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The Simpsons The Movie?
rosewood writes "Everyone loves the Simpsons so why not a Simpsons movie? I know I'm not the only one that would look forward for it. " I'm more than a little skeptical, but hell, South Park scaled pretty well to the big screen. Maybe if they could get some of the writers in from the earlier seasons (You listening Conan?) on board, they could do something awesome.
... but what the heck. I'd love to watch a Simpsons movie.
...
It's really sorta hard to imagine what it'd be like, though... I think part of the beauty of the Simpsons is the simplicity of the plots, buffed by the arcane insanity of the in-between stuff that goes on, often in the background. Dunno if I could handle a full hour and a half of that, but maybe... just maybe
(Here in LA, Fox shows Simpsons 3 times daily... admittedly, there's a lot of repeats, but hey, it's Homer-ific!)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
You know you're a geek when you refer to something going from TV to the big screen as "scaling".
That's priceless.
Referring to a woman who you knew years ago as a pigtailed little girl: Wow, she sure scaled well.
Amusing.
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Dan Castalaneta (sp) the voice of Homer Simpson stated on the Tom Lykis show (while in Aspen) that a feature film was unlikely during the time the show is in television.
Apparently the current yearly episode load (something like 22) is about the maximum the show can handle. Apparently it takes 7 months to write, draw, animate and then do the voices for an episode.
The Simpsons would easily scale into a full length movie...just think of all the episodes that were 2,3,4 parters. You could probably string together the simpsons for literally hours on end and never lose the humor, its just the way that show is.
;)
And even better is the fact that it would be made specifically as a movie...think of a full scale simpsons plot...without having to wait for the next episode. It'd be awesome.
Theres a reason the simpsons are the longest running active comedy show. And theres a reason why it also appeals to more than just one demographic group...and Im surprised it hasn't been picked up for a movie yet. Maybe the offers have come, but been refused?
... think about it, she's the sleeper character in the Simpsons.
If they did it right, they could grow Maggy into a new character that sustains the Simpsons for another couple of seasons.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Lots of handy information here - it actually sounds pretty unlikely from what they have said over the years. Ford Prefect
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
The guy would have to be bald. overweight, and rather thick... hmmmmm.....
William Shatner?
Doh!
Jailbrekr
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
The simpsons is tired. i can't remember the last time a new episode was good all the way through. in the classic episodes, the whole story would work together and the freaky side stuff would somehow all relate. the new episodes are just a bunch of jokes the writers thought up, just strewn together. sort of like that futurama crap. if they do a movie, i hope they use it to end the simpsons for good. quit before you suck, like they did with seinfeld. ed
The reason South Park "scaled" so well is because the producers took a new attitude towards the movie. It wasn't just another episode of South Park: it was a sick, twisted extravaganza which actually spent 1/5 of its total production time in the Censors office, trying to get whittled down from an NC-17 rating.
But here are some reasons why I think the Simpson's can't manage a full-length movie:
I hate to be pessimistic, but I'd hate a bad Simpson's movie even more. I mean, 10 years... to end with a crappy film would be just plain shameful.
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"Okay, who taught the cat how to type ctrl alt delete?"
i happened to find a new york post on the subway on the way to school and read an article about the simpsons movie which can be found here: http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/1251 .htm.
in any case, i'd love a simpsons movie. this is the last season, so it's a good time for it, etc, etc. i'm quite disappointed with how fox is giving futurama the timeslot shaft for malcolm in the middle.
If they make this movie with the writing staff they had this year it's going to suck big time. This season, the show has was lame and it's dedicated followers even dropped off. If they want to make a big splash and possible revive the series to its former glory they need to bring back the magic that Conan O'Brien, James L. Brooks, David Mirkin, and a bunch of the writers who left the show who left to work on Futurama last year. Futurama is funny this year and the Simsons just went to the dogs.
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Shortly before Futurama first aired, there was an interview with Matt Groening in Wired.
In the article he mentioned that he felt that Futurama had a better potential for movie development and that he personally thought the Simpsons were too limiting to expand into a feature film.
One of the former writers from The Simpsons, Mike Reiss, recently came and spoke to our University. One of the questions asked of him was "What exactly does Matt Groenig do on the show?". His response was "if you want to know what Matt Groening did on The Simpsons, ask yourself what Walt Disney did on Toy Story."
.sig Instructions .sig here
Someone else asked why a Simpsons Movie has not yet been created. His answer was simple: if a Simpsons movie WAS to be created, Matt Groenig would be the one to write, produce, and direct it.
And that's why there hasn't been a Simpsons movie yet.
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step one: place
My fellow Americans, this is a momentous occasion indeed, and I wish the best of luck to our own Mr. Groenigs future.
And speaking of future, have you watched his other show, Futurama? It is a wonderful portrayal of our great nation's spirit and ingenuity for this millennium, and the millenniums to come.
Thanks to Mr. Groenig, we can keep our hope alive for the next two thousand years.
Thank you, and God bless.
I'm under the impression that Matt Groening and many of the other Simpsons people found the Simpsons universe almost a little too confining in a way. Only so many things can happen to an average American family, after all (well, without the beetle-browed denizens of alt.tv.simpsons complaining too much...)
:-)
:-)
Some of my favourite parts of the Simpsons are when the writers go utterly and totally nuts; a lot of my favourite Simpsons moments are like this (Homer in Space? Homer^3? Itchy and Scratchy Land?) The Halloween episodes are a good example of this - the writers basically get a chance to let anything happen, and play with the consequences.
In a way, Futurama is the logical extension. Want a planet filled with human-hating robots? Suicide booths? A homicidal Father Christmas? Coin-operated prostitution droids? A Matrix comprised of senile pensioners? Civilisation-building parasites? Easy. And it doesn't even have to be Halloween either.
I've seen the latest Simpsons and Futurama (despite being in the UK, don't ask) and the Futurama ('I have a plan so devious...') knocked spots off the Simpsons (character killed off for no apparent reason - D'oh!) Oh, and any cartoon that can make P vs NP and 2001 jokes wins points from me.
A Simpsons film could be excellent; it could also be a terrible disappointment. If it was a success, it would be a nice way of making them go out with a bang instead of a whimper.
BTW, a third Futurama season (with 22 episodes) has been confirmed. There's an interesting interview here, along with loads of other cool stuff.
Ford Prefect
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
...they're going to need to introduce new material. While any diehard Simpsons fan will go to see the movie, it'll quickly lose interest unless they introduce a new character, or a major new thing to the show.
Another great way to follow through with the movie would be to incorporate the ending of the movie in with some of the television episodes about a month or a month and a half after the release of the movie. How do you all feel?
Anyone know if South Park incorporated the ending of their movie into some of their new episodes?
This may seem a trifle contrived, but as I see it, there won't be a feature film now, simply because it hasn't happened yet, ie. if it was ever going to happen it would have happened _way_ earlier.
What makes me say this? Well, first of all I would have thought the pressure to do a Simpsons movie would have been pretty massive earlier in it's history, when the hype etc. about it was MASSIVE, say after season 3 maybe. That's when everybody, and their dog, and their dog's friends, would have gone to see it.
I'm not saying lots wouldn't go see it now, I'm just saying that it seems a little late in the day for a full-length feature to come out.
To generalize a little (and open myself up to flaming), other cartoon feature films, such as Beavis and Butthead, and South Park, have been released pretty early on as well. This could be related to the fact that they don't have the staying power and broad appeal of The Simpsons, but is still related.
And yes, I know it's early days for South Park (compared to The Simpsons), and it may still be around in 10 years, but it definitely doesn't have the whole from 4 year olds to grandparents appeal of The Simpsons.
Cheers.
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:-)
Found by typing 'simpsons "pulp fiction"' into Google, then pressing 'I'm feeling lucky'.
I'm going to have to redraw and colourise that Apu picture...
God, I love Google.
Ford Prefect
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
MPAA member Fox would release it, So I won't be seeing any Simpsons movies, Untill the DeCSS lawsuits are dropped.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
I am an avid fan of The Simpsons - I have seen every episode and have my own library of approximately half the existent episodes.
However, I don't believe that The Simpsons would "scale" well to the big screen. Why? Well, look at most Simpsons episodes - they are mainly slap-stick comedy, with the very well placed satire and parody embedded in the script and visual gags.
Would that work on the big screen? Or should I say, would it work for more than an hour? Or even close to an hour and a half?
I doubt it. Sure, it would be a great moneymaker - it'd be like Star Wars, people knew it sucked compared to the hype, but they went and saw it anyway because everyone else was doing it.
However, I truly believe Matt Groening isn't as interested in money as the network producers are. He has always been keen on placing rich satire about life into a comedic, cartoony sense.
In an interview, I read that Groening sold Futurama to FOX by saying "Here's another show by me - the guy who created The Simpsons! And it's just as good as The Simpsons!" Of course, FOX saw dollar signs. Though, that's not what Groening created the show for, and it shows in the show's unique style that is Groening.
In any case, that's just why I think there hasn't, and won't be, a Simpsons movie coming any time soon.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Dialog and the musical score are recorded. This process does not occur until later in the production of a movie, but for an animated movie, the dialog and music must first be recorded so that the artists can synchronize their drawings to it.
A layout artist works in conjunction with the director to determine what will be in each scene, how each character will look, and how the story can best be broken into scenes. Once this process is complete, the layout artists prepare drawings to guide the background artists and animators.
The background artists are responsible for drawing all of the backgrounds found in the animated movie. A background is considered anything in the scene except for the characters and anything else that those characters might interact with (for example, if a character picks up a book from a table, that book is not part of the background).
The animators are responsible for drawing each character's movements on seperate drawings. It takes 24 of these drawings to make one second of film. Usually, different animators are assigned to different characters. The animators work from a timing chart. The timing chart indicates the number of frames, or seperate pictures, needed for the particular character to express each word of previously recorded dialog. For example, the timing chart may show that the character has to say the word "hello" in 8 frames. The animators then make 8 seperate drawings in which the character's mouth moves to form the word "hello."
Because the animators are responsible for drawing up to a million different drawings, the idea of key-framing has been introduced. In the key-framing, the lead animator draws the character in its key-frame position. A key-frame position may occur two or three times every 24 frames (or one second). A key frame means that frame contains the essential action of the scene. A junior animator must then draw all of the drawings necessary in-between the key frames.
Once the animators have completed their drawings, another group of artists traces them onto sheets of transparent celluloid, called cels, with ink. These cels are then sent to the painting department. At the painting department, a painter paints the proper colors onto the reverse side of the cels.
The completed cels are then sorted into their proper sequence. The cels and backgrounds are sent to the camera department. At the camera department, the camera operator has an exposure sheet which tells him/her which cels belong with which backgrounds. The appropriate cels are properly layered over the appropriate backgrounds, as they are filmed one frame at a time.
The sound track is added to the film and the picture is ready for release.
X-Files.
X-Files made a pretty decent movie for a television series that both drew from the history of the show and stood on its own as an excellent plot. When they returned to the series, not only did they do a great job of integrating the movie back into the plotline without too much dependency, but it almost seemed to give the series a new vibrancy.
But then again, X-Files is a very different type of television show that is almost more suited for the big screen than it is for the small screen.
A movie isn't going to fix what ails the show. Here's the problem in a nutshell:
In the Critic-Simpsons crossover, they make fun of "Football in the Groin."
A few weeks ago, on the Simpsons ski trip episode, they devoted 20 seconds of screen time to Homer being hit in the groin.
When you become what you used to parody, it's time to call it quits.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Full frontal nudity of Marge.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Beavis & Butthead Do America was the beginning of the end for B&B. Sure, it was at least in part due to Mike Judge starting up King of the Hill (how many B&B characters, or at least voices do you hear in there? I see a lot), but I think the movie was too much. Had it been done earlier in the lifetime of the show, maybe it would have been better. But by the time the movie came out, the show had already been "toned down" from the good ol' days and the movie never played to the sick (but damn funny) level the older episodes did.
Forget about a movie ... does anyone know why the TV series is still only available on video and not on DVD?
Regards, Ralph