--Scott Chernoff
If I had to get into a schoolyard fight over what was the funniest TV show of all time, I'd go to the mat for The Simpsons. No show has stayed so consistently brilliant for such a sustained period of time (production is under way on the show's 10th season), nor has any show sent me into so many uncontrollable fits of laughter. I don't know about you, but I've never made it through an episode of The Simpsons without laughing. Hard. Several times.
That's thanks not only to the show's incredible cast of voice actors, but also to its heroic writing staff, who over the years have used the animated citizens of Springfield, USA to analyze and satrize nearly every aspect of American society and culture. Each episode of the Fox powerhouse is crammed with so many jokes and ideas that fans are richly rewarded with new laughs for every repeat viewing, and every story is played out by characters that have become more beloved-and real-to viewers than most of their live-action conterparts. Indeed, Homer's oft-repeated cry of "d'oh" has become as ubiquitous a phrase in the pop culture pantheon as "May the Force be with you."
All of which makes it that much cooler when Homer, declaring his love to wife Marge in the third season, uses Star Wars as his model of goodness declaring her "as pretty as Princess Leia and as smart as Yoda." Coolest of all is that in the same episode, "I Married Marge," we learn in a flashback that young hellion Bart Simpson was conceived the night Homer and Marge saw The Empire Strikes Back. (Leaving the theater, Homer ruins the movie's big surprise for everyone waiting in line when complains, "I can't believe Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father.")
Delivered unto the world by creator Matt Groening and his fellow executive producers John L. Brooks and Sam Simon in December, 1989 (after two years of short Simpson cartoons on The Tracey Ullman Show, which Brooks and Simon also produced), The Simpsons has become almost as popular and iconic as Star Wars itself, and it seems only right that these two powerful pop cultural phenomena have joined Forces on occasion, with The Simpsons slipping in occasional, hilarious Star Wars references and ultimately collaborating with Lucasfilm on a THX Digital Sound System trailer, not to mention this issues awesome cover.
"Most of us working not only on the show, but also on the Simpsons comic grew up with Star Wars," said Bill Morrison, editor/writer/art director at Groening's Bongo Comics and a designer/contributing artist for the must-read HarperPerenial book The Simpsons: A Complete uide to our Favorite Family. Like the series, Bongo's Simpsons comics have also included many Star Wars references.
"Star Wars came out the year I graduated high school, and I didn't have a summer job, so I ended up seeing Star Wars 25 times," Morrison continued. "I wanted to be a sci-fi illustrator at one point.
Jason Grode, Simpsons comics writer/managing editor added, "I was nine when Star Wars came out. I remember vividly seeing the trailer and going home and telling my mother, 'There's this science-fiction movie coming and it's got this guy, and he's like evil or something, and there's this girl, and there's this monkey guy, and they travel around'- I was so excited. I saw it 36 times. I was a science-fiction fan before, but that really put me over the edge."
Matt Selman, a story editor for the Simpsons told the Insider that while the TV show has included references to obscure favorites like Twin Peaks and Schoolhouse Rock, that may have passed right by many oblivious viewers, there is no question about whether viewers will recognize a Star Wars joke. "There is not going to be an argument over 'is anyone going to get this' when you are putting in a Star Wars reference," he said.
But the writer, who says he's the biggest Star Wars fan on teh current writing staff, insisted, "There is no explicit Star Wars agenda on the show. The best episodes are the ones where you have a really good, emotional story for the family, and you pile on the crazy stuff around that. Nothing works if you're trying to cram in something that doesn't belong there."
Said Bongo's Morrison, "It's such a part of our culture that the references come at you, and there's no plan. You're writing a story, and a Star Wars joke pops into your head. Star Wars is full of so many great lines that it's just a treasure trove of gags. There's a lot of stuff to mine."
Selman, who's in his second season writing for the Simpsons, noted, "The guys who probably put in the most Star Wars stuff were Al Jean and Mike Reiss, who ran the show during the third and fourth seasons." In addition to the Empire Strikes Back episode above, highlights from this period include Mayor Quimby mistakenly telling Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy, "May the Force be with you" in the classic episode "Marge vs. the Monorail"; a landspeeder-like vehicle cruising by in "Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie"; and one episode, "Lisa the Beauty Queen" that featured both a caricature artist's rendering of Darth Vader in the background and a montage of Lisa trying on the hairdos of Marge, Grace Jones, Bo Derek-and Princess Leia.
And then there's the first and foremost Star Wars moment in Simpsons history: in the show's fifth episode, "Bart the General," written by John Swartzwelder, Bart closes the show by informing the audience "There are no good wars, with the following exceptions: The American Revolution, World War II, and the Star Wars trilogy."
Simpsons comics Star Wars jokes have ranged from slipping in stormtrooper camoes when least expected to having Mr. Burns paraphrase Grand Moff Tarkin by barking, "Evacuate-in my moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their destructive capabilites." Said Grode, "If you don't know Star Wars, it's still funny on it's own, but if you're a fan, there's that little extra. A lot of comic fans are science-fiction and Star Wars fans, so it's giving just that much extra to the fans."
The joke worked, Morrison said, because the line "fits Tarkin as much as it does Burns." Indeed, Burns is every bit as evil as arche-type Tarkin and Emperor Palpatine, to who he bears more than a passing resemblance, not mention a fondness for the catch phrase, "Excellent." The Simpsons even once its own version of John Williams' "Imperial March" to undrescore Burns' villainy. But Mr. Burns is just one of the many timeless characters who populate Springfield. Like Star Wars, writer Selman said, "We have a rich universe to fall back on."
And most of those characters are probably Star Wars fans, the writers agreed. "I think anything that American kids are into, the kids in Springfield are into," Selman said, adding that clearly many Springfield adults are also fans, naming the blue, elephant-like keyboard player Max Rebo as a likely candidate for being Homer's favorite character.
"I think Lisa would be a fan for certain parts of it because there's a grand mythology to Star Wars," Grode said. "There's a certain kind of intelligence behind it, and that's the kind of thing Lisa would like." Morrison agreed, adding, "She would be really into Yoda." On the other hand, Grode added, "The funny Wookie costume is something Ralph Wiggum would be into."
Asking which Springfield characters, if any, would not like Star Wars, Morrison thought for a moment and said, "Sideshow Bob would definitely not be into it." But Grode disagreed arguing, "One of the greatest things about Star Wars is you can find a line for anyone to find value in it. Sideshow Bob would like how Star Wars is empowering a young person to see things and make himself somebody, which Sideshow Bob wants children to do."
Convinced, Morrison finally hit upon a character who definitely would not like Star Wars-"Seymour Skinner's mother!" Skinner himself, who once awarded Ralph first prize for his science fair diorama of Star Wars action figures, "would be interested in the battles," Morrison said.
The bitter Springfield shopkeeper known simply as "The Comic Book Guy," Morrison added would "resent other fans and would be critical of Star Wars just to have an opposing view. He probably wouldn't like the Special Edition."
The most recent Simpsons/Star Wars moment came on "The Last Temptation of Krust," when Krusty the Clown grabbed a cup of joe at a coffee shop called "Java the Hutt." The quick joke came about simply because, said Selman, "we needed a funny name for a coffee shop."
But Selman revealed that there may be a much grander Star Wars tie-in coming next season. "I was talking to one of the writers who's working on a script right now where the first act takes place in a sci-fi convention," Selman told the Insider. "This could change, because everything gets rewritten, but in one scene Mark Hamill is there and he says something like, "I only have time to sign one autograph," and the crowd roits. Mark Hamill loves the show and does a lot of voice-over stuff, so that'll be a good opportunity for us to try to do Star Wars jokes."
If the episode is produced as planned, it could be the most prominent Simpsons/Lucasfilm tie-in since 1994 when a Simpsons parody of the classic THX "The Audience is Listening" trailer was adapted to become a real THX trailer shown in theaters.
It all started with the episode entitled "Burns' Heir," which was originally shown on April 14, 1994. In an early scene, a Springfield movie house showing "Siskel and Ebert: The Movie" runs a THX trailer in which the volume gets so loud that Hans Moleman's glasses shatter, a man's teeth break, and another man's head explodes. When it's over, everyone cheers anyway, except for Grampa Simpson, who cries, "Turn it up!"
"We knew The Simpsons was going to spoof THX," said THX marketing manager Kim Yost. "We had been talking with them about what they needed for the segment, and it was a lot of fun. Howard Roffman (currently vice president of Lucas Licensing) was running THX," Yost continued, "and I understood from Howard that he was with George Lucas and George basically said, 'This is very funny! We've got to make this into a trailer-this is great!"
Roffman and Yost enlisted the Simpsons' animators to re-animate the segment for film-aspect ratio, tweaking the timing of the piece a bit so that it would work as a THX trailer, but leaving the essential story and humor intact. From there, sound was mixed at Skywalker Sound, and the trailer was in theaters by the 4th of July-less than three months after the episode aired on Fox.
"The Simpsons marked a departure because it was a fun spoof of our classic," Yost said, "Today, in that spirit, we have our Tex character, and he also uses the classic trailer sound for his little adventures. We were thrilled The Simpsons wanted to include THX. The response was tremendous. To this day it's a favorite of many, and we get a lot of requests for it."
Yost said Lucasfilm and the Simpsons team have a great working relationship. "They're great," she said. "There's just a nice collaboration."
Simpsons writer Selman joked that the collaboration could go even further. "Maybe the new Star Wars movies will have Simpsons references," he suggested. "I believe the young Luke is going to be based on Milhouse."
D'oh!
Courtesty of the Star Wars Insider.