Movie and TV studio revenue fell 25 percent to $1.49 billion, and operating profit sank 72 percent to $112 million. Key film releases such as “Marley & Me” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still” drove up marketing costs, while last year’s holiday quarter had a better home-video release slate, including “The Simpsons Movie” and “Live Free or Die Hard,” the company said.
Could Spiderpig be keeping Fox’s parent company afloat??? [AP/Yahoo!]
Up in the Simpsons unit, one of the artists, a person who’s been with the show a few years and knows which heads are rolling and who’s are likely to be lopped off next, confided:
None of us know if Fox is going to order another season of The Simpsons after we’re done with this one. The actors are signed, but Fox hasn’t said if it wants another twenty episodes. I think Gracie Films [the producing company of The Simpsons] would like another order, and so is offering up sacrifices to Fox to show that they’re serious about cutting costs. Some old hands have been let go.
[TAG Blog]
Nancy Cartwright, voice of TV’s Bart Simpson, has not always been especially vocal about her membership in the always-controversial Church of Scientology. Her autobiography makes no reference to it, nor does her website. Although she’s done a few publicity events for it (one ad in the LA Weekly offered a chance to “Meet the Voice of Bart Simpson At The Scientology Center!”), she has not advocated for the Church in a big way – she didn’t preach the virtues of Xenu while doing publicity for The Simpsons Movie, nor has she tried to plug Dianetics while doing DVD audio commentary. Unlike some of the bigger Scientologist celebrities, she does not lecture Matt Lauer on psychiatry (Tom Cruise), star in movies based on books by L. Ron Hubbard (John Travolta), or leave a show when they make one too many jokes about the religion (Issac Hayes). Last year, however, she donated $10 million to Scientology – twice her annual Simpsons salary and nearly five times more than that deadbeat Tom Cruise – a story which raised a few eyebrows, but generally flew under the radar. A couple days ago, however, audio of Cartwright doing a “robo-call” for some Scientology event was uploaded to the Internet. The story has gotten a lot of attention, garnering more than 2,700 “diggs” on Digg, which is apparently a lot in Internet metrics (?).
Cartwright opens the call with “Hey, man, this is Bart Simpson!” before quickly resorting to her normal voice and saying “Just kidding… this is Nancy Cartwright!” She then announces that she is now “auditing on New OTVIII” (??) and wants to share her “many wins” with you (????). At this point, it doesn’t really seem all that different from getting a robo-call from Hollywood starlet Scarlett Johansson telling you about how cool Barack Obama is, except it’s for a religion. But Catwright lapses back into her Bart voice several times in the call, laughing and saying, “It’s going to be a blast, man!” in the same voice that used to shill for Butterfinger bars, blurring the line between Nancy Cartwright, real-life person, and Bart Simpson, fictional cartoon character. You can hear it for yourself here, assuming the YouTube of the audio hasn’t been taken down.
A lot of questions arise: does Bart want me to get my thetans checked or just Nancy? When has Bart ever advocated for anything other than eating his shorts, anyway? Legal issues aside (technically, Fox owns the voices of the characters, which came to light when Dan Castelleneta got in trouble for introducing comedian Paul Krassner on his album “Irony Lives!”), is it ethical for voice actors to use an iconic cartoon character in such a way? Should celebrities use their fame to promote their belief system? Does Cartwright ever use her Bart voice to prank call bars?
A man in Scotland was thrown in jail after singing the “Spiderpig” song from The Simpsons Movie to a group of police officers. [BBC News]
In last Sunday’s “Treehouse of Horror” episode, fictional school bully and noted haw-hawer Nelson Muntz called a giant pumpkin “super gay,” a homophobic slur that has a national gay organization all a-twitter.
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a non-fictional organization that focuses on facilitating positive social change in schools, sent the following statement to celebrity-stalking megablog TMZ:
Nelson’s use of ‘that’s so gay’ in a negative way is not surprising considering that 90 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth say they hear the term used this way frequently or often at school. Nelson should visit ThinkB4YouSpeak.com where he can send an apologetic e-card to Milhouse. GLSEN would also welcome Nelson’s participation in our next PSA so he can make amends by helping to educate young people about why such language is wrong.
Technically Nelson said, “The Grand Pumpkin’s super gay,” and it was directed at the Grand Pumpkin, not Milhouse, but who cares? I’m just glad GLSEN found the time to follow in the grand footsteps of Dan Quayle and complain about a fictional TV character instead of, I don’t know, maybe fighting to keep same-sex marriage legal in California? [TMZ]
This isn’t really news or anything, I just wanted to throw that out there [New York Post]
TVShowsOnDVD.com wrote a bunch of words about the horrible DVD packaging of the equally horrible season 11. Here’s an excerpt:
How would you get the discs out of such a tight space then? You have to reach in with two fingers and pinch the edge… making it virtually impossible to not smudge your fingerprints on the “don’t touch!” side of the DVD. Also, it’s a cinch that the discs will get scratched up sooner or later, inserting them and removing them this way since 100% of the disc makes contact with the cardboard. It’s a travesty.
In the opening of the upcoming annual “Treehouse of Horror” episode, Homer attempts to vote for Barack Obama, remarking that “it’s time for change,” but his EVIL ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE marks it as a vote for John McCain. A scuffle ensues, and the machine ends up killing him. (SPOILER ALERT: The previous two sentences may have contained spoilers).
In an eerie parallel, Al Jean has entered his eighth consecutive season of running the show, more than any other showrunner’s “term of office” in the show’s history. If his two years co-running the show with Mike Reiss during seasons 3 and 4 are taken into account, Jean will have been a showrunner for half the show’s run by the end of this season. Is it time for change? Even Homer thinks so. [Wonkette]
Was the scene in “Brush With Greatness” where Ringo Starr personally answers 25-year old fanmail based on real life? It certainly seems that way, as the former Beatle has kindly asked his fans not to send him any more mail after October 20th. Does this mean he expects to die in late 2033? Developing… [AV Club]
Simpsons creator Matt Groening has always enjoyed a favorable relationship with the press. Serving as a sort-of go-to cultural commentator, the head of Fox’s billion-dollar cartoon franchise is often quoted on everything from animation to music to high school to Olympic mascots. These days, however, he is often asked to comment on Fox’s other billion-dollar cartoon franchise, Family Guy. In a Wall Street Journal article about Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, MacFarlane’s contemporary is relegated to a handful of sentences, including a paragraph which curiously reads like a line from a Fox press release:
Cartoonist Matt Groening, creator of “The Simpsons,” says, “He’s laid the groundwork with this smash hit show and now, with new media opening up and Seth’s specific kind of rapid-fire visual humor, how to exploit it just depends on how ambitious he wants to be.”
Given that Fox and the Journal are corporate siblings, could this be another sign of The Simpsons‘s diminishing stature in the eyes of Fox executives? [Wall Street Journal]