“Cartoons have writers?” – Bart Simpson
“Enh, sort of.” – Lisa Simpson
The 81 minute roundtable discussion Conan O’Brien hosted with Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jay Kogen, and Jeff Martin is now live on O’Brien’s website. (I couldn’t get the embedding to work here on WordPress.) I must warn you: it is very addictive. I started it thinking I’d watch a few minutes and then come back to it tonight when I had more time. Nope. Watched it straight through my lunch.
As a Simpsons fan, it’s a must-see. They talk about the origins of the show, joke about specific memories and episodes, and generally just crack each other up. It’s funny from start to finish, and at one point O’Brien puts this picture up:
Clockwise from lower left: John Swartzwelder, David M. Stern, Mike Reiss, Conan O’Brien, Jeff Martin, Jon Vitti, Matt Groening, George Meyer, Al Jean (facing away from camera). Jean joked that this was a Potemkin village photo in that they brought in all the cutouts and cleaned the place up.
There’s a lot of great stuff in here, but for now just let me note that at the 28:00 minute mark, Kogen says, “I remember when the show was at it’s, well, it’s still at it’s height.” Heh. Caught himself midsentence.
