The call of 'D'oh!'

[Dave Monroe]

The call of 'D'oh!'
Writers become downright animated for 'The Simpsons'
guest spots.
By Steven Barrie-Anthony
Times Staff Writer

November 30, 2005

TOM WOLFE is screaming. He screams softly, this
Southern gentleman, his trademark white suit
unwrinkled, his spats unwavering even as a giant
granite boulder hurtles down upon him. It looks to be
the end of the pioneering New Journalism author of
"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."

"Aaaaaaaahh! Wait, no, that wasn't good, let me start
over."

"How did you scream last time a boulder was hurtling
toward you?" asks Carolyn Omine, executive producer of
"The Simpsons."

"Why don't you try, 'Aaaaahhhh, my suit!' " suggests a
rail-thin, nerdy-looking writer, from the front of the
Fox recording studio.

"Ahhhhh, my suit! It's gabardine!" wails Wolfe, toward
the microphone. "Well, but cops wear gabardine."

Slowly, Wolfe transforms. Even now, this episode's
director, Mark Kirkland, is circling Wolfe, snapping
pictures. Soon, a team of animators will render Wolfe
bug-eyed and yellow-skinned. A year from now he'll
appear on television alongside Homer, Marge, Bart,
Lisa, Maggie and the bartender Moe in an episode of
"The Simpsons" parodying highfalutin literary culture.

"We started with the idea of Moe as Charles Bukowski,"
explains Matt Warburton, who wrote the episode. "We
brought Lisa in as the person who discovers in scuzzy,
barfly Moe something that we've never seen before: a
poet." Antics ensue, with Wolfe and fellow guest stars
Gore Vidal, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen
voicing themselves. All were thrilled to participate.

"This is the only show of any sort that I watch on
television," Wolfe says, sitting in the greenroom
after recording. The immaculately dressed author is
surrounded by a group of scruffy Harvard-educated
"Simpsons" writers, hanging on his every word. "My
son, Tommy, who's now 20, one of his first words was
[Homer's trademark exclamation] 'D'oh!' And now any
conversation he has with anybody, he'll reference 'The
Simpsons.' "

The writers laugh knowingly. This isn't uncommon. The
show is in the "Guinness Book of World Records" for
the most guest voices of any animated series, and
invitees are often begged to participate by their
children or younger friends who see it as akin to
nabbing the Nobel Prize. Past guests include actors
(Kirk Douglas, Drew Barrymore), musicians (U2, the
Who) athletes (Andre Agassi, Magic Johnson),
politicians (Tony Blair) and even the most reclusive
of writers (Thomas Pynchon lent his voice twice, and
faxed in a list of jokes beforehand).

"The fastest 'yes' I ever received was Elizabeth
Taylor," says Bonnie Pietila, the producer in charge
of casting. "I hung up the phone after leaving a
message and she called back five minutes later." Some
celebrities are so eager to appear on the show "that
they have a representative call us on a monthly
basis," Pietila says. "But we only have 22 episodes
each season." Al Gore is one of the few to have turned
"The Simpsons" down.

On a stiflingly hot Monday afternoon, Franzen and
Chabon drive onto the Fox lot together. They convene
with producers in the greenroom and sit on couches
surrounding a wide swath of sandwich makings, jumbo
cookies and fruit that nobody ever seems to touch.

"My kids and my father are very excited," Chabon says.
He's not kidding. Reached later by phone, his father,
Robert Chabon, said that he always expected Michael to
win a Pulitzer (which he did in 2001 for "The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"). "And I still think
he's going to win the National Book Award," said the
Kansas City, Kan., pediatrician. "But him being on
'The Simpsons' is beyond my wildest dreams. You
envision certain successes for your children, but this
kind of success — I never envisioned."

Sometimes the show seems to be instigated by a vast
conspiracy of children. "Simpsons" creator Matt
Groening strolls into the greenroom and once again
tells Chabon that his kids are big Chabon fans.
"That's great," Chabon says, grinning. "My kids were
very excited when I told them that Matt Groening's
kids know who their father is."

The script calls for Chabon and Franzen to brawl
during a dispute about their literary influences, and
standing next to each other in the recording room, the
friends ready themselves for a fight. Franzen
complains loudly that he has fewer lines than Chabon —
"Only 38 words!" — to which Chabon responds, "I see
there's a little counting going on in the Franzenian
corner."

Dan Castellaneta, the voice of many "Simpsons"
characters, including Homer, Barney, Krusty the Clown
and Groundskeeper Willie, sits on a swivel chair
nearby, wearing sunglasses and smiling at the
amateurs. Then Groening arrives, a red light glows and
recording begins.

Franzen need not have worried about counting words.
The session's Emmy-worthy performances are wordless
strings of yelps and grunts. After reading and
rereading their lines, the writers take turns making
fight noises like "urrrrrg!" and "ugh!" and "ouch!"
Chabon throws his whole body into it, lunging at the
microphone, while Franzen keeps a dry, acerbic cool.
Omine, the producer, reads them their cues, and
writers sitting around the room toss out ideas as they
occur.

Franzen: "Gaa! Dajjjmit! Ach! Rrrr!"

Writer: "How about, 'Nooo! My prescription-less
glasses, the ones I wear to look smart!' "

Franzen: "My trademark glasses!"

Omine: "Let's continue with Jonathan, because you have
to whack Michael with a chair. Some more pain sounds,
please."

Writer: "How about saying, 'You fight like Anne Rice!'
"

Eventually, it's time to encounter that same runaway
granite chunk that flattened Tom Wolfe. Franzen's
scream has a hint of falsetto; Chabon writhes as he
lets out an anguished moan.

It's over in less than an hour; but echoes of those
recordings will stick with you, says Amy Tan, author
of the 1990 book "The Joy Luck Club," who voiced
herself on the show five years ago. "Among a certain
group of mostly younger people, I'm like a movie star
of cartoons," she says. "People who are not impressed
with anything else are very impressed that I was in
'The Simpsons.' I don't know what the equivalent would
be. Like I was playing with the Rolling Stones or
something. It's as though I actually know Homer and
Marge and the kids."

Being on the show doesn't improve a writer's
salability, says Sandra Dijkstra, Tan's literary
agent. "I don't think it does anything for their
careers. My impression is that it's simply fun. 'The
Simpsons' is countercultural and subversive and it
makes important statements about America today. Good
writers want to be subversive, and they want to be on
'The Simpsons.' "

If there were a trophy for hipsterism, it might well
be in the shape of Homer's head. The series that Time
magazine dubbed "the best show in the history of
television" has for 17 years spawned conversations on
playgrounds and at cocktail parties. It's the focus of
university classes and doctoral theses. And it long
ago infiltrated the lingo of today's high school kids,
who don't know a Simpson-less world. ("D'oh!" was
included in the 2001 Oxford Dictionary.)

But despite its cultural saturation, Gore Vidal hasn't
watched the show. "I live in Italy," he says, walking
with a cane toward a lone chair in the recording
studio. "I don't see much American TV."

Vidal puffs out his chest and begins, imbuing his
lines with the solemn dignity of a Shakespearean
actor. Each syllable receives its share of attention.
Groening watches intently from a couch, smiling. Vidal
doesn't sound like a Simpson. He sounds like Gore
Vidal.

It's a wrap. Vidal says that he "can't wait" to see
the episode and that transforming into a
yellow-skinned character is a return of sorts: "After
all, I had jaundice as a kid." On the way out, he
segues into a favorite topic and tells the producers,
"There's a White House plan to destabilize California
like they've destabilized Iraq or Iran." Then he
leaves the studio. Alive. Vidal is the only one of
these authors to escape a cartoon death.

http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-et-simpsons30nov30,0,5984841.story?coll=la-home-style



		
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