When Mike Reiss was a kid growing up in Bristol, he loved “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and dreamed of being one of the comedy writers as portrayed in the ‘60s TV series.
“I wanted to be Buddy Sorrell, the character played by Morey Amsterdam, ‘the human joke machine’.”
Reiss’ dream came true. Big time.
Reiss has been at various times a writer, producer and show-runner of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning animated series “The Simpsons” from the day it began nearly 30 years ago to the present. Reiss, 58, is one of a handful of people still working on the show who have been with the series since the beginning — including creator Matt Groening, producer James L. Brooks, show-runner (and Reiss’ longtime writing partner) Al Jean and David Silverman, producer-director-animation supervisor. Reiss regularly flies from New York to Los Angeles to participate one day a week in the writers’ room going over scripts and shows.
“One day a week is all I’m good for,” the four-time Emmy winner jokes from the 51st floor apartment near Times Square.
Reiss chronicles “the greatest job in the world” in his new book titled “Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets and Outright Lies From a Lifetime of Writing for ‘The Simpsons’,” on sale beginning June 12. It’s an insider’s perspective of the series — as well as a flippant look at his own career, which includes the animated series “The Critic” (voiced by Jon Lovitz), “Queer Duck” and a host of film, TV and theater projects — including works that played theaters in the state, “I’m Connecticut,” “Comedy Is Hard” and “I Hate Musicals: The Musical.”
Reiss also wrote more than a dozen children’s books, including “How Murray Saved Christmas,” which has become an animated TV holiday perennial. (Reiss will be speaking at Hartford’s Mark Twain House on July 26 about “Springfield Confidential” and his career.)
So is the writers’ room for “The Simpsons” like what was portrayed in “The Dick Van Dyke Show?”
“No show ever had a writing staff that small,” he says of the trio of writers in the classic sitcom, “but otherwise, yes.”
Reiss is a bit of an animated character himself, a shrug of a fellow with a constant smile, a Homer-esque forehead and the kind of amiable voice that softens the most cutting wisecrack. On the day of the interview he is wearing a “Simpsons” yellow polo shirt — and not accidentally, says his wife, Denise.
Reiss takes out a Simpsons-like drawing of the writers’ room of the animated series and you can almost picture Dick, Buddy and Sally Rogers (the character played by Rose Marie) topping each others’ jokes along with the Simpsons gang in the similarly bland-looking and thank-heaven-for-custodial-services office setting.
The writers’ crib has a historic footnote that could be a throw-away Simpsons gag — except that it’s true, he says:
“Our office is on the second floor of what they call the New Writers Building at Fox — overlooking a parking lot,” says Reiss. “One day I was watching an old 1932 newsreel and the narrator was saying, ‘Here we are at the opening of the New Writers Building at Twentieth Century Fox and who’s in town to cut the ribbon? Why it’s Leon Trotsky!’ And there was Leon Trotsky cutting the ribbon at our ‘new’ building.”
Nice Folks
In writing the book with Mathew Klinkstein, Reiss stresses that it’s “not an ‘as-told-to’ book” and that with the exception of some ideas, editing assists and short chats with Simpson personnel, he wrote the book. Packed with behind-the-scenes details and plenty of yucks, Reiss tried to make it a tribute to the show.
“Everyone involved in the show is actually really nice. The book is dedicated to them.”
But it’s not completely a love-in. He gives more than few pokes to Tim Allen, William Shatner and Steve Martin, among others.
He also reveals that coming up with things for Bart to write on the chalk board every week — and not the couch gag in the show’s opening credits — is one of the hardest things to write. (The couch-gag spot has been given to outside animators on occasion, including Bill Plympton, Don Hertzfeldt and this year’s Oscar winner for best director, Guillermo del Toro.
The book also references a trio of teachers from Bristol High School, with the names changed in case they don’t find it funny.
As far as the secret of ‘The Simpsons’ staying power — with its recent 626th episode, it just passed ‘Gunsmoke” as the longest running series in TV history — Reiss writes that there is no secret, though he does say the essence of the show is that it’s about family and folly.
Reiss is proud the show got two out of the three greatest recluses to be guests on the show: novelist Thomas Pynchon and graffiti artist Banksy. As for the third, “J.D. Salinger turned us down in 45 seconds.”
Though former presidents have turned guests spots down, word is that Obama wants to do the show and now it’s a matter of scheduling.
“But I told [show runner] Al Jean that I could get the show an even bigger guest. I can get the pope.”
A few years back a Manhattan monseigneur got Reiss to ghost-write some jokes for celebs like Al Roker and George Clooney for the Vatican-blessed charitable website “Joke with the Pope.” “I did it for free and the pope sent me a certificate calling me ‘a missionary of joy, he says pointing to the gold framed honor on his wall.
“So Al Jean says, ‘Well, OK but I have other things to do.’ I say, ‘But it’s the pope! And he owes me!”
Big Pictures
In writing the book, Reiss says he realized two ‘big picture’ things about his life and career.
“One is that I never had to work on a boring show like ‘The Cosby Show.’ Everything I did was full of imagination and, in a way, was about tweaking TV. Second, almost everything I’ve done, if it wasn’t a hit at least it had a cult following so at least it is fondly remembered by somebody.”
Several of those projects came during a period after he stepped away from show running “The Simpsons.” Besides “Queer Duck” and “The Critic” there were numerous film scripts, including “The Simpsons: The Movie.”
After several years, he came back to the weekly show — while still pursuing a host of other projects.
But he didn’t want to return to the show to be anyone’s boss or be that old veteran in the corner.
“I just wanted to be another writer pitching ideas and jokes. On my first day back it was just me and this 22-year-old kid in the room who had just been hired and I said, ‘OK, boss. What are we doing?’”
The most recent hires “include a 26-year-old guy from Nigeria, Damilare Sonoiki, and Megan Amram who got the job through her Twitter work. Neither were even born when “The Simpsons” first appeared in 1987 as animated shorts on the fledgling network’s “The Tracey Ullman Show” before getting its own 1989 Christmas special and then being launched as a series on Jan. 14, 1990.
Women Are Funny
When asked about the scarcity of women staff writers, he notes that it’s not been a deficiency unique to ‘The Simpsons,’ but in recent years there has been improved gender balance.
“It’s hard to explain away perceived sexism, but I’ll give it a shot,” he says. “When Al and I ran the show we read 800 spec scripts without knowing who wrote what so when they came into the writers’ room they could be an Asian or an old person. We just didn’t know. We just liked the script. Six of the first 14 episodes next season are written by women. I hate labeling any of these people by gender, race or nationality — they’re all just very good writers.”
Reiss says another reason there may not be an abundance of female writers on the staff is that those who are brought on quickly get wooed away.
“Hollywood perks up and thinks, ‘Oh, she writes for ‘The Simpsons’ and she’s a woman. Let’s hire her!’ So we lose them. No one is saying, ‘Oh, a middle-aged Jewish guy writing for ‘The Simpsons,’ we better get him.’”
But Reiss is perfectly happy to remain in that room where the laughs happen.
“I had this experience just yesterday,” he says. “We were rewriting a script and it was a really funny script about Homer and the comic book guy and there were about five of us in the room at the time and we were all pitching jokes and ideas and I thought, gee, it felt exactly like it did nearly 30 years ago when we were making the show for the very first time.”
