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The Simpsons: America's First Family

Special Information Original Airdate: June 23, 2000 Length: 50 mins Channel: BBC 2

The Simpsons: America's First Family is a 50 minute program which features the production of The Simpsons produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 2000. A shorter version is included as a special feature in The Complete First Season boxset. It aired on BBC2 on June 23, 2000 as part of Simpsons Night on the channel.

Plot summary

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After the introduction, the narrator begins with how the show began, then an interview with Matt Groening about "Life in Hell" and how The Simpsons got started. James L. Brooks then explains that the crew behind The Tracey Ullman Show were looking for bumpers to put in between advertisement breaks, so they could make the breaks between acts entertaining. Groening explains about how the "Life in Hell" bumpers could have gone wrong, and decided he should create new characters, The Simpsons. Dan Castellaneta and Julie Kavner were immediately casted as Homer and Marge respectively, because they were both already working on The Tracey Ullman Show, and Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith were hired to voice Bart and Lisa, two of the three kids, respectively. Yeardley Smith explains that she was originally brought in to voice Bart, but her voice was too girly. Nancy Cartwright also explains that she picked up the card for Lisa, but was not that excited about the part, so she picked up the card for Bart, and read the description of him, finding that she wanted to voice him. Smith then says that she auditioned for both Bart and Lisa, and a few days later, she got the part for Lisa. During her audition, Cartwright attempted to channel a 10-year old boy's voice into her head, and then came out with the voice of Bart. Kavner also explains that her voice was tired out, so she just exaggerated the tiredness for Marge's voice. Castellaneta started with a Walter Matthau impression for Homer's voice, but then the voice travelled down into the throat, and the voice sounded more dopier and the emotions of the voice were easier to control. Groening then tells us that the reason for the characters in the shorts being wierdly-drawn is because he drew the little sketches, and thought that the animators would clean them up, but instead they just traced over the drawings. During the shorts, The Simpsons was popular, so FOX, the network the Tracey Ullman Show was broadcast on, took a leap into the void - and gave the offer to transform The Simpsons into a half-hour program.

Al Jean, who has been the show runner for several seasons, explains that FOX commited $10,000,000 to produce 13 episodes, and Groening tells us that FOX was a little hesitant about the series, because primetime animation was something that had not been done for "about a generation". Jean and his partner joined The Simpsons because no-one else wanted the job, because animation was dead on primetime since The Flintstones twenty-years earlier. Al Jean was encouraged to join the show by James L. Brooks, Sam Simon and Matt Groening because the stories planned out were hilarious and the characters were great. By Christmas 1989, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", a Christmas special was broadcast. The Simpsons turned into a hit show, popping up on magazine covers, and hundreds of merchandise being released. Groening praised the amount of bootleg Bart merchandise being released during the show's first season, because he thought it was amazing how people could take a cartoon character and make him their own. FOX then moved The Simpsons to a new time slot, and ended up facing The Cosby Show. The Simpsons eventually won the battle for the top ratings, and ended up in the top ten for the entire second season. By the end of the first season, America had a new star - Bart. However, the kids who watched the show latched onto Bart, while the adult viewers latched onto the parents, Homer and Marge. Groening explains the personalities of Homer, and that he expresses his love for food. Mike Scully explains that Homer could not be without Marge, as she pulls Homer in from bad ideas. Marge is the anchor for the family, as Kavner explains, and is the one that holds everything together. Lisa is the only character on the show which has intelligence, making her a genius and a prodigy.

The Simpsons live in Springfield, with characters of several generations, non-vigilant cops, and jailbirds. Springfield is a town bursting with high culture, neighborhood grocers, fast food and is a town that never sleeps. With thousands of characters, Al Jean explains that Frasier is a great show, but viewers can expect the same characters every week. It is the same with The Simpsons, but there's always new characters being introduced. Hank Azaria, who voices many characters, first voiced Moe, the bartender, and originally tried out for him with a less-than gravelly voice. Castellaneta, the voice of Homer, also voices Krusty the Clown. Azaria also voices Apu, the owner of the Kwik-E-Mart, and is surprised why many people think the voice is funny. Cartwright's favourite character is Ralph Wiggum. Castellaneta also voices Grampa Simpson, Azaria voices Chief Wiggum, Cartwright voices Nelson Muntz, Castellaneta voices Barney Gumble as well, Azaria also voices Lou the cop (who Azaria thinks sounds like Stalone), Castellaneta voices Mayor Quimby, Nancy Cartwright voices Todd Flanders (although she doesn't know if she voices Todd or his brother, Rod), Castellaneta voices Groundskeeper Willie and Azaria enjoys voicing Professor Frink. Scully tells us that guest stars either voice themselves, or a different character, and then goes on to talk about Michael Jackson, who was a big fan of the show, and voiced a character who thought he was Michael Jackson. Tom Jones, who played himself in one episode, liked his drawing of the character. Mel Gibson, another guest star who voiced himself, was at a test screening while he had not been to the bathroom in hours, so he planned to sneak out and leap behind a dumpster, and that was actually put into the episode in which he starred in. Jean explains that guest stars don't have to do what's written, including Joe Frazier, whose character was in a fight with Barney Gumble in the episode he starred in. Originally, Joe Frazier lost the fight in the episode, but that was changed because Frazier said that he won't lose a fight to Barney, so in the end, Barney lost the fight.

The creators of the show work on one basic rule - The Simpsons is never a mere cartoon. Brooks explains that the plan was to take animation to the rules the crew follow in a live-action series. Jean also tells us that it was important to establish to the audience that The Simpsons was a real family, and that the audience could be emotionally moved by the show. The show has what is called "rubber-band reality", where characters don't walk off cliffs and walk in the air, they skateboard off cliffs, and fly over part of the cliff, think they are going to make it to the other side, and then the characters fall. Also, in sound effects, there are no boings or bleeps, there are close-as-possible-to realistic sound effects. Groening says that one of the great things about having an animated show is that you can draw whatever you want, a flashback, a flashforward, a fantasy etc., and you can show the TV shows the Simpsons are watching, i.e. Itchy & Scratchy. Groening says that he gets fan letters, who wish that Itchy & Scratchy would have their own show. A critic says that a lot of the humor in the show is because the writers are aware of what's going on around them, they can pick up from catchphrases and fads, and they have a good knowledge of film history so they can spoof them. Being a long-running series, the show can repeat gags, such as the prank call to Moe's Tavern by Bart. Scully thinks that the first and foremost rule for any writer is they have to have a disrespect for everything American. Scully also thinks that the show is about questioning authority, and showing the other side of things. Groening says that the best thing about The Simpsons is that you can make fun of anyone you want, any religion, any group and people in power. Scully also says that the show was set up so the studio and the network were not involved in the creative process. Normally, they would come to each script reading and approve the story. Without that, the crew is able to do whatever they want on the show.

Groening thinks that if there is an overall message with The Simpsons it is: "Your leaders don't always have your best interests in mind". Groening says one of the great things about having a fad as instense as The Simpsons's is there are "people who take the bait, and get upset, and they criticize the show, and make it more exciting". Jean tells us that George Bush in 1992 said that he wanted American families to be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. Groening says that the show answers all the conservative critics about television: they want families who go to church, The Simpsons go to church, they want families who pray, The Simpsons pray, they want families who have God in their life, The Simpsons have God in their life, and in some episodes God is shown. Groening also says that hell has been shown, and so has the Devil. Scully also says that there's a lot of heart in The Simpsons, and that there's a lot lost in critics of the show who blame The Simpsons as being a dysfunctional family.

The making of The Simpsons is a complicated process, and all begins with writers pouring over every line of script. Jean tells us that most of the writers are pre-meds, or people who weren't setting out to be sitcom writers, and it helps from the beginning as it wasn't people who were trying to do the same old jokes. The writers do up to 8 re-writes before it is considered ready to be performed. Before a single drawing is done, the actors come together to record the voices. Then, the animators can start blocking out the scenes. Steven Dean Moore, an animation director, explains that the script is sent, and the dialogue is recorded onto a voice track, and then a storyboard is made. Moore thinks that the storyboard phase is the most important part of the animation, because you are going to decide how thinks look. A team of designers then draw the characters, props and locations. Joe Wack, a character design supervisor, explains that there are probably upto 15,000 characters designed at this point, 15,000 props and probably 20,000 backgrounds, and it's like the designers have designed a whole world