Matt Will
Matt Will
years ideas drawing
I had been drawing my weekly comic strip, 'Life in Hell,' for about five years when I got a call from Jim Brooks, who was developing 'The Tracey Ullman Show' for the brand-new Fox network. He wanted me to come in and pitch an idea for doing little cartoons on that show.
character soul trying
I have less to do with 'The Simpsons' every season, but I stick my nose in here and there. Basically, it's just trying to keep the characters consistent and making sure the show has a soul.
scary flying mosquitoes
The scary thing about the future... there will be tiny cameras everywhere, and they'll be flying around like mosquitoes and drones. That will be bad. Drones are scary. You can't reason with a drone.
home tv-shows two
The really great thing about having two TV shows going on at the same time is that I can go to one and say that I have to go and visit the other, and then I can just go home, and they don't know.
nice ideas honor
The nice thing about 'Futurama' for me personally was that it was a way to honor some of the traditional ideas in literary science fiction, not so much movie or television science fiction - although we have that too, obviously. Our situation, a workplace comedy, led to all sorts of stuff.
son two use
The conundrum that I face on a daily basis is that I have two sons who have grown up watching 'The Simpsons,' so they know exactly what buttons to push. They know how Bart irritates Homer, and they use these lines against me to tell me that I'm not funny anymore.
kids later-in-life done
I know for a fact, obviously, because my kids grew up watching the show, that there are some things they are introduced to from 'The Simpsons', and then later in life they see the thing we're parodying. My kids had not seen 'Casablanca,' and we'd done parodies of 'Casablanca.'
mother father character
I basically drew my own family. My father's name is Homer. My mother's name is Margaret. I have a sister Lisa and another sister Maggie, so I drew all of them. I was going to name the main character Matt, but I didn't think it would go over well in a pitch meeting, so I changed the name to Bart.
creative foxes results
'The Simpsons' obviously is a huge success, and Fox has nothing to do with its success, with its creative success, and as a result they don't really like the show. They don't like 'The Simpsons' at Fox.
kids never-forget forget
Well, most grown-ups forget what it was like to be a kid. I vowed that I would never forget.
people matter banging
Our solution on 'The Simpsons' is to do jokes that people who have an education, or some frame of reference, can get. And for the ones who don't, it doesn't matter, because we have Homer banging his head and saying, 'D'oh!'
funny mad people
Sometimes people get mad at The Simpsons' subversive story telling, but there's another message in there, which is a celebration of making wild, funny stories.
hard-work drawing wish
The thing that makes me happiest about Simpsons Illustrated are all the drawings that we get from readers. I wish we could print them all. They're really imaginative. They show a lot of hard work.
family-guy swim cartoon
'Adult Swim' on the Cartoon Network is unbelievable. And 'South Park' continues to do great stuff. And 'Family Guy' and the various other Seth MacFarlane projects are amazing.