THE SIMPSONS NEWS

In my first post ever, I mentioned Simpson parties. Well I went to both so now I can tell you about them. The first one was a wrap party and in took place at the Fox studio lot. There is a large grassy area in the lot next to the cafeteria and the Fox store inside the lot. That’s were the party took place. It was a big barbecue party. Hamburgers, roast beef and barbecue chicken sandwiches were served. There was liquor and Buzz Cola (which tastes like coke) to be drunk and for dessert, chocolate fruit fondue. Or if you preferred there was also an ice cream bin you could go get ice cream from. Afterwards, those of us who had signed in for the nine o’clock screening of the movie, went into one of the lot theaters and watched it. Matt Groening and David Silverman were there greeting people in line. Before the movie played Matt, David, and James L. Brooks introduced the movie and thanked us for our work. It was really nice of them to do that. After the Movie was over my wife and I, on the way to our car, met up with David Silverman shook his hand and complimented him on the great job he did. We left very happy.

The second party was something all together different. It turned out that it was the PREMIER PARTY. First, we went to the Premier screening. Red carpet and all (Well, actually, it was a yellow carpet. No joke). There was a band that played every time an celebrity showed up and they would get interviewed on TV. It was exciting. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go to a movie premier again, so I tried to enjoy it as much as I could. We met up with the few friends of mine that were invited also and went into the theater. There were two theaters because there wasn’t going to be enough space in one. There was a balcony in ours. Most of the bottom half of the theater was reserved for “more important people”. We had to choose to either get bad seats in the front or the sides on the first floor or sit in the balcony. We chose to sit in the front on the first floor because one of my friends went to a movie one time, sat in the balcony instead of in the first floor and behind the place they would have sat in, sat Jet Li. My friend didn’t want that to happen again. Turns out that in the row behind us sat Marisa Tomei. We didn’t really see too many actors in the theater though. We looked. We sat around talking for an hour and a half before the movie began and we watched it again.

After the movie was over, we went to the “after party”. It was bigger than the usual TV premier parties we’ve been to. It was an open air party. There was food, and drinks (of course), but there was also FREE SQUISHIES (Yum). The Squishies were served in cups with different drawing of the characters on each. Apparently Mark Hamill was at the party. I friend told me, he saw him start stacking up all the different cups and walk off with some. Mark Hamill is as big a geek as WE ARE! I heard there were quite a few celebrities there. I saw Kevin Smith and his wife at the party but I didn’t really see anyone else. There were too many people. Besides food, there were places were you could get your picture taken with the Simpsons. There was a place were they superimposed your picture in a scene from the movie and there was a place were you could take your picture on a life sized couch where life size sculptures of the family sat. There was also a place were you could make a wax mold of your hand holding a rubber pink Simpsons donut. We stood in line for that for about thirty minutes before we gave it up. The line was barely moving. There were girls in tight yellow jumpsuits that hoola hooped around the party as well as women in suits playing saxophones. There were also four domes at the party. Each dome had a theme. One was the ice cream dome, another was a dance dome, the third was a video game dome (with X-box 360s), and the last dome was the exit. The DJ played music all night while behind him, on three giant round disks, drawings of the Simpsons were projected. In the center disk there was a projection of a giant donut. Alesha and I had a good time. We ended up getting home about twelve thirty that night. I overslept and got in late to work the next day. DOH!

How did we like the movie you ask? I loved it. I’m not just saying that because I worked on it. I really liked it. The consensus at the studio is that the movie is really good. We are all very happy with it. It’s very exciting. I can’t wait for you to see it, so you could let me know what you think. A word of warning. The movie is not for kids. There are scenes in the movie which may not be suitable for younger audiences. I knew a lot of the jokes already, and I still laughed my head off. Seeing them in context makes all the difference.

MY WEEK

Sorry about how long it took for this article to be posted. I’ve had a very busy week. I went to Comic Con so I lost the day I usually reserve to write on the blog. More on the Comic Con next post.

PODCASTS Interviews

I got interviewed on the Catholic Insider a while ago and my interview has just now been put up. To paraphrase Shannon who commented on my last article, “brings back memories”. The interview turned out pretty cool but I sure do mumble. Who am I, Popeye?!

A few months after that interview I was pulled back into the movie and worked for three months on it. We worked everyday on it, including weekends.

I think some of the things I said, may need some amending. I’m not exactly sure when Brad Bird began on the show or if he had anything to do with the style of the show outside of refining Side Show Bob. Maybe someone out there know a little something more about it than I do. I also left out the fact that Wes Archer was also one of the first people to work on the Tracy Ullman shorts along with David Silverman. He worked on the show until he left to become head director on King of the Hill.

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