Category: The Simpsons

Simpsons-Related Dear Abby Column Pulled
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Somewhere in Springfield, state unknown, Bart Simpson is in detention, filling a chalkboard with the words “I will not write a fake letter to Dear Abby.”
Well, it probably wasn’t Bart’s handiwork, but he’d no doubt approve of the prank that forced Dear Abby’s editors to pull next Monday’s advice column, which included a letter that mirrored an episode of “The Simpsons.”
“It did sound too similar not to be a hoax,” said Kathie Kerr, a spokeswoman for Kansas City-based Universal Press Syndicate.
The syndicate sent the column to newspaper subscribers last week. A day later, a newspaper editor called after noticing one of the letters to Abby sounded “awfully familiar,” said Sue Roush, one of the column’s editors.
The column is titled “Wife meets perfect match after husband strikes out.” In the letter, the writer describes herself as a 34-year-old mother of three who has been married for 10 years to a man who is “greedy, selfish, inconsiderate and rude.”
The writer says her husband, Gene, gave her a bowling ball for her birthday ó complete with the holes drilled to fit his fingers and embossed with his name. Undeterred, the woman decides to learn to bowl and heads to the local lanes, where she meets another man, Franco, who is “kind, considerate and loving.”
They fall in love and Franco proposes.
“I no longer love Gene,” writes Stuck in a Love Triangle. “I want to divorce him and marry Franco. At the same time, I’m worried that Gene won’t be able to move on with his life. I also think our kids would be devastated. What should I do?”
After the letter raised the suspicions of the newspaper editor, Universal Press Syndicate did some research and discovered that Gene seemed a lot like Homer Simpson’s thoughtless character in an episode titled “Life on the Fast Lane.”
In both the letter and the Simpsons episode, the husbands grow suspicious when they stumble across bowling gloves ó obvious gifts to their wives from the other man.
In the television show, Homer responds by ineptly professing his love for Marge, who later goes to him at the nuclear power plant where he works. He lifts her up and carries her out of the plant as his co-workers watch and cheer.
“Obviously, it has no basis in reality,” said Fox Network spokesman Scott Grogin.
Jeanne Phillips, who writes Dear Abby, told “Stuck” to tell her husband why she strayed. “To save the marriage,” she wrote, “he might be willing to change back to the man who bowled you over in the first place.”
Phillips was traveling and her editors told The Associated Press she could not immediately be reached for comment.

TV hit “The Simpsons” heads to the big screen — Doh!
LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Homer, Bart and the zany cast of the hit animated television series “The Simpsons” could finally become Hollywood stars, with plans for a big-screen version of their antics in the offing.
The industry press said Wednesday the creators of the show, now in its 15th year and poised to become the longest-running sitcom in US history next year, were working on a “Simpsons” feature film for Twentieth Century Fox studios.
Writers and creators Matt Groening and James Brooks are leading a team of writers in developing a full-length screenplay, while the studio has already hired key writers, Daily Variety said.
Twentieth Century Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox television channel runs the “Simpsons” series, said it was “very excited about the possibility of making a ‘Simpsons’ movie.”
“However, we are in the very early stages of developing an idea for the movie,” said the studio’s animation chief, Chris Meledandri.
Variety said that at least seven past and present writers of “The Simpsons” were involved in the movie.
Plans for a big-screen feature version of the globally syndicated “Simpsons” have been talked about in Hollywood for more than a decade, but Groening and his team have been very careful about over-exploiting the super-successful franchise, Variety said.
One of the show’s writers, Mike Reiss, told DVDFanatic.com that the final impetus for launching the world’s most famous animated dysfunctional family onto the silver screen came from the studio.
“They’ve wanted to do this since season two. It’s been 13 years of wanting to do the ‘Simpsons’ movie,” Reiss said.
“Finally Fox said, ‘Let’s just do it!’ We never had the greatest idea that was compelling, but Fox said, ‘Maybe if we start paying you, you’ll get inspired.’ And sure enough, it worked!”
Variety said no release schedule had yet been set for the planned movie but that it was likely to be at least two years before it enters movie theatres.
The show and its characters — who include dad Homer, the mischievous Bart, his sisters Lisa and Maggie and their mother, Marge — have generated pithy comedy while also tackling or pillorying sensitive social or political issues.
Its more than 300 episodes have frequently caused outrage, including one infamous episode portraying adoption and poverty in Brazil that prompted a protest from the city of Rio de Janeiro, which threatened to sue.
Former US vice president Dan Quayle was mercilessly ribbed by Groening and his team — in the guise of Bart — in 1992, after he notoriously misspelled the world “potato” during a visit to an elementary school.
Other barbs have included cultural and religious jabs, political jibes, pokes at industrialists and rampant capitalism, swipes at top sports personalities and more than the occasional attack on the French, who were dubbed “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” by one of the show’s characters.

Groening: Fox News Threatened to Sue ‘Simpsons’
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) – Over its 14-year history, “The Simpsons” has taken almost as many shots at its network, FOX, as Bart has at Springfield bartender Moe Szyslak through his prank calls.
However, Fox News Channel — which is part of the same News Corp. empire that owns FOX — apparently got a little touchy about an episode of the show that aired last season.
In an interview on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” last week, “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening said Fox News threatened to sue “The Simpsons” for using a fake news crawl with the Fox News logo in an episode that aired in March. The episode, titled “Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington,” involved Krusty the Clown running for Congress.
“We called their bluff because we didn’t think [News Corp. CEO] Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself,” Groening says in the interview. “We got away with it, but now FOX has a new rule that we can’t do those little fake news crawls in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it’s real news.”
Fox News says it never threatened to sue the show, according to several news reports.
The fake crawl took some jabs at Fox News’ right-leaning reputation, reading in part: “Rupert Murdoch: Terrific dancer … Dow down 5000 points … Study: 92 per cent of Democrats are gay … JFK posthumously joins Republican Party … Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple. …”
“The Simpsons” begins its 15th season Sunday (Nov. 2) with the annual “Treehouse of Horror” episode.

Mmm…Ringtones: Vodafone Inks ‘Simpsons’ Deal
LONDON (Reuters) – There was nary a “d’oh!” heard from mobile phone-using fans of “The Simpsons” on Tuesday, as Vodafone signed a deal to offer ringtones, games and other content from the show.
In a move that would likely be met with a murmured “excellent” from the show’s evil millionaire Mr. Burns, the world’s largest mobile phone company by sales inked an agreement with mobile content firm THQ Wireless and Twentieth Century Fox, the show’s owner.
Terms of the exclusive deal to offer “Simpsons” content to Vodafone customers in Europe, Australia and New Zealand were not disclosed.
The satirical tale of the yellow-skinned Simpson family and their neighbors in the fictional town of Springfield is set to become the longest-running sitcom in U.S. prime-time history this year.
Fox was not immediately available to comment on whether a ringtone of Burns answering the phone with the archaic greeting “Hoy hoy” — the preferred salutation of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell — would be offered.