The Simpsons hit the big screen

12 April 2012
The Weekender

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Household names: The Simpson family

As The Simpsons hit the big screen, their creator explains why everyone from Beatles to Archbishops are fans

Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, surveys the hundreds of fans who have gathered in a West End cinema for a special ten-minute preview of the forthcoming Simpsons Movie.

Once a struggling writer, he can now be satisfied that he has created one of the most lucrative franchises in the entertainment industry.

The secret of his success? "Stupidity: the love of stupidity is universal," he says. Well, he would know.

Groening created Homer Simpson, a nuclear power-plant safety inspector so inept that he has been personally responsible for 17 meltdowns.

He is a fatther who regularly strangles his son: a man who cannot say no to a doughnut or a can of Duff beer; and whose catchphrase - now an official entry in the Oxford Dictionary - is: "D'oh!"

And the world agrees. Millions of people look at Homer, his blue-haired wife Marge, his son Bart (the anagram of "brat"), his unappreciated genius daughter Lisa and the silent, dummy-sucking baby Maggie, and see a family that sums up the reality of human life.

We are dumb. We do the wrong things. We laugh at things we shouldn't. But we can be redeemed by love.

As Matt Groening puts it: "Homer strangles his son, but he loves him."

"Homer's not intentionally mean," adds the Simpsons Movie's co-writer and executive producer Al Jean.

"He does thoughtless things, but he loves his wife, and his family and Marge think Homer is the most hansome man that ever lived."

Groening laughs: "It's a fantasy."

No wonder The Simpsons is the world's most-watched TV show, broadcast in more than 60 countries.

Time magazine named the show the greatest series in the history of television, and this autumn will see the start of its 19th season, the longest run of any sitcom in American TV history.

There have been, Groening says: "400 episodes - as Homer would say, 'one for every day of the year.'"

Now comes The Simpsons' first, long-awaited film. According to Groening: "It's a romantic movie. Homer falls in love with a pig!"

The Simpsons creator Matt Groening

Cinema-goers can expect a relentless barrage of visual and verbal gags, right from the moment the film begins with a short clip of Itchy and Scratchy (the violent cat and mouse who star in Bart's favourite cartoon show), rudely interrupted by Homer complaining: "Why are we paying for something we can get for free on TV?"

And, in true Simpsons style, Bart is seen writing lines on his classroom blackboard, "I will not illegally download this movie", before skateboarding stark naked through the streets of Springfield.

Simpsons fans will be queuing round the block when the film is released in Britain on July 27, with box office takings sure to add hundreds of millions of pounds to the Simpsons empire.

But The Simpsons is a cultural phenomenon, as well as a commercial one.

The scientist Stephen Hawking has appeared on the show and the only words ever spoken in public by Thomas Pynchon, one of America's greatest authors, a celebrated recluse, were the lines he recited in two Simpsons episodes.

Highbrow British author Gilbert Adair has even said: "The Simpsons is a masterpiece to which the work of no currently practising Englishlanguage novelist is comparable in importance or greatness."

No wonder it has attracted stars such as, including Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Ricky Gervais, JK Rowling and Tony Blair.

When baby Maggie said her first and only word, 'Daddy', it was voiced by Elizabeth Taylor.

The Simpsons have even caused political controversy. When they first appeared, Bart's youthful vandalism and Homer's total inability to behave like a respectable husband, father or employee meant that the show was seen as an anarchic threat to decent family values.

At the 1992 Republican party convention, President Bush declared: "We need a nation closer to the Waltons than to the Simpsons."

These days, however, the Simpsons have a hard time finding enemies. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has admitted he is a fan of the show, describing it as "generally on the side of the angels and sense".

True, Homer frequently gets so drunk he forgets his family's names. But in moments of crisis, Homer will do anything for his children.

He takes two jobs to buy Lisa the pony she dreams of. And then, when his vegetarian, Buddhist, saxophone-playing genius of a daughter finds out what he's sacrificed for her, she tells him she can do without it as there's "a big dumb animal" she cares about even more.

This cartoon saga began life as a hurried sketch, by a struggling, Los Angeles cartoonist.

In 1987, Matt Groening was writing and drawing a weekly cartoon strip published in a number of alternative newspapers and magazines.

One of his drawings was given as a present to director James L Brooks, who liked it so much he decided to offer its creator the chance to take his characters on to TV in a show he was producing for British comedienne Tracey Ullman, then a new Hollywood star.

Groening as flattered by the offer, but he did not want to hand over his characters - or the rights them - to a TV network.

So, while waiting to see Brooks, Groening came up with something else to offer him instead, drawing his first sketch of the family on typing paper and turning to his own family's names for his characters.

" I do have a father named Homer, my mother is Margaret, Marge for short.

"I have sisters named Lisa and Maggie. When it came time to name the boy, I thought, 'Should I name him Matt?' But I thought I shouldn't do that to myself.

"The characters are not like my family except in appearance!

"My mother when I was a kid actually did have tall hair, very tall hair.

"Not quite as tall as Marge's and not blue, but the hairstyle was based on her."

Though the Tracey Ullman show was cancelled after two seasons, the Simpsons survived and their own show made its debut on December 17, 1989.

By now, the characters looked just as they do today.

The show soon became a huge hit. In the first couple of years, its star was Bart.

His catchphrases, "Ay caramba" and "Eat my shorts", echoed around school playgrounds.

Over time, however, Homer has become the show's most iconic figure.

Homer is so dumb his brain has been known to shout "That's it, I give up", and storm out of his head.

But he is created by very clever people, the majority of who have been graduates of Harvard.

Groening describes the writers, "sitting in a small room, eating cold pizza until the wee hours coming up with ideas".

It's the jokes written over those cold pizza slices that make The Simpsons so great.

Or, as Homer puts it, yelling furiously at Bart, who is doubled up by the sight of his father sticking a hammer in his own eye: "I'll teach you to laugh at something that's funny!"

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