by John Ortved
Despite these successes (Family Guy would be another), Roman was eventually ousted from his own company. In 1996, Film Roman went public, with the goal of producing their own series. When the stock began to tank, the board decided they needed an MBA to run the company. They hired David Pritchard, an industry veteran with little experience in animation, leaving Roman in charge of creative. Pritchard, who almost immediately removed Phil Roman’s name from The Simpsons’ credits, replacing it with his own, complained that Roman’s presence could undermine him. In early 1999, Roman was forced to resign from the company he built. Months later, when Film Roman’s stock refused to recover, Pritchard was let go, and John Hyde was hired to replace him. Hyde asked Phil Roman—now running his own shop, Phil Roman Animation—to reclaim his old office at Film Roman. He was also given a place on the board. “I said, ‘This is foolish. Move your office. Come back where you belong,’” Hyde told the Los Angeles Daily News. “He laughed, we shook hands, and that was it.”
In 2003, Film Roman was acquired by Starz Media, a division of media conglomerate Liberty Media, Inc. Like the move to Film Roman from Klasky-Csupo more than ten years before, the complaints from the animators as the smaller outfit was absorbed by a much larger, more corporate studio had a familiar ring to them.
“We were no longer this little mom-and-pop operation that Phil Roman created with so much love for the artist,” says an animator. “In the old building, you could write on the walls, you could run around naked, anything went. Now we were going into these stark white offices where you’re not allowed to put stuff on the walls. There were so many rules, which for artists who were used to so much freedom, makes it a tough transition.”
By 1993, Bart’s animators had a new, stress-free home, and the Ullman producers were out of the picture, but there was one last exile to be imposed. Sam Simon remained a thorn in the side of Gracie Films. Their eventual victory over Sam Simon would not only be pyrrhic, financially speaking; it would also rob the show of perhaps its most creative voice.
TEN
Buddies, Sibs, Dweebs, and an Odd Man Out
In which free Butterfingers do not equal compensation … someone finally gives Harvard graduates a fair shake … and no one has very much sex.
While creative differences caused a divide in Matt Groening and Sam Simon’s relationship, the division of The Simpsons’ spoils created a chasm. After the first season, when the show was blowing up and the money started rolling in, Sam felt that he was not being appropriately compensated. Today, Simon has made more than $200 million from the show, but at the time, issues over money only added fodder to his war with Groening. “Once, Sam got an envelope from Fox, and opened it up, and looked at it, and angrily threw it down on the ground,” says one witness from the early Simpsons days. “We knew it was a check, but we didn’t know what it was for. Later, Sam stormed out of the room. We crept over to see what it was, and it was a check for $34,000, which Sam had felt was not enough for whatever his part of this payment was—it was merchandise—and that check sat there for a couple days on the floor. We all just looked at it longingly, ’cause to us it was still a lot of money.”
DARIA PARIS, assistant to Sam Simon, The Simpsons (1989–94): I think a big issue came up when the merchandising started rolling in. And Sam was seeing a smaller portion of it than others, which wasn’t really fair.
JAY KOGEN, writer/producer, The Simpsons (1989–92): I think Sam did okay. [Laughs] Part of it may have been money, but I think it was a combination of stuff.
GAVIN POLONE, former agent for Conan O’Brien, Simpsons writers; executive producer, Curb Your Enthusiasm: Back then, you used to make different deals than today. People got what was known as “adjusted gross.” I think Sam may still be getting $50,000, $60,000, whatever, per episode.
BRIAN ROBERTS, editor, The Simpsons (1989–92): Matt used to be the king of merchandising. He would just sit in his office and sign posters and create more ways of doing merchandising. And meanwhile, Sam and the writing staff were churning out brilliant episodes. (And just as a side note, Fox is so cheap we never got any animation cels or anything. I couldn’t even get one cel from the episode that I wrote. But there was no shortage of Butterfingers. You could always go up to Matt’s office and grab yourself a big handful of Butterfingers, because those were free, because Matt signed that Butterfinger deal. No shortage of those. To this day, I can’t eat a Butterfinger.)
The hatred between the two of them just became deeper and deeper for I don’t know what reason. I think Jim sided with Matt. I don’t understand it. I think Jim fell in love with the myth and the legend and said, “Hey, let’s ride this deal.” That was the beginning of the end, I think, for Sam.
Simon’s demise at Gracie Films was gradual, and not surprisingly, Richard Sakai was involved in his being pushed out. Groening, who was being treated with contempt and disdain by Simon, often brought his complaints to Gracie. The Machiavellian Sakai, who was no fan of Sam’s, and would eventually be at daggers drawn with Matt as well, leveraged these complaints to Matt’s further indignation. One witness to Sakai’s behavior recalls Sakai pressing Matt’s buttons with incitements like, “Yeah, you know, [Sam’s] really being ugly to you. He’s like a toxic presence, isn’t he? It’s like he’s poisoning the show.”
Jim initially sympathized with Sam (who, it seems, really was being mean), because of their history and the fact that, in their hearts, they were both writers. As someone who knows both men put it, “If you woke Jim Brooks up at three in the morning and asked, ‘What are you?’ his answer would be ‘a writer.’” Sam Simon was the same way. This put Sam in Sakai’s sights (imagine Waylon Smithers watching someone getting close to Mr. Burns), and, according to one witness, he began ranting to Jim, “Sam didn’t go to the color proof today. Sam was late at the rewrite room.” He was relentless. It got to the point where Jim had to take meetings with Sam about his “transgressions.”
A strand that recurs throughout The Simpsons’ history, from Matt’s Life in Hell to Gabor Csupo to Bart Simpson, is a distrust of authority. If there is one theme that connects the show’s content with its formulation, it is this rebellious streak. And Sam Simon was no exception. Being called to task by Jim only provoked what was increasingly seen as Sam’s “bad attitude.” All of Sakai’s whispering in Jim’s ear, which earned him the nickname “Iago at Spago” around Gracie Films, was about to pay off.
After the first year of boffo Simpsons success, Gracie moved their offices to the Sony lot and made an exorbitant deal with ABC and its soon-to-be president, Bob Iger, to produce three series for that network. The first of these, Sibs, was a ratings catastrophe and a complete embarrassment when compared with the former successes from Jim Brooks advertised on its poster: “From the Creator of Mary Tyler Moore, The Simpsons, and Taxi. Three sisters who can’t stay apart and one husband who can’t relate—Sibs.” ABC, who had paid for a Simpsons and received a Fish Police, was understandably upset.
Adding to the tension at Gracie was Sam Simon’s clamoring for his share of The Simpsons loot. Sam felt that he was not being awarded the share of the Simpsons merchandising revenues to which he was contractually entitled, his contract being a complicated issue in itself. Before The Simpsons had ever aired, but after Simon had supervised the writing and production of the entire first season, his contract was still being negotiated (negotiations with Jim/Gracie were described to me as unusually complex and contentious by a number of sources). Early talks stalled, which caused Sam to walk away frustrated, and leave the contract negotiation to be finished after the show had aired. This would have been no problem if the show had tanked, but when it became a massive success, Gracie was in the unenviable position of making a contract with an executive producer for a show that was worth hundreds of millions, as opposed to the risky venture it had seemed when they’d first tried to nail down a deal in 1989. At some point during the second season, Sam finalized an agreement with Gracie, which gave him a chunk of the show, episode
fees, and a portion of the merchandising revenues.
The continuing eruptions over Sam’s share of the Simpsons merchandising was probably the beginning of the disintegration of Sam and Jim’s relationship. Despite Sam’s problems with Gracie Films and Jim, he was still contractually bound to show up for work every day and produce Gracie’s shows. If he had quit, he would have had to walk away from any material interest in any of Gracie’s productions, including The Simpsons. Gracie execs had motivation to make life difficult for Sam—for example, they threatened to put a report “in his file” about drinking on the set of Sibs, although many others were imbibing, including other Gracie execs—because if Sam was found to be in breach of his contract, he would lose his fees and back end points.
In 1992, Sam was made president of Gracie Television, a purely ceremonial title. The second series for ABC, Phenom, got decent ratings, but was quickly canceled by the network (one witness attributes this to ABC’s being too furious with people at Gracie to continue working with them—countered by another who says the real issue was the poor ratings of the show, that ABC wouldn’t cancel a real hit even if it were produced by Dr. Mengele). Sam held on, though. Finally, in 1993, after much posturing on both sides, Gracie and Sam cut a deal where he would agree to leave, but would retain his continuing back end and executive producer fees, and onscreen credit for the life of The Simpsons. Sam is still an executive producer of the show; he just doesn’t have to do anything for his piece of The Simpsons, which provides him with $20 to $30 million a year to this day.
In terms of content, Sam is responsible for the episodes written in the first four seasons of The Simpsons, and even the first couple of episodes of Season 5.
The Simpsons is and always has been viewed as a “writers’ show,” which seems appropriate for a sitcom established under the umbrella of James L. Brooks. The writers/producers wield an enormous amount of influence, disproportionate to any other sitcom in the industry then or now. Under his supervision Simon placed two of the original writers in charge as official showrunners for Seasons 3 and 4: Al Jean and Mike Reiss. They were young and brilliant, and had both the savvy and the energy to continue on in Sam’s tradition. While people will argue forever (mostly on the Internet) when the golden age of The Simpsons came and went, I believe it began during this period, with the show’s finest episodes appearing between the second and sixth seasons. This was a time when the team Simon put together, building on the model he created, wrote amazing show after amazing show, making The Simpsons’ voice distinctive and fully exploring the possibilities afforded to them.
Al Jean and Mike Reiss, mainstays of the original room, had previously written for the National Lampoon, The Tonight Show, Alf, and It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, but their friendship extended back to the Harvard Lampoon in the late seventies. There are a few triedand-true paths to becoming a Simpsons writer, and one of them begins in Cambridge.
BILL OAKLEY, writer/producer, The Simpsons (1991–97): From Season 2 to Season 8, there was never a time that there were less than 80 percent Harvard Lampoon graduates on the staff.
TOM MARTIN, writer/producer, The Simpsons (1999–2001): I was maybe the first pure stand-up comedian to come to the show. I had been doing stand-up for about eight or nine years. Prior to Season 9, it had been pretty much an Ivy League institution, except for Mike Scully—he jokes about having gone to college for about a week, and then I think he actually did a little stand-up too. I’m sure I’m the dumbest guy to ever be on The Simpsons as far as SAT scores.
I never fit in for a lot of reasons. One reason is that, as Larry Doyle put it one day, “You remind me of the guys who used to beat me up in high school.” And I thought, Well, that’s strange. What do you mean? I think I was perceived by many of the group as too normal. In fact, after I left, they made a calendar of me, a “Hunky Tom Martin” calendar that they had in the room [fellow writer Ian Maxtone-Graham and sound engineer Brian Koffman had trained with Martin for a triathlon relay—hence the presence of “hunky” photos]. But the funny thing is, realistically it’s like, No, no, guys, I’m handsome only compared to you. Not in the real world. I’m strong and athletic only compared to you guys. But that was what was funny about it. I’m writer handsome, writer strong, but not really handsome or really strong.
DONICK CARY, writer/producer, The Simpsons (1996–99): A lot of these guys had written on the Lampoon together in college, so they were sort of falling back into their college routine, which was, basically, to hang out all day and entertain themselves.
MICHAEL CARRINGTON, episode writer, The Simpsons; producer, That’s So Raven, Cory in the House: That’s what my writing partner, Gary Apple, always complained about. I’m from Syracuse University and he was from Rockport. He said, “Why are the Harvard guys writing comedy? Us state school guys should be writing all the comedy and the Harvard boys should be running the country.”
TOM WOLFE, author, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, Bonfire of the Vanities; guest voice, The Simpsons: I believe the sophistication of the show obviously comes from creative people who have that same kind of education that writers either have or think they have. I mean, most writers these days are well educated. It’s true that Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Dreiser, if you put them all together, you’d reach just about spring break of freshman year, but most writers are well educated. There is so much sophistication and, at the same time, it’s done in a way so that it never loses the young audience.
And of course, these days there are plenty of college writers, very good ones, who don’t want to write novels and they don’t want to write nonfiction. They want to write for television. And the prize is to write for The Simpsons.
And it wasn’t just The Simpsons. Beginning with Jim Downey (the SNL godfather, beneath Lorne Michaels) in the late seventies, and early Letterman in the eighties, television shows began to draw on Ivy League talent for much of their writing. Graduates from Harvard and the Ivys came to dominate the staffs of shows like Seinfeld, King of the Hill, Newsradio, and The Larry Sanders Show.
TOM WOLFE: A fellow from Harvard, he was on the Lampoon—and they usually get very talented young people working on their magazine—was telling me how he wanted to write for television, and I said, “Write for television? You’ll be anonymous. You’ll never make a name for yourself. Name one television writer.” Well, he named about three because they were all at Harvard when he was there, but he couldn’t name a famous one.
Whether you were from Harvard or not, the writers room could be an intimidating place. Brent Forrester, who was a writer on HBO’s widely respected Mr. Show, joined the room in the fifth season.
BRENT FORRESTER, writer/producer The Simpsons (1993–97); writer/producer, King of the Hill, The Office: Essentially, the way the show would go is: the scripts would come in, and they would be printed out, and everyone would have them in a kind of living room. And the head writer would say, “Okay. On page 3, we need a better joke for Homer.” The room would go into silence … and then someone would dare pitch the first line for Homer. And there would be, hopefully, at least an appreciative chuckle. And then someone else would dare to do a line, and you would just go around.
It was so intimidating. There was one writer there who, for the first three months that I was on the The Simpsons, never said a word. Now, to be hired on a show to write jokes and never say a word is a true path to being fired. He knew he would be fired. But he just felt it would be better to be fired never having said something embarrassing in front of those guys. And after three months he got canned, never having pitched a joke.
My own method was to go off at lunch and try to anticipate what the next jokes would be that would need to be rewritten, and write jokes, and then come back to the room and pretend that I was coming up with them off the top of my head, which always gives them a little extra chance of getting in ’cause they seemed kind of spontaneous. That was the only way I felt comfortable competing with these legendary writers who had created
and worked on The Simpsons for some time.
RICHARD APPEL, writer/producer, The Simpsons (1995–99): I don’t think I opened my mouth for the first six weeks in that room. Part of it was my son had just been born. My son was, like most babies, not sleeping through the night, and there were some days where I didn’t say anything not because I was intimidated but because I could barely focus. And I remember at one point actually falling asleep in the room, using that trick where you put your hand over eyes and make it look like you’re deep in thought—I just could not keep my eyes open. In front of everyone Bill Oakley started snapping his fingers under my nose and saying, “You can’t stay here, Grandpa! Come on!”
TIM LONG, writer/producer, The Simpsons (1998–): There was a stain on the roof when I walked in, and I remember saying, “What the hell is that?” And someone said, “Oh, I think that’s where Conan threw a slice of pizza on the ceiling.” And I had two simultaneous thoughts. The first was, Holy shit, I am in one of the Stations of the Cross of comedy—I’ve really arrived. And the second one was, Wait a second, Conan left five years ago.