The Simpsons Movie
Al Jean has been showrunner on The Simpsons for most of the show’s 18 year (so far) run. He took the task of supervising The Simpsons movie seriously, with an eye towards playing with the series’ traditions. For example, instead of Reineir Wolfcastle, The Simpsons Movie just draws Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, as president of the United States.
Al Jean Talks The Simpsons Movie
“We had a president character in the movie, and in a lot of movies you will see there’s [either] President Johnson or there’s some phoney,” Jean explained. “Jim [Brooks] suggested that we use Schwarzenegger and so over the course of the movie we were just praying that he would get re-elected.”
The movie is rated PG-13, so it’s not a South Park style outrageous romp. However, there are still some things that go beyond network television, at least in this day and age. “In television what happens is in the light of the Janet Jackson thing, all networks got constricted by the FCC, so the movie takes a little more liberties. We wanted to do a story that was more of a movie story and had a more emotional nature. So it wasn’t like South Park where we were going, ‘OK, we’re going to now show things we couldn’t show on TV’. We wanted to make a movie.”
Though packed with laughs, the film’s story threatens to tear the Simpson family apart, so there is a lot at stake. “Jim always said, ‘It's going to be funny but there has to be that point 20-30 minutes in where the audience realizes they're captivated by the story.’ There's a conscious effort in the writing to go from fast to slow, shift pace at different points and have emotional moments that you can only get when you're really involved in the story.”
However, you still have to look really hard to find all the jokes buried in the scenes. “There are really nice cool touches where you see the painting in the Alaska house is signed by Marge. By the way, it's a relief to be able to talk about the plot of the movie.”
They actually test screened The Simpsons Movie for audiences in Portland and Phoenix. Somehow, every single preview screener kept the plot a secret, but they helped the writers fine tune the story. “Between Portland and Phoenix for example, the scene at the end with the villain and Homer and Bart, that came in. The boyfriend that Lisa has changed. His final form came out of people at the screening. Part of it was over the writing, the character kept changing. His name was Dexter, the Adrian, then Colin. We couldn't settle on one but Jim thinks that an Irish romance would be suitably tragic for Lisa.”
The film has already contributed to pop culture by presenting Homer’s “Spider Pig” song. In the final film, there are 12 people credited with writing those few lines. “It was after the screening in Portland and David Mirkin saw Marge was looking up at the pig tracks ceiling and said, ‘Where did they come from?’ and I said ‘Well Homer should be holding the pig and saying ‘It’s the amazing Spiderpig’. And then David Silverman and David Morgan started singing that song and we’re generous with writing credits.”
The Simpsons Movie opens to theatres on July 27th.
For the trailers, posters, synopsis and more movie info, go to The
Simpsons Movie Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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