al jean-related stories
Posted Oct 7th 2009 10:02PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: TV on the Bigscreen, The Simpsons, Reality-Free

If you fondly remember watching the first
Simpsons Movie hoping that the sequel would bring you equal amounts of life affirming excitement, keep hoping.
Matt Groening and Al Jean said an interview with Morgan Spurlock, the
Super Size Me star and director hired for
the show's big anniversary extravaganza, that they have
no plans to start doing another Simpsons movie anytime soon.
They didn't rule out the possibility of another movie, but it certainly won't be in the foreseeable future. The pair said the process for the first movie was so frustrating that they couldn't fathom even starting a second one without some kind of heavy duty anti-psychotic medication.
Posted Sep 25th 2009 11:05AM by Nick Zaino
Filed under: The Simpsons, Interviews, Reality-Free

Al Jean started out with
The Simpsons 20 years ago as a writer working a couple of days a week. He was there when the series started, and even before it was officially a series, working on the Christmas show in 1989, when
The Simpsons first broke away from its beginnings on
The Tracey Ullman Show.
Now he's an executive producer and showrunner, staring down the twentieth anniversary of the official start of the series, which happens in January. I spoke with him this week about this Sunday's season premiere, a bit of
Simpsons history, and just how long the
Simpsons can keep making people laugh.
After 20 years of doing The Simpsons, how do you find something new to do with the show? How do you generate ideas you haven't done before?
Well, it's the best of both worlds. If something happens to you in your life or to the world, you can satirize it but you get to use these characters that people love and that you're very familiar with. To me, there's a lot of topics that are fresh and interesting.
Continue reading Executive producer Al Jean talks about 20 years of The Simpsons
Posted Aug 1st 2009 10:03AM by Nick Zaino
Filed under: Programming, The Simpsons, Animation, Documentary, Reality-Free

When documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock first saw
The Simpsons, he was a 19- or 20-year-old college kid, still living at home with his mother in West Virginia. Having grown up watching
Monty Python,
Fawlty Towers, and
Blackadder, Spurlock was ecstatic to watch
The Tracey Ullman Show, the show that would eventually introduce him to
The Simpsons.
Twenty years later, Spurlock has established himself as a filmmaker with
Super Size Me and
Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden, and will direct a segment for the upcoming adaptation of
Freakonomics. And he'll get to tackle the show he's loved these past two decades as he produces and directs
The Simpsons Anniversary Special - In 3-D! On Ice!, which will air Thursday, January 14, 2010.
Spurlock remembers his first impression of the show, watching back in his college days. "When it first came on, I was in college, and it was literally an obsession. It was something that me and all my friends would literally ... at 8 o'clock, we were sitting there on the couch watching this show, and it was something that we all did together," said Spurlock in a conference call with media last week. "For all my four years of college, that was something that we did."
Continue reading Morgan Spurlock on The Simpsons Anniversary Special -- In 3-D! On Ice!
Posted Oct 29th 2008 4:40PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: The Simpsons, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free

Animation domination will continue with
The Simpsons anchoring the Fox toon programming for at least
three more years. Al Jean,
Simpsons' exective producer, confirmed that since the actors are signed up till 2011, he's pretty much banking on the fact that the award-winning comedy series will stay on the air.
Considering the fact that
The Simpsons continues to be so successful -- last year's movie, for instance, grossed a staggering $526 million worldwide -- and remains hilarious and relevant, Fox would be nuts to let the show go. And one of the best things about this family sitcom is that the characters never age. Bart and Lisa only age in the episodes that fantasize about the future.
The Simpsons, paired with the
Seth MacFarlane shows --
Family Guy and
American Dad -- plus
King of the Hill, gives Fox the most competitive and alternative programming for Sunday nights.
Continue reading Expect three more years of The Simpsons
Posted Jul 26th 2008 3:30PM by Richard Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, The Simpsons, Interviews, Reality-Free, Comic-Con

Day three of Comic-Con 2008 began with waiting in a line that streched the length of the convention center for the Futurama panel, which was followed by The Simpsons panel. Futurama featured the primary voice cast of Billy West, Katey Sagal, and John DiMaggio as well as creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen.
Due to time limitations the panel when right into audience questions. One that was asked pertained to Matt and David's plans for the show. Both meant said that they had the entire story of Futurama planned even before the show began. They didn't know where the show would go, and they still have plenty of secrets to reveal in upcoming DVD releases.
Continue reading Futurama and Simpsons panels - Comic-Con Report
Posted Jul 15th 2008 12:05PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: The Simpsons, Family Guy, Animation, King of the Hill, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free

As usual, FOX leaves the best press conference (at least as far as I was concerned) for last. I sat through Karl Rove and Chris Wallace getting contentious with the critics near the end of the FOX News panel (more on that later), Jerry O'Connell and the cast of
Do Not Disturb strain to answer questions about a show whose clip reel wasn't all that funny, and the millionaires from
Secret Millionaire talk about being poor for a week. All of it was made worth it (and, really, seeing Rove start to get annoyed near the end was fun to watch) so we could see the final panel: all the producers of all FOX's Sunday animated shows.
The first person who spoke up, not surprisingly, was Seth MacFarlane. "Is this where Karl Rove sat? Because I don't want to get AIDS." Wow. Unfortunately, no line that was said after that was as shocking or funny. But it was all still pretty good.
Continue reading FOX Sunday animation panel: The Simpsons is still the king - TCA Report
Posted May 7th 2007 7:20PM by Adam Finley
Filed under: The Simpsons, Celebrities
In a recent conference call, Simpsons writer and producer Al Jean spoke about the upcoming 400th episode, titled "Kent Always Say What You Want" (the title was originally "The Kent State Massacre" but that was changed for obvious reasons).
The episode airs May 20 at 8:30 p.m. and is preceded by the 24 spoof "24 Minutes" featuring guests Kiefer Sutherland and Mary Lynn Rajskub.
Continue reading Al Jean talks about The Simpsons
Posted Jan 31st 2007 6:33PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, FOX, TV Royalty, The Simpsons, Animation, Adult Swim, Interviews, Comedy Central, Futurama, TCA Press Tour

Probably my favorite moment during the TCA press tour week -- and this is a week where I joked around with Greg the Bunny and visited the set of
Scrubs -- was when I met Matt Groening at FOX's party on the last night of the tour. Because just about all the questions I had about
The Simpsons were asked during the
show's press session earlier in the day, I took the opportunity to concentrate on his other show (and a perennial favorite amongst our readers),
Futurama, and
its impending return to TV.
Groening gives the show's loyal fans all the credit in the world for helping the show come back. "The continued devotion of the fans, chiefly on the Internet, kept us thinking that maybe we could bring this back," he said.
Continue reading Matt Groening talks about Futurama's comeback
Posted Jan 21st 2007 12:35PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, FOX, TV Royalty, Industry, The Simpsons, Animation, TCA Press Tour

It's Sunday. The winter press tour is over. I'm currently coming down from being over-fed, over-sugared, and moderately-boozed. I'm also thinking back to the fact that during the last four days, I rarely left my hotel, because the networks were plying their wares for us from morning until night.
I'm going to post my overall thoughts on this TV smorgasboard later this week. But before I hop a plane back to Jersey, I wanted to talk about the session that was a TV nerd's dream, at least to this TV nerd: FOX's panel to celebrate the 400th episode of
The Simpsons, which will air this May. On the panel was none other than creator Matt Groening, executive producer and TV legend James L. Brooks, current show-runner Al Jean, and voice actors Yeardley Smith (Lisa) and Dan Castellaneta (Homer and a bunch of other voices).
Continue reading The Simpsons creators celebrate 400th episode and movie - TCA Report
Posted May 22nd 2006 9:30AM by Adam Finley
Filed under: ABC, FOX, Animation, Short-Lived Shows, Comedy Central
The Critic, while it was on television, aired on ABC, FOX, and Comedy Central, though not at the same time. The show, created by Simpsons vets Mike Reiss and Al Jean, started off on ABC where it wallowed in obscurity, and then moved to FOX for its second season. Actually, it didn't fare much better on FOX, either, and after two seasons the plug was pulled. It did, however, manage to find an audience when Comedy Central began airing reruns. Also, a "third" season of shorts was created for Shockwave.com. Not counting the Shockwave mini-episodes, the series only ran for a total of 23 episodes.
The titular character, voiced by Jon Lovitz, was a critic living in New York City who essentially hated every movie he saw. Of course, every movie he saw was incredibly bad, so you couldn't really blame him. The series premiered in 1994, and as anyone who has tried to get an animated show on primetime in the wake of The Simpsons knows, it can be an uphill battle, even if you happened to work on The Simpsons yourself. In fact, a crossover episode of The Simpsons featuring Jay Sherman (the Critic) was made ("A Star is Burns"). That episode, however, perhaps inadvertently zeroed in on why The Critic didn't last. While it was a great show, it seemed to wither under the shadow of a much bigger and much more popular series. Even I never gave it much of a chance when it first aired, seeing it as a lesser version of what The Simpsons was offering. It wasn't until I watched it on its own merit that I realized it was actually very unique, very well-written, and had carved out its own little universe separate from The Simpsons. The lesson, I suppose, is never jump to conclusions.