David Cooper
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BONUS! Other Writers, Mailman, OTHER Other Writers and Kid
🕑 Added 2024-06-28 08:00:01 +0000 UTCFirstly, we needed to cover the rest of the writers/board room members.
We have now spent approximately two weeks discussing this single shot. It's over, move on.
Secondly, this Cliff Clavin looking fella.
I am glad I don't have to draw every single mailman from this, frankly, ridiculous shot:
Here's where the meat of today's word-broth is:
The other writers weren't based on anybody. But these OTHER other writers are based on Rich Moore, David Silverman and Wes Archer, according to the audio commentary for this episode. (Please forgive me, I haven't been able to dig out my DVD from storage to confirm this! I'm going to assume it is accurate for now!)
Rich Moore is best known round these parts as an early Simpsons director, of course. But "normies" might know him better for his Disney work, directing Wreck-It Ralph, it's sequel, and Zootopia. He can also be seen falling off the Escalator to Nowhere in "Marge Vs The Monorail":
David Silverman (this image is from 1991, in an attempt to show how close the caricature is,) is probably the best known of these three, having worked on The Simpsons all the way from the Tracey Ullman shorts up until today, where he still directs the Disney+ shorts. He has directed more episodes than anyone else and is credited as the director of "The Simpsons Movie". He's credited for defining a lot of the "rules" for drawing the Simpsons and their world consistently, and I recommend following accounts like Art of the Simpsons for examples of this through the years. We'll encounter Silverman again through the years - if there were a Mount Rushmore of Simpsons contributors, his face would be on it. he even has a guest appearance in season 31, so we'll get to that...eventually!
Wes Archer (also seen on the Escalator to Nowhere, above), also worked on the Tracey Ullman shorts, and has bounced around a number of popular animated sitcoms - he's been supervising director on King of the Hill and Rick and Morty, and is one of few people to have directed in all of Matt Groening's shows - Simpsons, Futurama and Disenchantment. He even had a character in King of the Hill named after him (and to be honest, his likeness looks closer to the real man there):
Lastly, this girl, who is my way of representing the FULL MINUTE of children frolicking to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony:
This sequence is kind of nice and relaxing to watch, and certainly hammers home the silly point they are trying to make (that cartoons going away would not magically turn kids into this idealistic utopia), but it's crazy to me that so much screen time is devoted to it.
This post is part of my "Every Simpsons Character Ever" series. For a list of my rules in this project, click here.
Comments
Alexander Hale
I'm excited that you've covered Silverman, Archer and Moore! They actually crop up a lot, especially in earlier seasons, and I noticed them last year and did a little research of my own. Their ride on the Escalator to Nowhere is probably their most well known appearance (I count the third guy as Silverman sans Homer-beard) but another prominent appearance is as convicts in the 'revolving door prison' ad from Sideshow Bob Roberts. And I spotted at least two of them in Bart's Girlfriend, when townspeople yell at Bart for stealing the money (beardless Silverman steps out of his house to yell, Moore yells from a passing car). Rich Moore's character design is obviously the most familiar, as it was flipped in pretty much the opposite way of season 1 Smithers' into Gary the nerd in Homer Goes to College (though I believe the original Rich Moore design was used several times after Gary came along). I find it really interesting that David Silverman is responsible for many of the design rules when several of them are broken in his own character design (Homer beard, overlapping eyes, long but thin head) - I'm guessing/hoping that was an intentional ribbing from his colleagues...
