IPOD
RADIO
Family Guy Stewies Guide to World Domination author Steve Callaghan
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Jun 15, 2005
I’m sure many of us diehard Family Guy fans were worried that the new episodes were going to come on and let us down. But that hasn’t happened; the new episodes are just as good and in some ways better than the previous seasons. Much of that credit can be attributed to Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. But one mustn’t forget his team of talented writers. One such writer/producer Steve Callaghan needs extra recognition because he just wrote the book Family Guy: Stewie's Guide to World Domination.
Buy Stewie's Guide to World Domination
Daniel Robert Epstein: I saw you onstage at the final Family Guy Live show.
Steve Callaghan: I talked to Mike Henry because I saw you’d interviewed him. He said you came to the New York show.
DRE:
So you guys had fun that last night?
SC:
The whole trip was just amazing. It was such a fun experience, we did the four shows and then Seth and I did a signing on Saturday afternoon. It was just one of those whirlwind weekends and it was unbelievable. The fans are so great and so enthusiastic, particularly after living through all the trauma of the show getting cancelled then cancelled again and then being off the air…
DRE:
The trauma of working on ‘Yes Dear.’
SC:
Exactly, all the other jobs in the middle. It was just really nice thing to see the show have such a resurgence.
DRE:
That last night seemed a bit raunchier. Did anyone at other shows, during the Q & A, offer to eat Mila Kunis’ poop?
SC:
No, that was the first time. The weird thing is both 10 o’clock shows were a little raunchier than the seven o’clock shows. Yeah but that one about Mila’s poop was unprecedented. There was one guy at the Friday night show who got up to ask a question and somehow in the midst of his question he offered to let us have anal sex with his girlfriend. That was very bizarre and a little off putting but it seemed to come from a good place.
DRE:
You were keeping yourself sober, you tried to anyway.
SC:
I was probably the one of the group who was drinking the least but I finally drank a little bit towards the end there. I was trying to balance things out. With Seth [MacFarlane] it’s funny, because as immensely talented as Seth is he gets nervous when he gets on stage and I think that particularly in those late shows he felt it apt to have a little alcohol in him.
DRE:
He’s not a stage guy like a lot of you are.
SC:
Exactly, but he needs to give himself more credit because when he does get on stage he’s phenomenal.
DRE:
Also my wife was like, “Wow Seth cleaned himself up and became hot!”
SC:
We had a nice time. I wish there were more quite frankly because they were just a real blast.
DRE:
I thought it would be good but I wasn’t sure if it was going to be really good. But it was hysterical.
SC:
That’s good I’m glad to hear that.
DRE:
Are you a New Yorker? Is that why your episode got picked to be read that night?
SC:
Actually I’ve been to New York many times but I’ve never lived there. I love it whenever I go. The whole idea of Family Guy Live started at the Montreal Comedy Festival last year where they did two shows there of When You Wish Upon A Weinstein, which is the same one they did here in LA. So I think they just wanted to mix it up. They’d kind of done that one and they wanted to try out another episode and see how that did. I think Seth was involved in picking this episode. He regards it as one of his favorite episodes. They were really nice about inviting me to read some of those extra parts. At the LA shows and in Montreal the writer of When You Wish Upon A Weinstein, Ricky Blitt, went along and he got to basically do what I did in New York.
Frankly I wish we all could have come because it’s very collaborative and we all contribute.
DRE:
I’m not sure how much we can totally go into the book because of the kind of book it is. It’s just a fun book.
SC:
Yeah it’s not Cold Mountain. It’s just a silly little humor book.
DRE:
I remember a friend of mine got me this terrible King of the Hill book years ago. It seems you may have spent a bit more time on it than people usually do on these books.
SC:
I appreciate you saying that. One thing that’s really nice about this go around of Family Guy is that they’re doing a lot more merchandising and just more general promotion across the board than they ever did before. It creates more of an awareness of the show which makes us feel like it’s something they really believe in this time around. They wanted to do the book so they approached Seth about it and I was very flattered that he pulled me aside and asked if I would write it.
DRE:
It’s also like free money.
SC:
Yeah, well my joke is, by the time it’s said and done I will have made enough to buy a copy of the book myself. It’s free money for Fox which is great. But at the end of the day I’m so happy to be doing what I do.
DRE:
I believe the new episodes of Family Guy are doing pretty well. I think the first episode back you got 12 million viewers and in the next episode you got 10 million.
SC:
I think you’re right. What’s also notable is that the demographics of the first episode were really phenomenal. For that week we were the highest rated show for teens.
DRE:
Wow!
SC:
In 18 to 34 year olds we were number four of all the shows on TV which was really amazing to see. Particularly because those numbers are so much different than what we’d gotten four years ago on Fox.
Those numbers will drop off a little bit because I’m sure a lot of people just tuned in for the premiere. But even when we sort of settle into whatever our average number will be I think it will be something that Fox will be very happy with.
DRE:
Did they send over a hot tub for the writer’s room?
SC:
They sent over ice cream. Some people from Baskin-Robbins show up and we had sundaes at the office.
DRE:
There you go!
SC:
We were just happy to be acknowledged. I’m one of the handful of people who have been here since season one and it feels like a different place around here. We never would have gotten ice cream the first time round. We were just shuffled off in a dirty office building in Studio City. If they called us once a month we were happy.
DRE:
How much were you left on your own with this book? Did Seth want you to show him pages or anything like that?
SC:
I basically just wrote that book on my own and I gave it to Seth to look at and give notes. He gave very few notes. It is for the most part what I wrote with some exceptions. The Fox legal department insisted on looking it over and asked me to change some stuff. On a personal note I feel like there were some jokes that were funnier before the legal department got a hold of them. But what are you going to do? I think Seth was very pleased with what I put together. I’m actually working on another book right now.
DRE:
I read about that. An episode guide, right?
SC:
Yes but we’re really going to try and make it jam packed full of stuff. It’s going to have quotes from different episodes, episode summaries and character synopses. We’re working on getting some production art in there. It’s all to try to make it the ultimate episode guide for fans of the first three seasons.
DRE:
Are you working with any of the Family Guy websites?
SC:
Yeah one of the web sites in particular.
DRE:
I would guess Planet Family Guy.
SC:
Yeah those guys have been great. In the darkest days of Family Guy when we all assumed we were out of a job, those guys helped a lot in terms of mobilizing fans on the internet, signing online petitions and getting people to send diapers to Fox.
One or two people from the site have actually come to visit us when they were in LA. We use them as a resource for different things from time to time. It’s very common that we’re in the course of writing an episode and we want to bring back a character and we’re like “what episode did we use that person in?” Sometimes we’ll actually go to the website.
DRE:
I read that you were in a sketch group, the ACME Comedy Theatre.
SC:
Yeah it’s a sketch comedy theatre company here in LA.
DRE:
I read that you and Alex Borstein were both in it.
SC:
What’s funny about that is that we were performing in ACME for years together and were good friends. When I first started on Family Guy, it was literally the first week and they were still casting the show. The two executive producers/show runners at the time were Seth obviously and a guy by the name of David Zuckerman. They came into the writer’s room and were like “Oh we’re having a really hard time picking who we’re going to go with for the voice of Lois and we’ve kind of narrowed it down to these two people and we want to play these two tapes guys to get your feedback.” So they put in this first tape and immediately recognized, I was like “Oh my god that’s my friend Alex!” I didn’t even know she was up for it.
DRE:
Oh that’s funny.
SC:
I had to come clean, “I know this person, so I can’t be unbiased but she’s terrific and really talented.” It’s been neat because she and I had this history of working together at ACME and then totally independently of each other came to Family Guy.
DRE:
[Family Guy writers] Mike Henry and Danny Smith do a lot of voices on the show. Do they have an easier time pitching jokes than you because they can just pop out a voice?
SC:
Yeah sometimes if you need a line from Herbert then having Mike Henry in the room is a huge asset. The other thing I always say jokingly is that if you’re pitching a line for Peter or Stewie or whatever, everyone has their own lame impersonation, which is embarrassing, but it’s even more embarrassing that we’re doing it in front of the person who actually does those voices. But you do that to help sell the line and give people a feeling for how the line would sound if it was in the show. So Seth always a gets like 10 to 15 percent advantage because he’s pitching the line in the exact voice.
DRE:
Now that you have the book credit you might have almost as much street cred as Seth.
I read you started on Family Guy as a writer’s assistant.
SC:
Yeah I worked on a couple of other shows in various capacities as a production assistant then as a writer’s assistant.
DRE:
On sitcoms or cartoons?
SC:
On sitcoms. I got hired at the very beginning of Family Guy as a writer’s assistant and that job is basically a script coordinator. I was the person sitting in the writer’s room typing the changes into the computer as they’re rewriting the script. Also I made sure the writers have the script that they need.
The environment in the Family Guy writer’s room was great because everyone was always really encouraging and would say to me “hey if you have a joke to pitch, speak up.” I would choose my moments carefully but I’d pitch a joke and it’d work its way into the script or I’d pitch maybe an idea for part of a story arc or something and that would get used. I guess after those first 13 or 15 episodes they put me on staff as a writer.
DRE:
Do you remember the first joke you pitched on an episode you didn’t have a credit on?
SC:
When I was the writer’s assistant during those first few episodes I pitched a gag where Peter is sitting at the breakfast table with Brian. Peter says “Brian look, there’s a message in my cereal, OOOOOOO” and Brian says “Peter those are Cheerios.”
DRE:
I remember that joke very well.
SC:
The interesting thing is that the each show’s writer’s room has a different vibe. On some shows the writer’s assistants keep quiet and you just do you job. But it was never that way on Family Guy
DRE:
When I was talking to Mike Henry I brought up one of my favorite jokes, the one where Peter drops the coin off the Empire State Building and it coin rips through the cop and there’s a little man in there. He tried to make it into a recurring character but it didn’t fly. Do you have any little characters you’ve created?
SC:
Yeah there are a couple of characters and moments I’ve created. One is when Lois and Peter are talking about the problem of toad licking at the school and they’re strapping on S & M attire.
DRE:
Banana was the safeword!
SC:
Yeah and then the other one was in my first produced episode which was 15 Minutes of Shame. They’re all out to dinner at this restaurant called the Lobster Shanty and they are all talking about having been on a Jerry Springer type show. In the background Stewie is disrobing and he jumps into a lobster tank and he basically wrestles a lobster with his bare hands and drags it up and throws it on his plate. I just love that kind of stuff where there’s jokes and stuff are going on in the foreground but there’s some extended bit going on in the background that we don’t really draw a lot of attention to.
DRE:
Well I think that’s a technique that the Zucker brothers actually created. I remember Garry Marshall was really into that kind of thing when he directed Young Doctors in Love.
SC:
I remember a lot of that type of stuff in Airplane. It just makes the whole show feel sort of more full and lush. It also gives you different things to look at like on a second viewing.
DRE:
I’ve spoken to [Simpsons producers] Al Jean and Mike Reiss. Mike Reiss likes your show. But Al Jean is now the sole show runner of The Simpsons. He thinks your show is funny but he has seen jokes, as have I, which have been on The Simpsons. Also since Family Guy has been on the air I’ve now seen jokes in The Simpsons that are very similar to Family Guy jokes. How does that happen?
SC:
I think there are definitely times where stuff gets pitched and someone will say “oh they did that on The Simpsons” and I will immediately steer away from it. To the extent where there have been times when we’re doing jokes that have been done on The Simpsons I can only say that it’s probably that no one was aware of it at the time. To a certain extent it’s kind of unavoidable, like it or not, there is a certain similarity in terms of their show and ours. When you’re doing so many episodes you’re bound to kind of cover similar ground at certain points. It’s unfortunate. It would be great if we had an encyclopedic knowledge of every episode or every joke they’ve done and if we did I’m sure we would steer away from any joke that would be perceived as similar to theirs. But in a room of 15 guys and if no one says “The Simpsons did it” that’s all we have to go on.
DRE:
You haven’t got any angry emails from Simpsons writers?
SC:
No, not so far. I’m actually a fan of The Simpsons. I have not watched as much of it recently but definitely when I was at college and right after I was a huge Simpsons fan.
DRE:
What episodes do you have credit on this season?
SC:
I just wrote the last of our new 35 episodes. So up to episode 35 there are like four or five I’ve been involved in writing.
DRE:
What are your episodes about?
SC:
One of them aired a week ago Sunday. It’s the one where Peter goes blind from eating the nickels. Then I have one coming up that’s probably going to air sometime this summer. Basically Lois gets a chance to take a young girl into the world of high fashion modeling. In the first act her and her parents are up in Newport and the family goes up there and are in the big regatta.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
I’m sure many of us diehard Family Guy fans were worried that the new episodes were going to come on and let us down. But that hasn’t happened; the new episodes are just as good and in some ways better than the previous seasons. Much of that credit can be attributed to Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. But one mustn’t forget his team of talented writers. One such writer/producer Steve Callaghan needs extra recognition because he just wrote the book Family Guy: Stewie's Guide to World Domination.
Buy Stewie's Guide to World Domination
Daniel Robert Epstein: I saw you onstage at the final Family Guy Live show.
Steve Callaghan: I talked to Mike Henry because I saw you’d interviewed him. He said you came to the New York show.
DRE:
So you guys had fun that last night?
SC:
The whole trip was just amazing. It was such a fun experience, we did the four shows and then Seth and I did a signing on Saturday afternoon. It was just one of those whirlwind weekends and it was unbelievable. The fans are so great and so enthusiastic, particularly after living through all the trauma of the show getting cancelled then cancelled again and then being off the air…
DRE:
The trauma of working on ‘Yes Dear.’
SC:
Exactly, all the other jobs in the middle. It was just really nice thing to see the show have such a resurgence.
DRE:
That last night seemed a bit raunchier. Did anyone at other shows, during the Q & A, offer to eat Mila Kunis’ poop?
SC:
No, that was the first time. The weird thing is both 10 o’clock shows were a little raunchier than the seven o’clock shows. Yeah but that one about Mila’s poop was unprecedented. There was one guy at the Friday night show who got up to ask a question and somehow in the midst of his question he offered to let us have anal sex with his girlfriend. That was very bizarre and a little off putting but it seemed to come from a good place.
DRE:
You were keeping yourself sober, you tried to anyway.
SC:
I was probably the one of the group who was drinking the least but I finally drank a little bit towards the end there. I was trying to balance things out. With Seth [MacFarlane] it’s funny, because as immensely talented as Seth is he gets nervous when he gets on stage and I think that particularly in those late shows he felt it apt to have a little alcohol in him.
DRE:
He’s not a stage guy like a lot of you are.
SC:
Exactly, but he needs to give himself more credit because when he does get on stage he’s phenomenal.
DRE:
Also my wife was like, “Wow Seth cleaned himself up and became hot!”
SC:
We had a nice time. I wish there were more quite frankly because they were just a real blast.
DRE:
I thought it would be good but I wasn’t sure if it was going to be really good. But it was hysterical.
SC:
That’s good I’m glad to hear that.
DRE:
Are you a New Yorker? Is that why your episode got picked to be read that night?
SC:
Actually I’ve been to New York many times but I’ve never lived there. I love it whenever I go. The whole idea of Family Guy Live started at the Montreal Comedy Festival last year where they did two shows there of When You Wish Upon A Weinstein, which is the same one they did here in LA. So I think they just wanted to mix it up. They’d kind of done that one and they wanted to try out another episode and see how that did. I think Seth was involved in picking this episode. He regards it as one of his favorite episodes. They were really nice about inviting me to read some of those extra parts. At the LA shows and in Montreal the writer of When You Wish Upon A Weinstein, Ricky Blitt, went along and he got to basically do what I did in New York.
Frankly I wish we all could have come because it’s very collaborative and we all contribute.
Frankly I wish we all could have come because it’s very collaborative and we all contribute.
DRE:
I’m not sure how much we can totally go into the book because of the kind of book it is. It’s just a fun book.
SC:
Yeah it’s not Cold Mountain. It’s just a silly little humor book.
DRE:
I remember a friend of mine got me this terrible King of the Hill book years ago. It seems you may have spent a bit more time on it than people usually do on these books.
SC:
I appreciate you saying that. One thing that’s really nice about this go around of Family Guy is that they’re doing a lot more merchandising and just more general promotion across the board than they ever did before. It creates more of an awareness of the show which makes us feel like it’s something they really believe in this time around. They wanted to do the book so they approached Seth about it and I was very flattered that he pulled me aside and asked if I would write it.
DRE:
It’s also like free money.
SC:
Yeah, well my joke is, by the time it’s said and done I will have made enough to buy a copy of the book myself. It’s free money for Fox which is great. But at the end of the day I’m so happy to be doing what I do.
DRE:
I believe the new episodes of Family Guy are doing pretty well. I think the first episode back you got 12 million viewers and in the next episode you got 10 million.
SC:
I think you’re right. What’s also notable is that the demographics of the first episode were really phenomenal. For that week we were the highest rated show for teens.
DRE:
Wow!
SC:
In 18 to 34 year olds we were number four of all the shows on TV which was really amazing to see. Particularly because those numbers are so much different than what we’d gotten four years ago on Fox.
Those numbers will drop off a little bit because I’m sure a lot of people just tuned in for the premiere. But even when we sort of settle into whatever our average number will be I think it will be something that Fox will be very happy with.
Those numbers will drop off a little bit because I’m sure a lot of people just tuned in for the premiere. But even when we sort of settle into whatever our average number will be I think it will be something that Fox will be very happy with.
DRE:
Did they send over a hot tub for the writer’s room?
SC:
They sent over ice cream. Some people from Baskin-Robbins show up and we had sundaes at the office.
DRE:
There you go!
SC:
We were just happy to be acknowledged. I’m one of the handful of people who have been here since season one and it feels like a different place around here. We never would have gotten ice cream the first time round. We were just shuffled off in a dirty office building in Studio City. If they called us once a month we were happy.
DRE:
How much were you left on your own with this book? Did Seth want you to show him pages or anything like that?
SC:
I basically just wrote that book on my own and I gave it to Seth to look at and give notes. He gave very few notes. It is for the most part what I wrote with some exceptions. The Fox legal department insisted on looking it over and asked me to change some stuff. On a personal note I feel like there were some jokes that were funnier before the legal department got a hold of them. But what are you going to do? I think Seth was very pleased with what I put together. I’m actually working on another book right now.
DRE:
I read about that. An episode guide, right?
SC:
Yes but we’re really going to try and make it jam packed full of stuff. It’s going to have quotes from different episodes, episode summaries and character synopses. We’re working on getting some production art in there. It’s all to try to make it the ultimate episode guide for fans of the first three seasons.
DRE:
Are you working with any of the Family Guy websites?
SC:
Yeah one of the web sites in particular.
DRE:
I would guess Planet Family Guy.
SC:
Yeah those guys have been great. In the darkest days of Family Guy when we all assumed we were out of a job, those guys helped a lot in terms of mobilizing fans on the internet, signing online petitions and getting people to send diapers to Fox.
One or two people from the site have actually come to visit us when they were in LA. We use them as a resource for different things from time to time. It’s very common that we’re in the course of writing an episode and we want to bring back a character and we’re like “what episode did we use that person in?” Sometimes we’ll actually go to the website.
One or two people from the site have actually come to visit us when they were in LA. We use them as a resource for different things from time to time. It’s very common that we’re in the course of writing an episode and we want to bring back a character and we’re like “what episode did we use that person in?” Sometimes we’ll actually go to the website.
DRE:
I read that you were in a sketch group, the ACME Comedy Theatre.
SC:
Yeah it’s a sketch comedy theatre company here in LA.
DRE:
I read that you and Alex Borstein were both in it.
SC:
What’s funny about that is that we were performing in ACME for years together and were good friends. When I first started on Family Guy, it was literally the first week and they were still casting the show. The two executive producers/show runners at the time were Seth obviously and a guy by the name of David Zuckerman. They came into the writer’s room and were like “Oh we’re having a really hard time picking who we’re going to go with for the voice of Lois and we’ve kind of narrowed it down to these two people and we want to play these two tapes guys to get your feedback.” So they put in this first tape and immediately recognized, I was like “Oh my god that’s my friend Alex!” I didn’t even know she was up for it.
DRE:
Oh that’s funny.
SC:
I had to come clean, “I know this person, so I can’t be unbiased but she’s terrific and really talented.” It’s been neat because she and I had this history of working together at ACME and then totally independently of each other came to Family Guy.
DRE:
[Family Guy writers] Mike Henry and Danny Smith do a lot of voices on the show. Do they have an easier time pitching jokes than you because they can just pop out a voice?
SC:
Yeah sometimes if you need a line from Herbert then having Mike Henry in the room is a huge asset. The other thing I always say jokingly is that if you’re pitching a line for Peter or Stewie or whatever, everyone has their own lame impersonation, which is embarrassing, but it’s even more embarrassing that we’re doing it in front of the person who actually does those voices. But you do that to help sell the line and give people a feeling for how the line would sound if it was in the show. So Seth always a gets like 10 to 15 percent advantage because he’s pitching the line in the exact voice.
DRE:
Now that you have the book credit you might have almost as much street cred as Seth.
I read you started on Family Guy as a writer’s assistant.
I read you started on Family Guy as a writer’s assistant.
SC:
Yeah I worked on a couple of other shows in various capacities as a production assistant then as a writer’s assistant.
DRE:
On sitcoms or cartoons?
SC:
On sitcoms. I got hired at the very beginning of Family Guy as a writer’s assistant and that job is basically a script coordinator. I was the person sitting in the writer’s room typing the changes into the computer as they’re rewriting the script. Also I made sure the writers have the script that they need.
The environment in the Family Guy writer’s room was great because everyone was always really encouraging and would say to me “hey if you have a joke to pitch, speak up.” I would choose my moments carefully but I’d pitch a joke and it’d work its way into the script or I’d pitch maybe an idea for part of a story arc or something and that would get used. I guess after those first 13 or 15 episodes they put me on staff as a writer.
The environment in the Family Guy writer’s room was great because everyone was always really encouraging and would say to me “hey if you have a joke to pitch, speak up.” I would choose my moments carefully but I’d pitch a joke and it’d work its way into the script or I’d pitch maybe an idea for part of a story arc or something and that would get used. I guess after those first 13 or 15 episodes they put me on staff as a writer.
DRE:
Do you remember the first joke you pitched on an episode you didn’t have a credit on?
SC:
When I was the writer’s assistant during those first few episodes I pitched a gag where Peter is sitting at the breakfast table with Brian. Peter says “Brian look, there’s a message in my cereal, OOOOOOO” and Brian says “Peter those are Cheerios.”
DRE:
I remember that joke very well.
SC:
The interesting thing is that the each show’s writer’s room has a different vibe. On some shows the writer’s assistants keep quiet and you just do you job. But it was never that way on Family Guy
DRE:
When I was talking to Mike Henry I brought up one of my favorite jokes, the one where Peter drops the coin off the Empire State Building and it coin rips through the cop and there’s a little man in there. He tried to make it into a recurring character but it didn’t fly. Do you have any little characters you’ve created?
SC:
Yeah there are a couple of characters and moments I’ve created. One is when Lois and Peter are talking about the problem of toad licking at the school and they’re strapping on S & M attire.
DRE:
Banana was the safeword!
SC:
Yeah and then the other one was in my first produced episode which was 15 Minutes of Shame. They’re all out to dinner at this restaurant called the Lobster Shanty and they are all talking about having been on a Jerry Springer type show. In the background Stewie is disrobing and he jumps into a lobster tank and he basically wrestles a lobster with his bare hands and drags it up and throws it on his plate. I just love that kind of stuff where there’s jokes and stuff are going on in the foreground but there’s some extended bit going on in the background that we don’t really draw a lot of attention to.
DRE:
Well I think that’s a technique that the Zucker brothers actually created. I remember Garry Marshall was really into that kind of thing when he directed Young Doctors in Love.
SC:
I remember a lot of that type of stuff in Airplane. It just makes the whole show feel sort of more full and lush. It also gives you different things to look at like on a second viewing.
DRE:
I’ve spoken to [Simpsons producers] Al Jean and Mike Reiss. Mike Reiss likes your show. But Al Jean is now the sole show runner of The Simpsons. He thinks your show is funny but he has seen jokes, as have I, which have been on The Simpsons. Also since Family Guy has been on the air I’ve now seen jokes in The Simpsons that are very similar to Family Guy jokes. How does that happen?
SC:
I think there are definitely times where stuff gets pitched and someone will say “oh they did that on The Simpsons” and I will immediately steer away from it. To the extent where there have been times when we’re doing jokes that have been done on The Simpsons I can only say that it’s probably that no one was aware of it at the time. To a certain extent it’s kind of unavoidable, like it or not, there is a certain similarity in terms of their show and ours. When you’re doing so many episodes you’re bound to kind of cover similar ground at certain points. It’s unfortunate. It would be great if we had an encyclopedic knowledge of every episode or every joke they’ve done and if we did I’m sure we would steer away from any joke that would be perceived as similar to theirs. But in a room of 15 guys and if no one says “The Simpsons did it” that’s all we have to go on.
DRE:
You haven’t got any angry emails from Simpsons writers?
SC:
No, not so far. I’m actually a fan of The Simpsons. I have not watched as much of it recently but definitely when I was at college and right after I was a huge Simpsons fan.
DRE:
What episodes do you have credit on this season?
SC:
I just wrote the last of our new 35 episodes. So up to episode 35 there are like four or five I’ve been involved in writing.
DRE:
What are your episodes about?
SC:
One of them aired a week ago Sunday. It’s the one where Peter goes blind from eating the nickels. Then I have one coming up that’s probably going to air sometime this summer. Basically Lois gets a chance to take a young girl into the world of high fashion modeling. In the first act her and her parents are up in Newport and the family goes up there and are in the big regatta.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
