The Simpsons were definitely the weird black sheep of the D23 Expo. Where the rest of Disney’s animation is mostly gentle, family-friendly and whimsical, the FOX acquisition gave Disney ownership of the crass, impolite and ill-mannered (but well-meaning) Simpsons family. But all those things that make the Simpsons so popular were all on full display at the D23 Arena. Where we would traditionally expect some classic Disney sugar-coating, Matt Groening and the gang came out in full force with their standard brashness.
It all started with the first thing guests received upon entering: Bart on a stick wearing Mickey Mouse ears and sticking his tongue out. That’s probably the clearest message about how the Simpsons are going to act going forward. We do hope that Disney leaves this show to its own devices. It is the longest-running show on television for a reason . . . and that reason isn’t Disney.
The panel was hosted by Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson. The guests were director Mike Anderson, screenwriter Al Jean, Nancy Cartwright, who voices Bart, Nelson, Ralph, and many others, creator Matt Groening, and writer Matt Selman. Essentially it was the dream team of the Simpsons. As a nod to their new corporate overlords owners, they began the panel with several clips of some of their favorite Disney spoofs, including Homer Badman (Under The Sea), Simpsoncalifraglisticexpiala(annoyed grunt)cious (Mary Poppins), and Two Dozen and One Greyhounds.
The Simpsons panel was nice in that it was mostly just made up of Yeardley asking the team questions while they gave wisecrack answers. It gave a wonderful insight into the minds of the Simpsons team in a candid way, nothing felt overly scripted and you could feel these people were still passionate about the show even after 30 seasons. Let that sink in for a moment, 30 SEASONS! Wow.
Matt Groening was asked to talk about his father, Homer Groening, and growing up being the son of a cartoonist. Homer never wanted his children to get into cartoons, saying “Animation is hard, don’t do it. If you do it, make other people do the hard work for you.” Groening also said growing up he really wanted his dad to work for Disney. We wonder how Homer would react to things now.
Matt’s two biggest suggestions to the people in the audience were that “it’s always better to have a finished project that isn’t quite what you originally envisioned than to have an unfinished one” and to the younger people in the audience, “take your prized possessions to college with you.” We can only wonder what prized possession of his was given away, that seemed pretty personal.
Asking Al Jean about how the original cut of the first 30-minute episode of the Simpsons went, Al responded that he wasn’t allowed to say how it was described by the team but that it started with an “s” and ended with an “it.” Swear words seemed to be the only thing the Simpsons team were warned to edit themselves on.
Mike Anderson spoke about how he lived down the street from where they created the Simpsons, and began as a background cleanup artist. One day someone came in and asked if he could draw the characters, to which he responded: “I have the pencil.” When Groening asked Yeardley about her connection with Lisa Simpson, Yeardley blatantly said that she is Lisa. Whenever the time comes that she no longer voices Lisa, she feels as though she’ll be losing a best friend. Groening seemingly has adopted using the meme “The Simpsons predicted that” (or maybe referencing the South Park episode “Simpsons Already Did It”). During many points in the panel, he made reference to it, including his response to Yeardley that they’ve predicted Lisa will be president of the US. Yeardley hoped that didn’t mean she was included in that deal.
That prediction led to an interesting conversation about the creative process of writing for the Simpsons. Recently, Nancy Cartwright wrote a Lisa-focused episode of the show and explained how that worked. The writing team was assembled into a room with the rough draft and went line by line reading the script while offering alternatives as they found lines that could be better or different. At one point, a writer suggested a new line for Marge and Nancy busted up laughing, but none of the other writers did. When Nancy suggested a change to another line, she busted up laughing at her own joke, yet no one else in the room laughed. She found it fascinating that the writers can write such hilarious scripts yet are so dry that they never laugh at their own jokes. The team was also very proud that including Nancy’s episode, recently 22 scripts were written by women, with many episodes being directed by women as well (Nancy’s episode included there as well).
There were quite a few references to how Disney influenced the Simpsons team in the past, here are a few I thought were notable, funny, or interesting:
- Growing up, a lot of Matt Groening’s vacation trips were to Disneyland.
- Many times they mentioned the loss of Russi Taylor, the voice of Minnie Mouse as well as Simpsons characters like Martin Prince, Uter Zorker, and Sherri and Terri.
- When Mike Anderson told his family that he was working in animation on The Simpsons, his mom told all her friends “my son’s working for Disney!”
- One of the biggest reasons the Simpsons family is designed the way they are is that Matt Groening read about why Mickey Mouse works so well: he’s recognizable in silhouette. So all the characters have recognizable parts to their silhouettes, particularly with their hairstyles.
- The “couch gag” in the intro to every episode was inspired by the Mickey Mouse Club. At the beginning of each show, Donald would bang a gong and some sort of different reaction would happen. Groening decided he wanted something similar while developing the Simpsons.
- The Donald Duck cartoon “Modern Inventions” inspired one of the major scenes in a Futurama pilot. In the Donald Duck cartoon, he uses a coin on a string to activate the coin-operated admission gate. In the Futurama pilot, Bender does the same thing when he tries to kill himself with the Suicide Booth. As an aside, Matt mentioned that Fox hated Futurama because they expected it to be more like the Jetsons.
Of course, this is D23 Expo and the Simpsons team did have a few things to announce. First off, what we already knew but should be mentioned: all 630+ episodes are going to available on Disney+. They seemed pretty proud of the fact that new and old fans of the show will be able to be together in a way that hasn’t happened before because they can watch any and all episodes of the long-running show.
Next, they’re working on a Thanksgiving episode. Because the real world is so scary, they’ve decided that the Thanksgiving episode should reflect that, so we’ll be receiving a sort of Thanksgiving of Horror that’s almost as scary as spending time with your family. Speaking of scary, the fan-favorite special Treehouse of Horror is returning again this year. Treehouse of Horror XXX is (most certainly purposefully) episode 666 of The Simpsons and they’ve decided to parody Stranger Things this year. The team showed us a clip of different parts of the episode and the crowd was dying of laughter. “Danger Things” and all the references were hysterical.
Groening stated that he loves the Treehouse episodes, they’re the right mix of difficulty and unleashed creativity. They also said that they’re interesting because they have to find new and unique ways to give all the characters overbites. The Demigorgons were certainly difficult, but I think they got it right.
The really juicy information came when they allowed questions from the audience. Surprisingly the panelists gave very candid answers, even to difficult questions like “How is Disney going to the change the Simpsons?” It’s a little off the cuff that the reply was that “we traded one evil corporation for…a nice one.” Groening went on to explain that the template for the Simpsons is that of a traditional family sitcom, but they’ve gone off in so many different directions over the years, even considering that now, with Disney, they could (and would potentially want to) create spinoffs. The crossover episode between The Simpsons and Futurama, Simpsorama, was brought up as something they’d love a chance to do with a Disney property.
They’ve considered doing another Simpsons movie for a while, but haven’t quite found a concept they want to do. They’re proud of the story of the first film but stated that the original concept came from “Homer gets a pig and they figure out how to get rid of its waste” so who knows when that next concept will come.
When asked about Apu, Matt Groening said, without hesitation, that he’s staying in the show. They’re proud of Apu, they love Apu, he’s staying put.
Another great question was if they had planned on doing another theme park attraction and how that would work with the current attraction and agreement with Universal Studios. This was the first time I noticed them hesitate a little bit and say “that’s a little above our paygrade.” Groening added dryly, “let’s have a war.” Another team member quickly chimed in to say “who knows, Disney has a lot of theme parks all over the world.” I interpreted that as they’re talking with people about it, but that it likely won’t happen domestically here in the US if it does happen.
Almost as a way of locking down the tone of the panel, it was ended with the love scene parody from The Simpsons Movie that spoofs many Disney films. Yeah, that one where the Disney-style animals are helping Homer and Marge undress. We’re almost surprised they didn’t pick the scene from earlier in the film where Bart puts a black bra on his head as a cheeky reference to mouse ears and says “I’m the mascot of an evil corporation!”
From the look of things, it seems Disney’s decided it’s best to leave The Simpsons alone and let them be the loud-mouthed, satirical, and raunchy show that has spanned over 30 years. For the sake of the quality of the show, we certainly hope that ends up being the truth.
Be sure to stay tuned to MiceChat for continued coverage, photos, and news throughout D23 Expo weekend! Find all of our D23 Expo coverage here:
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