The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History

by John Ortved

  JAMES L. BROOKS (to American Film, 1989): Screenwriters have real authorship of movies … The justification for Gracie was to try this idea out.

  ANNE SPIELBERG: I started hanging out around the place sometimes. It was like a house—I remember buying them a popcorn machine. There were a lot of people working on different projects there at the time, and we’d all goof off and gather together in the kitchen. Michael Leeson was around, doing War of the Roses, and Cameron Crowe was doing Say Anything. Gary Ross and I had been friends for a long time and decided to do this thing [Big] on spec, and the first person we gave it to was Jim.

  JAMES L. BROOKS (to American Film, 1989): The first two years [of Gracie] … was sort of an ideal period in my life.

  A filmmaker who “cares desperately about everything,” Brooks wants to control every aspect of whatever film he is making. And yet for all the self-involvement and ego ascribed to him, he can also be extremely generous with his collaborators. If someone throws a good idea his way, he’s known for exclaiming, “Oh, my God! You saved the movie!” For Brooks, every moment is the most important one. Having his own production company meant that he needed to be just as involved and meticulous with the work of others, a challenge he rose to admirably on most occasions.

  ANNE SPIELBERG: He was hard. He was difficult. He liked to just fling out ideas and go in every possible direction anyone could go with a possible scene. He liked to experiment. Although he was very quick-witted, I would wonder, Are we doing this all over again?

  He was intense. But he laughed a lot.

  We’d be quiet, and all of a sudden Jim would come up with a total non sequitur, as if he had the first half of the sentence in his head, and then he said the second half of it, which didn’t seem to be related to anything we had been talking about. His mind was jumping around a lot—that was a typical Jim-ism.

  ALBERT BROOKS: If you watch a Jim Brooks movie and you like it, the first thing you’re liking is the writing and the story, and the characters.

  GARY ROSS: Anne and I skirted the moment when Tom Hanks told the Liz Birkin character that he was really a child. And we kind of played that off camera. And Jim said, “You can’t play that off camera. You owe it to them to at least to make an attempt at the scene.” And I think that was very wise on his part.

  CAMERON CROWE, Oscar-winning writer and director (to American Film, 1989): You get calls late at night, or early in the morning, where Jim would go, “Hey, man, I watched those dailies from two days ago and let me tell you something—that house is too clean. Don’t you think that house is too clean?”

  GARY ROSS: Nobody can always triumph over commercialism. And I think Jim’s great strength is that he found artistic satisfaction within an environment of commercialism. Jim is commercially very successful, whether it’s Taxi or The Simpsons or Terms of Endearment or Broadcast News or Jerry Maguire or Big. These are very commercially successful movies, but they’re also very emotionally and artistically satisfying. Jim is at once a very successful artist and a very good businessman.

  JERRY BELSON (to American Film, 1989): [Brooks is] a very good executive. That’s probably one of the things that bothers him.

  Being a “good executive” requires different attributes than being a good writer. It requires steely nerves, a mind for business, and the confidence to make decisions that will ultimately leave others in your wake. Although Jim might have had these abilities, it was not in his best interest to put them on display. After all, he was the sensitive one, the tortured genius writer, not the cold-blooded suit. He needed someone to be the bad guy, to run Gracie Films with the iron fist Brooks could not reveal was his own. He found that person in Richard Sakai.

  The most complimentary adjective I have heard to describe Sakai is “devoted.” Sakai is generally described as “crazy,” though one interview subject called him “smart.” Nearly everyone I spoke to referred to him as Jim Brooks’s “henchman” or “hatchet man,” and more generously as “Jim’s id.” He was referred to alternately as “Lurch” (from The Addams Family), “Darth Vader,” and “a bad person.” He was also described to me as “not human,” a screamer, and “psychotic.” One thing is certain: Sakai believed in Jim Brooks more than anyone else, and from the time he was a production assistant on Taxi, he devoted himself completely to his boss, suppressing his own creative ambitions and doing whatever it took to be the man behind James L. Brooks.

  It is not easy to get people to speak on the record about Sakai—Jim Brooks still has long tentacles in Hollywood. But one witness ventured to remember how when Gracie was being formed, Sakai “was just desperate to become a part of Jim’s inner circle in a way that meant that he was rather ruthless.” Sakai spent much of his time at Gracie, dedicating himself wholly to Jim Brooks and the production of his films.

  Just as you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, you can’t make a string of phenomenally successful films without breaking some balls. Richard Sakai was, and is to this day, Jim’s chief ball breaker. Later, Simpsons writers would model the behavior of the sycophantic Waylon Smithers—with his undying adulation of his boss, Mr. Burns—on Sakai, one of the most important figures in The Simpsons’ history.

  KEN ESTIN: Richard Sakai was my best friend when I was on Taxi and we got along really well. After work we’d go to a video arcade and we’d play games together. He’d invite me over to his house; I’d have dinner with him and his wife, Patty. He was a pretty normal guy. He was just intense.

  Richard started with Jim as his gofer, as an errand person. He was so good at making things happen that eventually Richard became the associate producer and was entirely in charge of postproduction. And then when I began running Taxi, I made him the producer with me and Sam Simon.

  The thing is, Brooks had a lot of confidence in Richard. Richard, as I said, was very good and dedicated and admired Jim. They fought a bit and Jim was a little bit hard on Richard, and he endured it because he admired Jim’s genius and he knew he was on to a good thing with Jim. So there’s always been some confrontation between the two of them, but Richard’s very loyal to Jim and he ended up becoming the president of Gracie Films, so it paid off for him.

  At one point Richard wanted to be a writer and a director. He didn’t intend to be the hatchet man, but it turned out that that’s where his life took him, and Jim finds him indispensable. So in spite of their occasional belligerence or whatever, there’s a mutual respect.

  A source who knows both men confirms that Richard Sakai indeed did have creative aspirations of his own, but Jim, who “needs someone twenty-four/seven,” has never let Sakai out from under his thumb. Others believe that Sakai does not have the chops to make anything worthwhile without Jim Brooks. “He’d been riding Jim Brooks’s coattails for so long he had bonus miles,” says an early Simpsons staffer. “And he developed crazy resentments.”

  If Sakai was the guy beneath Jim Brooks, providing the means to Jim’s ends, Barry Diller was the guy above. Diller was at the helm of Fox when Brooks brought The Tracey Ullman Show to the network. A legendary Hollywood executive turned mogul, Diller had invented the made-for-TV movie at ABC in the seventies and knew Brooks well from Paramount, where Diller had been CEO and overseen the production of Taxi and Terms of Endearment (as well as other monster hits like Cheers, the Indiana Jones films, Saturday Night Fever, and Grease). In 1978, Diller took steps to create a fourth major television network, Paramount Television Service, to compete with the Big Three, but the idea quickly crumbled (the network was to be launched on the strength of a follow-up series to Star Trek, called Star Trek Phase II—no joke). This misstep aside, Diller was a TV visionary and the natural choice to run a new network when, in 1985, Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch purchased 20th Century Fox, the legendary studio of Darryl Zanuck, from oil wildcatter Marvin Davis.

  While Diller and Brooks are old friends, their relationship was described to me as complicated and at times combative. Fitting with his personality, Jim Brooks likes to fee
l that he is, as another producer put it, “Joe Lunch Box,” an employee with a boss whom he resents and can rebel against, a role easily provided by the domineering Diller and his control of the purse strings at Paramount and Fox. Conversely, it seems that that Jim’s tendency to break new ground pushed Diller to explore unique creative opportunities.

  HARRIS KATLEMAN, former CEO, 20th Century Fox Television: The relationship between Gracie and Fox was never wonderful because Barry and Jim had this hostile relationship, but I think it was a love-hate relationship. Jim would always push Barry to the brink. But that’s Jim. Jim is a creative genius.

  While still in his thirties, Diller had helped to save and reestablish Paramount Studios. With a reputation for ruthlessness, he fostered a competitive culture among his protégés: Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Eisner, Don Simpson, and Garth Ancier. Known as the “Killer Dillers,” these men would all go on to be (baby) media moguls in their own right. By 1984, Diller was feuding with Paramount’s new chairman and quit the company for 20th Century Fox, where he would become CEO under Marvin Davis. Here again Diller chafed under his boss, who had wooed him with 25 percent of any growth he could inspire (one insider referred to their coupling as “the Stalin-Hitler pact”).8 Fox was doing badly and Davis refused to provide Diller the funds necessary to turn the studio around. Diller threatened to quit. Lawyers were called. And then along came Rupert Murdoch.

  In March 1985, Murdoch partnered with Davis to purchase the half of Fox belonging to financier Marc Rich for $250 million (Rich had fled the country after being indicted for evading $48 million in income taxes). Diller was given a new contract with $3 million a year, preferred stock in News Corp, and, it was rumored, 5 percent of the new Fox Inc.’s profits.9 That same month, Murdoch announced the purchase of Metromedia, which owned independent television stations in major markets, like New York and Dallas (the price: $2 billion; the deal was financed, in part, by junk bond king Michael Milken10). He and Diller then publicly announced their intention to launch a fourth television network.b

  In September, Murdoch had purchased Davis’s remaining half of the company for $325 million, giving him complete control over Fox Inc. (Davis had wanted to flip a coin to see who would buy the other out—Murdoch called his bluff and Davis relented.)11 He started a new division: Fox Television Network, later renamed Fox Broadcasting Company. Though it could reach only 80 percent of the country’s television sets,12 by the fall of 1986, FBC was ready to set sail.

  HARRIS KATLEMAN: [NBC President] Brandon Tartikoff made the joke, “Fox Broadcasting is a network with a coat hanger for an antenna.”

  Fox Broadcasting lost $95 million in its first year, launching such forgettable shows as Duets and Mr. President (starring George C. Scott, who had not appeared on television since the 1960s). Yet Murdoch had bet the farm on this new venture and was committed to making Fox Broadcasting a success. As he’d done at Paramount, Diller pitted his young turks against each other, encouraging a competitive, combative atmosphere, which achieved phenomenal results, and for which he was unapologetic.

  GARTH ANCIER, former president of entertainment, Fox Broadcasting (in Daniel M. Kimmel, The Fourth Network): I think part of Barry’s management style is to have those kind of rivalries going on between executives in the hope that the best person will rise to the top. My problem, personally, is that I don’t respond to that kind of sibling-rivalry situation very well.

  ROB KENNEALLY, former executive VP of series, Fox Network: It was 1987 and I was twenty-six. I go to Fox to become their VP of development at 20th Century Fox Television, the studio. The network launches, and I’m at the sister company.

  So I’m in my office after my very first up-frontc as a studio executive, and I get a phone call that Barry Diller needs me in his office. First of all, it’s like God’s calling. Second, what would he want with me? So I’m walking across the lot and into his inner office and then into his office, and the first thing he says to me as I sit down is “How does it feel to sell so few shows?”

  And I get fairly defensive and say, “What are you talking about?” And I go through the litany of things we’ve sold, and he puts his hand up like, Be quiet. And he says, “I need you more here,” and he very dramatically kind of taps on the desk referring to the network, and then wipes it dismissively, “than over there.” And I was pretty surprised. I remember kind of saying to him, “Wow. That’s—really? Me?” And he says, “Yes, this is your seat at the table.” I didn’t know anything about networks. I didn’t know what affiliates were. I didn’t know what ratings really meant. I’d only been a studio executive for a year. And he said, I remember very distinctly, he thought that was great.

  And the more I sat there, the more I realized he was serious. This was a real job and he was offering me to oversee all of programming. He got me really enthusiastic, but I also had the presence of mind to say to him, “I hope you can appreciate the fact that I’d like to mull this over.” And he said, “I respect that.” So I walked back to my office. It was Friday afternoon. I am thinking about a thousand things, the implications of that meeting, what this means, when I’d start, what I’d do about the studio. It’s not a small move.

  And I went back up to my office and I called my wife, and as I’m dialing my wife, my assistant yells out, “It’s Barry Diller on line three.” And I pick up the phone and he goes, “Well?” That was the beginning.

  Barry’s MO was he hires people way over their head and makes them kind of rise to the occasion, because it gives him license to beat you into the executive you should become, if you can live through the process.

  You’d go away for the weekend and you’d come back on Monday and he was always there before everybody, so you wanted to be there—you wanted him to see your car. That was all part of the culture.

  You had a Diller phone line and it had, you know, almost a Pavlovian effect, because it would ring and it wasn’t like your other phone on your desk. I learned quickly to keep a running notepad next to my phone from Friday evening, because I could typically expect to get a phone call somewhere at the front end of Monday morning, you know, 8:15, 8:30, 9:00, and he would want to know where things were.

  GARTH ANCIER: Honestly, Barry is probably one of the best bosses I’ve ever had. He’s not necessarily the easiest boss to work for. I think he’s the first person to own up to that, but as a creative executive, most of my best habits were forged under Barry because he’s one of those people who force you to think differently than the standard creative executive in the business. I’d worked for Brandon Tartikoff for seven years before that. Barry was much more analytical, much more of an editor, and very demanding. I mean, not just demanding of the people around him, but demanding of the product. The thing that I think I learned most from Barry is that unless you make sure that every single aspect—from the idea to the writer to the execution to the casting—is right, you have a much lower shot of something working. Whereas Brandon came at it trying lots of different things. Wildly creative, but not necessarily as good an editor.

  Diller saw that the major networks were getting old and tired—they were losing viewers to cable and independent networks. People wanted something new, and Diller was eager to experiment.d He and his execs quickly realized that they weren’t going to beat the Big Three in the traditional sense, but they were beginning to win over young males, age eighteen to thirty-four, the demographic that is most important to advertisers.

  HARRIS KATLEMAN: The risk taking was pretty good because, remember, we’re the little engine that could, and we had to take chances, such as Married … with Children, which was very risqué and edgy—the network got condemned for it but that got the attention of the [other] networks at a time when the jury was still out on Fox Broadcasting.

  FBC’s first foray into entertainment was in October 1986, with the Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, intended to compete with Johnny Carson and David Letterman. Rivers was the big-name yet edgy star the network was banking on to draw a hip young audien
ce, but she failed miserably, fought with executives, and was replaced after less than a year.e Meanwhile, in April 1987, the network launched a beachhead into prime time with Married … with Children, The Tracey Ullman Show, and three other sitcoms broadcast on Sunday nights.

  GARTH ANCIER: We probably started out a bit too conventionally and then fairly quickly, in TV years, realized that the stuff that was working was the stuff you couldn’t find elsewhere else.

  RUPERT MURDOCH: Our first successful show, or that showed any ratings, was Married … with Children. And then came America’s Most Wanted.

  Jim Brooks made a loosely arranged production deal with Fox Broadcasting, which was banking on his Midas touch to make them a hit. He came up with The Tracey Ullman Show, a half-hour variety sketch program that showcased the talents and impeccable mimicry of its British star. Brooks assembled his cabal of Gracie producers and writers, and together they collaborated on what would be Fox’s first critical hit (the ratings for Ullman never did much—the show is best remembered for launching The Simpsons).