The Simpsons enters its 17th season

The Simpsons enters its 17th season

Over 356 half-hour episodes, 48 cartoon shorts and 18 years of comic madness, The Simpsons has gotten away with TV's most cutting humor, skewering topical trends and timeless human nature with gonzo impudence. That's been its slant ever since creator Matt Groening made the first crude Simpsons shorts for The Tracy Ullman Show .
Fox
The 17th-season premiere of The Simpsons airs Sunday on Fox. It is the longest-running prime-time comedy in TV history.

"We attack everything equally," producer-writer David Mirkin said. "Government is a big idiot. Big business is a big idiot. Any authority figures are big idiots. All religions are made fun of."

And that will again be the show's game plan when The Simpsons starts its 17th season Sunday on Fox (Channel 26).

Born in shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987 before shifting to Fox in 1989, The Simpsons not only is the longest-running prime-time comedy in TV history, but it's also thriving on DVD. Fox recently issued a season six box set, and season seven should arrive by year's end.

Using the same voice cast and the same ageless characters in a fractured family, The Simpsons has maintained high standards of humor, invention and subversiveness. TV's funniest show also doesn't need the crutch of most sitcoms: a laugh track. Its creators trust viewers to provide their own.

Mirkin said live-action sitcoms also suffer from other network restraints not felt by The Simpsons. They're test-screened and edited "to get rid of everything that can be offensive," he said.

"If people saw (Simpsons' humor) in live-action, they'd be much more offended, but a cartoon makes it cute. People don't realize how dark The Simpsons is, because it's a brightly colored, happy-looking cartoon. That's how we get away with it.

"Almost every joke offends someone, yet the networks try to please everybody, and when you do that, you please nobody. You wind up with nothing funny."

"What amazes me about The Simpsons is how they've been going this long and continuing to be a good quality comedy," said filmmaker Terry Gilliam, a member of the Monty Python troupe that pioneered subversive comedy on TV. He sees The Simpsons and South Park as carrying that torch.

"Obviously the ( Simpsons) writers keep changing, but it's a great team of writers," Gilliam said. "And they have a great team of performers. So the animation can be as crude as it is, which is fine."

Mirkin said the secret of The Simpsons' subversive success is that "we're not beholden to a network. Our criteria is simple: Is it funny?"

Usually it is. Mirkin also attributed the show's appeal to its veteran voice cast and its stories.

He called the former "irreplaceable."

Last year, the cast held out for more money, and got it. Dan Castellaneta (Homer) and Nancy Cartwright (Bart) reportedly now earn $8 million per season.

Just as many actors can mimic Christopher Walken, many can ape The Simpsons' Homer, Marge, Lisa or Bart. But the show's creators aren't interested in imitations.

The Simpsons' voice actors "are fantastic actors, not just voice actors," Mirkin said. "It was (executive producer) Jim Brooks' vision to get actors of this caliber. I'd hate to see The Simpsons with the loss of any of those voices."

Voices are recorded before animation, and Castellaneta sometimes ad libs. Since the animation style has only 16 mouth positions for characters, Mirkin said, "we can change anything they say up to three days before we go on the air."

Simpsons plots also are bold for TV. They don't go from A to B, but from A to M to Z.

"Most sitcoms have two acts, but we have a three-act structure," Mirkin said. "Often the first act has nothing to do with anything else on the show."

It's all part of the magic that has made the show a cross-generational success, on the small screen and through a mountain of other merchandise.

New to the pile is The Simpsons Season Six , a four-DVD set that is packaged in a box shaped like Homer's head. (Always fan loyal, the set's producers also offer a standard-size box as a replacement for any buyer who doesn't like the novelty package. To do so, call (800) 223-2369 or visit www.simpsonsbox.com. The only cost is $2.95 for shipping.)

Such sets have been big sellers. Even with a suggested price of $49.98, The Simpsons Season Six has ranked second on amazon.com's sales charts.

With two seasonal sets issued each year, the DVDs eventually could catch up with the series — probably around the time the DVD format becomes obsolete, Mirkin jokes.

"We're working on a chip you can imbed in your head, so you can just see the entire series running past your eyes all the time."

And there's further life in the series for fans.

The show lives on in syndication, though each episode is shortened by two minutes to allow for more advertising. "A lot of those two minutes are the funniest material," Mirkin said. "It broke my heart to cut for syndication. At least on DVD you get all the great humor that's been lost."

Those cuts are particularly tough for the creators because each episode takes around nine months to produce, from conception to final cut.

Such time and care can pay off in the final product. But it also means the eagerly awaited The Simpsons movie is taking longer than a Homer nap, despite being greenlighted early last summer.

"We don't have a (release) date," Mirkin said. (The Internet Movie Database projects it for 2008.) "It's all about the quality — the writing — which we're working on now. We are very quality conscious, and we don't want the series to suffer because of the movie."

The Simpsons will punch up its animation for the big screen.

Mirkin, who's directed such films as Romy & Michele's High School Reunion, wouldn't spill The Simpsons' big-screen plot, but did delve into its look.

"The animation will be tweaked," he said. "We're looking at various tests to get the right look. We're taking it into the realm of cinema but not too far from how it looks on the show."

That means the film will be largely hand-drawn, despite the fact that such movies have been staggered by computer-animated fare.

"The Simpsons is different," Mirkin said. "If we were coming with a brand new product, it would absolutely be CG (computer-generated). But we have a built-in audience, and CG wouldn't be the right look."

He can take comfort in the theatrical results for two other hand-drawn series that went big-screen. South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut earned $52 million in theaters, while Beavis and Butthead Do America took $63 million. And neither veered far from its TV look.

Big box office would offer vindication since The Simpsons has never received its fair due from Emmy voters.

"It's unfair we're stuck in an animated category, but it's our choice to be there so we can win, quite frankly," Mirkin said. "People don't take animation as seriously. If you put us up against live-action sitcoms, they'd beat us.

"We tried that in the fifth season but got no nominations, even though it was one of our best seasons. So I put us back in the animated category." There, the show regularly is a big winner.

Of course, The Simpsons movie will wind up facing the same discrimination. At best, it will be lumped in a category of competing animated films. But Mirkin isn't deterred.

"It's really exciting, a fantastic challenge, to make The Simpsons for the big screen and have visual fun with it and create a larger story," he said. "We're having a blast writing it — and that's all I can say."

Doh!