Backstage with The Simpsons

Celebrity cameos on The Simpsons have evolved from the semiobscure (Albert Brooks, starring as Cowboy Bob in season one’s “The Call of the Simpsons”) to groveling A-listers craving credibility after the show became a hit (Sarah Michelle Gellar in season 15’s “The Wandering Juvie”). A great deal happened in those voiceover booths that nobody knew about—until now. On Friday 24, former Simpsons writer Mike Reiss will dish on the cartoon’s juiciest triumphs and most scandalous foibles at 92YTribeca­. (That includes him pissing off Fox for remarking that ’N Sync were “five of the nicest girls I’ve ever met.”) We asked the four-time Emmy winner to reflect on the gets The Simpsons never got.

Photograph: Brooks Kraft/Sygma/Corbis

Bruce Springsteen
“We’ve asked him to do it every couple of years, since season two,” says Reiss. “We’ve had the Who, the Rolling Stones, three of the Beatles, the whole Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but Bruce always says no. We can’t even trick him into coming on. We got Clarence Clemons [as the narrator in season 11’s “Grift of the Magi”], hoping he would tell Bruce what a great time he had. Our show runner sent him a Simpsons baseball jacket, but none of it worked. Whatever deep-seated reasons he has for not doing The Simpsons, I don’t think you can buy him with a baseball jacket.”

Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

J.D. Salinger
“We had writer Thomas Pynchon [play himself in season 15’s “Diatribe of a Mad Housewife,” and in the following year’s “All’s Fair in Oven War”], who hasn’t been photographed or interviewed in 40 years. He even wrote jokes for the show, and everyone loved him,” says Reiss. “We said, ‘Gee, if we got the No. 2 recluse in America, why not go after the No. 1?’ It was the quickest rejection we’ve ever gotten. Literally 45 seconds passed between putting the feeler out and getting turned down.”

Photograph: Shepard Sherbell/Corbis

A U.S. President
“We’ve asked every President, from Gerald Ford on, and they all said no,” says Reiss. “We wrote a part for Bill Clinton two years ago. He wrote back and said, ‘I would love to do The Simpsons, but I would never do anything that would bring disgrace to the office of the President.’ I always say: ‘Sometimes they write the jokes for us.’”—Kenny Herzog

D’OH! “A Backstage Tour of The Simpsons with Mike Reiss”: 92YTribeca, 200 Hudson St between Canal and Desbrosses Sts (212-601-1000, 92y.org). Fri 24 at 7pm, $12.

Next Top five celebrity Simpsons cameos
Five It boys who made it to Springfield.

See more in Own This City

Time Out New York / Issue 708 : Apr 23–29, 2009

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Comments

1. Posted by matt on Fri, Apr 24, 09, at 12:33pm

   My lovable Simpsons, forget Salinger. Catcher in the Rye sucks. And I know good book.

   Flag as inappropriate

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