The Simpsons and Futurama are such big projects, going on for years and working in different media, that everything involved with them, promotion and merchandise and online presence and all the rest, deserve to be scrutinized, so that's part of it. I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone at the core of a multimedia juggernaut, even if you might not care for the specific pop-culture invasion of your brain. The people who do it work really hard.
You just have to keep in mind that the important relationship is the relationship with the audience. That's what I try to do. Everything else is secondary.
I have to say that The Simpsons comes from a huge number of great writers headed by Al Jean, the show-runner, and the work that they do is really fantastic. It's a blast just to sit around with them in the writers' room and listen to all the filthy jokes that will never get on the air.
I think human beings probably resonate with audiences more than bunnies, but who knows?
I think in daily newspapers, the way comic strips are treated, it's as if newspaper publishers are going out of their way to kill the medium. They're printing the comics so small that most strips are just talking heads, and if you look back at the glory days of comic strips, you can see that they were showcases for some of the best pop art ever to come out.
I would prefer to listen to a French classical composer like Olivier Messiaen than to the pop hits of the day.
I've been deadline-driven for my whole grown-up life, and that hasn't gone away. It is nice to be able to reflect about the big picture, about what kind of stories you want to tell, and how to take advantage of success.
Humor does depend on surprise, and the things that people remember as the funniest things in the world, you look at later and you go, "What? What was that all about?"
Anxiety and hostility seem to be a great part of good and bad humor. Examining humor too closely does seem to destroy it.
I think people who work in comedy and humor are hesitant to analyze it too much, because you feel like if you take it apart, you'll break it and not be able to put it back together again.
One of the great things about the Internet is that you can read what everybody has to say about everything. It is fascinating to me, the critiques about humor by people who have no sense of humor.
I personally like the idea of newspapers. It's a good format. You can read it in whatever order you want. You can glance at it. There is something about a single screen and scrolling through pages that just doesn't have the same appeal.
I'm a fan of animation and so, the more stuff that doesn't look like the other stuff that's out there, I'm in favor.
I always thought that television was the way to go in my goal to invade pop culture because it got to towns in which there were no bookstores. That's how I used to think of it: How do I reach kids who not only don't read but probably have no access to much in the way of books?
A lot of American shows don't last for as long as 12 episodes. They get cut after one. But certainly one of the great things about The Office in particular was that there was a beginning, a middle and an end.
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