Interview: 'The Simpsons' Executive Producer Al Jean On the Landmark 500th Episode
It only took two decades, but this Sunday, The Simpsons is finally reaching its groundbreaking 500th episode with "At Long Last, Leave." To commemorate the occasion, we spoke with one of the people instrumental to the success of the series Al Jean, who's worn several hats over the years behind-the-scenes at the show, but his most vital post has been as executive producer for a better part of the series' run.
Mr. Jean talked to MTV Geek by phone earlier this week about the show as cultural institution, keeping up with the times, and how Lady Gaga fits into the mix for the current season.
MTV Geek: To start with the obvious, what’s it like reaching 500 episodes?
Al Jean: Surreal. I mean, when you do a TV series, you hope to get a year and if you’re a hit, four or five years. If you’re a big hit, 10 years. So I’m amazed and delighted.
Geek: Do you feel like you have a sense of what kind of cultural impact the show has had? Or maybe how it reflects on the rest of TV?
Jean: Well, it’s impossible for me to be objective. I certainly think there’s a style of the show—we’ve been influenced by things like Saturday Night Live, SCTV, and Monty Python, and I think we’ve turned that influence into shows not just like Family Guy, but 30 Rock where’s there’s a much faster pace, more information. The sort of slow, three-camera sitcom has certainly changed and I think that’s partly due to us and not just animation which was clearly given a jumpstart by The Simpsons on TV and The Little Mermaid in features back in 1989.
Geek: How do you think that’s affected the writer’s room? I have to imagine many of the young writers on the staff now grew up watching the show.
Jean: Yeah, there’s a few—either they watched it in college or maybe when they were younger. But if you sit there saying “Let us do some comedy for a cultural institution,” then you should just retire because it’s not going to be funny. What you want to do is do funny stories and make people laugh about a family that feels real emotions. And that’s what we’ve been doing since the beginning and that’s what we’re still trying to do.
Geek: After 500 episodes, you’ve made so many types of episodes across styles and using different types of technologies, with just a vast array of guests. Is there still a dream episode of The Simpsons you’d still like to make?
Jean: Well, we don’t know what we’re doing until we think of the idea—we really love doing the current episode. I think that there’s some coming up this season that I really, really love. The show attracts people to it that have really great ideas, you get really great guest stars in something that you think will be around forever and that’s just wonderful.
Geek: Can you tell us a little about what else you have coming up in the show this year?
Jean: Yeah, our guests include Steve Carrell, Zoe Deschanel, Lady Gaga—Lady Gaga is playing herself, the other three are playing characters—and we have a great one in a couple of weeks where Bart becomes an underground artist and we have a lot of artwork from real underground artists like Shepherd Fairey that’s worked into the show, worked into the storyline and Shepherd does a voice in the show. We have a great episode that starts with Homer wetting the bed that sort of turns into an Inception show—just really interesting variations on The Simpsons as characters.
Geek: News and trends move so fast now that a joke or something from culture gets stale a lot faster. Case in point, Inception came out two years ago. Have you had to kind of evolve with things sort of cycling out faster?
Jean: Well, in the long run, our episodes are around a long time. So let’s say we do something that involves Inception, and there will be an initial response from something like The A.V. Club like, “Oh, they’re six months late with this.” But in the end, no one remembers when things came out—we did a The Shining parody on one of the Halloween episodes of our show and it was more than 10 years after The Shining came out, but nobody was going “Too late.”
Geek: So it’s about being timeless, then?
Jean: Yeah. What we’re trying to do is make episodes—the thing that I’m most concerned about is if someone watches something we do in five years and it’ll still make sense. You know, the same way I can watch a Bugs Bunny cartoon from the 30’s [that] I would still think of as funny.
Geek: What keeps you excited or elated about the work, especially after having been at it for so long?
Jean: What keep you elated is that you work with really funny people and it’s always interesting the stuff that you can do and just realized incredibly well. And writing is a cathartic profession if you can get your work produced and here you’re definitely getting your work produced and in a way that you can tell whatever story you want to tell.
Geek: On the other end of it, what still keeps you up at night about the work?
Jean: Thinking of new ideas.
That and from the beginning of my time with The Simpsons, I wanted to make sure we didn’t let people down—it was a show that we really loved and I think that’s part of the reason why it’s gone for 500 episodes. Not just me but everybody feels that we have this great, historical thing and you feel like you really want to keep it up.
Geek: What would like after The Simpsons look like for you?
Jean: You know, I’ve never thought that way. In the beginning, there were people who went off and wanted to create their own show—we’ve had people leave the staff. And I’ve always thought there’s no better place to be than here and I still feel that way.
Geek: What do you watch?
Jean: Well, my favorite television shows are The Daily Show and Mad Men, I think those are great. I don’t watch too much television because I don’t have too much time but those are my current favorites.
Geek: Could you tell us a little about the big 500th episode? What’s it about?
Jean: The Simpsons discover that there’s a big, secret meeting that they’re not invited to, which is kick them out of Springfield for something they’ve done. So they go off the grid to Slab City to sort of make a home there. And Julian Assange has a cameo in the episode.
The Simpsons' 500th episode, "At Long Last Leave," will air Sunday February 19th at 8 on Fox.
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