WRITER WATCH

“Matt Groening rang me up because he’d seen The Office on a flight, ages before it was shown in America. I did a very rough sketch and wrote a song. So the only things that were mine were the song, a couple of jokes and the Wife Swap idea, which was Jane’s anyway. So I mustn’t take too much credit – I said as much once, but they said no, no, that’s always the case. Whoever it says ‘wrote’ the episode goes through the same process. So that made me feel slightly less guilty.”

[The Guardian]

WRITER WATCH

Gould: I don’t want to be standing at the Pearly Gates explaining why I spent my life watching DVDs of sitcoms I’d already seen. I mean, really … do something else. Fold up old paper bags. Make a puppet. Dress like an angel and convince a wino that he’s died. Something constructive.

Does his boss Matt Groening know about this??? [City Paper]

COMING ATTRACTIONS, WRITER WATCH

The final segment of the upcoming Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episode on November 5 will take a few not-so-subtle shots at the current conflict in Iraq as aliens Kang and Kodos (who are featured in every “Treehouse of Horror”) attack Springfield before the humans can get their hands on “weapons of mass disintegration”. The connection to the Iraq war is made obvious, and there’s even a line at the end in which a character evokes the actual Iraq debacle.

“Hey you know it’s been more than three years, maybe we oughta get around to acknowledging the war in some way” [TV Squad]