'The Simpsons' at 500: Show runner talks angry Homer, Julian Assange
This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.
"The Simpsons" will air its landmark 500th episode on Sunday.
To put that into context, that's roughly 200 straight hours of show (minus commercials), stretched over 23 seasons, with hundreds of guest voices from Oscar winners, world leaders, esteemed novelists and notorious international figures. It's become a billion-dollar industry for the Fox network and made millionaires of its creators.
Executive producer Al Jean has been with the show since the beginning. He worked on the first episode to air in 1989 ("Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire") and has been through two stints as show runner: during the third and fourth seasons and again from the 13th season to the present.
PHOTOS: 23 seasons of 'The Simpsons'
To celebrate 'The Simpsons' reaching 500 episodes, Fox held an 86-hour showing to break the world record for longest TV marathon. Is it strange to have people watch your work under stressful conditions? [Viewers competed to see who could last the longest — for a $10,500 prize.]
Yeah. It’s the kind of thing they do to brainwash people. [Laughs] I don’t know if that’s what we were intending when we were writing these little half-hour comedies. I just pray they don’t have a psychotic break when my credit comes up.
Was there a plan from the beginning to feature Bart as the star of the show?
Well, he was the one that really popped with the general public first. I think with the writers it was always slightly easier to pitch Homer ideas because Homer was an adult male and he was somebody they could relate to. But Bart’s a great character. Two of the episodes that center around him and the school are still really popular. There was never a conscious change. We just do episodes that we think are funny and there’s always a point where we think "Hmm, we had too many Homers in a row. Let’s break it up." I like doing Lisa ones too. They're all great characters.
Have you seen the character dynamics change over the years?
My goal is to keep the characters the same. The situations change, but you're seeing the reaction of a basic family to what happens in the modern world. Homer was originally a little angrier and got a little dumber. I’m trying to take him back toward the angry end of the spectrum. With Lisa there's always the danger that she gets to be a know-it-all. You try to back off from that. She's an 8-year-old kid, too.
Has the style of comedy changed at all over the years?
When we were running it in Seasons 3 and 4, we tended to do more cutaway humor. We also did "The Critic," which came out at around the same time. That style has caught on and I think we do less of it just so we stand out a little more. But in terms of the pace of the show, it sped up after Season 2 a little bit, probably just because the first two seasons were coming with no animated precedents. There was never any conscious effort to change things. I think the show is fast-paced now because television just is faster paced. You even watch live-action shows like "30 Rock" and those shows have been influenced by our pacing and style.
