Interview with Matt Selman on The Simpsons Season 36 • Summer Special

Season 6

Jun 10

With the 36th season of The Simpsons recently wrapping up, we invited the current showrunner Matt Selman to sit down with us and talk all about the most recent season, its many movie parodies, his own relationship with the movies, and more. We even got a sneak preview of a few upcoming episodes of season 37!

Also in this episode:

Why movie parodies on The Simpsons these days are longer, more elaborate, and more niche than ever
Is prestige TV displacing cinema as the parody of choice?
The most Simpsons-y part of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning
A lightning round about possible movie references in season 36

We will return with regular biweekly episodes in September. Until then, keep an eye out for more special one-off episodes and new articles on our blog.

Watch season 36 of The Simpsons on Hulu and Disney+, including a new collection page and non-stop stream on Disney+.

Bonus: How to Run a Movie Draft, Simpsons Style

In our interview, we asked Matt Selman about the Curran-Payne Movie Classic, a summer movie draft that the Simpsons writers’ room has been running every year since 2009.

Matt and his team were kind enough to share instructions on how anyone can run their own version of the movie draft with their friends and coworkers! Read the full instructions on our blog.

Full Interview Transcript

Edited for brevity. Simpsons episode titles added throughout for clarity.

Adam Schoales: Welcome to the show! Matt, thank you so much for joining us and congratulations on the renewal. You guys gave a lot of Simpson fans a bit of a heart attack at the start of the season with the so-called series finale. But we're glad to know that you guys are still gonna be around for at least a few more years.

Matt Selman: Well, thank you for being briefly misled.

Adam: I definitely remember getting the text message from Nate like, “you need to check your phone, something's happening.” And then of course, watching the episode and being like, “Oh, thank goodness.”

Matt: And we sort of hope that if you're watching it, you know, it's the season premiere, you'd think, “well, they're saying it's a finale, but why would they do the premiere as a finale?” That was important to do it as the premiere. If we did it as the season finale that could have—we didn't wanna accidentally manifest the end of the show and put 500 people out of work just to be clever. So that was my worry, but it didn't happen.

Adam: It's funny. Nate and I were both born in 1988, so we're basically the same age of the show, and I've sort of had this ongoing existential crisis that if the show ever ends, does that mean I will also cease to be? So knowing that, at least I got another four years.

Matt: Well, there's no shortage of, “Are all the Simpsons coincidences a window into the simulation?” People like to call them predictions. I call them coincidences

Adam: For sure.

Matt: Matt Groening and I are going to do an animation festival next week, and he's like, “Okay, everyone is gonna ask us about the predictions. If you give your pedantic answer about math and history one more time, I'm gonna kill you.” So I'm gonna bring a wizard’s hat and we're just gonna pull out things and say random stuff and see if they come true. That's what people want! They want a wizard’s hat!

Nate Storring: I mean, I'm a big fan of this writer Jane Jacobs, and she also got accused of predicting things a lot. And what she said was, “I'm just really good at observing the present,” which I think is actually kind of true of The Simpsons as well.

Matt Selman’s Movie Taste

Adam: Well, Matt, people obviously know you as a TV writer and as a producer, but our show is all about discovering movies and movies through the lens of The Simpsons. So what are you like as a movie fan? What are some of your favorite movies and directors?

Matt: I would not call myself a cinephile. I mean, who doesn't like movies? But the job is so exhausting and tiring that my ability to savor the cinematic art form is—I just don't have the bandwidth for it. A terrible way of saying it is, “I have people to watch movies for me.”

I'm one of the common man. I just want a fun movie that's entertaining. I don't want to be super stressed out. I wanna just see something kind of dumb and silly and popcorny. I like the Marvel movies. You know, I like all the things that Gen X dudes my age are supposed to, like Back to the Future, all the super on-the-nose, basic, 53-year-old dude stuff.

Adam: Totally.

Matt: People are like, you’ve gotta see Midsommar. I'm like, no. Tell me a little bit about it. Okay, no.

I don't wanna see kids getting hurt. I don't wanna see families that are sad. I don't wanna worry. We have enough worries! I'm of the like Preston Sturgess, “forget your troubles” school of movie appreciation.

I just saw the last Mission: Impossible. I loved it. I know people picked it apart and said this was wrong, that was wrong. I listened to another podcast, The Ringer has a movie, podcast. They're really smart people. I thought their criticisms were picky and baby-ish and pretentious and ridiculous and embarrassing for those critics.

The degree to which they did not appreciate how hard it is to tell that story. If they didn't like it, great. If they were bored, respect. But having one foot in the movie industry, I know how hard it is to make a story make even just a little bit of sense. And that Mission: Impossible was terrifically fun for me. The set pieces, of course, are the star, but I didn't hate all the other crazy world building nutso stuff either.

Nate: Yeah. It's worth it. Just for those two incredible stunt sequences.

Matt: I mean, I wasn't bored during any of it, and I was only very confused why—did you guys see it?

Nate: Yeah,

Matt: Okay, I do have one question. Maybe you can answer this. Tom Cruise is trying to get technology one into technology two to trick the evil entity into dooming itself, right?

Nate: Right.

Matt: That's his plan. The entity will never expect this. And bad guy runs away with the thing knowing that Tom Cruise wants to give him the thing, why was that? Do you guys understand that?

Adam: Yeah, I mean look, I'm a big Alfred Hitchcock and James Bond fan, and being a fan of those two things have taught me sometimes that shit just doesn't matter. Like you're better off not thinking about it, you know?

Nate: I brought two planes as a backup!

Matt: Yeah, I love that.

Adam: Of course he did!

Matt: A red and a blue. He should have said I brought a yellow one for me and a red one as a backup. I would have no problem with that.

Nate: Yeah, totally worth it.

Matt: I just wanna see Avengers: Endgame or Alien: Romulus. That's the level of stress I could handle. I wanna see Fantastic Four, I wanna see Superman.

People at work saw Friendship. I do wanna see friendship, but I'm not looking forward to Friendship the way I’m looking forward to… Because I know I'm gonna be feeling weird feelings during Friendship. During Fantastic Four, I'm not gonna feel any weird feelings.

Nate: Yeah, totally. You're in good company on this podcast. We both love movies, but I think we're both kind of populists at heart.

Matt: I like Sinners. Sinners wasn't too scary.

Nate: Yeah, Sinners was great!

Movie Parodies & The Simpsons

Nate: Growing up, were there any movies that you first encountered as parodies through Mad Magazine or other pop culture things that then you saw it and you were like, “Wow, oh, that's that thing!”

Matt: Well, definitely Mad Magazine was a big deal. Hold on one second. I'm getting something for you. Visual aid.

[Matt leaves and comes back holding the book Cocktails with George and Martha.]

Matt: I just read this book about the making of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolf?, which is too stressful a movie for me to ever really wanna watch again, but the book was interesting.

The book makes a point about the Mad Magazine breakdown of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? Their take was always like explicitly say the subtext of the movie in a kind of bald way. But that's not a bad thing to do for kids, you know, to do this kind of visual, silly, cartoony Cliff Notes explanation of a movie.

So I think I definitely read a lot of Mad Magazine parodies. Oh my god, I love them. I'm 53, so like The Lord of the Rings by Ralph Bakshi I loved. There was one for The Exorcist that I remember really specifically, and the Superman ones.

It's a shame that doesn't really exist anymore, but I'm sure it fueled the whole first wave of Simpsons writers’ ability and desire to do movie parodies and references on the show.

Adam: Well, it's funny that you bring up Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? because for both Nate and I, our introduction to that play or that movie is The Simpsons parody. Mad Magazine did exist when we were kids, but not really in the same cultural zeitgeist. The Simpsons really was this gateway drug for so many of these classic movies. We have a running tally of these movies that when we finally saw them we're like, “Oh, that's what that Simpsons joke was referencing.”

Matt: With Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolf? on The Simpsons, there are two major references to it, one which is a very pithy exchange in one episode that I can't remember. But in the beginning, The Simpsons had the luxury of doing a short parody because we weren't so deep into creative bankruptcy that we needed to be like, “Oh, we can't just do this as one line, we gotta do this as a whole act.”

Adam: Right, right.

Matt: Then I did a whole episode [“Heartbreak Hotel” (S30E2)] that was like a full-on, four-minute, in-depth, crazy Haskell Wexler cinematography version. But in a way, the first one is more beautiful in that it was just a throwaway reference. I don't remember the context, maybe you guys do.

Nate: We had this running gag where we would go, “Queen of the harpies!” which was the line [from “The War of the Simpsons” (S2E20)].

Adam: And we had no idea! We just thought the line reading was funny. So we would always say it, And then, again, it's this thing of like, “Oh, what we’re actually doing, It's not a Simpsons joke. But that's the beauty of it.

Matt: Your website is really beautiful and elegant. I was just looking at it again and it's also very useful for us. [Matt laughs.]

Nate: Thank you! We appreciate that.

Adam: There you go, Nate, that must be the highest compliment you could get.

Matt: People always say, “Well, do you have that one person in the room who remembers everything so that you can say what you've done?” No, we don't have that person, because it's really hard to think of new things and remember all the old things at the same time.

Luckily, this shows affords a sort of Groundhog Day-style reality. We are always sort of resetting or rebuilding. So obviously we don't want to do the same thing, we don't want to do “queen of the harpies” again. But if something kind of similar does happen, it's collateral damage for whatever passes for originality now.

Nate: This past season you did a pretty in-depth After Hours parody [in “Desperately Seeking Lisa” (S36E3)]. There is an episode in the early days that did an After Hours parody, but it was much more just the vibe of After Hours.

Matt: What was the first one?

Nate: It's “Bart Sells His Soul” (S7E4), the very end of that where he's running around. It's nighttime. He's trying to get uptown from downtown and there's a street cleaner who's kind of maniacal and runs over his bike. But anyway, there's no direct line or scene or anything that it's particularly referencing. It just kind of looks and feels like After Hours.

Matt: That's the metaphor, like I was saying. The old version was just a glancing highlight for people in the know, and now it's like we beat you over the head with it.

Nate: But you know, that episode this season is amazing because I work in New York, I lived in New York for several years, and so seeing all this New York stuff so meticulously recreated, and also that eighties-movie vibe of Soho and the arts world—it's amazing! That era of The Simpsons couldn't have done that in such great detail.

Matt: No, it's true. Being into the 800s now, we are a little bit like Mad Magazine in that like, who else gonna do it? And when we stop doing it, no one gonna do it.

We have a thing coming up, a Jules Feiffer parody, right? No other shows—I'm pretty confident—are gonna do a big animation thing in the style of Jules Feiffer, if you guys know who Jules Feiffer is.

Nate: I don't actually.

Matt: Okay, there you go. He's a cartoonist from the kind of neurotic intellectual sixties and seventies in New York and a writer. He had a cartoon in the Village Voice and he did the illustrations for The Phantom Tollbooth. I think erudite guys, such as yourselves, would recognize his art. But yeah, he's dead. I'm old. It is a fun responsibility to take pieces of culture that really no other show has the freedom and manifest to get deep into and mess around there.

And so Tim Long, the writer-producer of that After Hours show, came to us and was like, “Yeah, I want to do this Lisa After Hours show.” And you can just feel light switches going on in your head, because you're like, “Oh yeah, New York of the eighties in film is such a specific genre of art movies and a few mainstream movies.” So we put in references to Desperately Seeking Susan, and all those terrific Lower East Side artistic filmmakers in that universe that doesn't exist anymore—that magically does exist in Capital City for some reason.

Movie References without the Monoculture

Adam: In the early days of the show, the movie parodies seemed to be relegated to established classics, like The Godfather, Wizard of Oz, Planet of the Apes, these movies that were maybe 20 or 30 years established as “people are gonna get this reference.” As the show has gone on, we've noticed that there's been more of a comfortability doing more recent references. Like for example, I know this past year you guys did Challengers. Is that a conscious decision? Traditionally, was the idea, if we're gonna reference something we need to make sure it's something that is gonna stand the test of time? Are you now more, like you sort of said, you need ideas and Challengers was a cultural moment, let's hop on that?

Matt: Cultural moments are fewer and further between now with the death of the monoculture, right gents?

Adam: Of course.

Matt: Most Americans probably don't know what Challengers is and don't know what that crazy scene is, but enough people did. My daughter was watching that episode and she knew what it was, which was a success.

I wish we had more. I wish the culture generated more even Challengers-level things that would be recognized, that did make an impact on a significant group of people. Those are hard to do—other than Hawk Tuah. I guess we have her forever now. She's our Hannibal Lecter, the icon that we can reference for a generation. It will always be meaningful.

I wanted to do something also—and I haven't ruled this out yet—from Saltburn, another indie movie, but there was some crazy stuff in there. If you had someone pleasuring themselves to a pile of dirt in a different context that could be… you know what I mean?

I try to encourage the writers to, if you go see a movie or watch a TV show over the weekend and something pops out as a cultural moment, just put it on a card and we'll put the card on a board. Probably it won't be in the show, but it could be.

We have a board full of things just called “sillies,” which I like ‘cause it's a very childlike name for the thing. It’ll just be a dumb joke, like one we haven't used yet is a mix up between an X-wing and a sex swing. Like Comic Book Guy receives a sex swing in the mail and someone, Moe or whatever, gets a life-sized X-wing fighter, right? I don't know where it fits. Who knows? Just put it on the board. It's silly.

Nate: Oh man, I hope that one finds a home. That's pretty good!

Adam: Yeah, that's really good!

Matt: I'm sure if we Googled, Twittered that or whatever, it probably exists in comedy somewhere also. The words are too similar for people not to have already thought of it. But who cares?

I wish we would be so ahead on the job that Monday morning all the writers would come in and I'd be like, “Okay, let's just take the morning and put cards on the board from stuff that we've absorbed in our cultural downtime,” like you guys are saying, but we don't have as much of a production cushion. We're always right up against the gun. So there’s no luxury of like, is there a moment from Friendship that would be good?

We did an episode this year… I watched The Banshees of Inisherin on a plane. That was stressful, but I did like it. That's a good one, ‘cause as soon as he brings up cutting off the fingers, it's an interesting dramatic technique for the writer-director to say like, “I'm gonna bring up something so horrible, you're gonna be praying this doesn't happen for the rest of your experience of the movie”—yet knowing it is going to happen. Having a mental dialogue with yourself of like, “Oh, come on, please don't let this be the thing in the movie,” but of course it's a movie, so why would they say it if they weren't gonna do it? Make that your worry cycle. And then, he did it, which is insane.

Nate: It is insane.

Matt: It is a big move. We didn't do the cutting off the fingers or the fingers choking the horse, but [in “Flandshees of Innersimpson” (S36E12)] we did put the Mrs. McCormick character in as a prophetic Irish witch lady to kind of amp up the drama of Ned saying he's not gonna talk to Homer ever again.

Nate: What is it about those recent movies that makes you want to put a card on the board?Because Banshees of Inisherin is probably even less recognizable to lots of people than say Challengers, but for the people who have seen it, it’s a great callback.

Matt: I don’t know. I just try to remember to always be thinking when I see a movie, is this a card? When I saw Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, no card really jumped out. I mean those set pieces are terrific, but nothing. I mean, we obviously could end a show with two planes or whatever, but for some reason it didn't pop out.

There's another one coming up that I can't really talk about, but another indie movie influence that will certainly be prominently part of the Simpsons culture moving forward. That's a little teaser for your audience.

Adam: There you go. That’s a scoop.

Matt: That's the fingers cut off for your people. Worry about this horrible thing happening.

Nate: Right, it's gonna choke a horse.

Has Prestige TV Replaced Movies?

Adam: This season you had a White Lotus parody. Television has become so much more of a—with prestige television, anyway—more of a cultural moment. Do you think that in some ways TV has replaced movies as the prime parody generator?

Matt: It's an interesting question. In a way, the white-hot audience enthusiasm for the shows that really pop these days is probably a little deeper than that of movies. Especially White Lotus that's released weekly. I'm a huge admirer of Mike White and the way he can build tension and watching that season, I really loved it. I was completely bouncing off the walls, screaming at the television. You can't do in a movie theater…

You can, actually.

Adam: Yeah, you might get kicked out.

Nate: Not these days!

Matt: We actually have one coming up, it's a combo of TV and movies—here's a little breaking-ish news. A Ripley the show and Ripley the movie full-length, black-and-white episode. Our terrific writer-producer Cesar Mazariegos did that.

If the movie industry exists or screenwriting exists as a career—not sure about those things—what I would say to people who want to learn how to adapt a book into a movie is read the book The Talented Mr. Ripley, and then watch the Matt Damon movie, and see how they kept the spirit of it alive. They kept the main plot and story, but they simplified and enhanced and, more importantly, crafted a much more tragic, cinematic ending than the book had. Rewatching the Ripley movie recently, I was really impressed how they created new characters and raised the stakes and brought in new relationships to create an ending that really felt like the whole thing is of a tragic piece.

I was prepared not to like the show ‘cause everyone was like old and ugly and creepy, but now I think the show was actually smart to go a different direction, and not try to like out-fabulous the movie. The movie is pretty fabulous. And I thought that was also masterfully executed by a different terrific set of filmmakers.

So anyway, Cesar threw himself full into a super Ripley mega-parody. There's definitely some transgressive behavior by Homer in that one.

Nate: I can imagine. I love that movie, so I'm really looking forward to that one. I haven't watched the show yet, actually.

Adam: Oh, Nate, you gotta watch the show. The show is pretty good.

Matt: At first I'm like, why is it so ugly? Why is it so gross? And then I realized that Steve Zaillian is just so good. He knows what he's doing. The comedy in it is really funny, and it's like, if a dramatist does his work well, it's a gift to us as vampires to keep ourselves alive, to suck their blood, you know?

And yeah, I knew if I said, “Cesar, do Ripley,” he would go crazy and he did. It's really cool. But that probably won't even air until 2026 sometime because that's one of our Disney+ exclusives. And so we said, if we have a show that's sort of a straight big parody of a streaming show, we'll put that exclusively on streaming as sort of a streaming on streaming connection there.

Breaking The Simpsons Format & Canon

Nate: You mentioned that there's a bit more of a drive with the parodies these days to go a little bigger, a little longer, more complete. But I feel like even when we look back at your early writing credits on the show, it seems like that's always been something you've been kind of interested in.

Matt: I know, I'm a giant hack.

Adam: I wouldn’t say that.

Nate: I would frame it as, you've always seemed to be interested in breaking the format of the show.

Matt: I'm greedy for more. So instead of doing one clever little thing, I'm like, no, let's savor it.

We did “Trilogy of Error” (S12E18), right? That was the great writer John August’s idea for the movie Go (1999). I remember seeing that and pinning the card in my brain that, like, that structure would make a really good Simpsons episode. And that was really fun to figure that out. It's a Simpsons episode based on the movie Go, which is three acts, each act resetting at the top of a common plot event and then going in three different directions. So a story, then a reset, then another reset, and they all come back at the end. And they intertwine and interact and play off each other, but in our version there's so much interaction and things that don't make sense in act one and then make sense in act two or act three. It was a lot of work to figure that out.

Adam: When it aired, I just remember thinking, “This is such a cool structure.” I was probably 11 or 12, so didn't really understand. I certainly didn't realize it was a Go reference, but just that The Simpsons was doing something different with it's storytelling, and admiring that. And then as you become older and you start to appreciate these things, you don't think of it as just a cartoon.

It also has a line that me and my sister to this day still quote at each other, which is when Lisa's trying to convince Homer to get out of the kitchen, and she says something to the effect of, “Dad, do you want to go upstairs and see my science project?” And he says, “No, but I sure don't wanna eat this crappy breakfast.” And we would quote that to each other whenever my mom made us something we didn't really like.

Nate: Ooh.

Adam: So yeah, that episode, it's got a lot of love in the Schoales household, that's for sure.

Matt: That's fantastic.

Nate: That passion for structural creativity—can you trace that back to something for you? Or is that just always been something you've been attracted to?

Matt: I dunno, maybe I'm just not good at doing regular stories, not good at human emotions and people.

I was doing notes on a Simpson animatic last night, and then I kind of got distracted and I went to Disney+ and I watched “Homer the Smithers” (S7E17), which I hadn't seen for a long time. It's really funny. Great episode. It really does a good job of like, you're feeling what the characters are feeling in a nice way throughout. As writers, we all wanna be able to do that, but if we can't, why not parody something? [Matt laughs.]

No, we can. We can do emotions, but at this point—I think I've said this a million times—if we're not doing stuff that's slightly bonkers and our version of experimental, it's a wasted opportunity.

Adam: For Nate and I, we adore the episodes that kind of break the show. You know, famously, the Armin Tamzarian episode that fans were in an uproar over by finding out that Principal Skinner isn't really Principal Skinner. But I'm curious, do you think now that the show has been on for so long that you guys are a little more comfortable breaking the show that way because you know that it doesn't really matter?

Matt: Yeah, I mean, we intentionally put that Tamzarian reference in “Bart's Birthday” (S36E1), the fake finale. That was a provocative gesture on our part to enrage people. I remember watching that episode as a super fan with Tamzarian and I didn't feel that betrayed at the time.

Nate: Neither did we! I mean, we were younger when we saw it, and we loved it at that point. But I think there was just a certain group of people who were very online who got really annoyed by it, for whatever reason. But I thought it was a meta-joke about the way the show works, and we liked that.

Matt: It was also just like, was the supposed backstory of Bart's principal that important to you? And, I mean, he still was in Vietnam. Here's a question: Was Skinner in Vietnam now?

Nate: Right, exactly.

Matt: Was he? I literally have no idea. Someone tell me. Maybe he was in the Second Gulf War. I don't know. I mean, we all know that the Simpsons live in a warped, existential, crazy, paradoxical, time-bending contradiction of reality.

Adam: Do you worry about that sort of thing? Do you worry about the Comic Book Guys out there that will be like, “um, actually,” or do you just try and tell the best story?

Matt: No, I mean, if anyone has a strong reaction to anything… Apathy is the worst reaction, or just turning off the show. You know, I'm sure plenty of Comic Book Guys have turned off the show, but the ones that continue to be angry about whether or not one piece of canon was sticky or not, that's a form of enjoyment for them, I suppose.

Nate: For sure. That's the way they engage with the show.

Matt: I mean there really have been a lot of episodes, also.

Nate: Right, how can you even keep track of all the canon?

Matt: Right, and again, if we did have that person in the room saying, “You did this, you did that,” we'd be mad at them all the time, although obviously we do say that sometimes. I bet if we hired an outside consultant to send them the script and say, “Did we do any of this, and is it really embarrassing?” that actually would be useful. I'm sure there's no one on the internet who wants that job.

Nate: Yeah, don't wish that into the world!

Matt: How much do I have to pay you to do it?

Matt: Here's another upcoming cinematic thing we have: One thing we always made fun of a lot and now we're doing again, is how The Godfather is overdone. The moments from The Godfather, like the horse head, The Simpsons did it beautifully and I think they did it like six other times. And The Godfather tropes are so clichéd.

Having said that, we have a giant The Godfather Part II (1974) episode coming up that is a back and forth, present and past, about the Quimby family saga.

Nate: Ooh, that’s exciting!

Matt: It's a good story. If you're upset about Skinner's backstory, think how much more upset you’ll be when you learn about Quimby's father's backstory!

Nate: Hah! That makes me even more excited.

Matt: There's a scene in The Godfather Part II, where young Vito Corleone, played by Robert De Niro, kills someone and then disassembles the gun and throws the parts away. The perfect crime, right? We do a similar thing where someone chokes someone with a sandwich and then throws the sandwich components apart carefully, which I think is funny and Godfather-y.

Adam: That's brilliant.

Nate: And you know, the structure of Godfather Part II, in the early days of The Simpsons is not actually parodied. There's some of the flashback stuff, but not the parallel stories thing.

Matt: No, no, this is the all in.

The Curran-Payne Movie Classic

Nate: I did have a behind-the-scenes question, which is about the Curran-Payne Movie Classic. Could you explain briefly to our audience what that is? I'm obsessed with it.

Matt: Okay, so in 2009 we decided we would do a version of fantasy sports in which the players being auctioned off to have a slate were the movies coming out that summer.

So we would have a fantasy auction, and instead of Tyreek Hill coming up and how much we would pay for him, that year it was like, Transformers. So someone would have Transformers two and someone would have The Hangover and someone would have Lilo & Stitch. At the end of the auction, everyone has three or four movies that are their movies for the summer. And their fantasy points are how much money that movie makes.

It's terrific for all offices. If any office wants us to help them do it, I'm sure we have a template or we can explain it. Other TV shows have done it and it's just a fun staff building thing, ‘cause then you're excited about the summer movies. I've never won, but now at this point, I just go in and spend all my money as fast as I can and leave because it’s too stressful.

Nate: Is the auction a live auction or a silent auction? How's that work?

Matt: It's a live auction. This wonderful writer-director who used to work on the show, Eliza Hooper, comes back every year and pulls the ping pong balls out of the hopper. And the big movies you have to split up into chunks. So it'll be like half of Fantastic Four. The three I have this year, which I don't think I'm gonna win, are Smurfs—all of Smurfs—all of the Bob Odenkirk revenge movie, Nobody. And I have a third one I can't remember.

Nate: Who do you think is gonna win? Who has the best roster?

Matt: Well, someone has two-thirds of Lilo & Stitch. That might do it.

Adam: Yeah.

Matt: And you get a banner. It used to be called “The Simpsons Movie Classic” or something, but now, every time one of our writers dies, we add their name to the thing, so eventually it's gonna have like 10 names.

Nate: It's such a fun idea, and I feel like now that idea of movie drafts has picked up. I think The Ringer has a movie draft, but 2009’s pretty early.

Matt: Yeah, and I've never seen anyone do it exactly the way we do it. Matthew Berry, a big former comedy writer and current NFL fantasy guru, he even had a website that did a version of it, and there's lots of versions of it where you pick the movies you think are gonna be the most successful. But the one where only one person can own each chunk or each movie is interesting. It's just a super fun night of staff building. You get crazy food and arguments about whether people can give people advice or not.

Food in the Writers Room

Adam: You mentioned crazy food and I feel like I'd be remiss not to bring this up because we spoke to Bill Oakley last year, and unsurprisingly, we talked a lot about food.

Matt: Bill, a lovely man. In no way is he “the Gordon Ramsay of fast food.”

Adam: Shots fired!

Matt: Gordon Ramsay is an angry, rageaholic reality-show manipulator, who is also a cook and a chef and a restaurateur. Bill is a lover of snacks and fast food and dips and chips. He is the Roger Ebert of fast food.

Adam: Ah, there you go.

Matt: He’s a charming person who is super smart and loves his art form, which is those foods.

Nate: I love that. He should put that on his website.

Matt: I don't mean that as a bigness related thing. Purely his sense of humor and his intellect.

Adam: Yes, of course. But what are you guys eating these days in the room? Have you transitioned to health food?

Matt: I try to eat super healthy. I love Goop Kitchen. I know people make fun of the Paltrow empire. That is the perfectly engineered, healthy takeout food. I dunno if you have that in Toronto and New Jersey. But Gwyneth Paltrow has salmon, vegetable, gluten-free bento boxes and salads and wraps that are unbelievably satisfying taste wise and filled-up wise, but also pretty healthy, you know, protein, macros, all that stuff.

Nate: Yeah, we have a lot of the bowl places where you can get your grains and your proteins and your greens and all of that. It sounds kind of in that vein.

Matt: Right, I love Tender Greens. I don't know, what are the global chains? There's a place called Moon Bowls that I really like. Sweetgreen, like any of the protein, veg-forward foods. ‘Cause like even a sandwich can really take you out for the afternoon.

Adam: Totally. I worked in TV for a while as an editor and I will say, whenever production was buying lunch, you kind of wanted to ball out, because you're like, “Oh, I'm not paying for my lunch today.” But I would very frequently make the mistake of ordering the wrong thing and then being completely useless for the rest of my day.

Matt: Yeah, the devil's bargain. Also, most foods are best in the restaurant. Arguably, take out food from a great restaurant is worse than hot food from a regular, okay restaurant. Hot food, really good. And so just get the things that travel, don't look to satisfy your greediest urges at work. Make those a treat for after work and then go nuts.

Nate: Good advice.

Season 36 Movie Reference Lightning Round

Nate: So we're coming up on time, but I did want to do a real test of your memory here.

Matt: Oh, no.

Nate: Sorry, Matt.

Matt: Can I say one other lame thing about Gordon Ramsay and movie tropes?

Nate: Please!

Matt: So actually one of the cool things about the new Mission: Impossible, I thought, is that they bring back the day player from the first Mission: Impossible, this guy whose life was ruined.

That's actually a very Simpsons-y idea, right? No one is really give that movie points for that! I am, at least. That's a very Simpsons idea, that this nerd who doesn't know how Tom Cruise stole his data was banished to Alaska or wherever—Saint Nowhere Island—and then has this big romance with a native Inuit lady and saves the world.

But Mission: Impossible had that iconic Tom Cruise floating around set piece. Again, it's harder for regular movies to generate those iconic things anymore because the monoculture doesn't exist. Maybe also movies just haven't been up to the task. But I did see a poster the other day for a new Gordon Ramsay cooking reality show where he's in the stupid Tom Cruise harness floating above the stove or something.

Nate: God help us.

Matt: That still has resonance somehow! People making that poster made Gordon Ramsay—or AI Gordon Ramsay—sit in a harness to sell that. I don't know that the show is called “Kitchen: Impossible,” but I bet it is. To their credit, I mean, if the show is called Kitchen: Impossible, you do stuff from Mission Impossible, but that’s like, what, 25 years old?

Adam: Yeah, it's 30 at this point.

Matt: Come on, movies and audiences create more iconic Hannibal Lecter, “wow” moments and let us feed off of you!

Nate: Yeah, they should have had Gordon Ramsay climbing the Burj Khalifa at least. It’s been a long time.

Adam: Yeah, that's also the Mission: Impossible movie that most people don't even remember because it's a weird Brian De Palma thriller. I mean, I love it, but I love it because it's a weird Brian De Palma thriller.

Nate: Yeah, it feels like the outlier in the series now, weirdly.

Anyway, I would love to do a lightning round of movie references from season 36. Obviously, we don't have commentaries anymore, so it's a little harder sometimes to pick up on some of those little references throughout the series.

Matt: It’s less fun to go on social media too, and explain this stuff.

Nate: Totally. Much more fun to be in a room with people.

Matt: Although we might have a new venue for that sort of thing coming up. That's a little teaser.

Nate: That's very, very exciting! Adam and I grew up on the commentary, so that would be amazing.

Matt: We might have a system that you would not be shocked by the words that would allow us to deliver reference backstory—a reference backstory vehicle, not unlike the thing we're on right now.

Nate: Yeah, that makes sense! So basically, I'm gonna try to read out a couple references I think I spotted while watching, and you can say, “yes,” “no,” or “pass,” to confirm, deny, or be like, I have no idea.

Okay, “Desperately Seeking Lisa” (S36E3): When Julian refers to the Upper East Side as “the Forbidden Zone,” is this a reference to Planet of the Apes?

Matt: I mean, only in as much as “the Forbidden Zone” has become part of how people talk. I don't think he's thinking about the apes, but if that's where that comes from in our cultural dialogue, then that's where that would've happened.

Nate: Right, it's now part of the general fund of pop culture. Fair enough. Same episode—this is a real deep cut—the original ending of After Hours actually has Paul escaping in a hot air balloon.

Matt: No!

Nate: Yes!

Adam: Judging by your reaction, I think I know the answer here, Nate.

Nate: So I was curious if there was any influence. They moved away from that, but that was one of the possible endings when they were trying to figure it out.

Matt: Golly gee. Now I really wanna ask Tim Long if he knew that.

Nate: Either way. I mean, it is actually pretty different. The float is a fantastic ending.

Matt: Maybe, that's a maybe.

Nate: Okay, “Treehouse of Horror XXXV” (S36E5): Is the style of the segment “The Fall of the House of Monty” a parody of a movie? It seems kind of in the vein of Guillermo Del Toro or Roger Corman movies.

Matt: There were these horror movies called the Hammer Films. We were trying to emulate those. And also a little bit of Roger Corman, like those kind of corny Vincent Price “mad man in a mansion” kind of movies. You know, it's a simple kind of a haunting—cheapo but also highly melodramatic and often very bloody. We weren't that bloody. We put a film treatment onto it.

Again, I apologize to your cinephile fans that I don't have an encyclopedic memory of those things, but like, it was definitely a love letter to that genre of like the crazy madman, where the whole movie is him getting his just desserts.

Nate: Yeah, totally. I just started rewatching those Roger Corman Edgar Allen Poe movies. They're a hell of a lot of fun.

Matt: I think the Raven is in there somewhere.

Nate: Yeah, they did do a Raven one. It's pretty adapted because, you know, it's just a poem. But—

Matt: No, I mean, I think we put the Bart Raven in that segment.

Nate: Oh, cool! Yes, I think I did see that.

Matt: Yeah, I think we did a little self Easter egg. See, The Simpsons is so old now we can just do parodies of ourselves.

Adam: Yeah, exactly.

Nate: “Denim”—amazing segment. I'm a huge fan of stop motion, so that was really exciting. On that note, is the way the pants move at all inspired by Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers?

Matt: That's another fantastic question. The Stoopid Buddies Stoodios guys, who are the animation stop-motion house that did that—I don't know that they did or did not. We did not say that. But of course, now that you say it, it seems so obvious. Of course, this is a version of The Wrong Trousers, right?

Nate: There's a moment where Marge is in the pants and she walks up the wall that looks a lot like The Wrong Trousers.

Matt: Interesting. I'm gonna say “yes.” If it's not true, we're morons.

Nate: Also in “Denim”: The part where there's a lightning flash in an alleyway, and then the pants appear. That's gotta be The Terminator, right?

Matt: Yes, our old friend The Terminator.

Nate: Yay! Yeah, that was a great one.

Matt: Although originally when those pants unzipped, the first version of it was, “This is like a visit to the OBGYN.” We had to kind of tone it down with the incidental sci-fi pap smear.

Nate: “Simpson Wicked This Way Comes” (S36E7): Any movie inspiration for the vibe of that?It's such an evocative episode.

Matt: Well, it's all Ray Bradbury stories, and all three of those stories have been made into movies and shows, like [“The Screaming Woman”] short story where the woman was buried alive.

The middle one with the building the robots of yourself, I don't know if that was ever filmed, but you know, they did anthology shows about Ray Bradbury short stories, so who knows?

And then, of course, Fahrenheit 451 has been made into bunches of things. And the kind of like dystopian stark Bauhaus cultural oppression future that that one warned us about—it was more just a kind of a genre of like messed-up, fascist dystopias. We thought it was original that it was all based on numbing you with good, intellectual things, as opposed to garbage. You know, the structure of that—the guy who realizes the system he's a part of is bullshit and then goes on the run and, of course, he thinks he's reached the promised land, but has led the bad guys there and everything is destroyed—is pretty familiar sci-fi, end-of-the-world storytelling for six minutes.

Nate: Yeah, definitely. I mean there are so many sci-fi movies that use that kind of language, in terms of like the brutalist architecture and all of that. I'm gonna do a couple more.

Matt: Oh, I'm impressed! Thank you for watching season 36!

Nate: Oh yeah, it was a great watch! This is actually one of my favorite episodes, “P.S. I Hate You” (S36E14). You were talking a little bit about emotionality. That one really hit me in terms of just connecting back to the characters.

So there's a moment where Marge goes to Patty and Selma and asks for help. There's a shot right at the beginning of that scene—it’s a dark background and Marge and it's zooming out a little bit—is that a parody of the opening of The Godfather?

Matt: I don't know exactly what in The Godfather, but it's definitely a Godfather reference, because you're misleading that it's Fat Tony, right? You think she's asking Fat Tony for help, and of course, then it's Patty and Selma at an Italian restaurant. So yeah, we were trying to build up big Godfather energy there.

Nate: Got it. It looks a lot like the very beginning, the “I believe in America” moment.

Matt: Yeah, I'm sure we were doing that.

The parody we always make fun of as the lamest Simpsons parody in the world, which I guess it is also a movie, would be “Simpsons Christmas Carol.” It’s so obvious. Burns is Scrooge and Homer is Bob Cratchit and Bart and/or Lisa are Tiny Tim and Moe is whatever, Jacob Marley. You know, it's so f*cking obvious, just mashup brain candy, that… I'm not saying we're never gonna do it because people would love it, but it's definitely the laziest, most obvious thing we can make fun of.

Nate: Right, maybe needs a twist or something to put it over the top.

Matt: Please, please, If that happens, excoriate us.

Nate: I have to ask, “Abe League of their Moe” (S36E15)—man, that one's hard say.

Matt: Best title ever.

Nate: There's a great gag in the episode where Grampa says that he and Moe are a great team like Martin and Lewis, and then you have Martin Prince and Louis Clark going by.

Matt: Horrible, it's horrible!

Nate: So obviously, it's a play on Martin and Lewis, famous comedy team, but are the names of Martin and Lewis the characters originally from Martin and Lewis? Do you know?

Matt: I don't think so. I could ask Matt Groening, but I think it was just something that was floating in the ether for us to just take, that these two characters happen to have the same names. That's possible.

Nate: Yeah, I think I noticed that a little while before you made that joke, and then when you made it, I was like, oh, maybe it is a thing! We did, The Nutty Professor (1963) on the podcast a long while ago, and so we were looking at the history of Martin and Lewis and all of that. Anyway, it’s a great gag, one way or the other.

Matt: Very sweet, sweet that their friends.

Matt Selman’s North Star Episode

Adam: Before we go, Matt, we have a running gag on our show that basically every time we cover an episode, I end up being like, “This is one of my top 10 favorite episodes,” and we're now like 50 episodes in. So clearly that 10 is loosey goosey, but I wonder, do you have an episode that you think of as a “North Star” that represents the very best of the show?

Matt: I don't know, that's so hard.

Adam: I know you've got a lot to choose from!

Matt: There's a lot, and the ones that you worked on, you have a weird creator relationship with where you see the flaws. You've seen it a thousand times and you can't really appreciate it as a fan. Can I just say an episode I like a lot that I happen to have written, but that's not why it's good or bad?

No one would ever put this on their list of anything, but I think it hits a lot of the notes that I personally like, very silly, movie parody, a little bit of light amateur philosophy, which I always like, about religion or the afterlife or faith, and big scenes of rationalization. I always think it's funny when characters rationalize doing something.

The episode is called—I know your viewers are hanging onto their dog, they're walking their dog right now, and they just can't. What is he gonna say? What's he gonna say? Hold on, they grab the dog, I need to hear this big reveal!

It's a show called “Sky Police” (S26E16). It's a parody of the card-counting movie with Kevin Spacey—sorry, everybody—I can't remember the name of, 21 (2008), I think?

It has a big, righteous speech about how card counting should be legal if you're good enough to do it. If you're actually good at beating the system using your brain, change the system, don't kick those people out of the casino. It also has Marge talking about what religion means to her, and what is God—is he up there controlling you, or is he just something that's kind of a source of beauty in the world? And has crazy Chief Wiggum with a jet pack. So I don't know, it’s a special episode to me that hits a lot of the creative things that I like, and it has a movie parody, of course.

Adam: Well, there you go. Maybe we'll have to cover it on the show and you can come back and give us all the behind the scenes.

Matt: It also also teaches you. It has actual information that shows you how card counting works.

Adam: Well, there you go. You laugh and you learn. That’s the best of The Simpsons, when both of those things happen.

Nate: Edutainment!

Wrap-Up

Adam: Well, Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. This was so fun.

Nate: Yeah, thank you so much.

Matt: This was great. Thank you guys for your loving website and podcast. We should use it more.

Nate: You ever wanna look something up? You can always do the search. Obviously, everyone should go and watch The Simpsons season 36. It's all on Hulu and Disney+. And, of course, people should stay tuned for the next four season.

Matt: There's a new thing on Disney+ that they did for us called The Simpsons Non-Stop Streams. So if you have a certain type of Disney+ membership, there's like a super Simpsons page, and it's kind of like what we used to call a TV channel in that, it is just constantly showing Simpsons episodes. You don't get to pick, you just click it on and see what happens to be on TV.

Right now, it's just showing the whole series all the way through on loop, but we're gonna start messing with that. The next one we're gonna do is just all Homer episodes—the Homerpalooza Stream. So anytime you want, you can go to Disney+ and I don't know what order they'll be in, but it'll be only the 300 Homer episodes, or however many it is.

Nate: That's awesome. Yeah, it's great to have that stream back, just the kind of randomness of discovery that gets lost a little bit with streaming.

Adam: Unfortunately, it's not on Canadian Disney+, and I'm so incredibly jealous because that's how I grew up watching.

Matt: Why is it not on Canadian Disney+?

Adam: Everything's different up here.

Matt: I'll ask about that.

Adam: Maybe it's a licensing thing, I don't know. But I would love to have it because Nate and I grew up in that era where up here in Canada there were multiple TV stations that ran back-to-back Simpsons. So you could sit for a nice four-hour block, and get a random melange of Simpsons episodes, and that's my favorite way to watch the show.

Matt: Right, that is good, and perfect for second and third screening also.

Nate: Hell yeah.