![]() ![]() ![]() If someone had drawn Bart slouching, it wouldn’t have served the joke that he’s attentive and enjoying it. I would’ve seen that section and thought, “This is make or break, because if this sequence falls apart, we’re in trouble.” I always take musical numbers reallyseriously, and that begins with the storyboard artist, sitting down and figuring out the best camera angles and the way to tell these jokes without interrupting the flow of the music. So when I’d have a sequence like that, it would have been very controlled. You have to be as good, legitimately, in order to make fun of it. He’d warn students: Don’t try comedy or satire until you’ve mastered your craft. Kirkland: I studied at Cal Arts under the director Alexander “Sandy” Mackendrick, who did Sweet Smell of Success. Oakley: Clearly it’s good enough to get Troy the acclaim he needs to get his movie career back on track. Zaius” obviously had a clear direction because it was “Rock Me, Amadeus.” Other times, they’ll give a note like, “in this style.” “Dr. Some are very specific, like, “We’re doing a parody of X,” so the music has to be like X. Then they present it to Alf and they say, “Here are the lyrics for this song, we have this idea.” And sometimes they even have an idea of what the music should be like. In our case, it works one way only: The lyrics are written into the script. A lot of the things that people remember and love on The Simpsons were horrible late-night grinds, whereas this was just a magic visit from the joke fairy.Ĭlausen: The first time I saw the line “chimpan-A to chimpan-Z,” I couldn’t stop laughing.Ĭhris Ledesma (music editor for The Simpsons, 1989–present): You ask any songwriter or songwriting team in all of songwriting, “Which comes first? Music or lyrics?” and everyone works differently. Oakley: It’s one of those rare bursts of creative brilliance. One nugget of an idea leads to a brilliant sequence, and that’s what The Simpsons room does best, with everybody feeding and playing off of each other. It’s like, when someone pitches a joke like “chimpan-A to chimpan-Z,” you start thinking of even better jokes and it all builds on itself. ![]() Weinstein: I guess this happens in lots of rooms, but in The Simpsons room there’ll be 20 minutes or half an hour with everyone silent, thinking of a funny sign gag or a Groundskeeper Willie line, but when someone pitches a great idea or a joke, the feeling spreads. My recollection is I thought it was pretty good and had a decent chance of going in the script, but wasn’t a sure thing. I certainly did not pitch it thinking it was a high point in the development of human or ape culture. Probably I gave up on “orangutan” and moved on. Weinstein: I know David Cohen had one of the best Simpsons lines ever, which is “I hate every ape I see from chimpan-A to chimpan-Z.”Ĭohen: No doubt I was going through the different types of apes in my mind trying to think of a funny rhyming lyric. ![]()
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