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Mike Reiss creator of Queer Duck
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Jul 26, 2006
Mike Reiss is living the American dream. After being a highly successful writer on The Simpsons since the 80’s, he was able to parlay that experience into creating Queer Duck. Originally Queer Duck was a series of short cartoons for Showtime. But for the first time Queer Duck has become a full length feature film. The movie has 12 musical numbers and more anthropomorphic gay animals than you homophobes can shake a ten foot stick at.
Buy the DVD of Queer Duck - The Movie
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you working on today?
Mike Reiss: Today I am going in to The Simpsons. I still work one day a week there as a consultant.
DRE:
Do you just go into the writing room and sit with the guys?
Mike:
That’s it exactly. Everything is done collaboratively and just very democratic. We’re all just going through the script a line at a time and going, “Can anyone think of anything better here? How about here? How about here?” It’s a fun job but it is a job nobody would do it for free.
DRE:
Do you do much else during the week for The Simpsons?
Mike:
That’s it except I’m working on The Simpsons movie and that’s like being a doctor on call because I’m always being called in at the last minute, “Oh we need a joke here,” or “this scene’s not working.” So that’s been a completely irregular schedule for about two, three years now.
DRE:
How many writers are working on The Simpsons movie?
Mike:
They picked this staff of seven veteran writers to write this thing. It’s mostly people who have done the show before. It is this dirty dozen and then we’re under the auspices of Matt Groening and Jim Brooks who are in there every day.
DRE:
Is it fun?
Mike:
It is fun because it’s a special team. It is the most professional room of writers I’ve ever worked in. The amount of work they can do in a day and the focus they have is really impressive. It’s been a very hard job but it was an honor just to be picked to be part of this dream team.
DRE:
You don’t really get a room of seven ex-show runners together.
Mike:
I calculated once, I think one third of the episodes have been written by the people in that room and that’s 130 episodes. I think the room has a combined 18 years of Simpsons show running experience. We have more years running the show than we actually have years of the show. It’s a great room and everybody gets along very well too.
DRE:
We spoke about four years ago and you talked about the Queer Duck movie then, you had already written it by that point.
Mike:
I wrote it in 2000. Showtime commissioned the movie and before I even turned in the script they scrapped the whole Queer Duck project including the shorts. They just said, “Oh, we don’t want to be the gay HBO or anything like that.” So then it was years and years of trying to get someone to make this script and what was funny was that it was this flip on the traditional story where the big studio turns you down and an independent comes to your rescue. In this case it’s four years of scrappy independents saying “ah we don’t want to do it,” and there are a few well known independents who said, “We’re going to make this” and then at the last minute they just backed out. It was very crummy behavior. After all that it was Paramount Home Video that said, “Make your movie” and they never meddled in the content.
DRE:
I read that a lot of people may have felt the “gay wave” was over or something.
Mike:
Well Showtime was really nice to me to pick up Queer Duck and they promoted it well but then I don’t know what happened. I feel like some girl who’s been dumped by a guy and then walks around for the rest of her whole life going, “What did I do?”
But I never gave up hope on the project so over the years I would just tinker with it. I kept playing with it as if it was still a viable thing and just writing a joke here and there. Then when Queer Eye for the Straight Guy came on, I said, “Oh I got to parody this in Queer Duck.” So I stuck that in the script and as time went on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy wasn’t that popular anymore so I cut that scene in half..
DRE:
One of the things I like about Queer Duck is that not only is it funny but it’s also not very subtle. What’s it like to write something like that?
Mike:
I’ve heard this a lot, “boy it’s in your face and over the top.” All I know is Queer Duck is like a Rorschach test in my head. It is what would come out if everybody would let me do whatever I want. This is the closest to me you’re going to be on the big screen.
DRE:
Was Flash animation used to make the movie?
Mike:
It was still Flash. I’m sure you saw it on home video but we showed it in a giant movie palace last week in San Francisco. One of those old 1920’s palaces with 1400 seats and it looked perfect on the big screen. It doesn’t look grainy, it doesn’t look choppy and the audience enjoyed it. At our first theatrical screening in New York, I saw the director, Xeth Feinberg, watching his own movie on the big screen and his jaw dropped because he was as surprised as anyone because it looked so good on the big screen.
A lot of this field work was actually done by South Park. I don’t think anyone thought that South Park could be a sustainable movie, which it was, or that you could sit and watch it in a theater but you could.
DRE:
How did you hook up with Xeth?
Mike:
He worked on the Queer Duck shorts and before that we did a cartoon together called Hard Drinkin’ Lincoln. We made ten of these Hard Drinkin’ Lincolns before we ever met or even had a phone call. I love what the guy does to my stuff. He always does my stuff better than the way I thought of it. I can sit and watch his animation of my stuff and enjoy it like somebody else wrote it.
DRE:
You’ve done two cartoons that went online because you did those Critic webisodes. Do you think web cartoons can ever come back to the heights they once reached?
Mike:
I think so. I don’t know how much of a business there is, except I hear it all the time, “make cartoons for the cell phone. Oh they’re perfect for the cell phone. Sell Queer Duck on cell phones. In Europe it’s already being done.” I don’t see it happening yet but I don’t have a cell phone either.
DRE:
What do you like so much about Queer Duck?
Mike:
I like it so much that I’ve written Queer Duck 2.
There are a couple of things; one is that it is always upbeat. These characters are always happy and in a great mood so it’s fun to write. It is not like writing for, let’s say Lisa Simpson, who’s always conflicted and worried. She’s a great character but she’s not always fun to write for. These guys are always fun and funny and having a great time. Take a character like Bi-Polar Bear, his only character is to make really sharp jokes. The other thing about it is doing a gay cartoon means you’re in virgin territory. When I created Queer Duck, I don’t think there were any other gay cartoon characters out there. Christmas shows have been done to death but there has never been the gay Christmas show and there’s never been a gay Halloween show. At the end of the Queer Duck movie I did a parody of the Sgt. Pepper cover with all our characters and it gets a laugh out of an audience. That is the hokiest most parodied image in history so nobody should laugh but it feels brand new with our characters. When I go into The Simpsons today we’ll be writing episode 398 and we’ve been everywhere and done everything. Once we can get to a fresh area or find some patch of ground we haven’t covered yet, then the show writes itself which is the real joy. But finding some new topics is such a challenge.
DRE:
I actually interviewed Jim J. Bullock a few years ago. For a couple of years after that I got at least one email a month asking me how to get in touch with him. What is it about Jim that he seems to have this enduring popularity?
Mike:
He is that guy. He’s always been funny and upbeat and energetic. That’s Jim 24 hours a day. I think they love him because he is this fun character and because he was a big celebrity for a few years there and because he’s so utterly candid and funny about the fact that he’s not this big celebrity anymore. But he’s just a joy. One of the things that motivates me with Queer Duck is that I want to make him a big star again because he’s such a nice man, so sharp and so multitalented.
DRE:
How’s his health?
Mike:
I guess people know he’s HIV positive. But he could kick anybody’s ass. He’s not a young guy anymore. I think he just turned fifty but he’s so buff. He’s a brute. A big, bulging, muscular tough guy with boundless energy so whatever he’s got, it agrees with him.
DRE:
[laughs] Have you ever met anyone that was offended by Queer Duck?
Mike:
No. We had one episode of Queer Duck that got Showtime in a panic and they were so afraid to air it. It was a Winnie the Pooh parody and one of the Showtime executives said “Well this cartoon ends with serial anal rape.” I said, “But in a funny way.” They were not going to air it and then they showed it to the president of Showtime and he said, “What’s the problem with it?” So they aired it and there was never a complaint. My biggest fear when I started this project was that it was going to be misinterpreted as gay bashing. It is so pro-gay and anti-homophobe so if people would misinterpret it or taken it badly I would have yanked the whole project. I don’t do it for money. I do it out of a sense of conscience and a sense of fun and play but luckily there’s never been a complaint.
DRE:
You wrote 12 musical numbers for the movie. Had you written songs for The Simpsons?
Mike:
Yeah, I’ve written them here and there in random episodes. With Al Jean I wrote the Mary Poppins parody. I like to write songs. They’re fun and you can labor over them for a while and craft them just right. Again there was this fear all the way through that there was too many songs but nobody’s complained.
DRE:
Are people always surprised to find out you’re straight?
Mike:
Yeah, in the old days journalists assumed I was gay. To me it was always a compliment. Some people who’ve seen the movie refuse to believe I’m straight and if I say I’m straight then I’m in denial.
DRE:
Is The Critic coming back in any form?
Mike:
I would say no. We put it out on DVD and it sold well but not great. If it had sold like Family Guy it would have come back. But it’s not anything I’m interested in revisiting.
DRE:
How come?
Mike:
Jon Lovitz asks about it all the time and he said he would do it again even as a live action series. But again Queer Duck is so upbeat and happy all the time, while everything about The Critic was always downbeat and nasty. As much as I enjoyed doing it, I always felt “This is not me. “ The final product was so much sourer than my outlook on life.
DRE:
Are you working on anything else?
Mike:
I’m always punching up other movies. I worked on Ice Age and Ice Age 2, anything Fox animation does I get to help with that.
DRE:
Any live action stuff?
Mike:
I sold a movie script that might be getting made soon but I don’t like to talk about these things. I sold a bunch of screenplays. I have a new children’s book coming out in October. So I write my dirty cartoons and I also write children’s books.
DRE:
[laughs] Is the movie that you sold the Adam Sandler one called The Man Who Knew Everything?
Mike:
I sold two to Adam Sandler that aren’t getting made.
DRE:
Is there anything that you want to do that you haven’t gotten the chance to do yet?
Mike:
No. The fact that I wrote Queer Duck and they let me make it the way I wanted to really knocked off a bunch of my dreams. This is an opportunity nobody gets. Nobody gets to see their work realized intact and the reviews have been great. There’s nothing that I’m dreaming of doing, except Queer Duck 2. I’d love to see it in theaters but Paramount Home Video made the first movie and they just weren’t that interested in the theatrical route. But maybe if this one’s a hit I can at least get some theatrical release for part 2, that’s my new dream. After that, then I can get hit by a bus because I have no dreams left to fulfill.
DRE:
What happens in Queer Duck 2?
Mike:
Queer Duck marries Openly Gator. They adopt a Chinese baby; Queer Duck joins the army, wins the war and runs for president.
DRE:
What else are you doing?
Mike:
I travel a lot and my wife and I are going to North Korea next month.
DRE:
I guess that’s what happens once you have enough money. You can go to North Korea.
Mike:
That’s it. We spent Christmas in Libya this year. Which again sounded insane but it was one of the nicest trips I’ve ever taken. It’s a lovely country. These are all my wife’s ideas. I would be happy to go to Hawaii.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Mike Reiss is living the American dream. After being a highly successful writer on The Simpsons since the 80’s, he was able to parlay that experience into creating Queer Duck. Originally Queer Duck was a series of short cartoons for Showtime. But for the first time Queer Duck has become a full length feature film. The movie has 12 musical numbers and more anthropomorphic gay animals than you homophobes can shake a ten foot stick at.
Buy the DVD of Queer Duck - The Movie
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you working on today?
Mike Reiss: Today I am going in to The Simpsons. I still work one day a week there as a consultant.
DRE:
Do you just go into the writing room and sit with the guys?
Mike:
That’s it exactly. Everything is done collaboratively and just very democratic. We’re all just going through the script a line at a time and going, “Can anyone think of anything better here? How about here? How about here?” It’s a fun job but it is a job nobody would do it for free.
DRE:
Do you do much else during the week for The Simpsons?
Mike:
That’s it except I’m working on The Simpsons movie and that’s like being a doctor on call because I’m always being called in at the last minute, “Oh we need a joke here,” or “this scene’s not working.” So that’s been a completely irregular schedule for about two, three years now.
DRE:
How many writers are working on The Simpsons movie?
Mike:
They picked this staff of seven veteran writers to write this thing. It’s mostly people who have done the show before. It is this dirty dozen and then we’re under the auspices of Matt Groening and Jim Brooks who are in there every day.
DRE:
Is it fun?
Mike:
It is fun because it’s a special team. It is the most professional room of writers I’ve ever worked in. The amount of work they can do in a day and the focus they have is really impressive. It’s been a very hard job but it was an honor just to be picked to be part of this dream team.
DRE:
You don’t really get a room of seven ex-show runners together.
Mike:
I calculated once, I think one third of the episodes have been written by the people in that room and that’s 130 episodes. I think the room has a combined 18 years of Simpsons show running experience. We have more years running the show than we actually have years of the show. It’s a great room and everybody gets along very well too.
DRE:
We spoke about four years ago and you talked about the Queer Duck movie then, you had already written it by that point.
Mike:
I wrote it in 2000. Showtime commissioned the movie and before I even turned in the script they scrapped the whole Queer Duck project including the shorts. They just said, “Oh, we don’t want to be the gay HBO or anything like that.” So then it was years and years of trying to get someone to make this script and what was funny was that it was this flip on the traditional story where the big studio turns you down and an independent comes to your rescue. In this case it’s four years of scrappy independents saying “ah we don’t want to do it,” and there are a few well known independents who said, “We’re going to make this” and then at the last minute they just backed out. It was very crummy behavior. After all that it was Paramount Home Video that said, “Make your movie” and they never meddled in the content.
DRE:
I read that a lot of people may have felt the “gay wave” was over or something.
Mike:
Well Showtime was really nice to me to pick up Queer Duck and they promoted it well but then I don’t know what happened. I feel like some girl who’s been dumped by a guy and then walks around for the rest of her whole life going, “What did I do?”
But I never gave up hope on the project so over the years I would just tinker with it. I kept playing with it as if it was still a viable thing and just writing a joke here and there. Then when Queer Eye for the Straight Guy came on, I said, “Oh I got to parody this in Queer Duck.” So I stuck that in the script and as time went on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy wasn’t that popular anymore so I cut that scene in half..
But I never gave up hope on the project so over the years I would just tinker with it. I kept playing with it as if it was still a viable thing and just writing a joke here and there. Then when Queer Eye for the Straight Guy came on, I said, “Oh I got to parody this in Queer Duck.” So I stuck that in the script and as time went on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy wasn’t that popular anymore so I cut that scene in half..
DRE:
One of the things I like about Queer Duck is that not only is it funny but it’s also not very subtle. What’s it like to write something like that?
Mike:
I’ve heard this a lot, “boy it’s in your face and over the top.” All I know is Queer Duck is like a Rorschach test in my head. It is what would come out if everybody would let me do whatever I want. This is the closest to me you’re going to be on the big screen.
DRE:
Was Flash animation used to make the movie?
Mike:
It was still Flash. I’m sure you saw it on home video but we showed it in a giant movie palace last week in San Francisco. One of those old 1920’s palaces with 1400 seats and it looked perfect on the big screen. It doesn’t look grainy, it doesn’t look choppy and the audience enjoyed it. At our first theatrical screening in New York, I saw the director, Xeth Feinberg, watching his own movie on the big screen and his jaw dropped because he was as surprised as anyone because it looked so good on the big screen.
A lot of this field work was actually done by South Park. I don’t think anyone thought that South Park could be a sustainable movie, which it was, or that you could sit and watch it in a theater but you could.
A lot of this field work was actually done by South Park. I don’t think anyone thought that South Park could be a sustainable movie, which it was, or that you could sit and watch it in a theater but you could.
DRE:
How did you hook up with Xeth?
Mike:
He worked on the Queer Duck shorts and before that we did a cartoon together called Hard Drinkin’ Lincoln. We made ten of these Hard Drinkin’ Lincolns before we ever met or even had a phone call. I love what the guy does to my stuff. He always does my stuff better than the way I thought of it. I can sit and watch his animation of my stuff and enjoy it like somebody else wrote it.
DRE:
You’ve done two cartoons that went online because you did those Critic webisodes. Do you think web cartoons can ever come back to the heights they once reached?
Mike:
I think so. I don’t know how much of a business there is, except I hear it all the time, “make cartoons for the cell phone. Oh they’re perfect for the cell phone. Sell Queer Duck on cell phones. In Europe it’s already being done.” I don’t see it happening yet but I don’t have a cell phone either.
DRE:
What do you like so much about Queer Duck?
Mike:
I like it so much that I’ve written Queer Duck 2.
There are a couple of things; one is that it is always upbeat. These characters are always happy and in a great mood so it’s fun to write. It is not like writing for, let’s say Lisa Simpson, who’s always conflicted and worried. She’s a great character but she’s not always fun to write for. These guys are always fun and funny and having a great time. Take a character like Bi-Polar Bear, his only character is to make really sharp jokes. The other thing about it is doing a gay cartoon means you’re in virgin territory. When I created Queer Duck, I don’t think there were any other gay cartoon characters out there. Christmas shows have been done to death but there has never been the gay Christmas show and there’s never been a gay Halloween show. At the end of the Queer Duck movie I did a parody of the Sgt. Pepper cover with all our characters and it gets a laugh out of an audience. That is the hokiest most parodied image in history so nobody should laugh but it feels brand new with our characters. When I go into The Simpsons today we’ll be writing episode 398 and we’ve been everywhere and done everything. Once we can get to a fresh area or find some patch of ground we haven’t covered yet, then the show writes itself which is the real joy. But finding some new topics is such a challenge.
There are a couple of things; one is that it is always upbeat. These characters are always happy and in a great mood so it’s fun to write. It is not like writing for, let’s say Lisa Simpson, who’s always conflicted and worried. She’s a great character but she’s not always fun to write for. These guys are always fun and funny and having a great time. Take a character like Bi-Polar Bear, his only character is to make really sharp jokes. The other thing about it is doing a gay cartoon means you’re in virgin territory. When I created Queer Duck, I don’t think there were any other gay cartoon characters out there. Christmas shows have been done to death but there has never been the gay Christmas show and there’s never been a gay Halloween show. At the end of the Queer Duck movie I did a parody of the Sgt. Pepper cover with all our characters and it gets a laugh out of an audience. That is the hokiest most parodied image in history so nobody should laugh but it feels brand new with our characters. When I go into The Simpsons today we’ll be writing episode 398 and we’ve been everywhere and done everything. Once we can get to a fresh area or find some patch of ground we haven’t covered yet, then the show writes itself which is the real joy. But finding some new topics is such a challenge.
DRE:
I actually interviewed Jim J. Bullock a few years ago. For a couple of years after that I got at least one email a month asking me how to get in touch with him. What is it about Jim that he seems to have this enduring popularity?
Mike:
He is that guy. He’s always been funny and upbeat and energetic. That’s Jim 24 hours a day. I think they love him because he is this fun character and because he was a big celebrity for a few years there and because he’s so utterly candid and funny about the fact that he’s not this big celebrity anymore. But he’s just a joy. One of the things that motivates me with Queer Duck is that I want to make him a big star again because he’s such a nice man, so sharp and so multitalented.
DRE:
How’s his health?
Mike:
I guess people know he’s HIV positive. But he could kick anybody’s ass. He’s not a young guy anymore. I think he just turned fifty but he’s so buff. He’s a brute. A big, bulging, muscular tough guy with boundless energy so whatever he’s got, it agrees with him.
DRE:
[laughs] Have you ever met anyone that was offended by Queer Duck?
Mike:
No. We had one episode of Queer Duck that got Showtime in a panic and they were so afraid to air it. It was a Winnie the Pooh parody and one of the Showtime executives said “Well this cartoon ends with serial anal rape.” I said, “But in a funny way.” They were not going to air it and then they showed it to the president of Showtime and he said, “What’s the problem with it?” So they aired it and there was never a complaint. My biggest fear when I started this project was that it was going to be misinterpreted as gay bashing. It is so pro-gay and anti-homophobe so if people would misinterpret it or taken it badly I would have yanked the whole project. I don’t do it for money. I do it out of a sense of conscience and a sense of fun and play but luckily there’s never been a complaint.
DRE:
You wrote 12 musical numbers for the movie. Had you written songs for The Simpsons?
Mike:
Yeah, I’ve written them here and there in random episodes. With Al Jean I wrote the Mary Poppins parody. I like to write songs. They’re fun and you can labor over them for a while and craft them just right. Again there was this fear all the way through that there was too many songs but nobody’s complained.
DRE:
Are people always surprised to find out you’re straight?
Mike:
Yeah, in the old days journalists assumed I was gay. To me it was always a compliment. Some people who’ve seen the movie refuse to believe I’m straight and if I say I’m straight then I’m in denial.
DRE:
Is The Critic coming back in any form?
Mike:
I would say no. We put it out on DVD and it sold well but not great. If it had sold like Family Guy it would have come back. But it’s not anything I’m interested in revisiting.
DRE:
How come?
Mike:
Jon Lovitz asks about it all the time and he said he would do it again even as a live action series. But again Queer Duck is so upbeat and happy all the time, while everything about The Critic was always downbeat and nasty. As much as I enjoyed doing it, I always felt “This is not me. “ The final product was so much sourer than my outlook on life.
DRE:
Are you working on anything else?
Mike:
I’m always punching up other movies. I worked on Ice Age and Ice Age 2, anything Fox animation does I get to help with that.
DRE:
Any live action stuff?
Mike:
I sold a movie script that might be getting made soon but I don’t like to talk about these things. I sold a bunch of screenplays. I have a new children’s book coming out in October. So I write my dirty cartoons and I also write children’s books.
DRE:
[laughs] Is the movie that you sold the Adam Sandler one called The Man Who Knew Everything?
Mike:
I sold two to Adam Sandler that aren’t getting made.
DRE:
Is there anything that you want to do that you haven’t gotten the chance to do yet?
Mike:
No. The fact that I wrote Queer Duck and they let me make it the way I wanted to really knocked off a bunch of my dreams. This is an opportunity nobody gets. Nobody gets to see their work realized intact and the reviews have been great. There’s nothing that I’m dreaming of doing, except Queer Duck 2. I’d love to see it in theaters but Paramount Home Video made the first movie and they just weren’t that interested in the theatrical route. But maybe if this one’s a hit I can at least get some theatrical release for part 2, that’s my new dream. After that, then I can get hit by a bus because I have no dreams left to fulfill.
DRE:
What happens in Queer Duck 2?
Mike:
Queer Duck marries Openly Gator. They adopt a Chinese baby; Queer Duck joins the army, wins the war and runs for president.
DRE:
What else are you doing?
Mike:
I travel a lot and my wife and I are going to North Korea next month.
DRE:
I guess that’s what happens once you have enough money. You can go to North Korea.
Mike:
That’s it. We spent Christmas in Libya this year. Which again sounded insane but it was one of the nicest trips I’ve ever taken. It’s a lovely country. These are all my wife’s ideas. I would be happy to go to Hawaii.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
