The Walt Disney Company recently held its biennial D23 convention celebrating Disney and its various properties, which thanks to corporate consolidation and a lack of antitrust enforcement also includes The Simpsons! Here’s a roundup of all the Simpsons-related stuff.
Chris Ledesma, who served as music editor of The Simpsons for decades, has died at the age of 64. His passing was announced with a tribute card at the end of last night’s episode, “My Life as a Vlog.”
Ledesma had worked on The Simpsons from the start of the show until his retirement last May, working closely alongside the show’s longtime composer Alf Clausen. According to Wikisimpsons, he is credited on 735 episodes, along with the Disney shorts and the soundtracks.
In 2011, he launched a blog, Simpsons Music 500, where he provided a behind-the-scenes look at the show. There, he’d delve into production minutiae, such as this post about music spotting or this one about scoring sessions, becoming an invaluable resource for fans. He also used the blog to regularly answer Simpsons fans’ questions about music cues, and this generosity extended to his Twitter account. I recall he did a livestream prior to scoring session at least once, where he highlighted some of the players in the orchestra, although it doesn’t appear to be archived anywhere.
Writer/producer Carolyn Omine eulogized him in a tweet: “Chris Ledesma was a sweet man who loved his job and was really, really good at it. We miss him.”
A recent Hollywood Reporter story on embattled Disney CEO Bob Chapek opened with this observation:
It is unclear at this point whether Chapek, 61, can execute a reset with Disney staff and creative partners. A cartoon hanging in the production offices of The Simpsons seems to suggest an opinion: It has Chapek in the “In Memoriam” section of the Oscars show.
First of all, what a fuckin’ lame cartoon. Second of all, who cares. Some comedy writers made light of authority, stop the presses.
Well, apparently the Simpsons TOP BRASS care, because the article was updated later in the day to include this parenthetical disclaimer:
(The Simpsons top brass, including Jim Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean and Matt Selman, deny that that there was such a cartoon in the office. “For the sake of the simple truth: No notice concerning Bob Chapek has been on the walls of any Simpson’s office. Since March 2020 all our work has been done remotely due to Covid. Nobody has been in the offices for two years now. We do miss the snack room,” they wrote in a joint statement. The source who spoke with THR said that the circulated cartoon was in fact subsequently taken down.)
That FOUR executive producers felt the need to issue a joint statement about this stupid doodle that may or may not have actually existed is bewildering and pathetic. Do they think they’re going to get sent to the principal’s office? Maybe they’re right and they’re just really concerned about the spread of Fake News. In that case, why not just have one guy deny it, why did they need all four? Was this really an “all hands on deck” scenario? Also, I guess maybe there’s a world of difference between “production office” and “studio,” because this doesn’t look like somebody’s home to me.
Whatever happened, their emphatic denial makes them sound like they’re absolutely terrified of their boss’s wrath, which seems very silly because The Simpsons was once known for biting the hand that feeds them (albeit with the hand’s permission) and other parts of the company haven’t exactly been shy expressing criticism of their leadership lately.
Who knows, maybe years from now we’ll read in DisneyWar 3 about how this absolutely set Chapek off and made him angrily tear up the plans for Simpsons Land at EPCOT or whatever.
John Swartzwelder has given his first-ever interview with The New Yorker, where the legendary Simpsons writer talks at length about his past and reflects upon his work.
This is a huge surprise, because Swartzwelder has a reputation as a mysterious, eccentric guy. As John Ortved wrote in his book, “Swartzwelder is an enigma. No one I interviewed knows much about the man, and unlike [George] Meyer, he has never given an interview or spoken publicly about himself or his work.” Fellow Simpsons writer Matt Selman blogged, “John Swartzwelder is immensely private. He would not want to be blogged about.” The only time his voice has been heard publicly is when showrunner Mike Scully called him during a DVD commentary (in an interview with the podcast Talking Simpsons, Scully says he had to give him an animation cel to get him to sign a release form). Amazingly, he still holds the record for most episodes written, even though he left the show nearly two decades ago.
In the interview, which writer Mike Sacks says was “in the works for over a year,” Swartzwelder reflects on his time in advertising and Saturday Night Live, offers some great writing advice, clarifies some misperceptions about the diner booth he installed in his home, shares his thoughts on the deification of the Simpsons writers’ room (“I know some people think of us as gods, and maybe we are. I’m not saying we’re not gods.”) and the word “Swartzweldian” (“about the most awkward-sounding word in the English language”), reveals his favorite season, and confirms the mostly-promotional Twitter account @JJSwartzwelder is him. He also mentions a cartoon he drew for George Meyer’s cult zine Army Man featuring “some nicely drawn chickens” with perfect beaks (you be the judge).
The whole thing is oozing with great jokes and is very much worth your time.
Looks like Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t the only unfinished game with bugs in it!!!!!!
Cyberhackers have uncovered a tech demo for what was initially assumed to be a never-produced Simpsons video game for the Sega Dreamcast, titled The Simpsons: Bug Squad!. Produced by the now-defunct Red Lemon Studios in late 2000 to demonstrate its Toon Renderer engine to Fox Interactive, the demo consists solely of a roach clad in military gear that can jump around a cel-shaded Simpsons kitchen and TV room while Homer walks around. pcwzrd13, who got the demo to work, produced a video playthrough. Others, like Stranno, managed to get outside to the backyard, where Bart is also walking around.
Andy Campbell, a co-founder of Red Lemon Studios, clarified some things on Twitter:
Oh my! Not seen that for 20 years! We had a great coder who had developed an amazing cell shading engine for DC. I knew Fox pretty well, so this was a demo we created and I pitched to them. We were never commissioned, so this was technically never an official title in development
— Dr Andy Campbell (@spacebrodie) December 20, 2020
The ‘toon tech’ cartoon rendering engine came first. We then looked at pitching it to publishers. I knew the folks at Fox… so we modelled the Simpsons house and characters. Bug Squad was a separate idea initially we retrofitted to make it a cockroach running about. Memories!
— Dr Andy Campbell (@spacebrodie) December 20, 2020
Speaking of unreleased Simpsons video game stuff, series producer Matt Selman revealed last summer that his favorite Simpsons game to work on was an unreleased Mario Party-like game. The unexpected discovery of The Simpsons: Bug Squad! gives hope that perhaps we’ll get to see it someday, along with who knows what else…
Shocking news for Simpsons fans concerned about the artistic integrity of an episode based entirely around a name-brand product: it turns out The Simpsons‘s upcoming 30 minute LEGO commercial was partially funded and essentially proposed by The LEGO Group.
Entertainment Weekly casually mentioned The LEGO Group’s financial stake in the episode in an interview with producers Matt Selman and Brian Kelley:
Lego helped pay for the episode. How much input did the company have into the creative side? I understand that there was a sex scene between Lego Homer and Lego Marge that they wanted to tone down.
KELLEY:
Let’s say we had a lot of fun with the Lego sex scene, and I’m not surprised that it was a little too risque. But we’ll always treasure the memory. [Laughs] They were good partners. Our audience is slightly older than their audience, so they would occasionally have concerns, but all the words in the episode are ours. If they had an objection, which they did on very rare occasions, we’d find a way around it.
Good to know that a show with “a near-total absence of network interference” (virtually unheard of in the industry) is now taking notes from a toy company.
Splitsider did a pretty good interview with current Simpsons writer (and rubbercat.net/simpsons reader) Matt Selman. About half of it is just plugging his latest episode, Homer the Hipster (which he’s already defending), but there’s still some good insights. Selman talks about his thoughts on a final episode, how those lazy layabouts Tom Gammill and Max Pross have finally – after being on the writing staff for over a decade – written an episode, how the staff tries to make sure the show doesn’t feel like a Jay Leno monologue (except, uh, when they actually do Leno monologues), and getting fired from Seinfeld. Then the interviewer gets him to tell the “Mayor of St. Louis” story, which is pretty funny:
It’s starting to get very awkward because he’s sort of addressing his whole speech to me and putting me on the spot and humiliating me and saying, “Who said this about East St. Louis? Have you ever been to East St. Louis?” I’m feeling very uncomfortable and awkward. ‘Oh man, I’m so dead.’ I unfortunately showed my true colors by selling out the others writers by saying that I didn’t write the joke in the show about East St. Louis [and] someone else wrote it [and] we all wrote it together, even though my name was on the script.
There you have it: by his own admission, Matt Selman is a gullible liar, a man who should not be trusted, but is also incredibly trusting. So dark, the duplicity of man.
The notoriously reclusive, Ron Swansonesque Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder joined the notoriously narcissistic social microblogging platform known as “Twitter” under the username @SwartzwelderJ.
Writer/producer Matt Selman and former writer/murderer Dana Gould are doing a “thing” this Thursday at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles. If you pay them 10 bucks, they will regale you with anecdotes about working for The Simpsons in the post-funny era, answer questions about wizard keys, as well as – and this is the important part – give you all the backstage dirt, like “Who punched a box?” If any of you readers out there end up going to this thing, please please please tell me who punched the box. I desperately need to know.
[NerdMelt]
Famous comedy duo “Eric & Tim” appeared in the sure-to-be-classic “Marge Becomes A Food Blogger” episode of The Simpsons last night and sang a rap song about being a foodie, which you can watch below courtesy of YouTube user “MelZtube80.”