[IMG:L]Back in 1989, James L. Brooks was the TV impresario who could turn animated shorts from The Tracy Ullman Show into a series. With his experience, creating The Mary Tyler Moore Show and such, he guided The Simpsons into being the longest running animated series in history.
One and a half decades later, when the team was finally ready to make a movie, Brooks was the only one who had done that before. Over a four year development and production process, Brooks produced The Simpsons Movie while the weekly series continued on the air.
In The Simpsons Movie, Homer causes so much pollution that the EPA places a dome over Springfield to contain the toxic waste. Lisa finds a new boyfriend, Bart wonders what it would be like to have a dad like Flanders and Marge must find a way to tolerate her husband’s most outrageous blunder. They even have the Simpsons go to a movie theater to see the latest big screen adaptation of their favorite cartoon, Itchy and Scratchy.
Hollywood.com: Did it feel like starting all over again, being the only one who had done movies and teaching the team how to do it?
James L. Brooks: I think the one thing we all had in common for the movie was I had never done anything like it before and nobody else had done anything like it. I had done movies but this movie is like none I’d ever worked on. The way it was done and the way we found our process, it was just a whole different deal.
HW: Why, because it was animated?
JLB: Because it’s animated, because we’ve been on television for a while, because we care so much about The Simpsons. I think we spent two years just getting over the hump of caring so much we weren’t loose enough. I think that happened to us because we’re all like this about how we feel about The Simpsons.
HW: Was it important to satirize the very format of movies?
JLB: We always knew we’d open with an Itchy and Scratchy [skit], and then the idea of introducing the family watching that was good. As I say, when you poke fun at everything, you gotta poke fun at yourselves first.
HW: But at the same time, if you do that too much it could take us out of the movie.
JLB: There were so many things that were in the movie and discarded. It was such a process. The things we threw away are longer than another movie. It was continually editing and continually finding what our storyline should be and working every joke forever.
[IMG:R]HW: What was some good stuff that just didn’t fit?
JLB: Lots. So many I couldn’t begin to list them, and including some things that we love. There’s one thing, one in specific, Hank Azaria played a truck driver when we had Homer hitching a ride for part of his way back from Alaska. Homer says, “Thanks for the lift,” he gets out and then we reveal that it’s a sausage truck. Homer leaves and then Hank, largely improvised, starts to go back to check on his cargo of sausages. He says, “Checking on my sausage truck. I love to check on my sausage truck.” And sings a diddy that we were all singing forever because we loved it so much, opens the door, sees that Homer has eaten them all and shrieks in horror. That’s something that we cut from the movie but that we loved.
HW: How important was it for the film to be emotional too?
JLB: It was enormously important to us because I didn’t think, and don’t think you can just entertain being a terrific animated movie unless you’re touching at some point or another.
HW: Could you bring that back to the show?
JLB: Yes, the only thing that’s tough, it’s harder to pitch in a room. It’s easier to pitch jokes. So it’s harder to stand up in a room full of your colleagues and pitch that but I think we’re a little emboldened now.
HW: There’s nothing R-rated, but is something like Otto smoking a bong forbidden on TV?
JLB: Absolutely. We’re doing things in the movie that we did in the early seasons but that in the current repressive environment, we can’t do.
HW: What has it been like for you to see television evolve over the decades and now kind of get more conservative?
JLB: All that FCC stuff, we did a show about it that I think was very important for us to do. It’s not a good creative environment. But in terms of television, I think this is a Golden Age in television. I think there are as many great, because of cable primarily but not solely, more great shows, more great memorable historically good shows on at one time than I can remember in a long time. Television is always great because television gives itself to writers. Television is the one where if you’re a writer, you get to get it the way you want it. Movies it’s a director, but in television it’s still the great writers’ environment.
HW: The Simpsons kind of began as the Bart show. It soon became very Homer-centric. When did that shift?
JLB: I think it’s always shifting a little bit. I think emphasis on characters, sometimes we’ll get through a season, we’ll say, “We didn’t have enough of the women” and we’ll get busy on that. But Homer and Bart certainly, I think all of them now, one of the stunning things to me was seeing the movie and you’re seeing it so many times, so many times. One day I just looked up, always exhausted because we were just working like crazy. I see Homer trudging across the snow and it’s Dan Castellaneta improvising it and I saw what an iconic comic figure he was. I mean, I saw it because suddenly he was walking across this big screen. I think that was the most emotional sort of coming of age Simpson feeling I’ve had doing the movie.
HW: What’s going on in Season 19?
JLB: We have 20 scripts in hand so we feel very good about it. You should get to Al [Jean] because he’ll give you the whole rundown. I’ve been living with the movie for the last four years. I usually come up with a couple of stories per year and stuff like that.
HW: Has this process been more production than any live action movie you’ve done?
JLB: You know what happens, I’ve always been involved with movies that have this in common. I think movies that have any ambition have this in common: you feel like you’re going to die if it doesn’t work. I think this movie had six of us feeling that way. So it intensifies a little bit.
[IMG:L]HW: People always wonder about the eventual end of the show. Isn’t there an endless potential topics and new young writers who can keep it going?
JLB: I think the job of a new writer is to match our energy. I don’t think we need energy. I think we have energy and I think this movie has energized us. We all feel refreshed and it’s been great for our little subculture this movie. Just the process of making it has been great for us.
HW: When you ultimately get to an end, can you even imagine thinking of a finale that could wrap up what will be more than 20 years?
JLB: If you live in anticipation of that you’re not doing your work. We’re doing our work. We have a job we go do every day.
HW: You hit 400 last year, so you have to do 500.
JLB: What is that, four more seasons? I really feel that one of the great things about doing the movie is that’s no longer the center of the conversation, how long are you going to go on and stuff like that. We surprised ourselves with this. We did something that we were sort of questioning for a long time and it’s been good for us.
