Quote: Kenneth @ 4th March 2019, 11:57 AMHave a few snippets:
We jumped from Sledge Hammer! to ALF, a show about an alien hiding out with a family in suburbia. ALF ("Alien Life Form") was in fact a puppet voiced and operated by show creator Paul Fusco, one of the most talented men I ever worked with.
More importantly, the show was something new in our careers: a hit!
One thing we would take from ALF to The Simpsons was its suffusion of pop culture references. In the pilot for ALF, there was a line that every critic at the time singled out. When the family in the show is fighting, the father cries out, "Have we learned nothing from The Cosby Show?"ALF's pop culture obsession reached a peak in an episode where the alien dreams he's shipwrecked on Gilligan's Island, his favorite show. We assembled a majority of the cast as guest stars -- sing it with me: Gilligan, the Skipper too, the professor, and Mary Ann. For a child of the sixties this was a dream come true -- I got to write jokes for Gilligan. And hit on Mary Ann.
Because ALF was a show with a puppet, we knew kids would watch it, even if they didn't get the jokes. This freed us to write our scripts purely for an adult audience. One episode was an hour-long parody of The Tonight Show, which was on three hours past most kids' bedtimes. (I got to reuse some old Carnacs on that one!) This was a lesson we took to The Simpsons -- don't write the show for kids; write it for the parents who will be watching with their kids.
ALF didn't pioneer this, by the way. Mad magazine never worried about what its audience might understand: it once did a cover story on A Clockwork Orange, an X-rated film that its core readers were too young to see. Years later, The Simpsons would do a Halloween show that parodied both A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut, the Stanley Kubrick X-rated double feature. If your kids have seen these movies, I'm calling Child Protective Services.
I can trace this refusal to write down to your audience to Rocky and Bullwinkle, a show everyone at The Simpsons grew up watching. Apparently, the writers of that show (including Jim Brooks's old writing partner, Allan Burns) felt that the show's animation was so bad, the only way to save it was in the writing. As such, Rocky and Bullwinkle was a mix of silly puns and sophisticated Cold War satire; villain Boris Badenov was a nod to Boris Godunov, the sixteenth-century czar regent of Russia. Get it, kids? Of course not.
After a year on ALF, Al and I went off to work on It's Garry Shandling's Show, a show about a guy who knew he was on a show. Even the theme song was self-referential: "This is the theme to Garry's show / The opening theme to Garry's show . . ." The set was an exact replica of Shandling's actual living room.
People don't realize how much of The Simpsons came from It's Garry Shandling's Show. More than half our original writing staff--Sam Simon, Jay Kogen, Wally Wolodarsky, Al, and I--had done time on the series. The show was as unpredictable and self-aware as The Simpsons would be. The Shandling show also pioneered the use of the random guest star; for example, Jeff Goldblum and Tom Petty had recurring roles, as themselves, playing Garry's wacky neighbors. The Simpsons would do this later, but Shandling did it first.
Very, very interesting - thank you. It is definitely a classy show as witnessed by its forward and back references. The only issue I have is the suggestion that ALF is a puppet. 
Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 7th March 2019, 12:05 AMI PM'd him a couple of weeks ago and he's OK. Has had some "issues" (I won't go into what) and hopes to be back soon.
I fear you might be pushing it so far as the 80% feline one is concerned - he's never been the same since altering that photo to make himself look less enigmatic - but, yes, I do want the Gord back big time. He puts the rock n roll into street markets and has a healthy attitude towards the never-ending German question.
