Four Finger discounted, Hey, everybody, welcome to the show, Dan do here.
I'm very excited. You should be excited as well, because I was lucky to sit down with legendary Simpsons show runner mister Matt Salmon. Now, obviously, Matt, He's been on the show a few times in the past, but I feel like this is the most in depth conversation we've had to date. We covered a whole range of topics, including their recent appearance at San Diego Comic Co, some
news on season thirty six. We also covered the chances of a potential Bluey Simpsons crossover, which is pretty interesting. Also some potential storyline ideas for a Simpsons movie sequel. I know people have been asking you about a sequel for years, but it was just really interesting to hear
what Matt feels a Simpsons movie sequel should look like. Also, most importantly, the pretty much the whole reason for this conversation was that Matt and I we did a real deep dive on that ninety show, which we recently reviewed here at the Fourthing of discaut Network, arguably the most divisive episode that Matt has ever written for the Simpsons. Some really interesting takes there at times even points out
it sounds like he's defending it. He's just giving his thoughts on why he feels the hate that episode has generated and still received to this day is probably unjustified. So you're going to really find that interesting. Now, don't forget your support is what keeps the lights on here at the Fourth Finger Discount Network. I quit my office job two years ago to take a chance on this thing, and because of your support, we are still around. So
thank you so much. If you want early and add free access to all the podcasts we do here at fourthing a discount as well as access to over one hundred hours of bonus podcasts, you can support us for as little as just one dollar per month on Patreon. You can find the link for that in the description of this podcast. But for now, enough shilling. Let's sit back and enjoy my conversation with the legendary Matt Salmon.
Mister Matt Salmon, you just got back from SDC, Say, how was it in twenty twenty four?
We had a really great panel. We really produced it well. We had you know, Kevin Smith was the moderator. We had like the special guest star of Seth Green from hilarious actor and his producing partner Harve Harvetein, who were like, have this amazing stop motion animation company called Stupid Buddies and they're doing this project. We revealed we announced a comic con that you know, we have this stop motion
parody of the character Venom named Denim. We are talking pants, Tim talking symbiotic pants, and it's a very funny you know Halloween Trios of Horror thirty five idea, and the pants are so funny. And the fact that they're made of actual, real denim, They're not animation or computers, but actual cloth, I think is super cool. So we had, you know, we had Kevin Smith. We had all these
you know, surprise videos we released. We he did this cool thing where, you know, a fan online gave us the idea of recording the scream of the crowd at Holly at the comic con, and we used we're gonna use that in the audio of the also of the Treous of War. So it was just a really you know Kevin Smith, who was so great and such a beautiful man, and he's really a big fan, and it's so funny, and we said so much stuff. It just wasn't like just talk talk talk yeap, yep, yep. It
was like just tons of original produced content. So then I finally got into after years of failing, used my amazing success to get me into the big Marvel Comics Hall h Super presentation, which had always wanted to get into one of those. And this was a doozy. This was a doozy because they did the big Robert Downey Junior Doctor Doom Live reveal.
And like, what was the end of you? In that room?
It was like a million religions exploding at once. It was so intense and kids people were crying and screaming, and amazingly I had no So they announced only one actor is so good that they could play Doctor Doom if people are familiar with this at all, and familiar I was thinking, oh wow, Daniel Dave lewis cool. But of course I could see why they picked Robert Downey Jr. In some kind of clone variant comic book heep reworking of Tony Stark's genius into evil.
Somehow I kind of felt I've kind of felt a bit of bright the Emergency Glass a little bit as well.
I think no, I think it's I think it was like a good move, Like it's better than bringing back iron Man. You know, Oh, iron Man's not dead.
It's creative. I'll give him that. That's all.
Those guys are so smart, and I think I'm sure they're going to figure out a way to make it not feel like emergency glass and make it feel earned. I know they're gonna work hard on that's for sure.
Well, that's cool that you've got to be in the room, though. That's that's a moment. That's a moment that's gonna live on.
I always wanted that. I always would read about it, and I feel like that was good. Now I don't need to do it again. Now I can just read about it five minutes later and like, Okay, that's what it was, Michi.
Yeah, but it's one of those moments, though, where you're going to be People are gonna be talking about that moment for a long long time. And to say that, to be able to say that you were there is pretty cook.
But like this, my friend was next to this little kid who was just like sobbing with joy. It was crazy.
Yeah, well that's what it was like when the Simpsons movie first premiered.
Right, sure, Yeah, yeah, Sally was well, there was maybe maybe relief was the feeling.
Did you know that? The thing is, so I think we got you guys obviously premiered in the States, maybe at a special premiere, but we were one of the first countries to get I'll put up a post on our social media. I've still got my original ticket stubs when I went to see it, and we got on the twenty sixth at ten am on which is the first thing. You guys got it on the twenty seventh in your cinemas, and you guys are behind us, so we essentially got it two days before you. So it's
strange that we got before you guys. But I remember at the premiere when the movie finished, and I kid you not, it got a standing ovation and I've never experienced it before, and I've never experienced it since.
That's pretty great. Yeah, well, our Australian fans are always very, very appreciative and cool. I think I remember that reading about it in Australia first and thinking is this like payback for the Australia episode.
No. The thing is everyone thinks we don't like that episode. We love that episode. It's almost yeah, we obsessed about that episode. But SDCC, so you're talking about Denham. So you brought it Seth Green's Seth Green's company. I was going to ask you whether it was your animal, so you brought in him. So is it just the genes that are stop motion.
With talking pants? Yeah?
How does that work? That must be a lot of effort, right.
Well, that you know, there's that You can see what I put online that kind of the little puppet model they're animating. Yeah, you can insert that into this, I'm sure and ah so yeah, and then they can just composite somehow. I don't know how the technology works, but
they're you know, they've been fantastics. I mean it's where you feel a little more guilty telling stop motion animators to add something or make changes because you can sort of think in your head, oh man, that's so much more work of just sitting there click click, move, click move, like endlessly doing that. We're like drawing animators on computers. You can just break their spirits anytime you want, because
again they'll figure it out. Computers, where the tactile experience of cloth and wood is more real.
Did you guys get them to do their side first and then animated to it is that how it works.
We do our side first, we send them, then we send it to them, and then they're they're still making their part right now. They't they haven't finished. Our part is done.
They haven't finished it yet.
No wait, well Halloween isn't asn't air till early November anyway.
I suppose yes, not the premiere, not Botts birthday. I want to get the boss birthday as well, because the man of guest stars you announced for that one. So what have we got We've got? Is it John Cena, you got, Dane Devita Attorney's Unkie Herb you got John McHale was.
Another one I forgot about that.
Conan O'Brien is a huge get. We're going to talk about Coon O'Brian in a minute, I said. Someone I'm missing though, something not Tom Hanks. Of course, that's a lot of guest stars for one episode. You didn't want to space them out a bit over the course of the season.
I think when I don't want to reveal the premise of the show, but I think when you see it, you'll understand. You'll understand why it is this, why it is so jam packed with big personalities from the history of the show. Yeah, as Tom Hanks was in the Simpsons movie if you will, he was yeah, and uh, but you know it's funny. I will say this, Brendon as you as you know during part of the writer's strike, I was in Australia, New Zealand, as you know all too well, and the idea of this episode came out
of cover. I have a conversation with a with a journalist, either a New Zealand or an Australian journalist who gave me the sort of accidentally gave me the idea for this episode that I don't want to.
Spoil but and you don't want to credit I could.
He will know who it was when it happens, and we will be able to recreate that and I can give him credit.
I'm still waiting for that blue couch gag that I gave you the idea.
For that idea. We're definitely so Bluey did their own version of the Simpsons intro on their own Yeah, and we want we want to do the blue couch gag. Big fancy couch gags are hardcase. Our shows are sold. We only have twenty minutes and forty seconds per episode. So it's like, if you're going to do a if Bluey Creators in Brisbane. If you're listening to this, I believe Brisbane h we ass as the most successful show
on Disney Plus and we're the second most successful. We would love to do a collab as they call it, but we just haven't had the time or energy to find the great placement for it. Maybe, but there's definitely ways to do it. There's definitely ways to do it.
How about Louie Simpson's short for Disney Plus?
That would be cynical. I would like, I don't know, I mean maybe.
Competing to say who can be number one?
I mean it's weird. Though shorts are funny. Their shorts are kind of fun. They their shorts are good because they introduce younger viewers to the show. Yeah, so like I kind of see them as they're like candy cigarettes you give to the kids on the playground and then to get them hooked on the real deal. Look at the nigga that is the actual show. But there's definitely candy. They're not sweet sweet nikkas.
I was talking about this with Marchael Price the other day about how do you guys take mentality of when you write the show now that you're writing for kids today or you're writing for people who have always enjoyed the show. It's a bit of a combination. You have to sort of blow the lines.
Well, it's definitely in our heads that we're so popular with kids, and that being on Disney Plus has become almost like a write of passage for so many I'll say, like eight to twelve year olds to like get super into the show for like a couple of years and then move on to the next craziest thing, right, but let that be part of their satirical animation education. Right. So that's so, you know, we're so proud of that role in young people's lives to do that. It's but
I wouldn't say we're writing for kids. I just feel like we're writing for our for ourselves, you know, like as writers and comedy writers and citizens of the goofy world that like we just want to make ourselves laugh and know that we're telling good stories and have Jim Brooks think the stories are emotional and transformative and you know, gripping, and.
He's still asking where's the emotion? Is the still least thing?
Sure And We're always thinking emotion for Jim for sure, which is what all writers should also be thinking and everything. Unless you're writing something you know, just deliberately nihilistic, which is fine, but if it's sort of in any way a popular thing you're creating, it has to be emotion first, and from emotion comes comedy. From emotion comes everything else.
Well, we touched on earlier Bat's birthday, so all the guest stars Conan O'Brien. Whose idea was it to bring him back? Obviously, like Michael said that, you guys contacted him. What was it like having cod because you went, you went, you went work on the showing kindon was there? Were you originally you went there for the first run?
No, but I met him over these Yeah, the idea to have him in it, I don't remember who.
Thought of that, Okay, But what was it like having him back in there? Though?
He was super funny, he was very on, he was very like complimentary. I think he showed the script to one of his kids for to make sure it was like funny and which I thought was.
Fun Yeah, it seems the treasure he's time on the show.
Well, people know about it, you know, I mean the fans certainly have, like there's a I'm gonna use the word hagiography, look it up, everybody. For Conan's time here, he was He's probably only here for eighteen months or you know, twenty six months or something. Not to I'd
to say he wasn't amazing, and his shows aren't. Maybe the most beloved in the history of the show, or the era when he was here is possibly deservedly the most beloved, but in the geo history of the show, it was almost a blink of the eye, right, Yeah, like where Grandpa me has been there for like Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, all the later weird eras people don't like how many.
Years have been there now, i'd be clus to thirty now, right, twenty five ish?
Oh if you started, yeah, twenty something, because I started in January ninety seven, so now twenty seven.
Yeah, well wait, you get me telling about your thirtieth anniversary soon. You're special, Yeah, wrap it up soon.
The show people just.
I honestly, I think we discussed this when you were Dan here, when we went after dinner. I just can't see The Simpsons ever ending, even if it's not in its current form. It'll it'll evolve into something. It'll never end, never end.
Our dinner, it's with our dinners, right.
Yeah, that was a great time, wasn't it.
Three places we did a click every week. Thank you Phil, all Me Brendan and Phil Rosenthal from Everybody Loves Phil.
Fate, Phil Loves Raymond and somebody Faithfield. Yes, but everybody does love Phil, that's the thing.
Yeah, they certainly walking around with Phil in Australia and New Zealand, people love him Like I'm like, I knew he was popular, but I didn't know people would cry when they saw him on the streets. Yeah, well they were like, oh here comes the accent. Sorry people. Oh Phil. You know, my partner had spinal fusion and we watched your episodes and they got him through the healing from the spinal fusion. My partner. You guys love partners over there,
which is a very old thing. Yeah, it's good. Well, who knows what the deal is just partner your partners.
But this sort of their way of saying, you know, you might not be married, might not.
Be this friend, you know, hanging together just seating or there were partners.
Yeah, I have that one memory of in one restaurant and this chef came out the back and started crying, and I thought, wow, wait, this guy is serious.
Figure because he's so positive and he's about exploring and being open and you know, celebrating and getting to know people and not you know, dividing and being gross and you know, people everyone. He's not a snob either. He's like some food snob. He's like a regular guy who likes hot dogs at snap. You know. He's not like he likes, you know, a really good pastrami sandwich. He's
not a you know, molecular astronomy food east. He doesn't have foody snob energy, you know, even though he loves food and I mean travel is definitely traveling with him with one of the great things. I mean what happened was during the writer's strike, I Phil had a speaking tour in Australia and New Zealand and I was like his one man Elvis entourage, very privileged role. And usually when I travel with my family, I'm the one looking at my phone like, Okay, we can't waste a meal.
We have to eat at the best places. We have to eat the most interesting places and most beloved places of the you know the most essential places, Like what we can't we just go to some random, you know, boring tourist restaurant. We've We're never coming back here. We can't waste it. I'm not fun to travel with so but on this trip, Phil is that guy. He's the one more worried than me about like we have to find the best, most cool places. So I just sit
back and enjoy the ride. It was possibly no offense to my family. Best vacation in my life. Family.
I'm sure they understand.
I'm surely you're great.
Families are good at times, but you know, sometimes sometimes with Phil resent family, Phil resental.
Emotionally heightened dynamic. It in many different ways that as you know, and with Phil Rosenthal was just like where's the best meat part? Like that was the only dynamic.
The thing is, you didn't tell me it was Phil. I didn't clue in because you just sent me a text he said, do you mind if my friend Phil comes as well? But then I was like, yeah, sure, I didn't care. I want to bring whatever friend you want.
I did a surprise on you.
You did and I got there and I walked into the hotel and I see you standing there, I was like, oh shit, it's that Phil's.
I'm so blase with my famous friends.
I honestly, and for about five minutes, I'm just thinking, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
But he's such a great guy. He we just hung out with everybody. You know, done that trip. He's turned them. It's so hot here.
Well you are, Yeah, I'm there.
That's better. But that was that was one of the most fun times in my life.
That well, I remember just being last thing over when on my way home, I misses my wife and I said, he's one of those people where you just you're glad sometimes the good guys win. You know, Phil, lovely guy, rich is anything. He's just successful and you just you're glad that he is.
Yeah, we just you know, so we this we did like a pub crawl, right, or a bar food crawl. We went to three different bars and ordered like five things at each one of these their favorite little snackies. I mean, it was we ate so much. We covered that was this is Melbourne. Yeah, and uh we we covered a lot of food territory in one night.
We did. We did, indeed, Yeah, great time. The first time I ever ate Sea Urchin.
Right. But now you're addicted.
Yes, now, it's great if I could afford it.
Yeah, it's a crippling financial problem for your fad my podcast money on tongues of urchin.
Yeah, delicious. But the bot's birthday. So you get all the guestars there, I'm assuming throughout the season you got plenty of the guestars that we haven't announced yet.
Yeah. Who are they? Well, Susie Esmond from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Yeah, who's plays Susie Green on the show and is always screaming at Larry.
That's she's a she's in a show you need to get Larry on.
Well, you have an idea, you have an idea. They know we have an idea.
Oh okay, then that's all we need, an idea.
Yeah, I won't be surprised if he said no, but we do haven't a good idea. Andy Serkis came back.
Yes, that's right. He's got that trilogy episode.
Yeah, another the Brave Bradbury Trilogy and he plays a couple of parts in that MM And you know now he's directing the new Gollumn movie, which I also hope they know what they're doing with that because I'll definitely watch it, see what they do. It's wife and kids maybe I don't know, get a family that we never knew about and they died.
Or that annoying middle class family.
He was married to, like a nice hobbit lady and two half column kids.
And would it be a good father that do you think? No?
I jored lended in Middleshire divorce.
I want to touch on good ideas. You know what I thought was a good idea, that ninety show. We would read that this week? Right, there we go and here we are so many people I've read I didn't hated it, right and n I watched it this week and we went, what do you do? What are you talking about? This was just so much fun.
Well, it speaks to the emotional connection people have with the with the flashback romance episodes, right that people love the the way we was and you know, the like I Married Marge and all the flashback Marge Homer romance shows from the classic years, with which were so kind of groundbreaking in their time because they did like culturally specific you know, the b Sharps episode right.
Which which I had comparisons with this one. I wanted to bring that up because I watched this going You watch Homer's Barbershop court Tet and you can enjoy the episode, but if you're a Beatles fan, you enjoy it more. This ninety show you can enjoy it, but if you're a Navana fan, you enjoy it more for sure.
And you know, I just I just I just rewatched it before just now to refresh my memory. And it was fun. It was a fun rewatch, and there definitely was a ton of stuff I'd forgotten and ah, but it really was me wanting to write a flashback romance show like I was jealous of, Like you know, the one where he and Marge go to see Empire strikes Back, and you know, he ruins it for everybody, right, and you know, the when as a Simpsons fan, you and they were doing the shows that came out in the
nine and they were doing eighties jokes. You know, that was kind of a revolutionary idea. And it seems like so many people have ripped it off now, right, including
us ripping off ourselves. But you know, that was very you know, a big idea that one of the reasons people really connected to the show is something super original in like the first generation of Simpsons fans, right, and those shows are really also have great emotion and great tenderness and all, but they're also you know, jam packed with retro cultural observations with you know, the irony of what happened later mixed in. And so I was definitely
watching this. I was like, oh, I was jealous of that. I wanted to do one. So I did one. And but you know, the reason people hate this episode so deeply they write it off completely. Which write it off people the residual calculator doesn't know that you've written it off. The money still comes in is because they feel it's it's it's this term retcon, right, a retroactive continuity, you know, overlap, which yeah, and I don't want to found defensive, but
I will. It was Nave our intent to retcon the other flashback romance cultural episodes, of which this is a love letter to. Speaking of romance, this is a love letter to those episodes, and like, we were actually very cautious not to duplicate or contradict anything that happened in the flashback episodes that took place in the late seventies
and early eighties and what have you. That people so emotionally have connected to like perhaps the only contradiction, having just watched it, that I can think of that's like hard contradiction is the like the way into the mini golf in pregnancy, right, thought.
I was gonna ask you about that. Was that your sort of was it in homage to the divisionals or is that your way of trying to make it seem like it's still part of the same universe.
I guess we were trying to dovetail it. If I were to do it again, I would have maybe made it match more exactly so that like in a way, the both timelines could have led to the exact same mini golf castle clothing dialogue like that. I you know, I don't know how close it is to what the first mini golf scene, whether there's a joke Marge, maybe this is the champage talking, right, is that?
Yeah?
So it's definitely that's okay, guilty as charge. That's that's the Reccon element. But in no way were we trying to say this is the new thing. Is this is not Marvel, who also have clearly thrown their hands up with continuity with Deadpool and Wolverine, where the thing is just like e fit, this is all insane. Multiverses are insane,
they never make sense. Just let's have fun with it, right, Marvel is saying that let alone the Simpsons, for whom deliberate contradiction and absurdity and silliness is in the DNA of the show is evidenced by like the most beloved joke from the well deserved Glory Years of like Homer saying it's a cartoon. Cartoons don't have to make sense.
In another Homer walks by out the window, right, like that's why you love the show fans, that kind of joke of like messing around and being silly with continuity and not taking yourself too seriously. So there is there is, as Lisa noticed, God, I'm really going off here, aren't I good? As Lisa notices in that that nineties show episode, there is a time window that was never addressed in the DNA of the canon of the show, which is Homer and marg are in their late thirties, Bart is ten,
yet they met in high school. There's like a huge amount of unaccounted for a time there, like a giant, a massive chunk of time. So this all could have happened, not in the nineties because The Simpsons was on in
the nineties. But again, if you want to do flashback episodes about characters that are have a thirty five year lifespan where they haven't gotten any older, you either have to have the flashbacks take place in a different time, or you have to just have all the flashbacks lock into a decade that was so far in the past.
Of neither version makes sense. There's either going to be contradictions and goofiness, or there's going to be, in my opinion, a sort of unsatisfying repetition of seventies bullshit, which we or just don't do flashback episodes at all.
Which wouldn't mean anything to kids watching the show in two thousand and seven seven slashbacks.
No, I mean to them. I mean even that timeline in the Marvel Universe way of thinking of things, even that timeline doesn't add up anymore, right, I mean, in this one current timeline, Maggie was born in twenty twenty three, yeah, something that, Yeah, was born in twenty thirteen.
Yeah.
So we could do with that two thousand show about more unaccounted.
Please do that.
I'm in that would sort of would that makes sense decade wise, maybe.
We were you surprised by the response of gut originally, Well, I.
Not not surprised, but I was. You know, it makes people feel good sometimes that Blake have a strong reaction because they care about something so like I mean, they wouldn't describe the feeling as good, but to me, it's
a powerful reaction, and that's always better than apathy. I think it's a little bit lazy or kind of first thought to say again it's a retcon when we really tried to say this is a playful, you know, joy ride with the Simpsons continuity that was clearly not trying to change what specifically happened in the classic flashback cultural romance episodes. So by this hundreds you know, people just love to think the first thing that comes into their mind and think, oh, that's I'm going to lock in
on that for the rest of my life. The first thought, lock it in, Just lock in on the first thought. So that's okay. But then, you know, I watched it and I felt just now that we really did earn our love letter credential to those beloved types of flashback cultural episodes. In that tons of jokes about the nineties, tons of music, tons of culture, tons of costumes and haircuts and TV shows and trends. I mean, it's it's
as dense as any of these things. And I thought it with a section of a couple jokes they didn't love anymore, I thought it really held up. And the animation is really good. It's that great kind of late right before we went digital and everything so to look cold and ugly.
Who made that decision back changing the animation? Me?
Ah, it might have been just we were feeling out the technology at the time and then it kind of got away from us.
Yeah. But but but the episode, though, it does it looks great as you were saying.
It's great, and the actor directing is great, and there's that thing at the end of it where like he's like Professor Moose pounds him into the set. I mean, that is silly. That is silly, But there's a little that I don't do stuff that goofy in myself these days, but it you know, it's it's it's silly. It was good.
I we talked about that moment and we sort of said that you had you and Guy and I, yeah, we could be review you and me and I forgot Guy and I and that moment there, like whilst it's goofy, I was saying, the guy has been such a douchebag for the entire episode that you just want to see him get some come up. And and it's an animation, so it's goofball comedy, and I don't think.
It like it didn't really stick out as a sore thumb in an episode that is so many crazy. I mean, I really liked the rock star who hates being a rock star, you know, heroin grunge chic that was I thought that really held up pretty nicely and all those that kind of Kobaine stuff because I was I myself like much like Mike recent Algeen, like iconic Simpsons writers you know who were running the show for these classic flashback cultural romance episodes. They were in high school in
the seventies and college in the early eighties. You know, I was in high school in the eighties and college in the early nineties, so like this was a little bit of my college experience, a little bit my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, which there is a little easter eggs, the bit of famous Klaus Oldenberg statue of a broken large broken button which we snuck into the background of
the campus there. You know, it was a little bit of that kind of being introduced to cultural revisionism, which now seems to be a big hot button cultural fascism issue that people can't sort of accept that we can ever say anything bad about the people who built what we have, which not that they were all bad, but you know, there's just like two sides of it, right. Yeah, But now watching it, I felt like this sort of reinforced at various reactionary hateful thought.
I do feel that that alone, the episode didn't feel dated because of that, because it just still feels like that's what happens today. It's crazy, Yeah.
I mean, it's you know, I guess personally, I feel that there has to be some kind of middle ground between the Founding Fathers or Mountain monsters and the Founding Fathers were heroes, you know what I mean, only heroes, only monsters. Like they were poor, they were you know, products of their time. They could have been a lot worse, and they much in other countries were much much worse.
But you know, to acknowledge their the things they did that caused you know, big problems that we still haven't really dealt with like slavery. You know, you have to acknowledge that too. There's got to be a way. Oh but there isn't. Oh there isn't. Oh there's no way.
Okay, great, Well, where's the eraser.
Burn burn half the textbooks?
I thought you brought up the product of us time there because we review some of these season eighteen nineteen episodes. That's what we're up to now season nineteen obviously, and there's some jokes here where you go, this wouldn't fly now, but you know what, this was two thousand and seven and it flew then. It's just a product of its time.
But there was nothing that I was like, super that I thought was super dated.
In this in this episode in season nineteen. There's been some jokes, yeah, yeah, this episode. Nothing in this episode that sort of caught me off guard. I thought it was just more non dated than anything.
I love the Professor guy. He's such an annoying version of that guy. I actually had a little Easter egg for your fans. So remember the trilogy episode Trilogy of Error, one of my favorite episodes eight thank You, and so that was based on the movie Go written by friend of mine who's a screenwriter's guy, John August. So we named Professor Stefan August. I did after John August, although both pretty woke, those guys. But John is bald for
one thing. There doesn't have beautiful hair, and he's not and he's in no way annoying, so that's also different.
Did you have a Telli in that?
I don't remember.
Do you finally do that often where you sort of base things on people in real life and you just never get a man to tell him that's that's based on you, Yeah.
Or like it'll be based on a little funny thing from their life or the name of their cat or something, and then you then you just forgot, you know, you never told them.
Yeah, they never knew. I wanted to ask Madge here, right, there's a moment where they're on the ika beds and she says, I don't want to have sex before marriage. Did you put that in there so that viewers wouldn't assume she was sleeping with the Professor?
Well, when she's with Homer. He thought it was important. Again in terms of the Cannon Beloved canon, is we Marge was a virgin when she slept with Homer. And got himpregnant with Bart. That's I believe that is that is locked in. So like, like even the scene where she was making out with the professor, which I just was watching, I'm like hoping it didn't go much further. I mean, it ends with them having a little smooch sash right, Yeah, yeah, I'm hoping that was just it.
I mean, he granted he had to ask for permission for every step of the way, so that was again, consent is important people, But so I'm hoping it just was a little smooch.
I do feel that Marge came across more poorly than Homer in this episode. I will say that I just think that she gave Homer. The canon story of the Simpsons is that Homer held Marge back, right and all this that. Now, he did have a big angry response to her getting into college, but then he says, you know what, I'm going to get a job at a job that I hate to pay for your education, and then she leaves them for the professor.
Right. Well, you know, but that's that's like a real storey.
Now.
Definitely she is like immature, yeah right, and having a kind of confusing self discovery with doing with her, with her and her own evolution being more important than you know, a real relationship, which is a real thing that happens all the time, right that someone goes leaves their small town and sees the big city and then like, I've changed, you know, and even if the small town people were supporting them along the way, they feel like they're a
different person now. But then it's you know, so, I mean, I like episodes where Marge is flawed, you know, I
think those are. We've done a lot. I can't remember any of them, but we've definitely done a lot where she is flawed, and is because it's because she's such a good person and we know she wants unlike Homer per se, she tries to be a good person and her self image of herself and her image in the town is that of someone who's really nice and doesn't make enemies and isn't rude or have temper tantrums unlike
her terror. And also she's married to someone that is such a destructive vortex of problem problematic behavior that like, on some level she sort of enjoys being the superior one, right, but Marge, you know, screwing up and being selfish or being greedy or that those kinds of stories and having her realize that it is usually a pretty satisfying journey.
But with this episode here, what was the vibe you were going for with it? Because I was getting, for some reason in the nineteen ninety seven kit coming into my head, nineteen ninety seventeen comedy love story kind of vibe. That's what I was getting from it. What were you going for?
Well, I just sort of wanted to do my own nineties version of one of those classic shows, and you know there were there isn't and then I just wanted to use all the cultural tropes of that era to tell the story and just to jam in as many
things as I could. There wasn't. Like I mean, there was this movie that came out in the nineties that was called PCU that I I don't think I ever saw, but was sort of about you know, liberal colleges in America in the early nineties, and so that was not really direct inspiration, but it was sort of a thing.
And I was getting give me the film Loser from two thousand, I was getting that kind of vibe as well, because it was the it's main that she's sort of having a relationship with the professor. So I sort of saying that came out in two thousand, but it's still kind of that era as well.
Also that movie like Okay, there's kicking and Screaming, which I think is early what's his Face? Noah Bombbac movie, which is about people in college and you know, but there's also the thing in Animal House, you know, where the guy's girlfriend is sleeping with the professor, and that's like a classic you know, sort of love story dynamic of the kind of that particular story hasn't aged well from Animal House, unlike every other joke in that movie, which is aged like fine wine. But you know, it
was funny, like as whatever. Gen X. That's the generation I am where we didn't really have so much like a big movie that was like our cultural movie, like say for the sixties, it would be Born to be Wild. What's the one with the stupid the guy on the motorcycle?
Do you mean as Rider?
Easy Rider? There it is Grandpa ex Grampa forgets everything. Ah, you know, Easy Rider And movies like and sort of Bonnie and Clyde, which also was not even was a period piece, but that was at a seminal counterculture film in its way, and many others, I'm sure, but like like there was Reality Bites right with flackers in it, that.
Was that that's very similar.
Yeah, and then there were romantic comedies with like edges of that, but none of those movies were like transformative or you know, unbelievably memorable. I mean people like them, but but does gen X nineties cultural You know, grunge coffee bar Irony Douglas Copeland, who's a novelist who wrote
books about that McJob. You know, kind of latchkey kids who were sort of over educated and undermotivated was the kind of and cynical and sarcastic was the and like not like nihilistic music that was like a well that was I mean to say, those song lyrics just listening to them again, those like grunge hating grunge lyrics are so I'm sorry there, they just make me laugh.
Were you and Nevada fan?
Well, everyone was a Nirvana fan, And certainly Kurt Cobain dying was like a kind of John Lennon dying, Elvis dying. There were you moment for sure for people my age, and but like writing those those lyrics of like just kind of ridiculous rebellion against nothing in boredom are really funny, and I certainly.
Love did you want the songs?
I did write? Yeah, I wrote, The room wrote them, and I wrote, but I definitely wrote a lot of them myself. I love. The worst lyric ever written is what is it like tears from my eyes?
Are you kissed or something?
No? No, no, no, that's it's that's It's like I'm talking about tears, like watery tears, like rain from my eyes, like the worst most least imaginative metaphor the history of songwriting, as like rain from my eyes as tears is so beautifully unimaginative. I just I adore it. So if that means I had to blow up Simpson's continuity forever and erase the past like we wanted to do with this catful retcon, it was worth it for that awful, deliberately awful lyric.
We watched this right, and I thought, we've been we're watching them in order, right, so we're watching season nineteen all through order. We've had episodes where things don't feel that they can I thought, in the first two minutes of this episode, it was pretty well established that this isn't going to be canon, this is just gonna be a bit of fun for twenty two minutes. That was my thoughts for it. Well, I don't I don't understand why people got so up and about about it.
It's just we were just having fun with the paradox. It was fun with the paradox.
I thought it was cool seeing the Simpsons in an era where they were the pop culture icon of the time, but watching these characters live through that era but they'll actually be the pop culture icon of the time. That makes it.
Even mentioned in the show that a struggling Matt Greening created Futurama. So yes, I guess in that multiverse Strand there was no Simpsons, but there was a Mac and he only created Futurama. And then Brendan in another episode we did later called do Pizza Bat's Dream of Electric Guitars from season something like in the last four or five years.
Is that the one Michael Price wrote about the Yes, yep, we talked about it the other day.
That took place to flashback sort of act one of that place in the in the nineties. But then Homer in that one, Homer is like a young teenager in the third of the same era as that nineties show, and so but yet so he's working at the pizza place with the animals, the Chuck E Cheese type place, and one of the kids in the audience is wearing a classic nineties Bart Simpson T shirt. Yeah, we just again, that's that's part of the DNA of the show is
deliberate contradiction, deliberate paradox. Don't take this too seriously.
Do you think companies changed now to the point where that ninety show came out in season thirty six wouldn't like a clown? But do you think people would be as bothered with it?
I don't. I don't think so, because now so many crazy things have happened, and yeah, I mean so many. Rick and Morty had been a post Rick and Morty world where like every explosion of genre and and nihilistic shredification of pop culture has happened to such a relentless degree in all these kind of really smart, weird cable cartoons, it wouldn't seem as sort of weird to people now.
I feel that that two thousand show is something we should definitely consider. Are going to go well, But.
Should we see to be with single margin, single Homer.
That be a reality show, right, yeah, it.
Could be a whole thing. An episode. Well we did another, yeah, but another one I wrote maybe the last. The last one I actually wrote was the one was another. It was sort of took place in that same era. Haters and lovers of that nineties show, which is the show The Clowns Days in the picture where young Marge and young Homer are PA's on a nineties blockbuster in Mexico directed by Krusty. This one, Oh my god, Oh this is this is a great I mean, so there, it's
the same thing. It's young Homer and Marge in their relationship, but they're working as PA's on a nineties tight in the green the era of nineties high concept movies on a kind of crazy space movie directed by Krusty in Mexico. And I really love that episode supremely much as well. And it has many jokes about the nineties and the era of the kind of the big log line high concept movie like nuns who are ninjas? Nin nanjas? You know when they don't make movies like that anymore, right.
Right, all come up, But movies are all serious as well, well, the Batman movies are serious. I does want fun again.
Well, it's weird because like Wolverine and Deadpool is like unbelievably fun and as many jokes as as like Airplane. I mean not the same types of jokes, but it is every scene with exception of like the big feeling scenes are as jammed with comedy and craziness and visuals and explosions and slapstick and him saying crazy weird things as any comedy you would ever see. Right, Yeah, but yeah,
it's people don't make just comedies. That has to be another genre or Barbie, which also is as dense with jokes as a Simpsons episode and as many Simpson style jokes in it, which all people loved and they laughed through the whole thing, And yet people are afraid to make just comedies. You know, it has to be another thing that's also with Simpson's level comedy density inside it.
Well, we ate a Simpson's sequel, then hurry.
Yup working on it.
So so if they came to you tomorrow, I said, guys, we want a saquel. Do you think you've got the idea that ready to go? Not not fully flashed out, but we've got a pretty good sense of what we want first sequel. If it was required, I.
Think we could do it. I just would want it to be I wouldn't want it to be a story that was trying to outmovie the last movie. I would rather just have to be a great family story that was rich enough to sustain for seventy six minutes or eighty two minutes or however long animated movies are.
It's probably gonna be plus exclusive, right if they do it, what do you think they have to go to the cinema?
I don't know. I mean, animated movies are very popular. They're having a huge resurgence, right, Yeah, with movies that people have nostalgia for, like Inside Out, Like okay, a lot of maybe there's nostalgia there, I know, just a big it's a high level conversation. But I would just say to me, it's like, let's not do the Simpsons multiverse movie. Let's just do a great family story about the characters that is worthy of holding your filmmake attention for seventy two minutes.
I feel like the taste of trailer would just have to be nothing. Then all of a sudden, the monoail goes by and it's like Monterreel, You'll sell a million tickets.
Maybe not, because in the one experience from the first movie was there aren't so many super fans that would actually make the movie a hit. You know, it has to.
You don't think.
It's it's there are There are a lot of people who are familiar with the sh show, but the number of like crazy super fans, I'm not sure. I think it has to be something that you would almost write it as if they haven't watched The Simpsons. They don't watch the Simpsons religiously, and this is something we have to really engage them with as if this was not we can't coast or even on the success of the franchise.
And there's a lot of jokes in the first movie about trying to coast on it, and a lot of those didn't even score that well, you know. And so like when Homer says, haha, you know you're watching a movie, he's watching the Chains Stack. Yeah says ha ha, You're paying to watch something you get for free at home, Like that'ss met our joke, right, YEA, yeah, I wouldn't want to do that anymore. I would just want to like, is this story funny, emotional gripping, you know, edge of
your seat, hug your kids kind of a story. And guess it should be silly and have Simpsons dock comedy, but it doesn't have to like reinvent meta relationship with audiences and because so much of that has happened already.
Yeah, but that was the novelty of the first one. It was it was the first movie, so that that worked for that one.
Like, I would just want this to be a classical movie storytelling with great characters and great comedy and great visuals and maybe some more songs. Maybe more songs, who knows.
That's one thing I thought that the first one missed was the song and Dances.
Yeah, that's what's a big song that was cut from the first movie. Shit, it was in the beginning of the movie. It was called Springfield Saturday Night, Everybody go Berserk, and it was kind of about everyone in Springfield partying and trashing the town on.
The blue rays. All the David A's is that I don't know, Okay.
Maybe this is breaking news, but you know, it really slowed it down. It was a great song, It just kind of slowed it down. You wanted to get to the You don't want your act one to be you want the movie to be two thirds act one because they're still going to Alaska. There's a dome, there's mutants, there's a lot of stuff happening in there.
Well, it's been fun chatting to you, miss the mesself. I was sitting there. There's really appreciate and you getting that you gravances about that Naughety show and it all makes sense to me.
It's like, I know I sound defensive and annoyed, but like, it's just I don't totally understand why people want to think it's a retcon when it's not. I mean, I'm just watching that show. I'm just like, some of my favorite jokes we ever did are in that show. Which are which?
Which ones?
Which are that? The The acronym acronym for rising nilis grunge Ennery, so grunge is in its own acronym and speaking of paradoxes, right, So that to me, it's like I don't think i'd ever seen I think we're the first person knew that joke of acronym with word of acronym in acronym, right. And then I love the Marvin Cobaine Back of the Future reference.
That was fun.
I love that we brought weird out classic weird al after having modern weird al in an earlier show. We brought classic nineties classes Hawaiian shirt weird al back. You know, I think it even better parody of a parody of an original song caled brain Freeze, which I think is a very weird al type of comedy idea that he he would think is funny. We got Kurt Loader, right, actual Kurt Loader.
I mean, who is reporting from the nineties.
Nineties is Kurt Loader? You know? Seinfeld and like that was cool.
Guy was just like, I don't know, because I know he thought it was on the nose with me. I really loved just hearing that Seinfeld theme in the Simpsons universe.
The music clearance for this episode must have been crazy.
Oh the song choices you chose closing closing time unbelievable.
So I guess we had to pay the Rolling Stones for that. I mean the lawsuit that they stole that song.
Yeah, yeah, we talked about that in the review. It's like, poor, poor it. What's them? Brandon the singer right? Richard Richard Ashtroft Dashtroft. Yes, yeah, but the thing is, though, it's just the song choices you chose for the episode were fantastic. Whenever you hear whenever you hear closing Time, you immediately had taken back to the nineties.
And the parodies also are yea terrifyingly those to the originals. I don't know that happened, but they're on TV. And uh, then the like you know, at the end, we took a shot at George W. Bush. Oh, they'll never be a worse president than Clinton, and then there was one a thousand times worse than George W. Bush. Here's one of your Simpsons predictions for you.
Oh god, let's loo get into predictions. I saw that you were a bit shitty about people saying, hey, they predicted that the symphony, orchestra and cyperceed. It's like, it's not a prediction that they just copy.
If they love it and they replicate it, that's like a that's like an homage. I believe work for it. Oh my, I noticed that, Like that joke about the annoying professor won't put a book on his shelf unless he's read it, I also won't do that. Really, I'm a pedantic, unbearable snob.
So you leave it there until it's been read and then they can go away.
No, no, no opposite. I don't put it on the shelf until I've read it, and then it goes on the shelf. You see it on the shelf. It's been read, and I find it morally wrong to display a book that has not been read.
What's your thoughts on me owning movies, Blu rays whatever on the shelf that I haven't watched yet? Is that the same thing?
Well, I know I don't care about Blu Ray, Blue Ray display.
Is that it's on the shelf. I'm check out my Blu Ray collection also for.
When, like whatever. Hopefully this won't happen, But if the world Internet ever went down and you only had electricity, it'd be great to have a few Blu Rays around, right, Yeah, everyone's so dependent on precious streaming, you know. You can see the grid taking some hits, and then you have electricity, an old Blu Ray player and a book of three books of DVDs and Blu Rays. Why would I throw those away? They take up this much space. They're just like a little backup plan.
Do you think you would ever write a book about your tom on the show.
I don't know. I've forgotten everything, no one wants, no one cares, nothing happened, and I don't know reckon. I don't reckon when the show ends. I just want to move on and some people, because.
You'll never move on from the Simpsons, right, I mean until people, Well, I'll.
If I can make money from it, I'll do that definitely. Some former Simpsons, people who've done excellent work Race is one do seem to live in the nostalgia zone as a big part of their actual lives, which if that makes them happy, that's awesome. But I don't super want to do that because I know, Brandon, if we're you know the work I've done, I'm so proud of it. I'm the luckiest man in the world. I'm so proud
of these shows. But like they will never be as beloved as the kind of first eight years, which is which is totally cool. I love the first eight years, but I don't think me coasting on my quirky shows from seasons twenty five to thirty to forty is going to be so it doesn't feel like as meaningful a journey. I'd rather just go back to Sydney with my wife and take her to the restaurants and she'd be like, oh, that's gross.
Why did you I remember when we were in that restaurant, and it's like, oh my god, it's Phil Resenthal And then feels like in my friend Mats Suon, do you watch the Simpsons and the guy guys not anymore? I love that I died a little bit inside as well.
I mean, the show is who are we kidding? The show it's HD. It's different. It's different, Like we still write the characters honestly who they are. But you know, comedy has changed, writing has changed, the animation has changed. So many other animated shows have come out as reactions to the Simpsons the classic years, like, you know, arguably the modern Simpsons is another. She's almost like a new
Oh Jesus get me in trouble. It's like a new show that's like a reaction to the original as well, you know, or like three new shows based on people's styles of writing, you know, And that's that's okay because the characters are so strong. Jim Brooks is emotional, DNA is so strong, MATC. Greenings drawings and comedic, subversive sensibility is so strong, like we can absorb that, you know.
And but like you'd have to be pretty dishonest with yourself to say that modern Simpsons is connecting to people my age the way the original did because they were young men and they're old now.
As viewing habits, viewing habits of change as well.
Yeah, I mean we're getting a lot of good you know, the Simpsons are back. The Simpsons are good again.
Oh, the last three years have been fantastic compared to what They're definitely on the upswing for sure, And.
I think you know, every season is terrific, and it's just sort of different. You just try different things, and there's no bad season, right, They're all fun. And you watch any episode and there's like twelve great jokes that you love at the very least, you know.
I As I said, we're watching them more in order, right, And I find that when you watch all these older episodes in order season eighteen nineteen, it feels like there was a running gag in the writer's room that you guys just couldn't get enough of, and you're snuck it into every episode. Can I ask what was the deal with Sacho Meal getting a line in every episode in season eighteen, the guy was saying barely seen throughout the
first like twelve fifteen years. In season eighteen, he just had a line to speak like this in every episode.
I don't think it was a plan, but I do think you're like, if you're going to table reads and you notice a character scoring and has a funny character as big energy and also can say plot and tell the audience what's happening, that's probably like, oh, that's useful, you know. And you know, I mean characters come in and out of favor with the writers through no plan, right, Like we really like Shawna. Now Shawna's relatively new character, you know, kind of like the sort.
Of well she's been it forever, but she's now getting more airtimes, right.
And the fact that she's chalmers his daughter is there's good from that, you know that when the same way like when people discovered Ralph was Wigham's son, right now, we've got a lot of mile which fro Matt over the years, and now Shauna being Chalmers's daughter has actually turned out to be a pretty clever, useful thing in terms of this very square single guy having up you know, the ultimate teenage daughter who he has no control over, like he can get.
What you're living through now?
Is that? Is that?
Is that like your life?
My my kids are not Shawna's, that's for sure.
Thank god.
Everything is never easy, but they're not Shawna's.
Yes, well, Matt, thank you so much again to talk to you.
First show is always leave the audience wanting more. I've already already failed at that, so, uh, this is great. I love talking to you. I'm always around whatever ended out this yap and he stuff and uh, but definitely watch the premiere. Well, I don't know when it's gonna air.
Well, we get a few days after you, guys.
September the premiere, which is definitely a big, big swing. And then we have that great Halloween with Denham coming up, and then sort of a parody of like au of how American, you know, partisan, super divided politics have become Kai Jews world destroying kai Jews. And then we we did like a kind of a hammer horror movie, which is like an old f sixties, you know, crazy scary, bloody, pastrionic horror movie where we tried to get like kind of jump scared how to do a lot of jump scares.
Not as easy to do a jump scare and animation as it is in live action.
We just I can't imagine that. Yeah, yeah, is it gonna be a lot more non canon eposides? I felt it was it last season was sason before there was like seven or eight that felt like just non canon episodes, and they're the ones I tend to enjoy the most. Sure, I feel like that's your influence, your fingerprints coming into the show, which is great because let's.
Just there's nothing we there's nothing we shouldn't try. Yeah, so definitely. Also, the premiere has i'll say, format wreaking energy.
Get your pitch Fox ready, buddy? All right? Thanks aging Matte Chuck you said, mister Matt Salma everybody, what an absolute legend. It's just so nice that the guy who runs the Simpsons is so open and willing to just chat with fans like myself. I hope he knows how much we all appreciate it. Now, the next guest I'm going to have you on the show is the writer
of the season thirty six premiere, Jessica Conrad. She recently joined the writing staff the last couple of years, and I'm gonna be having a conversation with her, so if you got any questions for her or myself, be sure to send them through to mailbag at four finger discount dot com dot au Also, please continue to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you do find
this show. All the support is really appreciated, and of course if you can, you can also support us on Patreon for a little as one dollar per month and get access to hours of bonus podcast But for now, thank you again for listening to my conversation with mister Matt Salmon. Thank you Matt for Johnny on the show, and I'll catch you all in the next episode here of four finger discout Auch