![]() At Beverly Hills High School, he wrestled and played football and was named “most talented” for the cartoons he contributed to the school newspaper, according to a 2014 Vanity Fair profile.Īt Stanford University, he studied psychology and drew sports cartoons for the student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, and for the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle.įollowing graduation in 1977, he spent a year as an artist and writer at Filmation Associates, a production company, working on animated shows including The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Fat Albert & the Cosby Kids. His only-in-Hollywood formative experiences included seeing his runaway dog returned by Elvis Presley, in a limousine, and walking in on his mother and Groucho Marx “in a compromising position in my parents’ bedroom.”Īn artist from an early age, he drew illustrations to accompany stories on a locally televised children’s program. He was one of two children of Arthur Simon, a women’s clothing manufacturer, and the former Joan Feld, who owned an art gallery. Samuel Michael Simon was born in Los Angeles on June 6, 1955, and raised in Beverly Hills. Ortved’s book quoted Wallace Wolodarsky, a Simpsons writer from 1989 to 1992, as saying: “Sam opened our eyes to the possibilities of what an animated show could be, which is to say we could go anywhere in the world, we could do anything, and that was incredibly liberating.” And I just thought, ‘This is groundbreaking.’” “This was a story about a frustrated housewife who meets someone romantic and wants to have an affair, and you’re on her side. “It was the first time I saw that this show could be something beyond what a normal sitcom could do,” Simon said. The season-one episode, written by John Swartzwelder, won a 1990 Emmy Award. Simon said his favorite episode had Marge, insulted one time too many by Homer, consider and ultimately decline romantic overtures by a French bowling instructor, voiced by Albert Brooks. He retained the title of executive producer - along with Groening and James Brooks - and said he collected tens of millions of dollars annually as the show continued. Regarding his departure after the 1992 season, Simon said he had grown unhappy as his responsibilities expanded beyond writing. The New York Times magazine, in 2001, quoted Groening as calling Simon “brilliantly funny and one of the smartest writers I’ve ever worked with, although unpleasant and mentally unbalanced.” The Simpsons/Wikipedia Simon told CBS’s 60 Minutes in 2007 that his work “turns me into a monster.” Colleagues didn’t disagree. Montgomery Burns, the money-hoarding executive, Simon said he felt a connection with Homer, because the “raging child that is within him is something that a lot of people, including myself, can relate to.” Though he created characters including C. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. ![]() “The revolution of The Simpsons would be that these characters had real emotion,” Simon recalled in a 2013 interview with the Archive of American Television, “unlike Bugs Bunny, who was very funny, but he didn’t have an emotional inner life that you could go, ‘Oh my god, I went through that.’” The result was the made-up city of Springfield, home to the Simpson family - Homer and Marge, and their children Bart, Lisa and Maggie. It was “the cigar-smoking, hard-gambling, brilliant” Simon, Ortved wrote, who took the animated shorts that Groening had created for The Tracey Ullman Show and “transformed them into the hysterical half-hour episodes that America fell in love with.” Rick Miller swaps the Simpsons and Shakespeare for Baby Boomers.Leonard Nimoy dead at 83 after end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Hailed as “the show’s true architect,” Simon “assembled the original Simpsons writing room, which has become the stuff of legend,” John Ortved wrote in his 2009 book, The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |