LA WEEKLY: Q & A With Simpsons Exec Producer @MattSelman: The Food Wife (airs tonight on FOX)

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Nov 132011
 

Read the full story here: LA WEEKLY SQUIDINK

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Courtesy of 20th Century Fox
Food on Television Q & A With Simpsons Exec Producer Matt Selman: The Food Wife, Food Blogging + Dining at Jitlada With Matt Groening
By Margy Rochlin Wed., Nov. 9 2011 at 2:27 PM

​Just a few weeks ago Fox Studios and the voice actors and producers of Simpsons were engaged in a financial tug-of-war that threatened the existence of the long-running animated series. If you need to remind yourself why we should celebrate the resolution (two more years!), watch The Food Wife this Sunday at 8:00 p.m. on Fox.

Early in the episode, Marge, Bart and Lisa start a food blog called The Three Mouthketeers, an act then followed by a culinary reference tornado that is so unrelenting that to catch them all requires DVR slow-mo or, barring that, multiple viewings. If neither are possible, pay very close attention when Marge, Lisa and Bart’s blog profiles are revealed — (on Bart’s list of grossest foods eaten? “Blood Cheese”) — and for fleeting cameos by every food world celebrity from Paul Prud’homme to The Muppets’ Swedish chef as well as a pointed reference to our own Jonathan Gold’s Essential 99 L.A. restaurants.

If you want to sing along with the foodie rap belted out by Amuse Bruce and Fois Garth (Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show, Great Job), it is printed in its entirety on Grub Street. If you’d like to read our conversation with the writer of The Food Wife, Simpsons executive producer and food blog scourer Matt Selman, turn the page.

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Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

​ Squid Ink: Food blogs take many forms – the eating diary blog, the recipe blog, the restaurant gossip blog, the “I’m-in-it-for-the-free-food” blog… What category does The Three Mouthketeers fall into?Matt Selman: The kind where people take pictures of everything and write non-professional reviews. But the show isn’t really about the content of the blog. It’s more about how Marge uses it as a way to bond with the kids emotionally. It’s more like a new activity for them to share and how Homer is excluded. For Homer, blogging about food is pointless because you’ve already eaten it and you’re full.

Read the full story here: LA WEEKLY SQUIDINK 

Bart Simpson gets Kramers Ergot-ed. Sammy Harkham dances with Matt Groening creations. Read all about it.

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Jun 212009
 

Sammy_Simpsons

Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror #15
Edited by Sammy Harkham
$4.99
48 pages/standard format/color/humor
UPC: 01511 (7-98342-02851-5)

Guest edited by Sammy Harkham, the award-winning creator of the popular Kramers Ergot anthology, this year’s issue is a jam-packed with some of the most idiosyncratic (and weirdest) takes on “The Simpsons ” universe ever. Among Halloween-inspired short strips by such visionary cartoonists as Jordan Crane (Uptight), C.F. (Powr Mastrs), Will Sweeney (Tales from Greenfuzz), Tim Hensley (MOME), and John Kerschbaum (Petey & Pussy), are four featured tales of inspired Simpsons lunacy: heralded artists Kevin Huizenga (Ganges, Or Else) and Matthew Thurber (1-800 Mice, Kramers Ergot) collaborate on a weird and wild story equal parts Lovecraftian eco-horror and Philip K. Dick identity comedy. Jeffrey Brown (Incredible Change-Bots, Clumsy) does a creepy and suitably pathetic story featuring Milhouse in a “Bad Ronald”-inspired tale of murder and crawl space living. Harkham and Ted May (INJURY) pull out all the stops for a tragic monster tale of unrequited love, bad karaoke, and body snatching at Moe’s Bar. Ben Jones (Paper Rad) does the comic of his life with an epic tale of how bootleg candy being sold at the Kwik-E-Mart rapidly spirals out of control into an Invasion of The Body Snatchers-like nightmare of a Springfield filled with cheap bootleg versions of familiar characters. And nobody does squishy, sweaty, and gross like up and coming cartoonist Jon Vermilyea (MOME), who outdoes himself with “C.H.U.M.M.,” a C.H.U.D.-inspired parody featuring everybody’s favorite senior citizen, Hans Moleman!

With a cover by Dan Zettwoch, Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror #15 is like nothing you’ve ever seen, and is sure to be one of the most talked about comics of the year by alternative comic readers and Simpsons fans of all ages!

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Sammy 1st solo show held at Meltdown. Vintage image found around the web!

At 20th TV, it’s back to the ‘Futurama’

 Hollywood  No Responses »
Jun 092009
 

At 20th TV, it’s back to the ‘Futurama’ – Entertainment News, TV News, Media – Variety.

In another case of an animated primetime series resurrected from the dead, 20th Century Fox TV plans to produce 26 new episodes of “Futurama.”

Comedy Central will begin airing the new episodes in mid-2010. Voice actors Billy West (who played Philip Fry), Katey Sagal (Leela) and John DiMaggio (Bender) have all signed on to return.

Created by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, “Futurama” originally aired on Fox from 1999 to 2003.

Twentieth Century Fox TV later produced four new “Futurama” segs for DVD, which first spurred talk of a series revival. But it took Comedy Central to seal the deal. The cabler acquired the rights to all 72 off-net episodes of “Futurama,” as well as the DVD episodes, in January 2008.

Since then, both 20th and Comedy Central have been kicking around ways to make a “Futurama” order make financial sense for both the studio and cable net.

As part of the deal, 20th still has an option to license the new episodes’ original runs to a broadcast network (such as Fox). If the show does go to broadcast, Comedy Central’s license fee will be reduced.

“It’s a deal we’re all happy with,” said Comedy Central programming senior VP David Bernath. “It’s a bigger win for us promotionally if we wind up going first … but if we wind up in second position, then the economics work out for us as well.”

Comedy Central’s “Futurama” rights run well into the next decade, which is why the net was so invested in the production of new episodes, Bernath said.

“One of the things that excited us even at the time when we bought the initial 72 episodes was the possibility of new production and new episodes,” he said.

Twentieth Century Fox TV has called shows back from the grave before: “Family Guy” returned thanks to that show’s strong DVD sales. And although not nearly as dead and buried as “Family Guy” and “Futurama,” the studio’s “King of the Hill” was also canceled and then uncanceled by Fox at least twice in its lifespan.

“Futurama” follows the tale of Fry, a pizza delivery boy who winds up accidentally frozen — before waking up 1,000 years later. He befriends one-eyed alien Leela, as well as cranky robot Bender.