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Trying to please everyone can be very hard, but, like 'Shrek' or 'The Simpsons,' 'Robin Hood' manages to entertain adults and children at the same time, but in different ways.
The Simpsons can go anywhere in the world and not worry about any budgetary issues. However, even when the show has had its run, I think the characters can go on in perpetuity.
I draw a weekly comic strip called Life in Hell, which is syndicated in about 250 newspapers. That's what I did before The Simpsons, and what I plan to do for the rest of my life.
I grew up watching 'The Office' and 'Father Ted' and all the British things at that time - 'The Royle Family' - and the American ones like 'Friends,' 'Frasier' and 'The Simpsons.'
The biggest move that put Fox on the map, from an entertainment perspective, was when 'The Simpsons' moved to Thursday night, and that was paired with 'Martin' and 'Living Single.'
I'm lucky that I can walk down the street, and maybe one person will recognise me from 'The Simpsons,' and another person will recognise me from 'Spinal Tap,' and it's always surprising.
A whole generation was raised to learn about comedy from 'The Simpsons.' To get to be in a booth with Homer and Marge and be in Springfield - it was unimaginable the emotions that I felt.
Everything I do, I do it with the hope that people will watch it more than twice. Whether it's 'Pan's Labyrinth' or 'Pacific Rim' or the opening of 'The Simpsons,' I do it with that hope.
I have less to do with 'The Simpsons' every season, but I stick my nose in here and there. Basically, it's just trying to keep the characters consistent and making sure the show has a soul.
The truth is that many of the writers of 'The Simpsons' are deeply in love with numbers, and their ultimate desire is to drip-feed morsels of mathematics into the subconscious minds of viewers.
I grew up - for a while, the only show I could watch if I hadn't finished my homework was 'The Simpsons,' because I think my parents saw that there was some real-life lessons to take from that.
That's been the case for decades. 'The Simpsons,' 'King of the Hill' - they do the preproduction in America, and the production is in Korea or in some cases China, or occasionally Japan or India.
I acted in 'Almost Famous.' My album 'Fingerprints' won a Grammy Award in 2007. Even more prestigious, as far as my kids were concerned, I appeared in episodes of 'The Simpsons' and 'Family Guy.'
When you think about 'The Simpsons' or 'King of the Hill' or something like that, the worlds tend to expand each episode, because there's no additional cost incurred to hire an animated character.
I constantly watch 'The Simpsons' and an English cartoon called 'The Raccoons' and 'Gummi Bears.' I was obsessed with ninja films, and the 'Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles,' I used to love that as well.
I'm a great admirer of 'The Simpsons.' It's very surprising because it's backed by a right-wing television company in the U.S., and quite often it's poking fun at the people who would be its audience.
When I was 21, I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for 'The Simpsons' who'd briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.
Typically in animation, the characters exist in a kind of stasis. Look at 'The Simpsons' - they never age, the baby never grows up - or 'Peanuts' - the kids never grow up, they always stay the same age.
'The Simpsons' obviously is a huge success, and Fox has nothing to do with its success, with its creative success, and as a result they don't really like the show. They don't like 'The Simpsons' at Fox.
When The Simpsons came around, there really was nothing else like it on TV. It's hard to imagine, but when Fox first took the plunge with it, it was considered controversial to put animation on prime time.
Early on in my career, I was often the only woman in the room, writing for shows like 'Late Night with David Letterman,' 'The Simpsons,' 'Newhart,' and 'Coach,' and sometimes I'd feel like I didn't belong.
I feed my kids organic food and milk, but I've also been known to buy the odd Lunchable. My kids are not allowed to watch TV during the week, but on weekends even the 2-year-old veges out to 'The Simpsons.'
I think the No. 1 lesson I learned from 'The Simpsons' was just that animation could be as funny as live-action. That animation could be funnier than live-action. That animation didn't have to just be for kids.
'The Simpsons' was about children and married parents; 'Futurama' is about people in between; they're growing up and haven't settled down. Every other cartoon show seemed to be, you know, dumb dad, bratty kids.
We went to church twice a week. My parents were employed in ministry; we prayed before dinner. We rollerbladed in the summer. We were allowed to watch the 'Simpsons.' I fought with my younger brother over Legos.
Roughly 65% of American households owned a video recorder by 1989, when 'The Simpsons' was launched. This meant that fans could watch episodes several times and pause a scene when they had spotted something curious.
We have a lot of American TV in Australia. I grew up watching 'Seinfeld,' 'The Simpsons' and those prime time TV shows over the years that feature grown-ups and high school kids. We had a saturation of American voices.
Anybody in animation today would be lying if they said they weren't somehow influenced by 'The Simpsons' to a certain degree. Except for the shows that go out of their way to look as far from 'The Simpsons' as possible.
Our solution on 'The Simpsons' is to do jokes that people who have an education, or some frame of reference, can get. And for the ones who don't, it doesn't matter, because we have Homer banging his head and saying, 'D'oh!'
Growing up, I remember my parents feeling a little wary of 'The Simpsons.' This was the late eighties, and there was a wave of articles about TV shows that were bad for America. Then we all started watching it and loved it.
'The Simpsons' money got bigger and bigger. When I left 'The Simpsons', no one thought that this thing was going to still be around. It's the cumulative effect. It's like, 'Oh my God, 25 years later, and it's still coming in.'
I think 'Family Guy' and 'American Dad' have definitely staked out their own style and territory, and now the accusations are coming that 'The Simpsons' is taking jokes from 'Family Guy.' And I can tell you, that ain't the case.
The early seasons of 'The Simpsons' had a great deal of heart. That's what I'm trying to pull from, the kind of stuff that goes straight to kids' hearts. When they're watching, they don't necessarily know why they love something.
On 'The Simpsons,' I will say that we definitely like to comment on what's going on in the world, and we try to be funny. If we can figure out a way of being funny about it, then we've gone part of the way of accomplishing our task.
'The Simpsons' basically - and 'Futurama' - are really smart shows. They're kind of disguised as these goofy animated sitcoms, but the references within the shows, if you're paying attention, are pretty smart and pretty sophisticated.
I think the weather here is a big attraction for anyone. But also, there are more creative people per square mile in L.A. than anywhere in the world. They make 'The Simpsons' here. Anywhere they make 'The Simpsons' is a good place to be.
I'm not even Indian-American: I'm Indian-Indian. Everybody expected me to have henna and a nose pin and talk in an accent like Apu from 'The Simpsons.' I was nervous because I wasn't sure if America was ready for a lead that looked like me.
Nihilism in American comedy came along way before 'The Simpsons.' There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to 'Saturday Night Live,' for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.
My mother had no interest in cartoons. I remember thinking, 'I am never going to grow into that person.' Which is so ironic - now I get to work on 'Family Guy' and 'The Simpsons' and 'Futurama', all of these great animated series! TV was my passion.
The humor is essentially dark for a cartoon and sophisticated. But at the same time, being a cartoon gives the writers more freedom than in a normal sitcom. It always pushes the line that, despite human failings, the Simpsons are really decent people.
We did 'The Simpsons Movie,' which took almost four years; it was the same people that do the TV show, and it just killed us. So that's why there hasn't been a second movie. But I imagine if the show ever does go off the air, they'll start doing movies.
I tend to relate more to people on television who are just themselves, for good or for bad, than I do to someone who I believe is putting on some sort of persona. The anchorman on 'The Simpsons' is a reasonable facsimile of some anchors who have that problem.
I never wanted to do a regular sitcom, because I'd be incredibly bored doing the same character week in, week out. But the beauty of 'The Simpsons' is that it's 15, 16, 17 characters. It's the variety that keeps it interesting. And hey, they're all my children.
The conundrum that I face on a daily basis is that I have two sons who have grown up watching 'The Simpsons,' so they know exactly what buttons to push. They know how Bart irritates Homer, and they use these lines against me to tell me that I'm not funny anymore.
I'm kind of a dork. I don't have much game. I'm not particularly comfortable in bars or clubs. I much prefer being home playing Scrabble, having dinner with a couple friends, going to see a movie, or losing a whole weekend to Season 14 of Law and Order or The Simpsons.
'The Simpsons' from the very beginning was based on our memories of brash '60s sitcoms - you had a main title theme that was bombastic and grabbed your attention - and when you look at TV shows of the 1970s and '80s, things got very mild and toned down and... obsequious.
I grew up, obviously, watching tons of animation; Saturday morning cartoons or anything that we could get our hands on. And then when 'The Simpsons' premiered, that just kind of changed the landscape of everything. We hadn't had prime time animations since 'The Flintstones.'
The thing about a cartoon is, you can do whatever you want. The tightrope that we are walking on 'The Simpsons' and 'Futurama' is 'How do you continue to surprise the audience, but make them good surprises?' Not every surprise is good, but you want to continue jolting people.
I know for a fact, obviously, because my kids grew up watching the show, that there are some things they are introduced to from 'The Simpsons', and then later in life they see the thing we're parodying. My kids had not seen 'Casablanca,' and we'd done parodies of 'Casablanca.'
In my cranky old age, I actually prefer recording alone now, on 'The Simpsons,' for example, because I find that the director can just focus on what I'm doing and I can do a lot of variations. A lot of times, when I record with a group, I'll stay after class for another hour or two.