Who put the Browns on Monday Night?

For the past two weeks, because it's taken me two weeks to read a single book for some reason, I've been reading The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History by one John Ortved. What follows are thoughts that shall not be considered a review because I said so.

The best way to describe this book is "How the sausage is made." From Groening's being brought to the attention of James L. Brooks for his Life is Hell work, and creating The Simpson family so as not to lost his rights to those characters up to 2008 or so anything that happened is fair game and discussed, warts and all. In fact, especially warts. Warts and bone and gristle and that worker's hand that got chopped off and went on a spree strangling people in the factory? Toss that in and put it on the packaging.

The first thing I noticed about the book is that it was fearless. The author calls people out by name and does not hide his true feelings for even a second. It took me a while to realize he could be fearless because, well, who the hell is this guy? There are no contemporary interviews with any of the major principles (Groening, Brooks, Sam Simon) or most of the cast (Yeardly Smith, Julie Kavner) to begin with, he's not going to hurt anyone's feelings and no bridges will be burned. This can be considered both good and bad, I guess.

A lot of the book starts feeling like "the truth everyone else is scared to tell you" as he speaks about how truly little Groening had to do with the show and it's humor as it came to be for the series. As it goes on, however, more and more editorial comments slip in and what's supposed to be a recounting of the facts becomes an essay about what Ortved thinks (1. The Futurama movies all sucked 2. The Simpsons Movie sucks 3. Family Guy is funny).

That's not to say the book is bad, though. I quite enjoyed the vast majority of it. I loved the "expose" stuff in the chapter on Sam Simon–he and Groening wouldn't speak for years–and the aandonment of Klasky Csupo for Film Roman for ridiculous reasons–over essentially one person. Loved, loved everything about the writers room; from it's evolution to guys on couches making each other laugh to the near worshipful way people viewed George Meyer to the long mostly pointless aside of the rise of king Conan O'Brien. I thought, and think, John Swartzwelder deserved a bigger section of pages but his being a "recluse" kinda makes it hard, plus he became THE MAN during what Ortved considers the series downturn.

Totally a readable book if you snag it from the library, but I wouldn't pay for it. Personally I think the best part of the book, though, isn't really Simpsons related but a product of the way the book is cobbled together from interviews. In the "Who's The Boss?" chapter there's a retelling of an argument between writer Bob Kushell and showrunner David Mirkin. It's told from two points of view, in Kushell's he can't remember exactly what he said but swears it was brilliant put Mirkin in his place and afterward all of the writers came to him and voiced their support. In fellow writer Brent Forrester's version he just kinda demanded an apology then tucked tail and left when he didn't get it and finally slunk his way back into the room later and got back to work. Hi. Larry. Us.