Al Jean and Others Will Live Tweet During The FXX Simpsons Marathon
Al Jean announced that he and other writers will be live tweeting during some of the episodes during FXX’s Simpsons Marathon that starts this week. “Not every minute. That would be the end of me,” he said. Jean, other writers from the show, former writers and Simpsons guest stars will be adding their commentary on Twitter throughout the marathon. Jean hopes to have Patton Oswald and Sarah Silverman as two of the guest tweeters. @BestSimpsons is the Twitter account reserved especially for the marathon.
As the series get ready to enter its 26th season and FXX is planning a non-stop marathon of all “Simpsons” episodes from the first 25, starting August 21st, showrunner Al Jean also talked about another iconic piece of Simpsons history– the couch gag. The idea for using guest artists for the couch gag was aspired by elusive street artist, Banksy.
“My wife and I had gone to see Exit Through the Gift Shop, and I thought it would be great if Banksy graffiti’d The Simpsons couch gag, that we pretended that he had come in and sprayed paint all over our couch gag and did his own thing, and so, with our casting director, Bonnie Pietila, we located him through the producers of that movie and said we want to keep this secret, but could you do a couch gag, and that was the first and that really caught people by surprise. “
The result was an extended and much much darker version of the couch gag and opening sequence that no one was expecting.
Other famous artists who have been invited to do their own visions of a Simpsons couch gag include Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville), John Kricfalusi, creator of ‘90s cult animated series, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) and Academy Award nominated animator Bill Plympton.
“We would hear from people like Guillermo del Toro that we admired say ‘Oh I’d love to do a couch gag,’ and we take it really seriously. I think that it’s an honor for us absolutely but also an honor for the people we ask and we really want to have our animation heroes be doing these couch gags, and I for example couldn’t believe it when we asked Sylvain Chomet and he said yes. Asked earlier was the question are there more, and the answer to that is yes, and yes, it was us that started it, but once we started it, people thought hey this is great, maybe they’ll let me do two minutes, and we couldn’t be happier”
Watch Banksy’s opening titles and couch gag sequence.
“The Simpsons” marathon begins on FXX on Thursday, August 21st at 10 am et and that’s when Al Jean is also begin his official Simpsons Twitter commentary.
