by John Ortved
Family Guy isn’t about tackling social issues, or about letting you know how smart its writers are with allusions to high culture; it is all about the laugh. While the Griffins stay consistent, the family isn’t meant to approximate a real one in their speech or deeds. Nor are their neighbors, like the hyperaggressive, paraplegic policeman Joe, sexual predator and best friend Glenn Quagmire, the old pedophile who lives down the street, or the sporadically appearing Greased Up Naked Guy. A typical episode has Meg pretending that Stewie is her crack-addicted baby to earn sympathy and tips as a waitress, while the adults accuse each other of stealing a prized trophy. It ends with Rod Serling, from The Twilight Zone, revealing that it was the talking dog, Brian, who took the trophy so he could bury it in the backyard, resulting in Brian assaulting him with a shovel and then burying the body.
It’s easy to see The Family Guy as a frat boy version of The Simpsons: bigger, ruder, and meaner. But, like South Park, there is more going on than easy jokes—the show has captured the imagination of millions with its hyperallusive, kinetic approach to comedy. If The Simpsons was a cartoon for adults in 1989, Family Guy was that for 1999 and beyond. Its popularity—on DVD and on the Cartoon Network’s late-night showcase, Adult Swim—among millions of college kids and twenty-somethings caused a true first: in 2005, after a twoyear hiatus, Fox uncanceled the series, bringing it back on Sunday nights, where it regularly trounces its forebear. It has gone on to spawn two more cartoon series: (the god-awful) American Dad and (the as-yet-to-be-seen) The Cleveland Show, and continues its strong DVD sales. In May 2008, Fox signed a $100 million deal with MacFarlane, keeping his shows until 2012 and making him the highest-paid writer in Hollywood. The entire Family Guy operation is now valued at over $1 billion.
SETH MACFARLANE: Early on, when I was in college, I had decided that I wanted to work for Disney ’cause they were sort of the biggest thing happening in animation at the time, because of their resurgence. Then The Simpsons came on the scene and completely eclipsed Disney in sophistication. I would watch The Simpsons and just go, “Wow, these guys are opening up a whole bunch of new doorways for animation with some bite to it.” So much of feature animation is geared toward kids—and to me animation is so often at its best when it’s got some teeth to it. The Simpsons sort of opened the doors: characters could swear.
[The Simpsons] is still funnier than any live-action show on television right now. I’ll watch The Simpsons before I watch a live-action sitcom any day of the week. I think the show, in its prime years, is up there with All in the Family, with Mary Tyler Moore, with Dick Van Dyke as one of the great sitcoms of all time. It deserves its place of honor on that list, as far as I’m concerned. It’s been eighteen years. So it’s a different show, obviously.
I’m always walking on eggshells with this issue, because I can’t stress enough how much respect I have for that show as a series. In some ways the stories tend to be a little bigger nowadays. They tend to be a little more out there; whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing really depends on the taste of each particular viewer. Tonally, every sitcom evolves in one way or another, and I think that The Simpsons is tonally certainly very different than it was four hundred episodes ago.
If I did Family Guy for eighteen years, I don’t think it would be as good as it is now. There’s only so much you can do with a certain group of characters, and I think that for a show that’s been on eighteen years, The Simpsons is doing as great a job as anyone could, after that long, of keeping it fresh.
It just depends on the episode. They aren’t doing quite as many of the smaller, quieter character stories anymore. I think that’s what that show does so beautifully and I would love to see them get back to that.
Among fans, much has been made of the rivalry between Family Guy and The Simpsons, which take the occasional shot at each other.
SETH MACFARLANE: I’ve had some interaction with Matt Groening and I’ve found him to be a really terrific guy. And obviously very, very talented. Just a good guy, in addition to everything else. I don’t know Jim Brooks, but Mike Scully, who ran The Simpsons for a number of years, is a friend of mine, and he’s a hysterically funny guy. I don’t know all those guys; I know enough of them to have sort of a relationship with that show.
For me there’s sort of a glaze over all of the back-and-forth gibes that you see on TV between the two shows. I have yet to meet one person on the writing staff of The Simpsons who isn’t pretty cool to hang out with. There is the belief among a lot of the fans that there’s a harsh rivalry between us and The Simpsons. The gibes are never really discussed between us, because I think it goes without saying that, yeah, we’re going to take jabs at each other because we both take jabs at everything else. I think sometimes, onscreen, they can get a little mean-spirited, but for me it doesn’t stick, because it’s all in good fun.
Even when you consider the gigantic success of The Simpsons’ offspring, no series has come close to The Simpsons’ level of influence. Seinfeld is comparable, in terms of money, and even how often its referenced, but only within a certain bourgeois American audience. Friends was, for years, a religion, but its popularity was passing and resounded barely past the nineties. Family Guy and South Park are somewhat in the same universe, in terms of annual financial revenues, and laughs per minute, but nowhere close in terms of syndication, smarts, or scope. With broadband, the increasing prominence of cable, DVR, and the increasing number of alternatives to network TV, it is unlikely that any television series will ever have The Simpsons’ success, import, or resonance.
MICHAEL MENDEL, postproduction supervisor, The Tracey Ullman Show, The Simpsons (1989–92, 1994–99): My big fat opinion about it is there seem to be fewer Jim Brookses and Steven Bochcos and David Kelleys and those kinds of people who can get a show on the air with their vision intact. That doesn’t exist in the way that shows are made these days.
JOHN ALBERTI: My daughter once referred to The Simpsons as the Beatles of television. Everything kind of starts with The Simpsons, and they are a little more mainstream than, say, punk rock, but still everybody still likes the Beatles, especially the classic Beatles. And now maybe The Simpsons have stretched it into the Rolling Stones because the Rolling Stones are so corporatized now it’s really hard to imagine that they were ever subversive or edgy or countercultural. It seems like they’re beating a dead horse to pick up a paycheck. So everybody was sad when the Beatles broke up, but now you look back and you think, Maybe it’s not quite so bad that the Beatles broke up, before they did anything really awful and embarrassing, just kind of hauling out that name because people would respond to it. So maybe that’s it. Maybe they’ve gone from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones.
ROBERT PINSKY, United States poet laureate, 1997–2000; guest voice, The Simpsons: All due respect to the Beatles, The Simpsons never went through the equivalent of a cute, mop-top, harmless, and charming period. The show never represented “youth.” On the contrary, it represented an irritable, anarchic impatience with cornball, pretentious ideas like “youth.” Like the Beatles, the show represents a watershed, but its spirit, its attitude is more like David Byrne.
RICKY GERVAIS, guest voice, The Simpsons; creator and star, The Office, Extras: I imagine its influence is as a paradigm of excellence. By definition, excellence is rare. People go, “Would that pass in The Simpsons?” What I like about The Simpsons is that it’s timeless and universal. And that’s something I’ve always aspired to. I don’t want to do a joke that people in my backyard get, that (1) won’t travel and (2) won’t be funny in a year’s time because you’ll forget the cultural reference. The Simpsons does that brilliantly. But I don’t know if it’s influenced people, because they are still rubbish. I don’t know if it’s changed the way people make TV. I don’t know if many things do that outside technology and law. But I imagine it’s made a lot of people go, “Oh, my God!” You ask any comedians, “What’s your favorite thing?” “Well, let’s talk about what our second favorite thing is, beca
use we’ll all agree that it’s The Simpsons.” That’s it. Simpsons. Simpsons is king.
In the end, explaining how The Simpsons managed to accomplish what it did is as futile as explaining how a joke is funny. It is said that talking about music is like dancing about architecture. Perhaps talking about The Simpsons is like laughing about biochemistry. If that’s the case, as with all of the above, The Simpsons could say it better than I can.
JAY KOGEN, writer/producer, The Simpsons (1989–92): We thought we were writing these really funny, smart, special shows that were chock-full of jokes every few seconds. And then someone showed us this study Fox had done. The number one reason people liked The Simpsons was “all the pretty colors,” and they liked it when Homer hit his head. We were writing the show for ourselves—we always made it funny for ourselves. But who knows why America likes it. Maybe they do like the pretty colors and when Homer hits his head. But I hope there’s more.
JOHN ORTVED
THE SIMPSONS
John Ortved grew up in Toronto, Canada, and studied at McGill University. His work has appeared in New York magazine, Interview, Vice, The New York Observer, and Vanity Fair, where he was an editorial associate. He lives in New York City and Toronto.
Notes
INTRODUCTION: “HI, EVERYBODY!”
1 Wayne Walley, “Fox Rates Look from Advertisers; Fourth TV Network Rebuffs Skeptics,” Advertising Age, December 14, 1987.
2 Chris Turner, Planet Simpson (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2004), p. 120.
3 Quoted in Gary Budzak, “Cracked Humor, Creative Freedom Keep ‘Simpsons’ Going,” Columbus Dispatch, March 2, 2004.
1: THE MATT GROENING SHOW
1 Thomas J. Meyer, “To Hell and Back,” Northwest Magazine, March 25, 1990.
2 Neil Tesser, “20 Questions: Matt Groening,” Playboy, July 1990.
3 Quoted in Joe Morgenstern, “Bart Simpson’s Real Father,” Los Angeles Times Magazine, April 29, 1990.
4 Paul Andrews, “The Groening of America,” Seattle Times, August 19, 1990.
5 “Best Colleges,” U.S. News & World Report, February 13, 2009.
6 Quoted in Jim Lynch, “2 Schools of Thought Compete at Evergreen,” Sunday Oregonian, June 10, 2001.
7 Tesser, “20 Questions: Matt Groening.”
8 Mark Rahner, “Matt Groening to Give Grads Bart-like Wisdom?” Seattle Times, June 9, 2000.
9 Meyer, “To Hell and Back.”
10 Quoted ibid.
11 Quoted in Andrews, “The Groening of America.”
12 Tesser, “20 Questions: Matt Groening.”
13 Ibid.
14 Jenny Eliscu, “Homer and Me,” Rolling Stone, November 28, 2008.
15 Morgenstern, “Bart Simpson’s Real Father.”
16 Quoted in Andrews, “The Groening of America.”
17 Tesser, “20 Questions: Matt Groening.”
2: THE KING OF COMEDY
1 Hilary De Vries, “The Director’s Long Shot,” Washington Post, February 12, 1994.
2 Quoted in Steve Daly, “What, Him Worry?” Entertainment Weekly, November 12, 2004.
3 Patrick Danaher, “Simpsons Producer Plans to Take World’s Funniest Family to Ireland,” Sunday Tribune (Dublin), March 2, 2008.
4 Aljean Harmetz, “Coming to Terms with His Success,” New York Times Magazine, April 8, 1984.
5 “James L. Brooks,” Current Biography (Bronx, NY: H. W. Wilson, 1998).
6 Daly, “What, Him Worry?”
7 Ibid.
8 Mark Seal, “The Man Who Ate Hollywood,” Vanity Fair, November 2005.
9 “In Hollywood, a Nouveau Royalty Made by Mergers,” New York Times, March 1, 1992.
10 James B. Stewart, “The Milken File,” New Yorker, January 22, 2001.
11 William H. Meyers, “Murdoch’s Global Power Play,” New York Times, June 12, 1988.
12 “Fox Lines Up 79 Independent Affiliates,” United Press International, August 4, 1986.
3: WHEN BART MET TRACEY
1 Gary Panter, “The Rozz Tox Manifesto,” garypanter.com/2004_05_16_archive.html.
2 James Lipton, “The Cast of The Simpsons,” Inside the Actors Studio, Bravo, February 9, 2003.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
4: SAM “SAYONARA” SIMON
1 Morley Safer, “Dog Nut,” 60 Minutes, CBS, July 15, 2007.
2 Quoted in A. O. Scott, “Homer’s Odyssey,” New York Times Magazine, November 4, 2001.
3 Quoted in Howard Rosenberg, “The Simpsons; A Google-Eyed Guerrilla Assault on TV,” Washington Post, March 18, 1990.
4 Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text, Hill and Wang, 1978.
5: WELCOME TO SPRINGFIELD
1 Quoted in Daniel Kimmel, The Fourth Network, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2004.
2 Quoted in Ken Auletta, “Barry Diller’s Search for the Future,” New Yorker, February 22, 1993.
3 Quoted in Jefferson Graham, “Aaauggh! He’s Gone, Man: In a Surprise Move, Barry Diller Resigns as Fox Chief,” USA Today, February 25, 1992.
4 Ibid.
6: THE ROOM
1 World Series of Poker, player profiles, worldseriesofpoker.com/players/playerProfile.asp?playerID=9703.
2 World Series of Poker, player profiles, worldseriesofpoker.com/players/playerProfile.asp?playerID=4470&pagecolor-FFFFFF.
7: THE FIRST EPISODES
1 Joe Morgenstern, “Bart Simpson’s Real Father,” Los Angeles Times Magazine, April 29, 1990.
2 “Some Enchanted Evening,” The Simpsons: The Complete First Season, Vol. 3, supplementary commentary by Matt Groening, DVD, 2001.
3 Ibid., supplementary commentary by James L. Brooks.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., supplementary commentary by Matt Groening.
6 “List of Week’s TV Show Ratings,” Associated Press, December 28, 1989.
7 Ibid., May 1, 1990.
8 Kenneth R. Clark, “The Simpsons Proves Cartoons Are Not Just for Kids,” Chicago Tribune, TV Week, January 14, 1990.
9 Michael Kingsley, “For the Life of the Party, Call Roseanne,” Los Angeles Times, June 30, 1990.
10 Tom Shales, “The Primest Time: Sunday Night Television,” Washington Post, March 11, 1990.
11 Richard Zoglin, “Home Is Where the Venom Is,” Time, June 24, 2001.
12 Morgenstern, “Bart Simpson’s Real Father.”
13 Quoted in Kleinfeld, “Cashing in on a Hot New Brand Name.”
14 Tom Shales, “They’re Scrapping …” Washington Post, October 11, 1990.
15 Quoted in Jian Ghomeshi, “A Feature Chat with Bill Cosby,” The Q, CBC Radio, broadcast July 13, 2009.
16 Joan Hanauer, “Cosby Edges Simpsons Across U.S.,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1990.
17 Rick Du Brow, “Cocky, Freewheeling Fox Falls on Its Face,” Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1990.
18 Deborah Hastings, “The Simpsons Finally Beats Cos,” Associated Press, November 28, 1990.
8: BIGGER THAN JESUS
1 Linda Shrieves, “Bart: A ’90s Kind of Hero; The Coolest Simpson Has Become America’s Hottest Kid,” Orlando Sentinel, May 4, 1990.
2 Kevin Goldman, “Major Networks Are Calling the Toons to Animate Prime Time TV Ratings,” Wall Street Journal, January 14, 1991.
3 Michel Marriott, “I’m Black Bart and What About It?,” New York Times, September 19, 1990.
4 Ibid.
5 Quoted in Ruben Castaneda, “Bart Simpson: Children’s Hero, Educators’ Menace,” Washington Post, May 29, 1990.
6 Scott Williams, “Bart Simpson—Cultural Icon or Rebel Without a Clue,” Associated Press, May 22, 1990.
7 Matt Neufeld, “Cowabunga, Dudes! T-Shirts of Bart Shaking up Schools,” Washington Times, September 20, 1990.