I had never heard of this guy. I’ve always heard Matt Groening and James L. Brooks were behind The Simpsons. Wikipedia only mentions him briefly. His short involvement netted him a sweet deal. He got a regular check from the show for the past 20 years.
Anyone else heard of this guy? It’s kind of weird to think Matt Groening had a co-creator. Next I guess we’ll find out J. Michael Straczynsk needed a co-creator for Babylon 5.
Dying of cancer, but super upbeat about the possibilities of the rest of his life and giving all his money to stray dogs to keep them from being euthanized and training the dogs to become guide dogs and therapy dogs for traumatized soldiers… Sam Simon is a fucking hero.
I’m sure he’ll never read this, but thank you Mr. Simon for everything you’re doing now in your last days and thank you for everything you did on The Simpsons. Your show helped an awkward kid make friends in high school. I don’t know if he could have done it otherwise.
Also, I’ll post this now because I’m sure someone will eventually:
He is an extremely accomplished TV writer and The Simpsons wouldn’t have become what it did without him. Matt Groening and probably James L. Brooks came to loathe the guy and he’s apparently very hard to work with, but he played a big role with The Simpsons. Whatever he may be like as a coworker - George Carlin wrote in his memoir that he was crazy - he seems to have found some happiness working with animals. And he’s lead an interesting life apart from TV: he was a pretty successful boxing manager and poker player and was married to Jennifer Tilly for a while. I was sorry to hear about his illness but he seems to be taking it well.
And the list of writers he hired is incredible. They wrote a lot of the defining episodes of the show, and if you’re a longtime fan there’s a very high chance someone on that list wrote your favorite episode. Jean and Reiss became showrunners after Simon left and Al Jean has been the head writer for about 10 years, John Swartzwelder is the most prolific writer in the history of the series, and George Meyer is still with the show and is responsible for a lot of the best jokes.
I haven’t watched regularly in years. Tonight is a good time to catch an episode and see what the show is doing now. It’s like a time capsule because no one ever ages. A show aired in 92 looks just like one they did in 13.
I didn’t realize Simon had such an important role in hiring the show’s writers. That’s very interesting.
One history of the show claimed the Simon was at least as important as Groening and Brooks. Groening was the guy who came up with the concept and the character names and Brooks was the executive who got the show made. But Simon was the guy who was down in the writing room actually producing the stories and scripts and jokes.
Maybe the show’s success was a matter of synergy between Brooks, Groening, Simon and the writers, you know, a teamwork thing … sigh, I know … socialism!
I’m sorry to hear about Sam Simon’s situation. From what’s been said, it seems as though he’s responsible for bringing a lot of laughs to a lot of people.
I’m another of those who stopped watching “The Simpsons” after the first few years. It’s quite possible that what seemed to me to be a decline in quality, is not unconnected with Mr. Simon’s departure.
I was just thinking about that myself. I am a frequent consumer of the WTF podcast and this one was really good. I didn’t know Simon other than seeing his name here or there. I think it’s worth a listen.
Groening’s writing contributions to the show is minimal. He wrote one script and came up with story ideas for four other episodes with somebody else writing the script. Which isn’t saying he has no role in the show - he did create the main characters.
But my understanding is Groening implies he’s much more involved than he really is. He apparently likes it if people think he’s the main creative voice on the series. But this isn’t true and it’s apparently one of the reasons why Simon left the show - he was annoyed with people giving Groening all the credit for work Simon was actually doing.
Groening’s an alum of my college and years ago I got to sit in on an interview with him. He said then (this was in 2001) that he didn’t really do much on the shows (Simpsons and Futurama)any more. He’d pop into the office at the Simpsons just to see what they were working on and then say he had to pop over to Futurama and leave. He’d go over to the Futurama office and see what they were working on and tell them he had to go over to the Simpsons office…but really he’d just go home for the day.
