Speaker 1: I didn't try to make more anime shows. I tried
Speaker 1: to make more live action shows, single camera live action
Speaker 1: shows and multi camera live action shows. And I've worked
Speaker 1: on movies, live action movies, some animated movies, and some
Speaker 1: sketch shows, some award shows, like anything. A lot of
Speaker 1: different choices.
Speaker 3: But predominantly in comedy. You're right, Jay, I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: looking out of it.
Speaker 1: You know you'll see Vogca comedy, all comedy. I've tried
Speaker 1: to write drama and that winds up. I can't resist
Speaker 1: putting jokes in.
Speaker 3: So it's something I was curious about because, I mean,
Speaker 3: your dad was a famous, well well regarded comedy rodit
Speaker 3: Righte a mad magazine calling me yes, And it's a
Speaker 3: very it's a very serendipitous segue that we're talking about
Speaker 3: your dad. But was I mean, was it always sort
Speaker 3: of on the CODs view that you'd be doing comedy
Speaker 3: for a living.
Speaker 1: Maybe, I mean, I love comedy and I grew up
Speaker 1: with comedy, and my ability to make my father laugh
Speaker 1: was like my my connective tissue father son connective tissues,
Speaker 1: so like he was sort of raising me to do that,
Speaker 1: So maybe it was always going to be comedy. I
Speaker 1: don't know he ever really thought it was going to
Speaker 1: be writing. I really didn't think I was going to
Speaker 1: be a writer. It looked horrible when my dad did it.
Speaker 1: It looked lonely and sad and you know, pulling your
Speaker 1: hair out and frustrating and all that other kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So that's the one thing I didn't want to be.
Speaker 1: I was trying to be an actor and a comedian
Speaker 1: and director, and I did special effects. I did a
Speaker 1: lot of things, and then eventually failed at all those
Speaker 1: things and eventually became a writer.
Speaker 2: When you were a kid, you dad obviously could write
Speaker 2: very funny jokes. Did you see him as a funny person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a silly guy. He did a lot of
Speaker 1: jokes all day long. But you know, sometimes when he
Speaker 1: had to be a dad, he was able to do that.
Speaker 1: He put on the dad hat every now and then,
Speaker 1: especially when I was in trouble. But my dad traditionally
Speaker 1: did funny things, and he fell into rooms and put
Speaker 1: whip cream on his face at award shows and like
Speaker 1: he was a weird, oh silly, really silly guy. One
Speaker 1: time he sent out a Christmas card for our family.
Speaker 1: It was me, my sister, my dad, and this blonde
Speaker 1: lady who had nothing to do with my nothing like
Speaker 1: my mom. And he just sent it out to everybody
Speaker 1: we knew and said, Mary, you know, happy holidays from
Speaker 1: the Kogans and my my father's friends. Most of them
Speaker 1: thought it was a joke and laughed, but there were
Speaker 1: a few people called up my mom and said, I
Speaker 1: don't know what happened, but we're on your side. He
Speaker 1: did me many practical jokes his whole life, and when
Speaker 1: I was born, he sent out a birth announcement announcement
Speaker 1: with his my father's height and weight on it and uh,
Speaker 1: you know there's a plank. Yeah, yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was and continues to this day. He loves a good joke.
Speaker 1: He's very funny. And I grew up in the shadow
Speaker 1: of that buddy.
Speaker 2: What did he think of your Simpsons work?
Speaker 1: Uh, it's good quote. I think he liked it. I
Speaker 1: don't think the Simpsons was his. It certainly wasn't his preference.
Speaker 1: When I told him I'm gonna leave this Emmy Award
Speaker 1: winning sketch show to go work on a cartoon live,
Speaker 1: you know, a prime time cartoon, he said, you're ruining
Speaker 1: your career. Don't do it, you know, that's a big, huge,
Speaker 1: huge mistake, and I had to go against my father's advice.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because the people that we've spoken to have
Speaker 3: worked on The Simpsons, there seems to be real connective
Speaker 3: tissue between Mad Magazine and the show. They seem to
Speaker 3: be a bit of a connective through line or a
Speaker 3: bit of a two and pray between the two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, because I mean I think they're both They
Speaker 1: are both in their era touchstones of comedy for different generations,
Speaker 1: and so the Mad Magazine sat it out Live Money
Speaker 1: Python the Simpsons. I mean, there's certain shows and things
Speaker 1: that have sort of identified what comedy is in a
Speaker 1: particular era, and The Simpsons, certainly in the nineties, was
Speaker 1: that thing. So yeah, I mean there's a touchdown and
Speaker 1: a lot of the people on my writing staff when
Speaker 1: I worked at the beginning since loved Mad Magazine and
Speaker 1: we're heavily influenced by Magnet Magazine. And when I was
Speaker 1: able to get all our pictures in Mad Magazine because
Speaker 1: my dad's connection, they I was a hero for a
Speaker 1: brief moment before they went back to calling me an idiot.
Speaker 2: How many of the of the original Simpsons writing stuff
Speaker 2: did you know when you joined that first season. How
Speaker 2: many did you know beforehand?
Speaker 1: Well? I knew Sam Simon and Matt Groening, and.
Speaker 2: So you didn't know Ali didn't know Mike. He didn't
Speaker 2: know all those guys.
Speaker 1: Oh, no, hey, we do do. Alan Mike had worked
Speaker 1: on the Gary Shandling Show, so I knew them for
Speaker 1: one season of that. I think maybe I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think maybe John Veedy also worked in the Gary Shanling Show. Briefly,
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't really remember. But there were a
Speaker 1: few people who worked on It's on the Gary Shanling Show.
Speaker 1: Not many, but George Meyer I had not known before this,
Speaker 1: Jeff Martin and I hadn't known before this. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of John Schwartzwelder. I certainly didn't know. So
Speaker 1: a lot of these guys were brand new to me
Speaker 1: when we showed up.
Speaker 2: Did it feel like you'd been picked or somewhat of
Speaker 2: a super team by James L. Brooks and Sam Simon.
Speaker 1: No, well, it didn't feel like we were just a
Speaker 1: super team. I like that idea, though. It felt like
Speaker 1: we were, yeah, much more close to the underdog. We
Speaker 1: were going to experiment with this strange little show. That
Speaker 1: is doomed to failure but could be really funny. And
Speaker 1: that's what we proceeded to make. We thought James L.
Speaker 1: Brooks got us thirteen episodes, not a pilot thirteen episodes,
Speaker 1: so we have thirteen episodes to fail, and that's what
Speaker 1: we thought we'd do. We just make ourselves laugh and
Speaker 1: make it as silly and as crazy and as fun
Speaker 1: as we wanted to be while also trying to tell
Speaker 1: a story and have emotional resonance because our boss, James L.
Speaker 1: Brooks insists on it. But I mean, we're just, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty something idiots and we emotional residents. You know, we're
Speaker 1: too spectro me to care about emotional resonance. But we
Speaker 1: exceed to his wishes and made sure that there is
Speaker 1: emotional resonance to the show. And that's why I think
Speaker 1: the show is actually pretty good, because it matters. Jeah.
Speaker 3: I'd like to veer a wife from the Sims just quickly,
Speaker 3: but I'd like to ask about what you learned at
Speaker 3: at Groundlings, which is this legendary comedy troupe I guess
Speaker 3: you'd call it, But was working with those guys a
Speaker 3: being part of that organization, was it like comedy one.
Speaker 3: I won in terms of fundamentals and technique.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's comedy school and it's writing school. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you have to write sketches. It's a sketch troop. It's
Speaker 1: like Second City or you know a lot of people
Speaker 1: from drownings go to Saturn Alive and it's the perfect
Speaker 1: It's the perfect place for people who work on certa
Speaker 1: a live because you write sketches, you do characters. You
Speaker 1: you know, try to figure out what's funny. You keep
Speaker 1: editing and editing and editing, you fix things. You have
Speaker 1: to agree in the moment, and if you learn an improvisation,
Speaker 1: you have to be quickly in a scene and saying
Speaker 1: things that make sense within the scene. So those are
Speaker 1: all great things for comedy writers. So if you're going
Speaker 1: to a scene write a show, it's good to be
Speaker 1: able to think in the voice of one character, then
Speaker 1: suddenly think in the voice of another character, and go
Speaker 1: back and forth and be consistent. If you're in a
Speaker 1: rewrite room with a lot of other writers, it's good
Speaker 1: to be able to say yes to what the showrunner
Speaker 1: wants and agree and then offered eight nine twelve suggestions
Speaker 1: on what the joke or the moment could be. So
Speaker 1: you're looking at story, you're looking at character. Growling is
Speaker 1: a very big on character, and you're looking at comedy.
Speaker 1: And it's all being taught to you and forcing you
Speaker 1: by doing, by making comedy and learning how to fail,
Speaker 1: learning how to go on stage and not be funny
Speaker 1: or not get a lab when you thought it would,
Speaker 1: and hone your craft. So Growlings was very essential to
Speaker 1: my development and the development of so many others. Like
Speaker 1: I think half of everybody in comedy at least came
Speaker 1: at least half came from the Growlings, the other half
Speaker 1: from Upfront Gate or Second City or something as else.
Speaker 1: But but to stand up comedy, but ours, the Groundings
Speaker 1: is a very good school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was the ink be audit for people like
Speaker 3: Will Ferrell, Christen wig Elvira because Andrew paid some even
Speaker 3: the Simpsons on Trust mcnail. Yeah, I mean, does a
Speaker 3: ground leak recognize another groundling out in the wild, you
Speaker 3: know if you're.
Speaker 1: By reputation, Okay, by reputation. So I kind of keep
Speaker 1: track of who who came through the school, and I
Speaker 1: went there when I was a kid. I started when
Speaker 1: I was seventeen and eighteen sou But I keep track
Speaker 1: of people, and i know people from the Groundings, and
Speaker 1: I'm still friendly with people who I didn't wasn't in
Speaker 1: the Groundings, they weren't in my era, but I still
Speaker 1: keep up with those those people too. So yeah, the
Speaker 1: Groundings still very cool functioning place.
Speaker 2: I've seen interviews where you've said some of the best
Speaker 2: advice you can give comedy udors to when you join
Speaker 2: a team is to just shut up and just listen
Speaker 2: and just take it all in.
Speaker 1: When you join a writing staff, Yeah, not a team.
Speaker 1: When you draining a writing staff, that's a weird and
Speaker 1: there's only two of you and one of your shuts up,
Speaker 1: that's not a good team.
Speaker 3: But you just described the full finger discun done exactly right, exactly.
Speaker 2: So what were the first things that you learned when
Speaker 2: you went to that Simpsons writers room yet that what
Speaker 2: caught you off?
Speaker 1: Guys, Well, that was my first room. My first room
Speaker 1: was the Tracy Oman room, and I'm there with James L. Brooks,
Speaker 1: a guy named Jerry Belsons, very famous comedy writer. Heidi
Speaker 1: Perlman from Cheers, one of the executi producers of Cheers,
Speaker 1: Sam Simon, one of the executivecers of Cheers and Taxi
Speaker 1: and ken Aston. So I'm with these giants of comedy
Speaker 1: and Wiley and I are just these two little peons
Speaker 1: who have been hired because we work really cheap. So
Speaker 1: the idea is be quiet and listen. First of all,
Speaker 1: if you're quiet enough, you'll figure out who's in charge,
Speaker 1: so you can figure out who's the boss and who
Speaker 1: do you want to please. Second of all, every show
Speaker 1: has a tone, so you have to really. You can
Speaker 1: watch the TV and the TV show and still not
Speaker 1: get the tone they're going for. Listening to what people
Speaker 1: are doing in the moment gives you the tone. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then after a few days you start talking suggestions.
Speaker 1: Something something you say gets in fantastic, something you say
Speaker 1: doesn't get in. You're still hustling and working, but don't interfere.
Speaker 1: Don't slow them down. You know you're the slow man
Speaker 1: in the photopol be a lot of people who just
Speaker 1: start out want to prove themselves and say and at
Speaker 1: the gate they just start pitching ideas, but they're slowing
Speaker 1: the room down. Let the big boys handle a lot
Speaker 1: of it. And then when you have a moment, try
Speaker 1: to try to pitch a golden a little golden idea
Speaker 1: and see if it gets in.
Speaker 2: But when did you ever feel like one of the
Speaker 2: big boys at the citizens?
Speaker 1: Oh? I felt like the big boy at the sentences
Speaker 1: right away. Wally and I were first on board, so
Speaker 1: like it. It was Matt Groening, Sam Simon and me
Speaker 1: and Wally so like everybody else was like you came later,
Speaker 1: guys like we felt. We felt very warm and welcome
Speaker 1: and and and part of it right away. I wasn't
Speaker 1: worried about that. And and the Simpsons. The tone of
Speaker 1: The Simpsons was being thought of by all of us
Speaker 1: as we were starting figuring out what the show was,
Speaker 1: and it was growing exponentially with every idea and uh,
Speaker 1: all the premises that were laying down and all the
Speaker 1: characters that we were developing. And the very first script
Speaker 1: that we wrote while and I wrote it was called
Speaker 1: Homer's Odyssey, and it was the very first script that
Speaker 1: existed for The Simpsons. It was not there was no
Speaker 1: pilot script.
Speaker 2: It was just like we're running a season.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of many in the pipeline, but ours was
Speaker 1: the first and our first script. I think Homer was
Speaker 1: called Homer, but Marge's called Juliette really because she didn't
Speaker 1: have a name. Yeah, it was Homer and Juliette because
Speaker 1: we were we were trying to be cute.
Speaker 2: So they hadn't named the characters. But that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Now mother, father, brother, sister, baby, I think that they were.
Speaker 1: They were.
Speaker 2: So the story of when, uh you know, Matt says
Speaker 2: that when I went into pitch the idea to Fox
Speaker 2: and You, I had to quickly think of the names
Speaker 2: of the of the characters and quickly write them down.
Speaker 2: I went in and I pitched the idea.
Speaker 1: Didn't happen, right, He may he may have had those
Speaker 1: and then that, but you didn't tell us. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: when we're doing the shorts on the Tracy owned show,
Speaker 1: they didn't. Really. Bart may have had a name. I mean,
Speaker 1: a lot of characters didn't have names, including Marge, so
Speaker 1: we just made one up. But that's not the one
Speaker 1: that stuck. Turns out Matt wanted to honor his family,
Speaker 1: so he did.
Speaker 3: You were the big men on campus in the Simpsons
Speaker 3: his room. But is there a reset when you move
Speaker 3: on to different projects, or if you gathered enough sort
Speaker 3: of clout and credibility when you move on to say
Speaker 3: something like Fraser.
Speaker 1: Every time you go to a grand new show, you're
Speaker 1: the logo. It's the same thing. You clam up and
Speaker 1: you figure out how does this room work?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And who is the person that you really have to
Speaker 1: pitch to? And who are the assholes? Who're the nice people?
Speaker 1: And who are my friends? And who are going to
Speaker 1: be the people I'm not gonna like? And like, you know,
Speaker 1: what's what's the tone going to be? So and especially
Speaker 1: on a show that's been on for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: I and I've got on a Frasier. It had been
Speaker 1: on for many years. So I'm walking into a Emmy
Speaker 1: winning TV show that people's going All I can do
Speaker 1: when I show up is ruin it. That's the only
Speaker 1: thing I could do to change things. So you want
Speaker 1: to be very careful, listen to what the show is,
Speaker 1: but then do your best to join in and give
Speaker 1: them what they need. But you still think it's funny.
Speaker 1: You know, be true to yourself, give your own ideas,
Speaker 1: but you know, learn the layer of the land before
Speaker 1: you start making big suggestions.
Speaker 2: And trouble did you find as times evolve, comedy evolves?
Speaker 2: But do you find that writer's rooms tend to sort
Speaker 2: of stay the same when it comes to the structure
Speaker 2: and vibe or does every show in every year have
Speaker 2: its own sort of different vibe in the room.
Speaker 1: Every show, every show sort of has its own vibe,
Speaker 1: and it's usually set by the showrunner. So since showrunners
Speaker 1: are all different people, they're going to have different vibes.
Speaker 1: The christ Lloyd, Christopher Lloyd, not the actor, the writer
Speaker 1: who run who ran the Frasier Writer's Room, has a
Speaker 1: much different vibe than Sam Simon had at the at
Speaker 1: The Simpsons who had a much different, more different different
Speaker 1: vibe than Thenard Boomer had at Malcolm in the Middle
Speaker 1: and uh Bruce Helford had at The Low Pet Show
Speaker 1: or something like that. They the showrunner sets the tone
Speaker 1: of the humor, but also just the vibe of what
Speaker 1: kind of workplaces is. I think everybody who works at
Speaker 1: any workplace, their bosses set the tone for them. If
Speaker 1: their boss is a grouch who is you know, hates
Speaker 1: his life, he's gonna make sure you hate your life.
Speaker 1: And if their boss is a sort of Fezziwigs style
Speaker 1: lovely man, then your life will be much more lovely too.
Speaker 1: So you hope when you get a job that you
Speaker 1: find the fezziwigs of the world.
Speaker 2: What what best described Sam Simon's vibe?
Speaker 1: Uh? Wow, that's a great question. I mean, Samsung is genius,
Speaker 1: so really funny, but also just a little bit angry.
Speaker 1: So uh uh and by I say this as someone
Speaker 1: who loved him dearly, I love Samsung like a brother.
Speaker 1: But he he could be really angry. He could scream
Speaker 1: at you at the top of his lungs. It was
Speaker 1: he was not shy about overreacting to a million things.
Speaker 1: But he's also really smart and really funny, and he
Speaker 1: could be as ferocious as he could be. He could
Speaker 1: also be like a lamb at times. But so it
Speaker 1: was kind of the vibe is mercurial. What's the weather
Speaker 1: like when you watch into Sam? Is he is he
Speaker 1: good Sam? Or is he not good Sam? Uh? And
Speaker 1: so that's that's the kind of you're walking on eggshells
Speaker 1: a little bit when you're dealing with him.
Speaker 2: I think that's a difference between angry and angry for
Speaker 2: the right raisins.
Speaker 1: Though Okay, no, he was not angry for the right reasons.
Speaker 2: He wasn't.
Speaker 1: No, No, I mean sometimes he was, but sometimes he wasn't.
Speaker 1: I don't you know, he had he you know, every
Speaker 1: we're all products of our childhood, so in his childhood
Speaker 1: he learned to be quick to anger and then but
Speaker 1: he's also really, really smart and funny, So I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a bad to ask him. Would there
Speaker 3: be times when you feel like I shouldn't be taking
Speaker 3: this personally? I know it's office hours here, but I'm
Speaker 3: kind of taking this personally.
Speaker 1: I think the trick to surviving a show like that
Speaker 1: is not taking things personally. Sure, So, like he's just saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, Sam's in a bad mood, doesn't mean I'm horrible.
Speaker 1: If there he's screaming at you for writing the shittiest
Speaker 1: script in the world. It's hard not to hear that
Speaker 1: as a writer and go like, oh, is it really
Speaker 1: the shittiest script of the world. But and sometimes he's right.
Speaker 1: Maybe sometimes you've written something bad, But most of the
Speaker 1: time he's just engaging you in the way he likes
Speaker 1: to engage.
Speaker 2: When you say angry, then do you mean angry because
Speaker 2: you haven't written a joke the way he wanted? Or
Speaker 2: is he just in a bad mood because something happened
Speaker 2: now out of work and he brought it with him
Speaker 2: to the office.
Speaker 1: I mean, he could lash out it for you for anything,
Speaker 1: any reason at all. So like I remember walking down
Speaker 1: with Sam down the twentieth century Fox Walkway and then
Speaker 1: guy ran into him said hey Sam, and then and
Speaker 1: Sam just started screaming at him. I was like, Hey Sam,
Speaker 1: you're gonna say hey Sam to me? And then and
Speaker 1: then he walked. They had this little tiff, and then
Speaker 1: they walked along and then Sam said, you see what
Speaker 1: he said to me? I said, Sam, he said nothing
Speaker 1: to you. The guy just said, hello, you heard you
Speaker 1: heard something else you heard I'm going to kill you.
Speaker 1: But what he said was have a nice day. And
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know why you react the way
Speaker 1: you did, But they said, really I did, Like he
Speaker 1: really had had a messed up sense of who was
Speaker 1: coming at him and who was not coming at it.
Speaker 2: I find that this so interesting because you never hear
Speaker 2: these stories best Sam, obviously because he's passed and if
Speaker 2: they want to talk positively of him. But I think
Speaker 2: it's interesting to hear that there's a reason he was
Speaker 2: so successful because he I guess, he got shit done
Speaker 2: and he wanted things done his way. And you gotta
Speaker 2: have a bit of mongol you, I guess.
Speaker 1: He absolutely want to get shit done and want to
Speaker 1: get shit done his way. He's also and this can't
Speaker 1: be this is not a small thing. One of the
Speaker 1: great audiences of the world. So, like he knew who
Speaker 1: is funny. He loved to laugh. When somebody wrote something,
Speaker 1: he would like laugh hysterically. So he loved people, good
Speaker 1: people and good things. When when they hit him right,
Speaker 1: he was fantastic. So he found all the writers of
Speaker 1: the Simpsons. He found all his people and appreciated them.
Speaker 1: And so if that was one of the great writing
Speaker 1: staffs of all time, which some people claim it was,
Speaker 1: it's cause Sam found those people.
Speaker 3: I don't mean this to be a leading question, Jay,
Speaker 3: but I mean it seems like the kind of behavior
Speaker 3: that you're talking about with Sam there is becoming less
Speaker 3: and less tolerated in show business. Is the work diminished
Speaker 3: as a result? Bet does better work get created if
Speaker 3: some heads getting kicked? Metaphorically speaking, I mean I would
Speaker 3: say no, I don't. I run shows before it, and
Speaker 3: I don't kick in people's heads.
Speaker 1: I try to. I try to give a very warm, welcoming,
Speaker 1: kind loving environment for people to feel safe to pitch
Speaker 1: their best work. You know, satun Lahib is a pretty
Speaker 1: rough and tumble place and people manage to survive that.
Speaker 1: It's a very light, cutthroat, you know, pit people against
Speaker 1: each other kind of place. So some great work gets
Speaker 1: done there. But my favorite kind of work is when
Speaker 1: everyone helps everybody. When when somebody writes something, everybody else
Speaker 1: chips in to make that better, and then the cast
Speaker 1: chips in to make that better, and everybody tries to
Speaker 1: make everybody look good. That's that's magic. That's I had
Speaker 1: that at certain places. It was like that. At Frasier
Speaker 1: it was like that, and and honestly it was like that.
Speaker 1: It's The Simpsons. You know, all the writers really put
Speaker 1: in great jokes in everybody's script. So when you know,
Speaker 1: you talk about Last Exit to Springfield, that's something that
Speaker 1: was written by me and Wally, but also written by
Speaker 1: ten other people.
Speaker 3: It's probably difficult to review your own work in terms
Speaker 3: of ideas and themes and that. But when it comes
Speaker 3: to The Simpsons, were there certain things that you found
Speaker 3: you and Wally came back to like you wanted to explore.
Speaker 3: I mean, these could be like big overriding ideas about
Speaker 3: community in society or just about family dynamics and character
Speaker 3: interaction to mean.
Speaker 1: We were just trying to mind our childhoods for things
Speaker 1: that we thought were fun and interesting. Also, we were
Speaker 1: just trying to sell. The way you got an episode
Speaker 1: is you pitched an idea to Sam or Matt or
Speaker 1: Jim Brooks, and so you would think about, like, I'm
Speaker 1: want to write two to three episodes this season, and
Speaker 1: then we had we had we had sort of weeks
Speaker 1: where we would a few several few days where this
Speaker 1: we do a story conference out off lot. We go
Speaker 1: to a hotel room and we just pitched stories. And
Speaker 1: so at that point we sort of had ideas. I
Speaker 1: had a bunch of ideas from that are written down,
Speaker 1: while he had some ideas written down, and I would
Speaker 1: pitch it to Sam, and Sam go, oh, that's the
Speaker 1: shittiest idea in the world. And then I will I
Speaker 1: turned to Jim Brooks during lunch and said, oh, do
Speaker 1: you think this one, Jim? And if he liked it,
Speaker 1: I sold it. Sam had it do it, and so
Speaker 1: I was able to push the things. So it's the
Speaker 1: idea like the jazz singer, we ripped off the jazz
Speaker 1: singer and made Krusty for Krusty gets busted. I guess
Speaker 1: it was a U and I was like father, like
Speaker 1: cloud and and that was an idea that Sam hated,
Speaker 1: Matt hated. But then I went to Jim and Jim liked.
Speaker 1: I said, we gotta do it, so you know, and
Speaker 1: that idea why I don't want to do that, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just thought it's funny to do a
Speaker 1: weird show busy story with the weird cloud. So it
Speaker 1: it's things that made me laugh or I thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: Barta Daredelvill came about because we used to see these
Speaker 1: ads for truck Asaurus. There is this giant truck that
Speaker 1: I couldn't figure out why people were going to see
Speaker 1: it in the stadium, this monster robot truck, but people
Speaker 1: loved it, and so we, uh, we just made fun
Speaker 1: of that. And Evil Knievel was a big thing in
Speaker 1: our childhood too, so we made a fake Evil can Eevil.
Speaker 1: I don't even know when we were doing the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: Evil Canel probably didn't wasn't doing anything, and kids that
Speaker 1: era probably have no idea. There wasn't Evil can Eevil.
Speaker 1: But that's the guy that we were. We were making fun.
Speaker 2: We'd heard the name. We probably didn't know who he was,
Speaker 2: but he'd become a point with if you did something silly,
Speaker 2: you mom and dad would say, who you think you are? Evil?
Speaker 3: It's just right.
Speaker 2: It was a brand by that point.
Speaker 1: Sure, So I mean crazy lunatic, mostly drunk guy I
Speaker 1: don't even know, but I was like, we he jumped
Speaker 1: over things on his motorcycle. That seemed like if you're
Speaker 1: if you're nine years old, that seems like a really
Speaker 1: cool job. So you're very interested in jumping over things
Speaker 1: on your bike, and that was that was fun for us,
Speaker 1: So we mind that, we mind other things. We also
Speaker 1: knew that if we had a good Lisa episode or
Speaker 1: a March episode, a lot of the other riders, who
Speaker 1: were let's say say very spectromy who not great with
Speaker 1: email relationships, didn't want to touch the women characters metaphorically
Speaker 1: and not possibly physically, that we weren't servicing those characters.
Speaker 1: So if we had a good Lisa story or March story,
Speaker 1: we knew that's a sale. We could get that then,
Speaker 1: you know, so we would we would, we would think
Speaker 1: about that too. Those were fund for us ride.
Speaker 2: I know MEMI wrote the part what became the part
Speaker 2: of the Simincess Open Fire. Why do you think there
Speaker 2: was a real lack of female voice in that writer's
Speaker 2: room in the beginning.
Speaker 1: There a couple of reasons. One is, you know, it's misogyny, honestly.
Speaker 1: I mean in nineteen ninety there were a few women writers,
Speaker 1: but there weren't a lot of men. Weren't seeking out
Speaker 1: the voice of women for these things. It was boys club,
Speaker 1: mostly white guys. You know, it's like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of there was no there was no diversity being sought after,
Speaker 1: so it was so there was definitely misogyny. The pool
Speaker 1: of writers that Sam was looking for was a very
Speaker 1: limited pool. Was like this, there was a magazine called
Speaker 1: Army Man that was being self made, and more than
Speaker 1: half the writers in that Simpsons room came from Army Man.
Speaker 1: And there were mostly guys except for like Merrion Marco
Speaker 1: who didn't want to work in the Simpsons. So like
Speaker 1: there's like mostly guys. So that that's the main reason
Speaker 1: was the limited view of the pool of writers and
Speaker 1: the lack of wanting to make a diverse staff was
Speaker 1: why there weren't a lot of women writers then.
Speaker 2: So you said you were good at writing. March at
Speaker 2: least the stories you guys to those because the others didn't.
Speaker 2: When you didn't have that female voice in the writer's room,
Speaker 2: did you ever seek did you ever run and buy
Speaker 2: a female friend of yours whatever and say, hey, what
Speaker 2: do you think of this idea? Did you have a
Speaker 2: chancetick advice from female associates of yours to see whether
Speaker 2: you were getting that female voice right in your script?
Speaker 1: No? No, I mean I don't know. I mean I
Speaker 1: didn't run. I didn't run mister Burns's lines by an
Speaker 1: evil man either, like I didn't. It's it's being a
Speaker 1: writer means that that you imagine in your head what
Speaker 1: the characters are like. And accuracy isn't really the goal.
Speaker 1: The goal is entertainment and and and the feeling of legitimacy.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't I'm I'm I'm against the
Speaker 1: way things are right now. To sell a show, you
Speaker 1: just have to say it was my authentic experience, this
Speaker 1: happened to me. And that goes against everything I believe
Speaker 1: as a writer. As a writer, you have created freedom
Speaker 1: to write anything. I should be able to write spy
Speaker 1: novels and I should be able to write romance novels,
Speaker 1: and I should be able to write a show about
Speaker 1: a teenage girl who's also falls in love with alien.
Speaker 1: And none of those things happened to me, but as
Speaker 1: a writer, I get to write them, and so uh
Speaker 1: and and I don't think that a female writer needs
Speaker 1: to check with me to write a male character. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's what we do. We have to
Speaker 1: we have experience. I have experience of females in my life,
Speaker 1: and I have experiences of evil people in my life.
Speaker 1: And I have experience of moments when I felt like
Speaker 1: I was an evil genius even though I wasn't doing
Speaker 1: mister Burns style evil. But like, we all know what
Speaker 1: it's like to be angry but not angry enough to murder,
Speaker 1: or angry or fall in love but not fall in
Speaker 1: love like Romeo and Juliet. We can. We know these
Speaker 1: emotions and we tap into them for our writing, and
Speaker 1: writing is for making things that are even more interesting
Speaker 1: and fabulous than your real life. So the fact that
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily specifically be authentic, I don't buy that.
Speaker 2: Oh, don't think you watched those first seasons of The
Speaker 2: Simpsons and think there was a lack of female of
Speaker 2: what you don't. It doesn't feel like it's coming across
Speaker 2: poorly by any means.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, And if there was something that you're like
Speaker 1: really doing the cultural episode about Jewish people or something else,
Speaker 1: then we like we did while and I we did,
Speaker 1: like fatherlike land about a rabbi. I went and talked
Speaker 1: to rabbis and I said, is this real? Would this happen?
Speaker 1: What are some things that I could use that are
Speaker 1: real from the culture, And so you do research from that,
Speaker 1: or you do research about Italians, or you do research
Speaker 1: about any other culture, and you try and you know,
Speaker 1: be as accurate as you can and bring forth things
Speaker 1: that people like. And it does help these days if
Speaker 1: you are doing something about someone from a certain culture
Speaker 1: that that person of that culture is on the writing staff,
Speaker 1: I think people feel better about it. But I don't
Speaker 1: think it's necessarily the only way to do it. I
Speaker 1: would recommend a diverse writing staff. But if you want,
Speaker 1: if I wanted to make a show about Inoit people,
Speaker 1: I still can do that. If I can't find an
Speaker 1: Inoit writer available to me who's really funny to hire
Speaker 1: on staff, I might be able to still do enough
Speaker 1: research to do them proud to make something that's true
Speaker 1: to into it.
Speaker 3: Write what you know is very reductive, but you've got
Speaker 3: to add write what you want to know as well.
Speaker 1: Well. The worst thing every starting out writer rates is
Speaker 1: it's about a play, right, trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to write a play, and like, I want to shoot
Speaker 1: myself every time I read that first draft the writer's
Speaker 1: first thing, and it's very authentic to who they are.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's just boring and and cliche. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: what give me something more interesting?
Speaker 2: You're talking about the success of The Simpsons sort of
Speaker 2: was a part of the fact that you guys had
Speaker 2: this underdog mentality of what desn't to fail? When you
Speaker 2: realize that you weren't going to fail that this is
Speaker 2: arguably the biggest show on television. Did the mentality shift
Speaker 2: in the writer's room? Did the vibe change? What was
Speaker 2: it like?
Speaker 1: I mean, we were shocked, we were thrilled and shocked.
Speaker 1: We were having fun, so it meant, oh, we'll get
Speaker 1: to make more. This is fantastic. We get to make
Speaker 1: more fantastic. And further, people were liking the jokes, were like,
Speaker 1: what was making us laugh must be making some other
Speaker 1: people laugh. So that's very life affirming to us. So
Speaker 1: that was great. So we wanted to continue making really
Speaker 1: funny shows that people would like. I'll tell you about
Speaker 1: the end of the first year or season two, we
Speaker 1: got a polling some data from Fox who said, you know,
Speaker 1: because we thought people love our our insightful wit and
Speaker 1: all the detailed jokes and the references to Kirker Guard
Speaker 1: and to you know, Citizen Kane or whatever and all this,
Speaker 1: and Fox gave us data that suggested that the reason
Speaker 1: people liked The Simpsons was the pretty colors and that
Speaker 1: people fall down. It was like, fuck, you like that,
Speaker 1: that's it, and it's true. Then the pretty colors and
Speaker 1: people fall down is happening while we're making fun of Kirkerguard.
Speaker 1: So it's okay, but it was very frustrating to think,
Speaker 1: oh no, We're spending all this time to think of
Speaker 1: the greatest references and use all these things from pop
Speaker 1: culture and it doesn't matter. But I guess it does
Speaker 1: ultimately matter. It did. I think the reason the show
Speaker 1: survived for that long is it mattered. And those other
Speaker 1: cartoons do the same thing. If a family guys all
Speaker 1: references and South Park is all pop references, So I
Speaker 1: think we're not alone.
Speaker 2: Who were you writing it for. We're running it for
Speaker 2: the younger audience or the older audience. You yourself are
Speaker 2: for ourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't think young people or actually kids should
Speaker 1: be watching the show. It was definitely not made for kids,
Speaker 1: so we asked kids not to watch it. Of course
Speaker 1: that fell on on deaf ears because it's a cartoon.
Speaker 1: What of course kids are going to watch it. So
Speaker 1: we kept doing things as if kids weren't watching it,
Speaker 1: and eventually we had to realize kids are watching it,
Speaker 1: and we have to watch what we say and what
Speaker 1: we do. But we were literally exclusively writing it for ourselves.
Speaker 2: But there were some dark themes in that first season,
Speaker 2: Like you said, Homers Odyssey, Homa is going to commit suicide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we were trying to we were something dark.
Speaker 2: That's one of the darkest episodes in the history of
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 1: I agree. We just we just started out to go
Speaker 1: and start start with a.
Speaker 2: Bang, yes.
Speaker 1: Uh, and go from there.
Speaker 3: Having said that, Jay, I mean, I personally just wanted
Speaker 3: to give you a shout out for Old Money, an
Speaker 3: episode that you that you and Wally right, I mean,
Speaker 3: dignity on dignity on me, is one of my favorite
Speaker 3: lines from any movie or TV episode. Ever, as far as.
Speaker 2: I'm concerned, he's not bullshiting. He mentions it on the
Speaker 2: podcast all the time.
Speaker 1: I have no idea if I wrote it or somebody
Speaker 1: else wrote it, but I thank you on behalf of
Speaker 1: the many people who could have written it.
Speaker 3: And it's not necessarily aimed at a youthful audience one moment, our.
Speaker 1: Shows weren't aimed. It aimed at anybody but ourselves for
Speaker 1: the most words. And so, but aging isn't It is
Speaker 1: a real thing, and dying is a real thing. And
Speaker 1: you know all that. It's it's uh, gambling is a
Speaker 1: real thing. Uh, it's all, it's all, It's all there.
Speaker 2: When it came to the pop culture references you would
Speaker 2: be making, though, was there a quite of how popular
Speaker 2: it had to be or was it just something you
Speaker 2: knew You didn't care, you were writing the show for you.
Speaker 2: It's going in if you thought it was funny, and
Speaker 2: James thought it was funny.
Speaker 3: We.
Speaker 1: Uh, it had to pass the muster of the room,
Speaker 1: like we thought enough enough of our audience would know
Speaker 1: it should that should be the rule. Not nobody knows
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be so niche that only John Ved knows it.
Speaker 1: It should be. It should be enough that enough people
Speaker 1: understand either the context through context or the specific to
Speaker 1: get the joke. So yeah, it couldn't be just anything.
Speaker 1: And it had to make a room full of nerdy
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know how many there were anytime.
Speaker 1: Maybe start out with seven of us and grew to
Speaker 1: be twelve or something, but it had to make most
Speaker 1: of us laugh.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing. Even if you're not one hundred
Speaker 3: percent familiar with The Godfather Part two or Yellow Submarine,
Speaker 3: you know, the Beetles, you know enough about American cinema,
Speaker 3: enough people know about these kinds of things that these
Speaker 3: gags in last aeg. Of Springfield are gonna land. They're
Speaker 3: gonna hit to some degree or to bearing degrees with
Speaker 3: bearing members.
Speaker 1: I mean, I felt pretty safe with Godfather references. This
Speaker 1: is one of the most seen movies of all time,
Speaker 1: and certainly back then, maybe less so now.
Speaker 3: But getting him as granular as making him like Don Ferucci,
Speaker 3: and you know, he's sort of grabbing stuff off there,
Speaker 3: heaus off cards and all things, and well the band
Speaker 3: all that's kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In saying that, though, I grew up in the nineties.
Speaker 2: I was born in eighty eight, so as a kid,
Speaker 2: I literally had no idea what was going on here.
Speaker 2: I didn't know who the Godfather. I didn't know. I
Speaker 2: didn't get the Batman reference with the mirror, right, I
Speaker 2: didn't get any of this stuff. It's too young, right,
Speaker 2: but you knew but it was funny enough you knew
Speaker 2: it was something.
Speaker 1: It's like what kids do when they do six seven now.
Speaker 1: It's like they're laughing at something but they don't know
Speaker 1: what it is. Yea, And that's fine, But that's not
Speaker 1: as satisfying to me as a writer as people laughing
Speaker 1: at something that they know what it is. So I
Speaker 1: would rather they recognize Don Ferucci and think that's really
Speaker 1: funny that that's what we're doing, rather than just say
Speaker 1: it's something. Now. When I grew up, I read now
Speaker 1: magazine parodies of movies I'd never seen, and at least
Speaker 1: i'd read them all. I saw Looney Tune cartoons, Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers cartoons, also talking about movies. Henry Bargat movies The
Speaker 1: Petrified Forest or something I also never seen, and so
Speaker 1: I understood what humor could be from context. But when
Speaker 1: I got older and knew the reference, they were better,
Speaker 1: So I think I think they're better when you know.
Speaker 2: But I think the Simpsons My point was sort of
Speaker 2: more that I think the Simpsons introduced a whole generation
Speaker 2: of us in the nineties to these pop cultural icons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm the point is the same for the
Speaker 1: for the World Looney Tunes, and for Mad Magazine. Like
Speaker 1: I'm going to go see Lawrence of Arabia because I
Speaker 1: read it in Mad Magazine and okay, what that movie
Speaker 1: came out in nine sixty three. I was not alive.
Speaker 1: So it's like, I'm gonna I'm gonna see that because
Speaker 1: I read the parody and I'm going to try and
Speaker 1: figure out what that song is that Frank Jacobs is
Speaker 1: doing a parody of. I'm reading it, so I like,
Speaker 1: what's that? What's the real song? So it inspires me
Speaker 1: to go look for better references in my.
Speaker 2: Life with Last Exit the Springfield. So the idea I've read,
Speaker 2: I've read that that of the plant going a strike
Speaker 2: came from Mike Reese. Is that that's correct? Uh?
Speaker 1: Well, Mike said, so I don't I don't know that
Speaker 1: that's true, but okay.
Speaker 2: But what were your thoughts when you were first pitched
Speaker 2: this idea or was it was it an idea that
Speaker 2: you and Wally came up with, Like, how how did
Speaker 2: this come about? This, this particular story.
Speaker 1: I mean I think they they may have said we
Speaker 1: want to do a strike episode. Yeah, that may have.
Speaker 1: That may have been discussed first. So, I mean, I
Speaker 1: have no reason to doubt Mike Grease. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: a goddamn liar about everything else.
Speaker 2: But that's one thing you never went on. That submarine
Speaker 2: never happened exactly.
Speaker 1: No, No, I mean it could be, but that that
Speaker 1: that seems like a very reasonable story. Like Homer's Odyssey
Speaker 1: is basically very almost a strike like an episode. It's
Speaker 1: the Homer Homer almost takes down the plant because he's
Speaker 1: a safety inspector. So it's similar to that.
Speaker 2: It's almost like an origin story that episode for Homer,
Speaker 2: isn't it. Yeah, how he comes to safety inspector? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right. But also there's a you know, we had been
Speaker 1: on strike, the writers. I had been at least one
Speaker 1: strike by the time we're doing the last exit episode,
Speaker 1: and my father had been on strike many times. So
Speaker 1: I was very aware. We're very pro union family, you know,
Speaker 1: I was Writers Guild WGA member before I was born,
Speaker 1: and so it's like, you know, I'm a member. I'm
Speaker 1: literally a member of now five or six unions. So
Speaker 1: like I'm a big mean union guy, whether I want
Speaker 1: to be or not. And so we're we're we're fans
Speaker 1: of unions.
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily a funny concept, though, though the plant
Speaker 2: goes on strike and how do you approach this and go,
Speaker 2: how do we make this funnier?
Speaker 1: I would say that anything that's a dramatic subject is
Speaker 1: also a comedy subject. There's no subject that couldn't be funny,
Speaker 1: and I don't care what it is. It's anything. If
Speaker 1: it's like somebody's somebody's diagnosed with a deadly disease, if
Speaker 1: somebody is is trying to hunt for the murderer of
Speaker 1: his father. You can make anything funny if you choose
Speaker 1: to find the humor in any particular situation of the
Speaker 1: absurdity or the weirdness or all those things. But you
Speaker 1: do need a good story no matter what, And a
Speaker 1: good story means there's going to be real conflict and
Speaker 1: real drama at the heart of every story. When Homer
Speaker 1: invites the Daredevil, when Homer's afraid his kid is going
Speaker 1: to kill himself on a skateboard. That's not funny. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not funny. It's real. It's like you're worried that
Speaker 1: your kid is he is getting the wrong message from
Speaker 1: daredevils and putting his life in danger. There's nothing funny
Speaker 1: about that. However, we could make it funny by pointing
Speaker 1: up the absurd level of things and how kids don't
Speaker 1: really understand things that are dangerous, and the idea that
Speaker 1: there's a popular guy who jumps over things is ridiculous too.
Speaker 1: So like if you just highlight put a spotlight on
Speaker 1: the stupid of America or culture in general, you'll find
Speaker 1: what's funny. And there's plenty to put a stoplight to
Speaker 1: put a spotlight on. Well.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the story of Framed. In another way,
Speaker 3: it's a bolshie union organizer versus a capitalist big wig.
Speaker 3: These two butting heads. They've both got very different drives,
Speaker 3: different desires, except guy one of them's absolute dumbass, right, So.
Speaker 1: Like an idiot, an idiot and an evil guy fighting
Speaker 1: with each other couldn't be funny because you're extreme characters,
Speaker 1: even though the situation you know, healthcare, salary, dignity at
Speaker 1: your work. Those are all not necessarily funny things, but
Speaker 1: that's not the center of the center of the story
Speaker 1: is the conflict between characters. And if those characters funny
Speaker 1: and they have funny motivations and they do funny things,
Speaker 1: then it can be very funny.
Speaker 2: We're also talking on the emotion as well, and the
Speaker 2: drive for Homer to do this in the first place
Speaker 2: is because he wants best for his daughter. That's why
Speaker 2: he's doing all of this. So and he's sort of
Speaker 2: all he's doing is big thing, but he's oblivious to
Speaker 2: it all. And I like the fact that you have
Speaker 2: the scene just to set up the fact that Burns
Speaker 2: doesn't remember who he is, so you can have all
Speaker 2: those moments where Burns is oblivious to the fact that
Speaker 2: Homer's just a blue idiot as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I you know, at a certain point
Speaker 1: it got so stupid for us, even when it says,
Speaker 1: like Homer Simpson, who is he like? Good? That that joke.
Speaker 1: We never got tired of that joke, even though it
Speaker 1: was ridiculous. So I don't know, Yeah, he should be Homer, Marge,
Speaker 1: the Simpsons family should be on the forefront of mister
Speaker 1: Burns's mind because he's dealt with them so many times.
Speaker 1: But in our little universe, he doesn't care about the
Speaker 1: little Man, so he doesn't.
Speaker 2: Whenever we talk to Matt Salmon, he always says that
Speaker 2: each episode should be viewed in its own vacuum, that
Speaker 2: you shouldn't worry about what comes before. But I think
Speaker 2: that there has to be some sort of element of continuity,
Speaker 2: like you're saying, there where Burns probably at this point
Speaker 2: should know who Himer is.
Speaker 1: Matt Matt. Matt needs to work in a vacuum. Matt
Speaker 1: is required. You can't do eight hundred episodes and be
Speaker 1: really worried about the seven hundred and ninety nine that
Speaker 1: came before you. Yes, we were on the episodes twenty yeah, forty,
Speaker 1: very reasonable number than not to be aware of what
Speaker 1: the universe was for that show. Then it gets into
Speaker 1: the hundreds, forget about it.
Speaker 2: When The Simpsons became a success, did you feel off
Speaker 2: the success yourself?
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean I've Here's the thing. Everybody,
Speaker 1: every writer, every actor, everybody I know, we all feel
Speaker 1: like impostors anyway. We all feel like we don't deserve
Speaker 1: the success. That we the success that happens to us
Speaker 1: is dumb luck. And you know, the really good stuff
Speaker 1: was written by other people or other actors, and there
Speaker 1: are many more talented people who aren't working and all
Speaker 1: that stuff is all true. So when you wander through
Speaker 1: the world knowing that you're just a dumb idiot who
Speaker 1: got lucky, then when something you're working on is very successful,
Speaker 1: you go, yes, I got lucky. This is fantastic. And
Speaker 1: then I don't know if you think, boy, it's because
Speaker 1: of my genius. I think you just think I'm working
Speaker 1: with really funny, smart peace people and I should just
Speaker 1: shut up and let everybody make my work look better.
Speaker 1: And and I think that's true of most writers and
Speaker 1: most creative people. It's part of us that thinks were
Speaker 1: fantastic and a part of us that thinks we're just
Speaker 1: you know, playing playing game here and hoping that no
Speaker 1: one discovers us. So when the Simpsons became popular, I
Speaker 1: was all all in on enjoying the ride. I knew
Speaker 1: that there was not going to be things like this
Speaker 1: don't happen. I knew that I've been grown up in
Speaker 1: show business. I knew things like this don't just happen.
Speaker 1: You don't get on the show that people are selling
Speaker 1: T shirts on side of the road, bootleg T shirts.
Speaker 1: Just it's like I had seen Star Wars happen. That
Speaker 1: was like Star Wars. Everybody knew who Star Wars, everybody
Speaker 1: knew what The Simpsons was at that moment, and it
Speaker 1: was crazy to be in the center of it. But
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Did James and Matt and Sam. Did they let you
Speaker 2: guys the rotting stuff, let you guys know how important
Speaker 2: you were to the cog, to the system, or do
Speaker 2: they want you to sort of feel like you should
Speaker 2: be thankful to be here, or do they make you
Speaker 2: feel like you are part of this You're you're part
Speaker 2: of the reason.
Speaker 1: Yes, they constantly said that we're knuckleheads who are lucky
Speaker 1: to be there, and then every now and then said
Speaker 1: we couldn't do the show without the great writers. So
Speaker 1: like it would, they would go back and forth all
Speaker 1: this stuff and what they You know, Jim, Jim believes
Speaker 1: in writers and writing for sure, Sam does too, Matt
Speaker 1: does too. I mean, everybody believes in it. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, it's just like we're just all knuckleheads anyway.
Speaker 1: I mean, we really were dumb kids. I mean nerdy,
Speaker 1: smart kids, but idiots in our own way. And so
Speaker 1: it was a very motley crue. At the very least.
Speaker 2: We've asked this question to several of the key writing
Speaker 2: staff of The Simpsons, But did you yourself? Have you
Speaker 2: ever reflected on and gone I kind of wish I
Speaker 2: didn't leave.
Speaker 1: Now I'm really glad I left. I was tired. I
Speaker 1: was working for five years, no real vacations, nos, NonStop.
Speaker 1: I'm mining childhood stories after childhood stories. It's starting to
Speaker 1: get feel the same. And I got a chance to
Speaker 1: go work for something else and get paid a shit
Speaker 1: ton of money, So like, all right, well and go
Speaker 1: on the next adventure. Like part of the thing about
Speaker 1: being an artist is and again I say the word
Speaker 1: artists knowing that I'm an idiot, but that's fine. Like
Speaker 1: part of the journey of trying to lead a creative
Speaker 1: light is to experience new things and to try new
Speaker 1: things and put yourself in world of change. And at
Speaker 1: least that is for me. And that was exciting to
Speaker 1: try and do that and make our own show. That
Speaker 1: was an opportunity to make our own show. We spent
Speaker 1: three years trying to make our own show. We were unsuccessful,
Speaker 1: but that was fun to try and do too. We
Speaker 1: learned lessons on how to do it well and some
Speaker 1: things we didn't want to repeat, and I wanted the
Speaker 1: opportunity to do it myself. And I've eventually got those opportunities.
Speaker 1: But it takes branching out and trying new things.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's important as an artist to never
Speaker 2: be comfortable.
Speaker 1: Financially, artistically comfortable.
Speaker 2: How comfortable in a sense of you know you've got
Speaker 2: this gig, you don't have to leave, they're not getting
Speaker 2: it rid of you.
Speaker 1: Yes, even if you work forever, if you're Al Jean
Speaker 1: or Matt Sellman and you work on this show and
Speaker 1: you know you're not going anywhere, it's one of the things.
Speaker 1: You're still uncomfortable because every episode is tough, and every
Speaker 1: story breaking is uncomfortable, and there's always going to be
Speaker 1: days where you're spending like staring at each other saying
Speaker 1: we can't break the story and this joke doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Discomfort comes with the process, So I don't think we
Speaker 1: have the manufactured discomfort to be a good artist. It's
Speaker 1: part of the process.
Speaker 3: Figuring me if this sounds like an absolute rookie question, Jay,
Speaker 3: which it is. But I mean, I'm always curious about
Speaker 3: the term breaking the story. What exactly do you mean
Speaker 3: by it?
Speaker 1: So breaking the story is a term for coming up
Speaker 1: with a good story. So you come up with an idea,
Speaker 1: and maybe the idea is that the plant goes on strike,
Speaker 1: but that's just an idea. That's not the story. The story.
Speaker 1: Why does the plant go on strike? And why does
Speaker 1: and how is Homer involved? And what does Homer do
Speaker 1: to make it work and make it worse? And what
Speaker 1: happens when that gets is worse? And what are the
Speaker 1: what are the details of the story to make it worthwhile?
Speaker 1: And those details are called breaking the story. And they
Speaker 1: called it sounds violent because it is kind of violent.
Speaker 1: Breaking it is really sort of figuring out, like breaking
Speaker 1: out a pony, Like we're gonna we're gonna tame it
Speaker 1: and make it into something that we liked, that's understandable
Speaker 1: and that makes sense, and it's surprising and it's interesting
Speaker 1: and all those things. And to be all those things
Speaker 1: is really hard, and it takes a lot of really
Speaker 1: creative minds to make good ones, and you it's easy
Speaker 1: to make bad ones. Actually it's not easy to make it.
Speaker 1: It's still hard to make bad ones, but it's hard.
Speaker 1: The whole process is hard. So that's why I bring
Speaker 1: and story is the hardest part of the whole job.
Speaker 1: Every everybody will tell you that jokes are easy. Story
Speaker 1: is hard. And figuring out what the story is going
Speaker 1: to be and making it one that you haven't seen
Speaker 1: before and one that you don't know exactly where it's going,
Speaker 1: and one that's having fun interesting stops along the way.
Speaker 1: That's a hard thing and that's what you have to
Speaker 1: choose to really dedicate yourself to do. And that's what
Speaker 1: you know. Really great shows are based on having really
Speaker 1: good storytellers.
Speaker 2: Did you know this was going to be your last
Speaker 2: episode last day at Springfield when you were writing it?
Speaker 1: H I think so. I think we knew that it
Speaker 1: was going to be our last episode because we had
Speaker 1: signed a deal of some kind, although there was always
Speaker 1: an opportunity to come back and write another one at
Speaker 1: some other point in time. But no one has ever
Speaker 1: asked us.
Speaker 2: So you went part of the Simpsons movie or anything
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: No, the people who were on the Simpsons movie were
Speaker 1: people who were working on the show at the time.
Speaker 2: I thought they brought some of the original Rode back
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean that George was still there
Speaker 1: and I was there, Mike was there, still consulting capacity,
Speaker 1: like all those people were kind of still in the orbit.
Speaker 1: But maybe they just hate us.
Speaker 2: Possibly could be they just said you're but uh, the
Speaker 2: thing is because I'm watching this knowing it was your
Speaker 2: last episode, and rewatching it for the for this, and
Speaker 2: it's it feels like there's just so many jokes cranny.
Speaker 2: Obviously that was just how The Simpsons worked. But I
Speaker 2: just didn't know whether it was the idea of We're
Speaker 2: just gonna cram in as many ideas as we had,
Speaker 2: because it was like a last Hurrah kind of mentality.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's it. I just think that's what
Speaker 1: the Simpsons was. Like, We're just jamming ideas and jokes
Speaker 1: and ideas and jokes and ideas and jokes and having
Speaker 1: some sort of heart in the center of it that
Speaker 1: that makes sense, and some some you know, father daughter
Speaker 1: loving situation going on, and you know, and and Lisa's
Speaker 1: idealism going on. Like we had some legitimate things in
Speaker 1: the episode, but mostly it was just like how many jokes.
Speaker 1: Can we tell what can we make if it's funny? Uh,
Speaker 1: and let's be as funny as we possibly can. But
Speaker 1: that was every episode of the Simpsons we ever made. Was
Speaker 1: that was trying to be?
Speaker 2: That was it? Did you have sort of a time
Speaker 2: limit of how long was too long? With add a
Speaker 2: gag of some kind?
Speaker 1: Uh, it's to taste. So like, for example, the joke
Speaker 1: where Lisa needs.
Speaker 2: Uh, dental plan Lisa needs brices.
Speaker 1: Right, dental plan Lisa needs braces. It just goes back
Speaker 1: and forth a lot of times what we wrote, what
Speaker 1: I wrote this, that particular joke I wrote. I think
Speaker 1: I did it on four pages long, maybe five, just
Speaker 1: back and forth of that that joke. I thought that
Speaker 1: joke Coo would stand forever, like I found. I felt
Speaker 1: there was a joke that would go laugh at first,
Speaker 1: then it's like why does it keep going? And then
Speaker 1: laugh again? Oh my god, it's keep going, and then
Speaker 1: laugh again. And I thought it could stand a really
Speaker 1: long time, and it wound up being thirty seconds maybe,
Speaker 1: But I my original thought was two minutes.
Speaker 2: You know, it was always just dental plan lace and
Speaker 2: these prices or is there other No?
Speaker 1: I think that was it. I just Devil Brown lacing
Speaker 1: these braces. Maybe one other thought in the middle, but
Speaker 1: I don't think so. It was really just that back
Speaker 1: and forth, back and forth, back and forth, simple back
Speaker 1: and forth, showing basically how stupid Homer is.
Speaker 2: Is that why you break it up with the pencil
Speaker 2: down the butt crack, just to sort of separate it
Speaker 2: a bit, because you thought more will the audience be
Speaker 2: able to stick it out this long?
Speaker 1: Or I don't remember. I think maybe the butt the
Speaker 1: pencil and the butt crack wasn't mine. I think maybe
Speaker 1: that's something that you'd l add it in. But I
Speaker 1: just thought it was really funny to just be stuck
Speaker 1: in that moment.
Speaker 2: Because the Simpsons hadn't really done that up to this point.
Speaker 2: I don't think we're just dragged and dragged and dragged.
Speaker 1: No, that it's funny. It's new, it's a new thing,
Speaker 1: but it's where it's not new that Homer is an idiot.
Speaker 1: That's not new. It's what new ways can we show
Speaker 1: his idea?
Speaker 3: I must admit watching that scene, I was just before
Speaker 3: the pencil went into the butt crack, I was like,
Speaker 3: the stretch this out. I can feel it's not reaching
Speaker 3: breaking point, but I really got some stretch on it now, right,
Speaker 3: And then yeah, there was that break and then it resumed.
Speaker 3: So yeah, how.
Speaker 1: Long How long should a joke go? It depends, like
Speaker 1: you do. You make it, and then you see it
Speaker 1: and then you edit it, and then you see it again,
Speaker 1: and then you edit it and then you see it again.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it works, and sometimes it's it's too long,
Speaker 1: like when when Homer fell down the cliff in bark
Speaker 1: the level. How long how long should he go? You know,
Speaker 1: long enough long?
Speaker 2: And then go and then do it straight away again. Able.
Speaker 1: My favorite jokes of all time is the if any
Speaker 1: joke I've ever written in my whole life, it's that
Speaker 1: whole sequence is my favorite thing I think I've ever written.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just that the ambulance hit in the tree that's
Speaker 2: right in front of it.
Speaker 1: It's daisily stolen. It's buster keating jokes stolen. But you
Speaker 1: know what steal from the grates.
Speaker 2: That's right? Yeah. Well, this episode here last Sex's springfield
Speaker 2: like dental plan Lese and these braces. It spawns so
Speaker 2: many icon now Simpson's memes, so many moments have turned
Speaker 2: into memes. You've got where's my burrito an onion into
Speaker 2: my belt. You know, the Big Book of British Smiles.
Speaker 2: How does it feel for you when you say an
Speaker 2: idea that you and Whally wrote thirty plus years ago
Speaker 2: get a new lace on life through the main culture.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm an old man, so memes mean nothing
Speaker 1: to me. What do I care about? Me?
Speaker 2: Means everything to us?
Speaker 1: Right, that's everything to you guys. But I like that
Speaker 1: jokes are in the culture. Those jokes will fade away
Speaker 1: from the culture. I've seen. I've seen people be very
Speaker 1: famous and then very unfamous things that were in the
Speaker 1: culture in the nineteen seventies when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: Now people have no idea about vice versa. Things will
Speaker 1: fade away. It's okay, it's fun that it's there. The
Speaker 1: Big Book of British Smiles is wal you wat erski joke.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic and I'm glad that it resonates because I
Speaker 1: don't know that that. I wasn't sure that all of
Speaker 1: the world knew how horrible British teeth.
Speaker 3: Were, but.
Speaker 2: That was that just sort of the stereotapt that it
Speaker 2: was mentality in the states of British people have terrible teeth.
Speaker 1: It's not just stereotype. It's true. At one time with
Speaker 1: the advent of sugar, when sugar was brought into England
Speaker 1: was colonizing everything they brought over sugar, and sugar started
Speaker 1: destroying English people's teeth in a horrible way. I think
Speaker 1: there was Terry Jones, one of the Python guys, talked
Speaker 1: about it that before sugar they dug up the remains
Speaker 1: of British people and their teeth were fine, and then
Speaker 1: after the advent of sugar, sugar started destroying people's teeth
Speaker 1: very quickly. So it's there was a period of time
Speaker 1: when just devil care was not great and people, British
Speaker 1: people's teeth were particularly awful. But I think that's true.
Speaker 3: It feels like you walked so Austin Powers could run.
Speaker 1: Exactly well Austin Powers. I mean, if you're a fan
Speaker 1: of Elvis Costello, as I was, he did have great
Speaker 1: teeth for a while, and then he had great teeth
Speaker 1: after he got some money. So like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it happens.
Speaker 3: Speaking of Austin Powers, I just want to sidetrack for
Speaker 3: a little bit. But script doctoring it seems like one
Speaker 3: of the coolest jobs in the world. And you seem
Speaker 3: to have got your fair share of credits or not
Speaker 3: credits in that regard, including the Austin Powers movies. I'm
Speaker 3: just wondering how you got into it, how it works,
Speaker 3: and maybe the punch up that you're most proud of.
Speaker 1: Wow. I mean, I really enjoyed working on The Nightti
Speaker 1: Professor with Eddie Murphy because I got a chance to
Speaker 1: work with him. That was really cool, and they were
Speaker 1: filming it while we're writing it, and that was really fun. Really,
Speaker 1: so that when you write a joke and they actually
Speaker 1: film it, is that, Oh, that's fantastic. Because I've done
Speaker 1: so many rewrites where you write a million jokes and
Speaker 1: then nobody it never sees the light of day. It's
Speaker 1: just script pages that go nowhere. The Austin Powers movies,
Speaker 1: I am. I can not take credit for Austin Powers.
Speaker 1: Austin Powers is Mike Myers. He's a genius. He's fantastic
Speaker 1: and if you whisper something to him and he like,
Speaker 1: then you know, you feel like a hero. But it's
Speaker 1: all Mike Myers and Mike smeers brilliance and and but
Speaker 1: I love working with him on on things and I
Speaker 1: respect his genius immensely. I like working on the Shrek movies.
Speaker 2: You big on You're big on building connections. Did did
Speaker 2: you get the Shrek gig? Because he built that connection
Speaker 2: through Austin Palace?
Speaker 1: I got the Shrek gig because I'm I'm yeah, knew
Speaker 1: Mike Myers. Yeah yeah, So like, yeah, I think some
Speaker 1: of it's too you know, guys, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say that it's not a meritocracy. It is a lot
Speaker 1: of it is having a dad who's a writer. Didn't
Speaker 1: hurt and uh get me. That got me the job
Speaker 1: at Gary Shanling show. That got me the gig. So
Speaker 1: connections matter, uh, and then you know, it helps if
Speaker 1: you can deliver once you get the opportunity. But you're
Speaker 1: gonna get more opportunities more people, you know. So I
Speaker 1: worked to developed relationships with people and sometimes they worked.
Speaker 1: They they they turned into jobs. Uh, sometimes they didn't.
Speaker 1: But that's all right. I like I like people in general,
Speaker 1: so it's it's all good.
Speaker 2: I mean, look at look at the guest list for
Speaker 2: your podcast. She was on the biggest Names in entertainment.
Speaker 2: It's it's incredible.
Speaker 1: The biggest names in entertainment, name the biggest Robert de Niro.
Speaker 1: I got him.
Speaker 2: But that means a lot of a lot.
Speaker 1: Of a lot of really good people come to my podcast.
Speaker 1: You've got the mine's called the Jake Cogan Experience. What's
Speaker 1: it's called? No, don't be alone with Jake Cogan? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: if Brian Cranston comes out. But guy, these are people
Speaker 1: I work with. Mostly. There's a few people I didn't
Speaker 1: know came on the show that I love.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 1: Tony Shaloub I had never met and I always wanted
Speaker 1: to meet him. And I asked a friend or a friend,
Speaker 1: will you ask Tony Shaloub to be on the show,
Speaker 1: And they said yes, I loved it.
Speaker 3: You had the pad of guys on them. Sorry, this
Speaker 3: is probably gonna be cut out of the the interview,
Speaker 3: but I mean, uh, you had Shane Black and Fred
Speaker 3: Decker And I was like, oh my god. I was
Speaker 3: actually speaking to uh to Dano about Fred Deckert the
Speaker 3: other day and then all of a sudden his name
Speaker 3: comes up on your podcast. Oh I'm putting this aside
Speaker 3: to listen to you later on a loop.
Speaker 2: We're big love for We're big love for Ricochet the film.
Speaker 1: They're great, But what I really like about them is
Speaker 1: their friendship. So like that they they're true friends, and
Speaker 1: they're movie friends, but they're real friends and they talk
Speaker 1: to each other in a real way. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of cool to come up with people who all dream
Speaker 1: of being in the movie business and they all were
Speaker 1: in the movie business.
Speaker 2: It's a particular favorite moments of mine from this episode
Speaker 2: Last Sex at Springfield, where like Grandpa's rambling story, so
Speaker 2: that spawned the obvious time on into my belt. So
Speaker 2: when you're writting one of these scenes, how do you
Speaker 2: know when enough is enough? When it comes to Grandpa's rambling?
Speaker 1: You don't. You write it and then you edit it later,
Speaker 1: but you just go you go along. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no the scripts. When we wrote a Stimpson script, we
Speaker 1: would generally write a seventy page long script and then
Speaker 1: the scripts would be cut down to a unreasonable forty pages.
Speaker 1: So like it still and forty pages is still crazy
Speaker 1: long for a show that size, but a lot of
Speaker 1: its stage directions and visual jokes and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: But uh, we wrote long. We wrote long. I still
Speaker 1: to this day, I write long.
Speaker 2: It's probably just it's bet best to just wrote it
Speaker 2: out rather than just leaving and you want to write it,
Speaker 2: and they want to keep it, they can keep it, and.
Speaker 1: Then a lot of it's gonna be shitty, and so
Speaker 1: you're gonna cut the shitty parts. I always when I
Speaker 1: teach writings, you write stuff that is in your head.
Speaker 1: You go from this stuff that's good to this stuff
Speaker 1: that's good, and all the stuff in the middle is shitty.
Speaker 1: Just put them together, you know, it's like you can
Speaker 1: wrinkle in time.
Speaker 2: Do you think this ramble would have been lot three
Speaker 2: times as long then in the visual script?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure it was. I'm sure it was. And
Speaker 1: just like Homer's you know, dental plan Lisa in these
Speaker 1: Braces was more was twice as long as it was
Speaker 1: in the script as it was, and that you you
Speaker 1: just you write, what do you write? And then a
Speaker 1: wom full of really smart people go this is boring,
Speaker 1: or I don't like this, or let's this is the
Speaker 1: best part, or let's stuff you wrote. I have something
Speaker 1: even better, let's put that in, and then you do
Speaker 1: thank them very much, thank you, it's good, it's better.
Speaker 1: I'm glad it has my name on it, even though
Speaker 1: it's your joke. Thank you, And then you do the
Speaker 1: same for their scripts. But but that's that's just how
Speaker 1: it goes.
Speaker 3: It seems like so many funny people have the perverse
Speaker 3: urge to push a joke as far as it will go,
Speaker 3: almost push it into the realms of being unfunny, to
Speaker 3: see if they can do that circular loop of making
Speaker 3: it funny again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, that's a little bit of a comedy
Speaker 1: high wire act that who doesn't like it? If you're
Speaker 1: if you're a pro, you're gonna want to You're gonna
Speaker 1: want to push the joke, I think, and be willing
Speaker 1: to risk people scratching their head for a second before
Speaker 1: they laugh. That everybody hasn't know what's going on the
Speaker 1: whole time to ultimately get where you're going. It's good
Speaker 1: maybe if there's confused up until the point.
Speaker 3: I'm always reminded of uh, Norm McDonald at a roast for
Speaker 3: someone one. Yeah, he was basically just doing bits out
Speaker 3: of some how to do comedy from book from the
Speaker 3: ninety fifties or whatever the way. It's anodyne jokes ever,
Speaker 3: but delivering him in that inimitable Norm mcdng style, The
Speaker 3: audience just like absolutely baffled. They got no idea what's
Speaker 3: going on, and the comedians are just dying. They think
Speaker 3: it's the funniest thing they've ever heard in their life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, listen, it's meta. It's a little bit meta,
Speaker 1: and that's that's funny too. So like you, if you're
Speaker 1: a student of comedy and somebody's doing playing with the form,
Speaker 1: you could appreciate that. You don't need to just like
Speaker 1: you don't need to know all the references to Godfather too,
Speaker 1: It's still okay to not know everything and learn it later.
Speaker 2: I think you want to bring up the Aristocrats too.
Speaker 3: On that note, I did, actually, yeah, I mean I've
Speaker 3: recently tried to explain the concept that the Aristocrats to Dando,
Speaker 3: but I may have messed it up. So as someone
Speaker 3: who was in the documentary the same name, what can
Speaker 3: you explain it? And what is the notion of the
Speaker 3: aristocrats joke? What does it mean to comedians?
Speaker 1: That is the ariscrats is just a joke. It's a
Speaker 1: dirty joke, really filthy joke that gives an opportunity for
Speaker 1: a anybody who's telling it to do their own version
Speaker 1: of the joke. So basically, it's like jazz, you have
Speaker 1: a template of something, but then you go off into
Speaker 1: your own solos and your own so it's it's the
Speaker 1: artistry of it is how you tell the joke and
Speaker 1: what you put into it, and how you make it
Speaker 1: your own, and how you make it specialized. And that's
Speaker 1: the beauty of that joke. That joke is not a
Speaker 1: great joke in and of itself. It's a it's a form.
Speaker 1: It's a joke form that a lot of people know
Speaker 1: that the best of the best can make brilliant just
Speaker 1: by how they play it.
Speaker 3: What's the best or the worst version of the Aristocrats
Speaker 3: that you've heard or who told it?
Speaker 1: Ah, the best or the worst version, I don't know.
Speaker 1: The worst version is probably whatever I said. But the best,
Speaker 1: I mean, Gilbert Godfried is pretty funny. Bob Saggot's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: I mean, their version, everybody version of the joke, so
Speaker 1: she's pretty intense. But the intensity the one the people
Speaker 1: go crazy in it. I'm very interested in it because
Speaker 1: it's not about the specifics of the joke and everybody
Speaker 1: getting a joke. It's the weird strange act. So they're
Speaker 1: they're describing a family that does a vaudeville act, a
Speaker 1: nightclub act, and the act is both morally repellent, disgusting,
Speaker 1: sexually deviant. Is everything that you could do in it
Speaker 1: that's weird. So it's what are you willing to talk
Speaker 1: about and say and describe? How gross are you willing
Speaker 1: to get? How you know? Are you willing are you
Speaker 1: willing to say the words exactly? Do you dance around
Speaker 1: the words? Do you what do you do to make
Speaker 1: your audience intrigued? So that's what it is. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: every every comedian has their own version of it, and
Speaker 1: it's the movie's worth seeing just for that.
Speaker 3: It's a good documentary. It's like a comedy rorschock test
Speaker 3: though the Aristocrats, isn't it?
Speaker 1: I guess so for some people. I find that most
Speaker 1: people don't storm out in a huff and go, oh,
Speaker 1: what's that? They get pretty quickly they get it's not
Speaker 1: it's not the gross stuff. It's we're watching comedians, you know,
Speaker 1: riff Is.
Speaker 2: It one of those stories and one of those gags
Speaker 2: where you start telling it with that and nets and
Speaker 2: you're gonna start telling it and if you know, you know,
Speaker 2: But if you don't know, you're like, what what the
Speaker 2: fuck's going on here?
Speaker 1: I suppose? I mean that's a lot of jokes to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not My favorite jokes are not direct
Speaker 1: line jokes. My favorite joke, like my favorite joke. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm not great at jokes, but my favorite joke that
Speaker 1: I ever tell is a guy goes out on his porch,
Speaker 1: sees a snail on his door doorframe, and he takes
Speaker 1: a snail and he throws it away and then goes
Speaker 1: back inside. Cut to six years later, there's a knock
Speaker 1: on the door. He opens the door, doesn't see anybody,
Speaker 1: looks down there's the snail and says, what the fuck
Speaker 1: was that about? So it's not nobody expecting the snail
Speaker 1: to talk. The guy didn't have any attitude when he
Speaker 1: threw the snail away, but it's like it's coming out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. But of course now suddenly you're seeing the
Speaker 1: snails point of view and.
Speaker 3: You're enjoying it.
Speaker 1: So like, why that's kind of a surprise you're seeing
Speaker 1: the snails point of view.
Speaker 2: Well, another favorite mode of mine from Last Eggs it
Speaker 2: was that the Hired goons right Crusher and Blow. I
Speaker 2: don't know why for some people everyone seems to love
Speaker 2: the hired Goons. Was it a joke that you guys
Speaker 2: wrote in there, or was that something was added later
Speaker 2: on the hired Goons?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't remember, I imagine I can.
Speaker 1: We love the phrase hired goons is just like henchman. Yes,
Speaker 1: also greed great phrase, no reason hired goons and henchmen.
Speaker 1: But we love it. They're old fashioned, old timey fashion
Speaker 1: things that we like.
Speaker 2: Also think it's one of those gags where it's not
Speaker 2: necessarily funny on paper, but it's the way Dan delivers
Speaker 2: hired goons. Did you ever write jokes that you thought,
Speaker 2: you know, we're writing because we know Dan c is
Speaker 2: going to be saying this. We know he'll make this work.
Speaker 1: I mean, no, just knew that they would make it
Speaker 1: work anyway. But so we did that wasn't It wasn't like, oh,
Speaker 1: well we have Dan Castlena or we have Harry Sheer.
Speaker 1: It's just like, is this gonna be funny? And then
Speaker 1: oftentimes those guys made it funnier. Yeah, So it's unlike,
Speaker 1: it's not like this is dependent on this person's read
Speaker 1: of this thing. It's sort of we're hearing a voice
Speaker 1: in our head. They often come up with a funnier voice.
Speaker 3: Having said that, talking about funny voices, I'd like to
Speaker 3: ask about the Let's get him tells a character m
Speaker 3: VP of this episode. One might say, uh, can you
Speaker 3: tell us about the I guess the shout out that
Speaker 3: that that that character is. Is it a tribute to
Speaker 3: uh anarcomic tripes of years past?
Speaker 1: Is it Droopy Dog Dog?
Speaker 2: Dropy Dog is the voice?
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get it Phil, that's the one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Droopy Dog. But it's a Pana Bibarra character.
Speaker 2: He's so memorable. But he says about eight words and
Speaker 2: his entire existence. But you know every Simpsons fan and
Speaker 2: I know that guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, uh no, I never did any voices
Speaker 1: on the Simpsons, but I was. I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of all those guys. And when we did, when we
Speaker 1: pitched in the room, we pitched the voices of the characters.
Speaker 1: We tried. We pitched like mister Burns, we pitched Homer,
Speaker 1: and we pitched part We we modulated voices to to
Speaker 1: to activate the characters as best we can to give it,
Speaker 1: give the jokes their best.
Speaker 2: Shot, which Rody did the best Burns.
Speaker 1: Everybody had their own version of it. But I guess
Speaker 1: Sam's I think Sam Simon had the best Burns.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, And if we are talking about favorite moments
Speaker 3: and we're gonna give a shout out to Quigly cross
Speaker 3: quickly sorry Quigly, I thought that was great. And also
Speaker 3: the Rimple of Monkeys with the thousand time rid Us,
Speaker 3: best of times, blurst of times, poor monkey getting slapped
Speaker 3: across the head and just going primal as a result. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a bit of a bit of a meme as well.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that was our joke, but maybe it was,
Speaker 1: I think, but it was a that's a great joke.
Speaker 2: You watched this though, and yes, it's a great story
Speaker 2: behind it. But it also does feel like there's a
Speaker 2: bunch of gags that these guys could exist in really
Speaker 2: any episode. They all work so well together here.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, we're in Burns's mansion. We're in like
Speaker 1: we're in we're in his world. We get to do
Speaker 1: funny things about that, and and uh, you know, lots
Speaker 1: of episodes are in Burns's mansion, and certainly many many
Speaker 1: more have been since we did that episode, So I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's filled with Simpson law Simpson jokes. Uh,
Speaker 1: And again the audiences have voted that show as the best.
Speaker 1: It's not my favorite show, but I think it's really funny.
Speaker 2: I think it's great, and it's funny because I was
Speaker 2: telling Guy before we started recording Forgive Me. When I
Speaker 2: was a kid, this wasn't, by no means one of
Speaker 2: my favorite episodes. The older I got, the more I appreciate.
Speaker 2: But as a kid I was, this wasn't one that
Speaker 2: I gravitated towards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me neither. I didn't dislike it, but I was.
Speaker 1: It was one of those things we were just like,
Speaker 1: you know, all right. I thought it got a little sentimental,
Speaker 1: and I thought that the song it got bogged down
Speaker 1: by the song a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, for what reasons? You thought it sort of
Speaker 2: took away from the comedy or.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just gotta get gets little quiet and serious around
Speaker 1: the song when she sings the song.
Speaker 2: So it's a very unseerious episode up to that point,
Speaker 2: isn't it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wrote a Bob Dylan protest song for her to
Speaker 1: sing and wound getting trimmed down to that.
Speaker 2: Oh so you've still got the full song like you could?
Speaker 2: You could play it for somebody.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I could. I mean, I haven't haven't been
Speaker 1: asked to in thirty years, but I'm taking fine, we're
Speaker 1: asking you now.
Speaker 2: So there is So there's a union Simpsons union song
Speaker 2: out there incomplete? Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the style of Dylan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, see, this is.
Speaker 2: What we talked a lot, Josh Weinstein and whatnot. There's
Speaker 2: got to be a Simpsons museum, this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Simpsons fans want to say this ship do they?
Speaker 1: They do.
Speaker 2: I don't even know if you would never have said that.
Speaker 2: I've got the full song. We cut it back to
Speaker 2: like one verse, but you wrote a full song. People
Speaker 2: want to hear that.
Speaker 1: I guess. So, I mean it's it's you know, what's
Speaker 1: better is what the what the show was. I think
Speaker 1: what people really want to see is the show they like.
Speaker 1: They're they're the anciliary stuff around the show, Like I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to see the cars that weren't the
Speaker 1: Aston Martin, the James Bond cars that the prototypes of
Speaker 1: the cars that weren't as cool as the Aston Martin.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm going with what we saw.
Speaker 2: I disagree. I think I grew up in the era
Speaker 2: where you know, you had your behind the scenes documentaries,
Speaker 2: you had your audio commentaries. We want to know how
Speaker 2: these things were made. We've seen the show, we love
Speaker 2: the show, we'll watch it every day, but we want
Speaker 2: to see how it came together.
Speaker 1: But I'm assuring enough people read the version I ra said,
Speaker 1: this is not as good.
Speaker 2: All right, But did you ever have jokes that you
Speaker 2: feel easily could have made the show?
Speaker 1: But it was just all the time, got jokes that
Speaker 1: are that made the show, that that made this from
Speaker 1: the script all the way to recording, all the way
Speaker 1: in and still get cut out. But dah, you know
Speaker 1: you want your jokes to stay. But you know, either
Speaker 1: they get there, they get cut for time, or they
Speaker 1: get cut because they're ruining the character, or they're not
Speaker 1: part of they're not accurate for the story or what
Speaker 1: we're trying to mat No, that's fine. You know, as
Speaker 1: I got older, I was less precious with jokes and
Speaker 1: more with what the whole story says.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not the team thing. Well, there's a Rather than
Speaker 2: go through the entire episodes, a few key things I
Speaker 2: wanted to point out. So this episode kicks off with
Speaker 2: a clip from the McBain movie right with Mendoza unleashing
Speaker 2: the swank, you know, ten times more pout, more addictive
Speaker 2: than marijuana. Was that in your original script?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we had we had a McBain show.
Speaker 2: Did you guys, did you guys know the writers, Did
Speaker 2: you guys know that you were putting together essentially a
Speaker 2: McBain mini movie if you splice all those clips together, Like,
Speaker 2: was there a case of what did what happened in
Speaker 2: the last McBain scene? No, we had to carry over
Speaker 2: from that or is it just you're just writing your.
Speaker 1: Own No, they were just they were just parody movies
Speaker 1: at the moment.
Speaker 2: And it just conveniently worked out to be a mini movie.
Speaker 1: I guess so. I mean, I imagine if you put
Speaker 1: all the itching scratches together, you can make a mini
Speaker 1: movie too, But maybe there would be a boring movie.
Speaker 1: But it was like, I don't know, it's there. It's
Speaker 1: it's a parody of a type of thing that's real,
Speaker 1: and and uh, they they shouldn't. I don't think they're
Speaker 1: they're purposely connected. But I'm glad it's able to do.
Speaker 2: It because there's there's a home, there's a whole McBain
Speaker 2: law out there now where, like even McBain and Mendoza
Speaker 2: got their own line of action figures as a result recently.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, McBain there was an actual move a detective
Speaker 1: series called mc bain. There was like a movie. I
Speaker 1: used to work in a bookstore and they would sell
Speaker 1: McBain books. Uh so I think, uh we we owe
Speaker 1: that author some money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the rotter at McBain absolutely, and there was a
Speaker 3: crystopal walking action movie called McBain exactly.
Speaker 1: So, I don't know it's it's it's really funny. I
Speaker 1: guess McBean's like Donald Schwarzenegger. And you know, any anything
Speaker 1: that's like a villain's like mcbern like and can have
Speaker 1: a cliche, a detective movie cliche. That's a McBain story.
Speaker 2: This this scene though, this one in particular, is really violent.
Speaker 2: I mean people are getting shot in the face and
Speaker 2: there's holes in their head. I watch this going how
Speaker 2: did this happen? How did this get through the.
Speaker 1: Hands of those movies? We watched those movies.
Speaker 2: I know, I'm I'm talking from Fox. How did Fox
Speaker 2: let this get through the television?
Speaker 1: It's cartoon cartoon.
Speaker 2: Some of the ship that I've heard that they wanted
Speaker 2: to not let you guys do and then this happens.
Speaker 3: Then a guy get shot in the head and drowns
Speaker 3: in the in the punch bowl. Holy Mullen.
Speaker 1: Violence was almost never the issue. It was usually sacks
Speaker 1: or language. Maybe then they one time they told us
Speaker 1: Homer can't say shove this license up your ass, but
Speaker 1: they said you could, We could say shove this license
Speaker 1: in your ass.
Speaker 3: And we said, okay, wow, romantics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then you had you had the James L.
Speaker 2: Brooks low though, right where they really they could comment,
Speaker 2: but they couldn't really stop you from doing stuff. Is
Speaker 2: that right?
Speaker 1: That's the center can stop us. The sensor could stop us. Now.
Speaker 1: That was the only notes we ever took with sensor
Speaker 1: notes executive. We didn't get story notes from executives, but
Speaker 1: the sensor was able to say, we don't do that.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, all right. Anything else in particularly eats the
Speaker 2: definitely some one that you want to sort of cover.
Speaker 3: This is very immature of me, but I'm a big
Speaker 3: fan of the double entendres in the conversation between Burns
Speaker 3: and Smiths where I'm sorry, we're we're between Burns and Homer,
Speaker 3: where Homer thinks that Burns is coming on to Hi'm sure,
Speaker 3: I'm flattered. Maybe I'm a little curious, but the answer
Speaker 3: is no. It's like, don't go in for these back
Speaker 3: door snannigans. I'm sorry. I just thought that was hilarious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do too. I think they're really funny. I'm
Speaker 1: that is again another opportunity to make a funny joke
Speaker 1: out of what's a normal you know, negotiation or interaction,
Speaker 1: and uh, how fun is that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, there's so many different degrees of humor throughout this episode, though.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's stuff that's kind of I won't say
Speaker 3: low brown, but I mean this stuff that is. But
Speaker 3: there's a lot of the stuff that's you know, nastly cynical,
Speaker 3: like and gets made the union delegates like, well, there's
Speaker 3: no jobs unpaid unless you have crooked woo. That's boblous.
Speaker 1: Again, I'm laughing at it. They're not my jokes. There's
Speaker 1: so many jokes. This show is filled with really funny
Speaker 1: things brought by so many different people, like, for example,
Speaker 1: the word onion around the belt, which was the fashion
Speaker 1: at the time. I don't think that's our joke. Who
Speaker 1: knows who Maybe George Meyer's joke. I have no idea,
Speaker 1: but it's really good and great. So we're we're the
Speaker 1: Wally and I are the beneficiaries of the genius minds
Speaker 1: of a lot of really funny people who worked on
Speaker 1: the show, and at that point was I guess Conan
Speaker 1: was there by then, and so it's Conan and David
Speaker 1: Stern and there's lots of other really funny writers who
Speaker 1: are working there at the time.
Speaker 2: You're great friends of kind of being on your podcast
Speaker 2: Bright episode one of my favorites. What was he like
Speaker 2: to work with? For you? Personally?
Speaker 1: I loved working with Conan. I was the loud, annoying
Speaker 1: guy at the Simpsons room until Conan showed up, and
Speaker 1: then he was the loud, annoying guy. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: was usurped by him and grateful that there's somebody even
Speaker 1: louder and more annoying than me. But he's an adorable guy,
Speaker 1: endless energy, super smart, super creative, and you can see
Speaker 1: how hard he works when you watch his shows or
Speaker 1: the Oscars or whatever. You know, he puts in maximum
Speaker 1: effort and it shows. It's not they doesn't hit all
Speaker 1: home runs, but you can see that he's really really trying.
Speaker 2: Was there ever a competitiveness in the Simpsons Wroders room.
Speaker 1: There's always a competitiveness in every writer's room because you
Speaker 1: want your joke to get in because you pitched it,
Speaker 1: not necessarily that guy's joke to get in, or that
Speaker 1: woman's joke to get in, if they ever led a
Speaker 1: woman in. But but you know, it's like you want
Speaker 1: yours to work because you want validation that your value
Speaker 1: and creative. But you also want the show to be funny.
Speaker 1: And so if somebody pitches something that's so much funny
Speaker 1: that we just pitched, you cannot help but just go
Speaker 1: laugh and go like that, that's great, that has to
Speaker 1: go in.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: But I've worked in writers' rooms where people try to
Speaker 1: sabotage each other, and people try to shit on people's
Speaker 1: jokes and and make sure that they don't get in
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff, And that's it's so antithetical
Speaker 1: to the process that we're trying to do make the
Speaker 1: best show possible. And and there are jealousies, and there
Speaker 1: are favorites on every writer's room and every and the
Speaker 1: favorites can change from time to time, So whoever's running
Speaker 1: the room suddenly likes this person. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to argue. Sometimes George Meyer was the well
Speaker 1: respected I think lampoon guy, Harvard lampoon guy, that Mike
Speaker 1: and Al and all v D and all these guys
Speaker 1: looked up to George when we showed up. That was
Speaker 1: already the dynamic with them. I didn't know George all
Speaker 1: that well, so I didn't look up to him. I
Speaker 1: didn't go to Harvard, I didn't have that Harvard lampoon
Speaker 1: stuff going on, So to me, he was just another shmo.
Speaker 1: But what he would say things people would look on
Speaker 1: him as with reverence that I did not understand. So
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, but you know, not everything George said
Speaker 1: was hysterical, but a lot of his stuff would get
Speaker 1: in because he was the perceived favorite. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: George is hysterical and a lot of what he says
Speaker 1: is really really good. But I think it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: how the social dynamic can lift some some material, sometimes
Speaker 1: over over what it really is.
Speaker 2: Accepting that another RATA on the same team has a
Speaker 2: funnier joke or has made georgejoke funnier. Being able to
Speaker 2: accept that, is that something you have to learn or
Speaker 2: is that just part of who you are is it?
Speaker 2: Can you learn? Can you learn to accept that?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you have to. I mean you have to.
Speaker 1: If you're the showrunner, you're begging for that. That's all
Speaker 1: you want is people to give top the other one.
Speaker 1: That's a funny joke. That's the funnier. That's funny. That's
Speaker 1: that's all you want. You want people to add and
Speaker 1: uh you build and add funding to it. So yes,
Speaker 1: if you're a writer and you're gonna be storm out
Speaker 1: of the room somebody else makes a funny joke, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be very welcome there for very long. So
Speaker 1: you should learn, and you should appreciate it, and you
Speaker 1: should be grateful that person who wrote the funny joke
Speaker 1: that's going in the script is getting you home. You
Speaker 1: want to go home eventually, and that person is getting
Speaker 1: you home. So fantastic. I get to go home. I
Speaker 1: get to go you know, watch T watch TV at home.
Speaker 2: On the topic of George Mayer, there's a moment in
Speaker 2: this episode where they steal the diamond from Lenny's teeth
Speaker 2: and they say yoink. Now, apparently George Maya is the
Speaker 2: man who coined that phrase yoink, and no one seems
Speaker 2: to realize that that's a Simpson's word. Is that true?
Speaker 1: Was it, George? I mean, isn't this scooby Doo word?
Speaker 2: No, Apparently yoink was coined. That's that's the ship. That's
Speaker 2: that's the ship they called bullshit. Prevailing wisdom is that
Speaker 2: it's a Simpsons word. Yeah, you're everywhere online joints. I say,
Speaker 2: zoinks zoints.
Speaker 1: Okay, zoints. So zoinks and yoink don't get uh credit
Speaker 1: for each.
Speaker 2: Other because zoinks is sort of more like zoinks. I'm
Speaker 2: scared where yoink is to take something.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think you guys are nuts. It's it's just
Speaker 1: a animal animal on a pia goofy word. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean anything, and it's fun and I'm glad that it
Speaker 1: started on my on that episode fantastic. Great, but it's
Speaker 1: people look too closely sometimes at things and then and
Speaker 1: and they missed the forest for the trees. Yuick is
Speaker 1: a funny noise. Great, It doesn't mean much more than that.
Speaker 1: It's it's the same kind of thing where they Simpsons
Speaker 1: predicts the future like that, that kind of crazy bullshit.
Speaker 1: It is sort of like is missing the point is
Speaker 1: no Simpsons does not create predict the future. What happens
Speaker 1: is Simpsons has a lot of really funny jokes all
Speaker 1: over the place, and some of them weirdly come true.
Speaker 1: How aired is that? That's that's more amazing to me
Speaker 1: that if you did a million jokes and of the
Speaker 1: million jokes, forty of them came true. That's insane to me.
Speaker 1: That's crazy that the dumbest things you thought of at
Speaker 1: that time is actually what happens.
Speaker 2: That's what Salmon said. Salmon goes, we think of what's
Speaker 2: the craziest shit that could happen, and we'll be on
Speaker 2: tava long enough that have Unfortunately, some of it's not
Speaker 2: starting to come.
Speaker 1: True, right, And that's the perversity of fate. Fate chooses
Speaker 1: to extol the dumbest of our ideas and make it
Speaker 1: into reality.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about Dr Wolf real quickly. Clint Eastwood and
Speaker 3: Anthony Hopkins initially approached Anthony Perkins actually cost.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I've also, oddly enough, I think we
Speaker 1: wanted Donald Schwartzenegger really, oh my gosh, because we had
Speaker 1: a German vibe to Doctor Wolf. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of people say no to the Simpsons all,
Speaker 1: at least back then said no to the Simpsons all
Speaker 1: the time, and probably now do too.
Speaker 2: But did I really even at that point when it
Speaker 2: was still so successful, they were turning it down. I
Speaker 2: know that Springsteen turned down the Well episode, but right already?
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know that story, right, I probably do,
Speaker 2: but please rate tell me all right.
Speaker 1: I think we were trying to get to hold of
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen to do the Well bid and sing the
Speaker 1: song Kid down the Well. And we can't get a
Speaker 1: hold of Springsteen, so we keep calling his manager, John Landau,
Speaker 1: who we now have seen famed in film Delivered Me
Speaker 1: from Nowhere. So we get a hold of him. He says,
Speaker 1: I can't get a hold of Bruce, like bullshit, all right, No,
Speaker 1: I think he'd like to do it. It's like you
Speaker 1: can tell us no, we have to move on, But no, no,
Speaker 1: I think he'd like to do It's well then, to
Speaker 1: find him and let us know because we have to
Speaker 1: move on. We're good recording this soon and okay, I'll
Speaker 1: do it. I'll do it anyway. That night, I go
Speaker 1: to the movies at a movie theater in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: said no longer exists, and guess who's at that movie theater.
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen and Patti Sciavola. They're at that movie theater
Speaker 1: and I see Bruce Springsteen across the hall, who we've
Speaker 1: been trying to reach for weeks. We can't reach him,
Speaker 1: and I go Bruce Springsteen joints and I uh, and
Speaker 1: I make a bee line for Bruce. And I'm wearing
Speaker 1: a Simpson's jacket. The Simpsons producer Jack you get it.
Speaker 1: There was a leather jacket, red, the red and black
Speaker 1: jacket that you got, producers. So I'm running up to him,
Speaker 1: to Bruce Springsteen, and then he sings. This fat guy
Speaker 1: running towards him and he's like, eyes mean, and he
Speaker 1: steps in front of Patty because he's a fucking hero, right,
Speaker 1: He does the one anything Heard.
Speaker 3: And then Clarence Clement stands in front of him.
Speaker 1: Well no, I stands in front and says, hey, man,
Speaker 1: it's like Bruce h I'm uh mister Springsteen, miss Springsteen.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I caught you. My name is Jake Cogan,
Speaker 1: I'm a producer of the Simpsons. And I point to
Speaker 1: my jacket as if that's truly anything. We're selling T
Speaker 1: shirts on the freeway in storage and venice No one
Speaker 1: only a jacket means nothing. That the amount of merchandise
Speaker 1: come to the Simpsons is into the billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: So I said, we've been trying to get a hold
Speaker 1: of you. We can only reach your manager John about
Speaker 1: this thing that we're doing on the show. It's like
Speaker 1: doing a song for a girl in a well. It's
Speaker 1: really funny. And I was like, I just have to
Speaker 1: know if you would be interested, and he said, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I really like to do it. I was like, he
Speaker 1: wanted to get the crazy fat guy away from him,
Speaker 1: so he said yeah, and he said no, and and
Speaker 1: then we never heard back from him or John Lenno ever,
Speaker 1: and then we just gave up and went to spring
Speaker 1: But I scared the shit out of Bruce Springsteen. I
Speaker 1: literally made Bruce Springsteen think he was going to have
Speaker 1: his sort of scary John Lennon moment. And you know,
Speaker 1: thankfully I don't carry a weapon, so that's good. But
Speaker 1: it's like, it's it's I'm I scared the boss.
Speaker 2: You'll lock on when Homer approaches the Oscaran truck when
Speaker 2: he's fat and he's got the moonmo and he's at
Speaker 2: the gossips and just take it all. I just take
Speaker 2: it all exactly.
Speaker 1: He just wanted to get me to get away. And
Speaker 1: I don't blame him. I don't blame in the least,
Speaker 1: but it was I just didn't not I'm so unaware
Speaker 1: of myself, and how would I would that I could
Speaker 1: be scary? The thought that I could be scary to
Speaker 1: anybody is shocking to me.
Speaker 3: What movie was it?
Speaker 1: By the way, God who cares? Movie theater doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: It was in a It's in Los Angeles. There was
Speaker 1: a place called the Century City entertained ABC Entertainment Center,
Speaker 1: and there was movie theaters and a Schubert Theater in there.
Speaker 1: It's all been knocked down. It doesn't exist anymore. So
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. I don't know what movie.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I'm picturing you Moore as Lenny, sort of a
Speaker 3: drunken Lenny, approaching the limousine and just giving the thumbs
Speaker 3: up to mister b.
Speaker 1: No. I was just like sweating, like I was acting
Speaker 1: like a producer, like I wanted him. I wanted the
Speaker 1: Springsteen to do it, and I was so excited.
Speaker 2: Let's be honest, though, I sting turned out to be
Speaker 2: a fantastic choice in the for that episode. He worked
Speaker 2: out perfectly.
Speaker 1: I'm not shitting on mister Sting. I mean it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: He was great. He's fantastic, and he was great, and
Speaker 1: who's perfect for it and all the great And I
Speaker 1: bet I assume Springsteen has been on the show since then, So.
Speaker 2: No, he still hasn't.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not.
Speaker 2: I don't want to work with don't be alone with
Speaker 2: that guy. So he's like, and I don't, I don't
Speaker 2: want to work with that guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, well then he doesn't have to be anymore. I'm
Speaker 1: not there, but he does have to be on my podcast.
Speaker 1: So that's all right, I'll get I'll get Springsteen for
Speaker 1: the podcast.
Speaker 2: But you did have one guest on this episode who
Speaker 2: mocked herself Joyce Brothers. Oh smart line and in and
Speaker 2: out real quick. Yeah, it wouldn't even really called a
Speaker 2: guest appear. This just a cameo of anything, right, I.
Speaker 1: Think we didn't write it for a guest. And and
Speaker 1: and I think she called and said, hey, would I could,
Speaker 1: is there ever a spot for me on the show?
Speaker 1: And sure, yeah, I mean she she was very nice,
Speaker 1: and I mean she was very good also very famously
Speaker 1: good at marketing herself and constantly trying to be re
Speaker 1: up her cred and I guess getting on The Simpsons
Speaker 1: maybe helped your credit a little bit. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Maybe she's just a fan of the show. Anyway, she
Speaker 1: was great, very gracious. People are willing to make fun
Speaker 1: of themselves, are fantastic. Tony Bennett fantastic. I mean Tom Jones,
Speaker 1: we did. We had so many great people who.
Speaker 2: Were all of the celebrities that came in and just
Speaker 2: blew you away because you just weren't expecting him to
Speaker 2: be so open and lovely.
Speaker 1: Well Tony Bennett, I remember being just I was so
Speaker 1: thrilled to hear him sing the Capital City song on
Speaker 1: that was so and he was so great. You know,
Speaker 1: Joe Montagne was fantastic. It came back many many times.
Speaker 2: So you would you have worked with Kelsey before Frasier then?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I worked with him because on the I created
Speaker 1: the character of side show Bob.
Speaker 2: Yeah, crusty gets busted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah, and so but also we
Speaker 1: worked it was a guest on the Tracy Ollman Show
Speaker 1: even before.
Speaker 2: Then, so I actually didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was my job to roust him out
Speaker 1: of his trailer because he was so drunk and high
Speaker 1: or whatever he was that I had to sort of
Speaker 1: like shake him away and say it's time for a rehearsal. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, he cleaned up his years later. But what's
Speaker 1: remarkable was as stoned as he was and whatever he
Speaker 1: was taking when he went on stage, he was fantastic.
Speaker 1: Immediately great, snapped to it, did a scene perfect, line perfect,
Speaker 1: and then went back to his trailer and fell asleep.
Speaker 2: The ultimate professional.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so before we let you go though, So this
Speaker 2: is obviously a mister Burns episode. I love the animation
Speaker 2: of Burns at the end when he listened to them singing,
Speaker 2: he looks like the Grinch? And whatnot?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: What was it? What was Burns's one of your favorite
Speaker 2: characters to write? Is such an enjoyable character to watch?
Speaker 2: Was he an enjoyable character?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: WHILEY and I get credit for creating mister Burns, we
Speaker 1: created mister Burns and Smithers.
Speaker 2: Really, I'm as honesty of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's very nice script for it. So I have
Speaker 1: a special love for him. When what we wrote wasn't
Speaker 1: what tears. He was developed by everybody and by artists
Speaker 1: and by everything to become the excellent guy that he was.
Speaker 1: But our first version was just evil boss, but he
Speaker 1: became very evil and very funny. I love mister Burns
Speaker 1: and I loved the relationship with Smithers, you know, and
Speaker 1: we when we developed Smithers, we definitely wanted Smithers to
Speaker 1: love mister Burns in all the ways that he loves
Speaker 1: mister Burns.
Speaker 2: I need you to settle this for so, Yes, playing
Speaker 2: at home, did you write Smith's to Bean African American?
Speaker 1: Yes? Really he was black and gay?
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, then, but there we go, finally settled because
Speaker 2: the people always go, oh, it was an animation era,
Speaker 2: but no, he was, you know, he.
Speaker 1: Was black and gay. And they decided, we we all
Speaker 1: decided Jim Brooks and whoever was he couldn't be both.
Speaker 1: Why why make the one black character gay? Also because
Speaker 1: I can't choose choose the same thing with doctor Hibbert.
Speaker 1: Doctor Hibbert was a woman was Julia Hibbert, And they
Speaker 1: said why a woman an a black so diverse too much?
Speaker 1: And so I was named it after Julia Sweeney, the actress,
Speaker 1: the comedic actress, and her married name was Julia Hibbert,
Speaker 1: and I named the character after.
Speaker 2: That's where doctor Hibb comes from. There you go, we
Speaker 2: learned something every day.
Speaker 1: And Julius Hebert and then when we went up against
Speaker 1: Bill Carsby, it was perfect foil to make fun of
Speaker 1: Bill Carsby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there we go. Well, and you also created Kanye
Speaker 2: and Cotis. You guys essentially are the reason we got
Speaker 2: Treos of Horror because I know Matt pitched the idea
Speaker 2: kids tell Us to Ghost Stories in the Treehouse, but
Speaker 2: you guys sort of went, that's a great concept. We
Speaker 2: can run with this.
Speaker 1: We supported the idea in a place when a lot
Speaker 1: of people didn't want to support it, but we supported
Speaker 1: it and we liked it. And yes, man Greening gets
Speaker 1: credit for that thing. We get credit for saying that's
Speaker 1: a good idea.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, though, that's arguably the episode that
Speaker 2: everyone really still looks forward to this day. It's the
Speaker 2: Halloween episodes. Say what you will at the Simpsons. You know,
Speaker 2: I still enjoy the Simpsons, My kids like watching the
Speaker 2: new episodes and put it on from Disney Plus has
Speaker 2: been a great thing for discovering the new episodes again,
Speaker 2: particularly for the younger audiences. But you know, even if
Speaker 2: someone doesn't necessarily watch the Simpsons anymore, they'll still keep
Speaker 2: up with the Halloween ones that's been the mainstay.
Speaker 1: Think they're fun. I think it's so much fun. It's
Speaker 1: also you know, they're standalone. They're fantastic. Usually it's a
Speaker 1: parody of something that's cool that's happening at the moment.
Speaker 1: You know, it's I agree, they're a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: and they're fun to write. They're really fun to write
Speaker 1: because they're a little ten minute cartoons. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's uh, yeah, everybody wins, we all want we loved it,
Speaker 1: they love it. It's all good. They've been a few
Speaker 1: shitty ones, but mostly they're pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes the parodies aren't great. But when you're doing
Speaker 2: those first Treas of Horror episodes, things like the Raven,
Speaker 2: did you think the kids would have any idea what's
Speaker 2: going on there? Or did you just not care?
Speaker 1: No? And I think that's one of the bad ones.
Speaker 1: Like I honestly no, I don't think it's any good
Speaker 1: at all. Sam. The only reason we did Trias of Horror,
Speaker 1: the reason the reason we got Sam Simon to agree
Speaker 1: is that we told him you could do the Raven.
Speaker 1: They went oh. He hated the idea up until he
Speaker 1: heard we could do the Raven. And then he did
Speaker 1: his version of The Raven, which is fine. It's Edgar
Speaker 1: and Poe, it's it's educating. I feel like it's more educational.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's something that that and then and
Speaker 1: that bums me out because I don't need education in
Speaker 1: my Simpsons cartoons. But we had James old Jones fantastic
Speaker 1: reading it, and uh I got to meet him and
Speaker 1: that was fun when we we did it before he
Speaker 1: did his his The Raven, you know, giant plate of
Speaker 1: chocolate chip cookies. It's like, what are you doing? Don't
Speaker 1: you have to have a clear throat to do? What
Speaker 1: do you do? Is no, And he was chomping down
Speaker 1: and chopped the two cookies, and then he started doing
Speaker 1: the Raven.
Speaker 3: Just passing a box of chips. A hoy, what.
Speaker 1: What's going on? But uh, I think to me, the
Speaker 1: the the tanging codos, you know, to feed Man parody.
Speaker 1: I think it's not just because we wrote it. I
Speaker 1: just think it's much funnier and it's that's better. And
Speaker 1: I and and there's Frankenstein one that's good. That is
Speaker 1: one of the Amityville Horror in that same episode. That's better.
Speaker 1: I just think they're better. But you know what, Sam
Speaker 1: Simon loved him. He wanted to educate the world and
Speaker 1: he did. And it has jokes in it. It does
Speaker 1: have jokes in it, It's just not immediately as funny
Speaker 1: as the other ones.
Speaker 2: Sometimes, like you said, you got to please the boss
Speaker 2: to get what you get to do what you want
Speaker 2: to do as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, you always have to please the boss.
Speaker 3: Yes, some guests.
Speaker 2: All right, finally, before we let you go, he's you
Speaker 2: want to ask more question?
Speaker 1: One more? All right?
Speaker 3: I'm taking the internet's word for this, which is a
Speaker 3: fool's errand. But apparently you were voted most likely to
Speaker 3: drop his pants on a dare in high school. It's
Speaker 3: raises the question, how are you responsible for the will
Speaker 3: drop pants for food? Gag? And Krussy got canceled.
Speaker 1: I don't remember being most likely to drop my pants
Speaker 1: in high school. I don't think that's true, although had
Speaker 1: somebody asked me to drop my pants, I would have
Speaker 1: for a dare or for for the comedy value of it.
Speaker 1: I used to do anything for a joke.
Speaker 2: Is that tiring after a while?
Speaker 1: Yes, there's a lot of energy. You've got to use
Speaker 1: a lot of energy being always on, being always on.
Speaker 1: But also I like it, and as I said, my
Speaker 1: dysfunction with my father made me want to really be
Speaker 1: funny all the time. So it's okay. But no, I
Speaker 1: don't think my ability or willingness to drop my pants
Speaker 1: has anything to do with that joke of the show. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think that's just funny.
Speaker 2: The final question we always ask people, and I said,
Speaker 2: you said, you don't prepared anything, but you can do
Speaker 2: it because you are J Cogan. But the question is,
Speaker 2: it's nineteen ninety eight. Fox have asked you to put
Speaker 2: together a five episode Friday Night Simpsons marathon. Which episodees
Speaker 2: are you going with? And what are you starting with?
Speaker 2: In particular, I'm.
Speaker 1: Gonna start with the seventh episode, which was the Christmas episode,
Speaker 1: which became our pilot. I'm gonna start with that because
Speaker 1: it was so successful right out of the gate, people
Speaker 1: loved it, fantastic. I'm gonna follow that up with Like Father,
Speaker 1: Like Clown because and I'm gonna follow that up with
Speaker 1: Barth the Daredevil, and I'm gonna follow that up with
Speaker 1: Old Money, and I'm gonna follow that up with last
Speaker 1: exit to Springfield. And the reason why I pick all
Speaker 1: those other ones is because I get residuals, and so
Speaker 1: I want the money. Baby, They're all cod I want
Speaker 1: to ask you written not the best ones, but the
Speaker 1: ones I get paid for.
Speaker 2: So okay, the residual still exist with the Simpsons, you guys.
Speaker 1: Yes, we get money. We get money from the show
Speaker 1: is sold all over the world. It's also we get
Speaker 1: a fraction of a fraction of a penny when they
Speaker 1: played on Disney Plus, so we get some money.
Speaker 2: So do you just have like a three laptops going
Speaker 2: constantly on your episode.
Speaker 1: Kids Got to Eat Man Charlie Cogan. Charlie Cogan, who
Speaker 1: is a uh is a very funny musician, not funny talented, talented,
Speaker 1: talented musician, singer, songwriter. Charlie Cogan. He is a genius.
Speaker 1: But you know, I need I need to make some
Speaker 1: residuals to get more band members for him. And oh
Speaker 1: this is his sad this is music stage.
Speaker 2: Here before when you were talking about was that a
Speaker 2: band set up?
Speaker 1: That's yeah, this is my son's music recording studio and
Speaker 1: so h Charlie Cogan kog and listen to his music.
Speaker 1: Tell me if you like it, tell me if you
Speaker 1: don't like it. I want to hear because we're he's
Speaker 1: making about to make a new record, so I want
Speaker 1: to hear what people think about his music so he
Speaker 1: can adjust to the audience.
Speaker 2: We'll chuck the links in the description. We'll chut the
Speaker 2: links in the description of this podcast. But speaking of podcasts,
Speaker 2: plug yours one mole time before we let you guys
Speaker 2: there there it is.
Speaker 1: Don't okay Cogan, that's my podcast. I usually have a
Speaker 1: guest on and we talk about my problems and we
Speaker 1: can we can really get into solving my problems and
Speaker 1: learn about our guests. And often it's a comedian, it's
Speaker 1: a writer, it's an actor, it's an artist of some kind.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a grief specialist, but not always. It's always
Speaker 1: somebody who's interesting to me and hopefully interesting to you.
Speaker 1: But listen to don't be along with Ja Cogan. But
Speaker 1: more than listen to it, subscribe to itsri You never
Speaker 1: listen to it, just subscribe to it. Don't you the
Speaker 1: same thing on your show? Right? You need subscribe, like
Speaker 1: and subscribe, You not like and subscribe, but subscribe, Just subscribe.
Speaker 1: What does it cost? You nothing, just subscribe.
Speaker 2: The thing is and he's had Matt Groening on the show,
Speaker 2: a man who you know very rarely does podcast episodes.
Speaker 1: But you know it's only done too as far as
Speaker 1: I know, Mark Maron and me, that's.
Speaker 2: It because he gave us the Springsteain treatment. So you
Speaker 2: know he said, I love to be young. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he doesn't do it. He doesn't do it much.
Speaker 1: I just contacted him on Saint Patrick's Day. I uh,
Speaker 1: I called him to wish him a happy birthday, even
Speaker 1: though his birthday is Valentine's Day, but always Saint Patrick's
Speaker 1: Day reminds me that.
Speaker 2: I'll think you're getting Jay. It's been an absolutely hona.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. Guys, and you're not you know
Speaker 1: you ossies. Aren't the dicks everybody say you are? You
Speaker 1: know what? You're sweet, nice, lovely people with a good heart.
Speaker 1: I like it. I want to go. I want to
Speaker 1: go to Australia. And where if I go to Australia,
Speaker 1: where should I go?
Speaker 2: It depends?
Speaker 3: Why are you coming?
Speaker 2: He's coming for touristy shet. Are you coming to enjoy Australia?
Speaker 1: I want to absorb the culture. I want to sort
Speaker 1: of figure out what's cool about the place. I want
Speaker 1: to be able to come back and say I want
Speaker 1: to go back there again.
Speaker 2: I recommend a little town called Jeloon. That's where I'm from,
Speaker 2: so Bally. For culture, i'd go to Melbourne, which is
Speaker 2: a capital city. You just want to do the touristy
Speaker 2: stuff like the opera house and the bridge and what
Speaker 2: everyone thinks is that's Sydney.
Speaker 1: I will fly over that stuff, I'll see it, but
Speaker 1: I want to know what, like the great food is,
Speaker 1: or the great music or the things that make it special.
Speaker 3: That's Melbourne. But if you want a unique astrayant experience,
Speaker 3: maybe head up north, go far north Queensland and the
Speaker 3: Northern Territory.
Speaker 2: To get your beaches and your outbacks and your whatnot.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, all right, and the animals that will kill you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm afraid of that.
Speaker 2: Plenty of those, We are lots of them. You get
Speaker 2: used to them, yeah, yeah, just be nice to them.
Speaker 2: They'll be nice back.
Speaker 1: Best way to protect yourself from a kangaroo.
Speaker 2: Well, don't try and act tougher than it, because they
Speaker 2: are always tougher than you.
Speaker 3: Right, the kangaroo will it will out out for you.
Speaker 1: The pouture of a kangaroo is disgusting.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, very very mucusy, Yeah, reportedly, so I go.
Speaker 2: And funny, I learned that from the Simpsons.
Speaker 1: I just learned get recently too, so I know maybe
Speaker 1: from the Simpsons, but just how discussed because you think
Speaker 1: it's so cute in there but it turns out no,
Speaker 1: it's disgusting.
Speaker 2: It's where babies live and that ship. Yeah no, good,
Speaker 2: Thank you again, Jock, Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: This isn't a pleasure. I really enjoyed this. I hope
Speaker 1: you edited so that don't seem like moron