News conference with Matt Groening
and 'Simpsons' producer Mike Scully

A look ahead at 'Simpsons' and 'Futurama'
At one end of a large hotel ballroom in Pasadena, Calif., sat "Simpsons" and "Futurama" creator Matt Groening, wearing a red "Simpsons" crew jacket with stitched-on patches showing various Simpsons characters. To his right was "Simpsons" executive producer Mike Scully.

On July 22, 1999, they gathered with journalists at a news conference during the annual summer meeting of the Television Critics Association.

We attended the news conference and now share this transcript:

MIKE SCULLY: We have a clip from one of the early shows of "The Simpsons" from this fall. I'll give you a little set-up on the clip. It's an episode where Bart is diagnosed as ADD (Attention Deficit Discover), and they decide to put him on a new experimental drug called "Focusin" [sp] to help him pay attention in class. And in the clip you're going to see, they've got the medication home and they're trying to figure out how to get him to take it. And Homer has come up with an idea to kind of sneak it into him.

MATT GROENING: Wait, wait, wait. So this is a pill that will make Bart's behavior improve? I guess this series is going to take a completely new direction with this. ... So I guess nothing could possibly go wrong with this drug, right?

SCULLY: No, no. The effects are all very positive, and things go very smoothly, and Bart's a much better kid after that.

[After Fox deals with several technical problems, the clip is eventually shown. It's a couple of brief scenes in which Homer stuffs the drug in some taffy to get Bart to eat it, then Bart reports an usual reaction.]

QUESTION: With the Emmy Awards nominations happening today, have you guys just given up on being frustrated over not being part of the regular comedy series category?

GROENING: We will never give up being frustrated!

SCULLY: [laughs] No, actually now, there are so many great animated shows, I think the category is as strong as the live-action category. There was a time when it did bother me a lot. But it really doesn't anymore. I think the shows in our category now are as funny as a lot of the ones in the live-action.

QUESTION: And what do you think explains, you know, why, after all of us writing about it year after year, and I'm sure FOX trying to move -- trying to lobby for it elsewhere -- what do you think explains the fact that you can't break through there?

SCULLY: I think it could have been done. But you have to really go all out with a very heavy, heavy publicity campaign. "The Larry Sanders Show" had to do it to let people know that you could vote for an Emmy for a cable show. But they were in the trades every day just telling people. And I think people were just looking at it as a different type of show. Because it's animated, there's -- you know, we have more creative freedom. I guess it's just different than a live-action show. But I think a lot of people really weren't aware that they could have voted for it.

QUESTION: If I can jump in with a quick question, too. No nice way to put this, but how are you going to deal with the John F. Kennedy Jr. Airport issue in "Futurama"?

GROENING: Because we had -- that's the name of an airport in the year 3000 -- I don't know. I don't know. We haven't even talked about it yet. I don't know. It's not that big a deal. I mean, you know, it's a single reference in the pilot episode.

QUESTION: And you'll just not include that in any future episodes?

GROENING: Well, you know, it's very difficult when you do a TV show set 1,000 years in the future and you reference people who are living today, just about everybody is gone at some point, you know.

[It was apparently not too difficult. An Aug. 8, 1999, repeat of the "Futurama" pilot aired on Fox in the U.S. dropped a mention of JFK Jr. Airport and replaced it with "Radio City Mutant Hall."]

QUESTION: Matt, could I ask you to philosophize for just a second. We're accustomed to a pattern where, after three or four years, shows just go downhill in quality, and soon enough, they just aren't funny. Why hasn't that happened to "The Simpsons"? Why do you think it happens to most shows? And why do you think it hasn't happened to "The Simpsons"?

GROENING: Well, I can only speak from my experience on "The Simpsons," and also, given your theory, live in apprehension about "Futurama." But what -- it's in part because, I think, that "The Simpsons" is run by Mike Scully and writers and animators and the voice actors who really love the characters. And one of the great things about working on the show is, after all these years, there are still so many stories to tell.

I think it's partly the leeway we have with the medium of animation. Unlike a sitcom, you don't have to go in and out of the same doors week after week, and your characters don't get old and wrinkly, so that's another advantage.

But basically, it comes down to the writing. The writers are still energized and eager, not only to not imitate what has gone before on "The Simpsons," but also not imitate what other TV shows are doing. I don't think you'll find an episode of -- any episode this coming season on "The Simpsons" that you'll see on another show. I mean, this thing that Mike just talked about I don't think you'll see on any other show.

SCULLY: Yeah, we always try to find things -- you know, storylines or areas, just something you wouldn't see on the average sitcom. You know, besides doing this drug story this year, we're tackling leprosy, which we think is long overdue, and not enough attention paid on network television.

So, yeah, Matt's right. It's just a matter of -- we still care about the show a lot; we want it to be great. The show has a very high quality standard. And nobody wants to be on the ship that's going down. We all want it to stay up. And it still makes us laugh.

GROENING: And if "The Simpsons" wins an Emmy, here's my theory: It's that when "The Simpsons" wins an Emmy, it's got two more years -- a year to coast and a year to just drive it right into the ground.

QUESTION: It's been a year now since Phil Hartman died. With some time and distance, have you given any thought to introducing some new characters to bring it back into the law arena or the entertainment arena?

SCULLY: No, we definitely wouldn't bring back Phil's characters -- Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz. We've dropped in a couple characters here and there, just like one-shot things, but we don't really -- we're not really looking for a specific replacement for Phil's characters. If we stumbled upon something we like, we would do it. We did a show last year where Marge was in a road rage class, and they were showing a film, and it was the type of film that normally would have been done by Troy McClure, and we used a kind of a tough female state trooper character just to try something different. But, no, he's definitely missed on the show.

QUESTION: To go back to the Emmy thing, Matt, when you have two children in there, what's going to happen if one of them wins and the other doesn't?

GROENING: Well, I was talking to Dan Castellanetta, the voice of Homer, this morning, and he said, "You know, Matt, you're in such a great position. No matter what happens, you get to be bitter." [laughter]

QUESTION: Would you expect "The Simpsons" to win over the -- over "Futurama"?

GROENING: Probably. I don't know.

QUESTION: If it's a winner.

GROENING: You know, I like both shows. Now that Mike's here with me -- when Mike leaves, we'll talk, okay? [laughs] No, yeah, "Simpsons" is great. It's won a lot.

QUESTION: Matt, I have one question about "Futurama." There is this scene where Fry sees the earth destroyed, and there is the future world. Will that be explained in the series how earth was destroyed, what happened?

GROENING: Yes, all will be explained. One of the great things -- I mean, it's science fiction and there's a little element of fantasy. And almost all science fiction, even the hardest science fiction, has what we call "the magic wand" to explain how you can travel through space faster than light and go through time. I'm sure there's a good scientific explanation that'll be shorter than my answer that I just gave.

Let's run a clip from "Futurama." This is from an upcoming episode. ... This is an episode in which aliens -- there's an alien planet who has been following transmissions of television from Earth, and they're 1,000 light years away, or at least 1,000 years away from earth as far as TV transmissions have gone, and they're very eager to see the last episode, which was interrupted, of a FOX TV show which we call "Single Female Lawyer." [laughter] And they've threatened to destroy earth unless they get to see this episode.

And that's basically all you need to know. It has nothing to do with the clip, but let's watch it.

[Fox shows a clip that includes a "Star Wars"-like battle scene from "Futurama" and a scene where the Starfleet-like male officers wear extremely short outfits.]

QUESTION: Any plans for crossover now that you're airing back-to-back?

GROENING: Um ... HEY!

SCULLY: Hey!

GROENING: No, no. "The Simpsons" are fictional. This is real. [laughter]

QUESTION: Does the reference to "Single Female Lawyer" mean that you're finally working out some kind issues with "Ally McBeal" from last year?

GROENING: Issues? Well...

QUESTION: The crossover that apparently never happened.

GROENING: Yeah, what happened on that? It didn't happen?

SCULLY: Oh, on "Simpsons"? No, no, no. That was -- geez, that was a long time ago. There was simply some sort of misunderstanding, I'm told. Next question? [laughter] It just didn't quite work out. I honestly can't even remember the reasons anymore. It was a long time -- that was our Halloween show from last year, so it was actually like two years ago that it happened. But just some crossed signals. Didn't work out.

QUESTION: Mike, have you ever gotten any offers from FOX to move your animation to the animation studios in Arizona?

SCULLY: No, no. We're -- everyone is very happy with Film Roman. They do a great job for us. Are you representing the studio in Arizona? No, okay.

QUESTION: No.

SCULLY: No, we're happy. Anybody else?

QUESTION: Matt, describe the time period fight there, because you seemed last year to be -- you really, really wanted the 8:30 spot for "Futurama," and for a while, they gave it to "Family Guy" instead. And it appears that ultimately you won. Kind of tell us what happened there. I mean, did you feel bad there for a while that you didn't get it? Did you push pretty hard in between?

GROENING: No. You know, this is all -- it's all a numbers game. I think every show on FOX would love to follow "The Simpsons." And it was just -- it's a business matter completely, you know? We did really well when we followed "The Simpsons." We had two episodes that followed "The Simpsons" when we premiered, and we did very well.

QUESTION: But do you feel kind of vindicated in a way, that it was proven you were right? That "Futurama" did better than the other shows at 8:30, and so it eventually got the spot?

GROENING: I don't know if "vindicated" is the right word. I don't think too much about it. It's fun to be on Sunday night because the ratings are better. But, you know.

SCULLY: "Futurama" is a nice kind of natural bridge between us and "The X-Files" because, first of all, it's two Matt Groening shows, but, you know, "Futurama" having the sci-fi premise that it has, just kind of takes you naturally into "The X-Files." I just think the shows really complement each other.

QUESTION: Matt, your show has really great celebrities that come on and do voice-overs. It's almost like a cult following where they know they've sort of made it when they get to do a voice-over on "The Simpsons." How hard or how easy is it to get them? Are they -- do they call you? And also, what's in store for this season, and who are you talking to?

GROENING: Well, there is a long list of celebrities who would like to be on "The Simpsons" but just aren't good enough. We will be distributing that list shortly. [laughter] No, there are a number of people who have wanted to be on "The Simpsons." It's great, over the years, and we've gotten to a lot of them. And it's great. They're fans of the show, or sometimes their kids are fans of the show, and that's why they do it. Mike can talk about some of the guests.

SCULLY: Yeah, we have upcoming on the show this season, Mel Gibson, Mark McGwire, Lucy Lawless, Ron Howard (in a return appearance), Penn and Teller -- and Teller will speak on "The Simpsons" -- The B-52s, Garry Marshall, John Goodman, Henry Winkler, Don Cheadle, so we've got a lot of guest stars coming up this year. And like Matt said, some of them call us; we call some of them. And if they say no, then we start stalking. So we usually get them. We go after the ones with kids first. That's an easy way to get them on the show.

QUESTION: Mike, do many turn you down?

SCULLY: Excuse me?

QUESTION: Do many turn you down?

SCULLY: No, actually, we really are surprisingly lucky with the amount of positive responses we get. The few that say no, many times it's for scheduling reasons. They're off shooting a movie and we just can't get it together in time.

QUESTION: How did you do to make [sic] the characters of "Futurama"?

GROENING: I'm sorry, I don't --

SCULLY: I think that was for you.

GROENING: What is the question?

QUESTION: How did you do to make [sic] the characters of "Futurama"?

GROENING: How did we do it?

QUESTION: Yeah. What do you think when you make the characters?

GROENING: Well, you know, "The Simpsons" is a tough act to follow. You know, the immediate impulse was to do a fat bald dad with a bratty kid in the future, but we decided to try something different. We decided to do -- it's basically a workplace comedy set in the future.

And I just thought -- had certain notions that I wanted to try out. I'm a big fan of science fiction, and I wanted to see if we could try out some ideas, really use the medium of animation to try different things. Or as in the case of the clip you saw, just imitate the first "Star Wars" movie. But, you know, for instance, I wanted to -- on "The Simpsons," we've never done -- no offense to Marge, but we've never really done "sexiness" on "The Simpsons." We really stay away from that. And on "Futurama," I wanted to see if we could explore some of the concerns of young adults rather than -- on "The Simpsons," the show is basically sort of middle-aged parents who have sort of given up on life, and kids. On "Futurama," we have a lot of young adults who are struggling with romance and work and sex in a way that they aren't on "The Simpsons." I don't know if that answers your question, but ... .

QUESTION: Matt, a question about -- last summer, you mentioned your admiration for Stanley Kubrick. And of course, since he died, there have been a lot of notations of the various Stanley Kubrick references in "The Simpsons." I wondered if you could react to the revelation that Kubrick turned out to be a huge "Simpsons" fan, which we just learned recently.

GROENING: Yeah, you know, somebody just told me that, too, that he was. And that's true? Is that for sure?

QUESTION: Yeah that's according to Michael Hare, the screenwriter who worked with him on "Full Metal Jacket."

SCULLY: He also was a big fan of "The Nanny," oddly enough. [laughter]

GROENING: Well, you know, there are so many Kubrick references in "The Simpsons" that it must have been an odd experience for him to tune in the show, because there were tons of them.

QUESTION: I knew he was a recluse, but did you ever get any sort of indication of this before, or had anybody told you that?

GROENING: No, I had no idea. Did you? Did you know?

SCULLY: Yeah, but I forgot to tell you. [Groening laughs/laughter] Yeah, he called several times. [laughter] He really wanted to talk to you. I'm so sorry. [laughter] No, I didn't know.

QUESTION: Matt, could you kind of describe when a character -- or Mike, either one -- when a character just surprises you? I was thinking of Apu, who just sat there and was just a minor character for so long. And all of a sudden, he gets the bride in the Valentines episode and things, and all of a sudden, he's starring in episodes. Are there times like that where characters just surprise you?

SCULLY: Oh yeah, Apu, I think -- the great thing about Apu is that the voice that Hank Azaria brings to the character makes him very likable very sweet, for some reason you really like this guy, even though we've shown that he gouges people on prices -- and there is something very likable about him and we're doing -- we're kind of taking Apu another step further now.

He got married last year -- this year -- or he got married two years ago, I guess. Anyway, and last year he was kind of bored in his marriage for awhile. This year Apu is going to have octuplets. [laughter] Because, you know, we wanted to show the job of having eight babies in your house at one time. We just want to kind of show the other side of that event after all the -- after all the Pampers and the Huggies people, and Fisher-Price after they all leave your house, after dropping off all the goodies, and what it's like to take care of eight babies. So that's coming up for Apu this year. So yeah, he's been a real -- we've had that with a lot of characters, Apu, Principal Skinner, Mr. Bums, there's a lot people you can hang stories on that become a real important part of the show.

GROENING: I think it's a tribute to the voice actors who actually bring these characters to life, because often they're written in the show as throwaway characters but sometimes the actor just gets the voice exactly right. And the temptation -- it's tempting to explore all sorts of characters and we'd like to leave people not having enough. There's the character- - one of the characters -- one of my favorite characters on "The Simpsons" is the Comic Book Store Guy, who has never been given a name, and maybe that's why he's been held back because he doesn't have a name yet. But he's one of my favorites. And that's also Hank Azaria.

QUESTION: Well, Mike, talking about satirizing in this case, the fertility craze, since you have to make episodes with such lead time, does it get frustrating that you can't be as topical with what you're mocking? You see something in the news and you say, "Man, that stinks. I want to make fun of it right away."

SCULLY: Yeah, that happens. Actually with the fertility one it actually worked out well because it takes nine months to do an episode of the show, so for some reason that one timed out right for us.

But yeah, that's happened. Last year when we were doing our- - we were writing the script for the Super Bowl episode and we wanted to do a crazy Super Bowl commercial. And Viagra had just hit the market and we were pitching jokes in the room and one of them was, to do kind of like the Budweiser frogs, but it's three rabbits going "VI-AG-RA." [laughter] And we wrote the piece and then we realized that by the time it hit the air, we would probably be the last show doing a Viagra joke, so we did something else instead. So yeah, once in a while it gets in the way. Sometimes we can fix -- at the last minute we can make a little topical comment on a late rewrite, but once in a while the time thing does hurt us.

QUESTION: This is for Mike or Matt, both of you. Are you surprised or amazed that this show has been on the air for 10 years? It's now the longest-running series. I mean, do you sometimes wake up and say, gee I didn't think it would last this long or have this much fun with it?

SCULLY: Well, I don't wake up but yeah, oh yeah, I mean, I joined the show at the beginning of season five and I considered myself very lucky. I thought I was going to get in for the last couple of seasons and I was really thrilled that I got there. Nobody was really talking about season 11 then. And going back to the beginning, I'm sure that number didn't come up.

GROENING: No, yeah, I'm surprised. I guess I didn't think it through, you know. If it's successful it just doesn't stop. It is -- it's strange. It's also nice to have this staggering number of episodes to look at. There have been -- there have so many episodes in the can now, that I can actually watch the show in syndication and be delightfully surprised by jokes because I'd forgotten a lot of them. What are we up to now on this?

SCULLY: I think, let's see on Monday we're recording our 245th I believe. I maybe 229 have aired. Lot of shows.

QUESTION: Matt, "The Simpsons" went through a lot of adjustments in the first year or two, you know, improvements, refinements, denser plotting, characters, are you happy with "Futurama" at this stage? Or do you see the need for changes? Are you making changes for next year?

GROENING: Animation, all animation is an experiment and you're constantly making adjustments in what you're doing, yeah, so we're doing that. I mean, "The Simpsons" is still -- we're still trying to get "The Simpsons" right, you know, after all these years. You're trying to be original every week and still be true to the characters and that's a careful balance you have to maintain.

QUESTION: I guess that was more a "Futurama" question than a "Simpsons" question. I was just using that as an example. And there's a lot of evolution ... in "The Simpsons" in the first year as you tried to make it a better show.

GROENING: On "Futurama" we were very -- because the whole universe was wide-open, that is, we had to design everything, including alien species and planets, and we even made up alien languages, which we stuck in graffiti and signs, which we thought -- we'd never -- we weren't going to give the -- weren't going to decode the language for people and we're going to let -- over the season, let people figure out what these signs said in this alien language. And with the Internet, they figured it out by the end of the first episode, and this was like with 14 letters of the alphabet being used. It's bizarre, what people do with their time.

Anyway, you know, with "Futurama," with "The Simpsons" it's actually a very conservative blueprint for a show, it's a family sitcom and you've seen a million dumb dads and wiseass kids. And on "Futurama" we really were trying something that I don't think is quite as familiar, at least you don't quite -- the template isn't immediately obvious. And, as a result, I think we were very careful to tell linear stories. And in the second season, the shows that we have in the works right now are faster-paced and a lot wilder, because we feel that the audience is now on board with what we're trying to do. I mean, now FOX gets the show, for a solid year they didn't quite understand what they had on their hands. They saw the ratings and then they said, "You know, it's pretty good."

QUESTION: Mike and Matt ... Mike Judge and Greg Daniels -- couple sessions ago -- said that the success of "South Park" led them to rethink doing a "King of the Hill" movie. And one of the things that Mike said was he can't imagine why you haven't done a "Simpsons" movie to this point. What are your thoughts on that?

GROENING: You know, in part it's because we're working so hard on "The Simpsons," there's not a lot of hours left over in the day to do a movie. And we really do care -- I can speak for Mike on this -- everybody who works on the show cares about it so much that we don't want to let the show itself slip, and there's not a lot of extra troops out there to make the show really good and also do a movie. I'm sure there will be a movie one of these days. We just haven't figured out a way of doing it yet.

QUESTION: Two questions, please. Do you know what's happening in other countries like Argentina that we are very fond of "The Simpsons" and now we are waiting for "Futurama" that is coming in August. What do you say to the Argentine people that are waiting for that series? And if you know about what's going on there?

GROENING: Well, the success of "The Simpsons" all over the world has been gratifying. It's great. It's seen all over the place and we're really happy. And I think "Futurama" will be successful as well. I think visually, as you can tell, it's pretty sophisticated for television animation. And that's not even a finished episode that you saw there. We're still tinkering with that and there are a lot of retakes coming in. Some of the stuff that we have in the works, as far as special effects this coming season are fantastic, and I think that's going to play very well internationally.

QUESTION: Mike, please, most series last seven years and "The Simpsons." ... How do you do to keep it always fresh with creative episodes? Do you have new writers?

SCULLY: We bring in new writers periodically but I think the more important thing is that the people who are there really just want to keep it good. We're constantly looking for new story angles, we watch trends in the country to see what's going on. Like for instance, the clip today with Bart being put on the behavior-altering drug, you know, it's a hot issue in the country today.

In the episode with Mel Gibson, Homer helps him remake a version of "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington," but it's far more violent than the original. [laughter] Things, you know, like we're always looking for those kind of things, and you can find a lot of great shows like that. Apu with the babies is another example. We have a new Christmas show too, where it kind of deals with the Furby, Cabbage Patch, Tickle Me Elmo, that each year there has to be one toy that everybody wants, and so this year that's what we're dealing with in our Christmas episode, with kind of a sinister toy company.

GROENING: Yup.

JOE EARLEY, FOX publicist: Unfortunately, we're out of time.

GROENING: Thank you.

SCULLY: Thanks for coming.

Page added: 8/14/99

Original reporting and presentation, copyright 1999, William LaRue.