"The Simpsons" -- still funny after all these yearsBy Zack Stentz, posted May 13 How do they do it? After over 200 episodes, "The Simpsons" remains the most consistently funny half hour of television on the air, despite have gone through dozens of writers, animators, producers and story editors. But there is some continuity. For nearly ten years, Dave Silverman has been among the handful of artistes who make sure "The Simpsons" keeps on being funny. "Without blowing my own horn too much, I'd like to think that I'm one of the reasons, along with Matt (Groening, the series creator) and (executive producer) James Brooks, that the show's quality has stayed high," says Silverman, who until recently was animation director and still serves as a consultant to "The Simpsons." "Another thing that really helps is that at this point, the new writers and animators who come aboard are already fans of the show." Not that sustaining the show's edgy quality has always been easy. In one "Simpsons" episode, corporate executives make "The Itchy and Scratchy Show" introduce a new talking dog named Poochie. "Not a lot of people know it, but that episode was based on something that happened to us," recalls Silverman. "The Fox people one year wanted us to add a new character to The Simpsons family to generate more interest. A wacky relative or something like that." That same episode also took a swipe at subculture of Internet-based obsessives who catalog and critique "Simpsons" minutae with all the devotion of latter-day Trekkies. "We're aware of the Internet people," Silverman says. "I think those parts of the episode were a way of telling these people 'Lighten up, it's just a show.'" One favorite pastime for The Simpsons' online fans is catching errors made by the animation staff. The most famous of these was a mistaken instruction to the show's Korean animation subcontractor that resulted in Mr. Burns' obsequious sidekick Smithers being African American for one first season episode. "I warned them that this would come back to haunt us," Silverman explains. "But because the mistake was ours rather than the company in Korea's, no one wanted to pay for it to be redone." Any other major gaffes? "In another early episode, "Bart the General," there's one line of dialogue that was dubbed very badly. The most frustrating thing about it is that we actually shot a correct version of the line, but for some reason it never got in there, so now that mistake will live forever in syndication." The Simpsons"' production flow has become somewhat more standardized since the bug-eyed family's first airing, which make such glitches fewer and farther between. "The bigger budget and greater amount of time we get to do each episode means we can bring a level of refinement to the animation that wasn't there before," says Silverman. Still, in some ways he misses the early days of the show. "It was quirkier toward the beginning," Silverman says. "And when you look at the characters in the old "Tracy Ullman Show" segments, there was a crudity that made them look more animalistic. And I kind of liked that." Silverman started doing his own animation shorts when he was a teen-ager and had recently graduated from UCLA when he got the call to help out on a "spec" project. "It was very matter-of-fact. My friend Wes Archer (a fellow animation director) was working for (animation production company) Klasky-Csupo, and he asked me if I wanted to come in and work on this new animated concept by Matt Groening called "The Simpsons." Alot of companies bid for the Simpsons job," he continues, "because we all loved Life In Hell (Groening's long-running alternative weekly comic strip) and were excited about translating his stuff to animation. That whole year of 1987, three of us were having to do all of the drawing for these minute and a half sketches (at 24 frames a second, that's several hundred drawings), not even knowing if Fox was gonna pick up "The Tracey Ullman show." Fox, of course, did pick the show. But it wasn't the ratings for Ullman's under-watched comedy revue that told Silverman the characters were striking a humongous chord with the public; it was, well, the Simpsons jacket incident. "I first realized it shortly after the first episode aired ("Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," which Silverman directed and aired Dec. 19th, 1989 as a decidedly non-Charlie Brown Christmas special). I was back in Maryland, where I'm from, walking around a shopping mall wearing a Simpsons crew jacket. And people from all walks of life kept approaching me, asking me where I had gotten the jacket, and where they could buy one, and telling me how much they liked the show. And this was after only one episode had aired. So I went back to California and said ' Look, Matt, I think we really have a hit on our hands here.'" Strangely enough, Groening himself had a similar experience not long afterward. "I was at [San Francisco's] Escape from New York Pizza, and a homeless guy asked me for my crusts," Groening recalled. "And then he saw my Simpsons crew jacket and yelled 'Man, I love that show!' That told me just how wide our demographics were." The success of "The Simpsons" changed the landscape of television by convincing networks and cable companies that animation was a viable format. Sure, "The Simpsons" spawned such short-lived duds as Family Dog and Capitol Critters, but it also paved the way for a new crop of smart animated shows. "I like King of the Hill and South Park, and one of the main reasons I like them is because they're successful," Silverman explains. "Each time an animated show it a hit, it convinces executives to invest in the medium, and that's good for the entire art form." Like other Simpsons alumni, Silverman has branched out to do other projects, including a short-lived sting as co-director for Dreamworks' animated film "The Road to El Dorado." One intriguing possibility: another project from Simpson's creator Matt Groening. "Matt's creating a new series called Futurama, [due to air on Fox in early 1999] which he wants me to work on," says Silverman. "And just recently Pixar (the Richmond-based, Steve Jobs-owned computer animation house which produced Toy Story) called and asked me to come up and work for them. I'm having a hard time deciding what to do." Poor guy. Such an enviable dilemma. "It is, isn't it?" he replies. "So I guess I'll shut up and just enjoy it." Top of page |