Toronto Writer Takes On The Simpsons In New Book
Posted November 13, 2009 9:21 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
John Ortved encountered just one problem with writing his book about The Simpsons: The men behind the scenes of television’s longest-running show refused to participate.
“James L. Brooks and the producers of The Simpsons wouldn’t let…they asked current people on the show not to speak to me,” he says, sitting on a couch at his parents’ Toronto home.
But those who had already left the show – notable among them Conan O’Brien and The Office show-runners Greg Daniels and Brent Forrester – were more than willing to speak with Ortved.
And a few of those who still counted on NewsCorp for their paycheques also participated.
“There’s a line of irreverence and anti-authoritarianism that stretches through The Simpsons and everyone who works on it… They might not have been for or against the book when they heard about it, but once there was all this blowback from the top, I think that kind of rubbed them the wrong way.
“One writer said to me, ‘I think it’s very un-Simpsons what they’re trying to do to you.’”
The end result was The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History. It’s an oral history in the vein of Edie: American Girl (one of Ortved’s favourties) – at least three-quarters of the book is other people talking.
“The voices involved were so singular and so interesting, I really wanted to hear more from them then from me,” he explains.
There was no official reason why Brooks and others who had made their reputation – not to mention a sizable fortune – on the residents of Springfield declined Ortved’s interview requests.
Unofficially, Ortved heard otherwise.
“What came back to me through the grapevine was that I was asking all these questions about Sam Simon, and he was getting a lot of real creative credit for the show from the writers.”
Simon, who continues to share executive producer credits with Matt Groening and Brooks, left the show in 1993.
What other writers thought of him, and how much credit he did or didn’t receive, comprises the juiciest portions of the book.
According to those interviewed in the book, Simon was known as both a genius and an asshole, but he’s not the only wronged party.
There are tales of animation deals gone sour, personality clashes that have turned into decades-long grudges – it seems like everyone interviewed knows of someone who got less than he deserved.
(Or, in the case of Groening, much, much more.)
While tales of who-did-what are sure to stir up debate among Simpsons die-hards, the most interesting parts of the book focus on the writers.
In the early years, the writers and show-runners sat around an enormous table to pitch their ideas and look over scripts.
The oral history format works well to recapture the lively roundtable discussions.
Jokes are tossed out, topped, and rejected; stories are too surreal and yet not weird enough; and childhoods are plundered for plot points, all to serve the show.
Behind-the-scenes antics – grease from a slice of pizza thrown at the ceiling still stains the office years later, tales of writers laughing until they cry, producers who refuse to go home and instead shower in the middle of a meeting – are fascinating, and make for the very best chapters in the book.
The nearly 300-page work of non-fiction began as an article in Vanity Fair.
“I found out that they were doing a movie around the fall of 2006 and so I pitched it then.”
At the time, Ortved was an editorial associate.
“My beat was answering my writer’s phone,” he jokes.
“I was hoping they would let me write it – often, ideas are assigned to someone else – and they did.”
His piece, along with an interview with Conan O’Brien, appeared in the August 2007 issue of the magazine.
“I didn’t really have the intention to write a book,” Ortved explained, but a phone call changed all that.
“Writers everywhere probably hate hearing this, but an agent called me out of the blue and was like, oh, we can make a book out of this.”
With a lot of help, Ortved put together a proposal and pitched the book. He and his agent took the offer that he says was the “most interesting.”
For a few months, he balanced his work at Vanity Fair with research and interviews for the book.
By April of 2008, he had left the magazine. And in October of 2009, the book was published – three years after he first pitched the idea.
“It felt, alternately, like a very short time and a very long time. I’m not sure – it’s the first book I’ve written.
“The thesis of my book, if there is one, is that all of us speak Simpsons now. It has just had such a profound influence. Their comedic style, their humour and their way of storytelling has seeped into our humour and the way we tell jokes and the way we tell stories.”
