22 Short Films About Springfield

"22 Short Films About Springfield"
The Simpsons episode
Episode no. 149
Directed by Jim Reardon
Written by Richard Appel
David S. Cohen
Jonathan Collier
Jennifer Crittenden
Greg Daniels
Brent Forrester
Rachel Pulido
Steve Tompkins
Bill Oakley
Josh Weinstein
Matt Groening
Writing supervisor
Greg Daniels
Showrunner(s) Bill Oakley
Josh Weinstein
Production code 3F18
Original air date April 14, 1996
Couch gag The family are sea monkeys, and swim to a couch made of clam shells to stare at an open treasure chest.[1]
Guest actors Phil Hartman as Lionel Hutz and the hospital board chairman[2]
Commentary Matt Groening
Bill Oakley
Josh Weinstein
Richard Appel
David S. Cohen
Rachel Pulido
Yeardley Smith
Jim Reardon
David Silverman
James Oakley

"22 Short Films About Springfield" (captioned on-screen as "Twenty-Two Short Films About Springfield") is the twenty-first episode of The Simpsons' seventh season, which originally aired on April 14, 1996.[2] It was written by Richard Appel, David S. Cohen, Jonathan Collier, Jennifer Crittenden, Greg Daniels, Brent Forrester, Rachel Pulido, Steve Tompkins, Josh Weinstein, Bill Oakley and Matt Groening, with the writing being supervised by Greg Daniels. The episode was directed by Jim Reardon.[2] Phil Hartman guest starred as Lionel Hutz and the hospital board chairman.[2][1] The episode looks into the lives of other Springfield residents in a series of linked stories and originated from the end segment of the season four episode "The Front". The episode is a loose parody of Pulp Fiction, which gave the staff the idea of a possible spin-off from The Simpsons. The title is a reference to the film Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould.

Plot

The episode is a series of short skits, each showing a brief slice of life in Springfield after Bart wonders if anything interesting happens to Springfield's citizens:

Production

The episode's principal idea came from the season four episode "The Front", which featured a short scene entitled "The Adventures of Ned Flanders" at its conclusion. The scene had no relevance to the main plot of the episode and was designed solely to fill time.[3] The staff loved the concept and attempted to fit similar scenes into other episodes, but none were short enough to require one. Show runners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein decided to make an entire episode of linked short scenes involving many of the show's characters, in a similar style to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.[3] The title "22 Short Films About Springfield" was decided upon from the start of the episode's production,[3] even though there are not actually twenty-two stories in it.[4] Originally there were more scenes, but several of them had to be cut out for time.[3] To decide who would write each of the segments, all of the writers chose their top three favorite characters and put them into a hat, the names were drawn out and the writers were assigned their parts.[3] Oakley wrote the Superintendent Chalmers story,[3] Weinstein did the Comic Book Guy and Milhouse scene,[4] David Cohen penned the Reverend Lovejoy sketch, as well as the deleted Krusty scene.[5] Brent Forrester wrote the Krusty Burger scene,[4] while Rachel Pulido, whose first Simpsons episode this was, wrote the Bumblebee Man one.[3] Richard Appel wrote a deleted "elaborate fantasy segment" revolving around Marge, the only remnant of which is her cleaning the sink during the first Lisa scene, and also did a scene with Lionel Hutz that was dropped as well.[6]

The episode's first draft was 65 pages long and needed to be cut down to just 42, so numerous scenes were cut for time or because they did not fit into the overall dynamic of the episode.[3] To solve this problem, a scene before the second act break, where the townspeople go to the Simpsons house to provide advice of how Lisa can get the gum out of her hair, was created to include every character that did not appear anywhere else during the course of the episode.[3] Weinstein and writing supervisor Greg Daniels was responsible for ordering and linking together the episodes, and director Jim Reardon had the challenge of segueing between each section in a way that did not make the change seem abrupt.[7] Those that were hard to link were put before or after an act break or were given a theme song, one of which was cut from the Apu story, but was included as a deleted scene on the DVD.[4]

Bill Oakley wrote the Chalmers scene because he is his all time favorite character from the show. The main reason he loved him was that, until Frank Grimes was created for the season eight episode "Homer's Enemy", Chalmers was the only character that "seemed to operate in the normal human universe."[3] In previous episodes, Skinner and Chalmers' scenes together revolved around one joke: Skinner tells Chalmers an unbelievable lie, but Chalmers believes him anyway. So, their scene in this episode is made up of a string of thirteen interconnected lies.[3] The dialogue between him and Skinner was something that had never been done before, in that it is just a long relaxed conversation with nothing important being said at all.[5]

In the Mr. Burns story, every single word he yells at Smithers is real and used correctly. To maintain accuracy, the writers used a 19th-century slang thesaurus to look up words.[4] Many of the Spanish words used in Bumblebee Man's segment are easily understood cognates of English and not accurate Spanish; this was done deliberately so that non-Spanish speakers could understand the dialogue without subtitles.[4][8] The very tall man was a caricature of writer Ian Maxtone-Graham,[4] and the barber was based on one from the Tracey Ullman shorts.[7] The crowd on the street who laugh at Nelson includes caricatures of Matt Groening, Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein. Oakley wrote in the script that the street was filled with Springfield's biggest idiots and so the animators drew him, Weinstein and Groening into the scene.[3]

Cultural references

The episode contains numerous references to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Like the film, the episode's plot is episodic, though the stories are interconnected. The policemen's conversation about McDonald's parallels the famous "Royale With Cheese" discussion,[2][9] and the music played during the segment's beginning was also taken from the film.[4] The story involving Chief Wiggum and Snake is a direct parody of the "Gold Watch" segment of the film. Snake runs over the donut-carrying Wiggum at a red light, like Butch did to Marcellus Wallace, before crashing into a fire hydrant and beginning an on-foot chase.[4][9] The two run into Herman's Military Antique shop, where Herman beats, ties up and gags the two, then waits for "Zed" to arrive, exactly as Maynard does in Pulp Fiction.[2][9] The writers were pleased that Herman already existed as otherwise they would have had to create another character just for this scene.[3] The episode's title is a reference to the film Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould.[2]

Reception

In its original American broadcast, "22 Short Films About Springfield" finished tied for 73rd in the weekly ratings for the week of April 8-April 14, 1996 with a Nielsen rating of 6.9. It was the seventh highest rated show from the Fox Network that week.[10] On March 12, 2002, the episode was released in the United States on a DVD collection titled The Simpsons Film Festival, along with the season eleven episode "Beyond Blunderdome", the season four episode "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie", and the season six episode "A Star is Burns".[11]

The episode is Bill Oakley's personal favorite episode, but it is hated by two prominent figures within the running of the show.[3] That said, the episode is frequently cited as a popular one amongst the show's fans on the internet.[4] Entertainment Weekly placed the episode 14th on their top 25 The Simpsons episode list, praising the episode's structure and finding the Pulp Fiction references "priceless".[12] Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, the authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, called it "an untypical episode, and a very good one," naming the Skinner and Chalmers story as the best.[1] IGN named "A Fish Called Selma" the best episode of the seventh season, but found that "22 Short Films About Springfield" was "good competition" for the crown.[13] Empire named the episode's Pulp Fiction parody the seventh best film gag in the show, calling Wiggum and Snake bound and gagged with red balls in their mouths "the sickest visual gag in Simpsons history".[14] The episode is the favorite of British comedian Jimmy Carr who called it "a brilliant pastiche of art cinema".[15]

Legacy

The episode sparked the idea amongst the staff for a spin-off series entitled Springfield Stories[16] or simply Springfield.[17] The proposed show would focus on the town in general, rather than the Simpson family. Every week would be a different scenario: three short stories, an adventure with young Homer or a story about a background character that was not tied in to the Simpson family at all.[16] The idea never came to anything, as Groening realized that the staff did not have the manpower to produce another show as well as The Simpsons.[17][18] The staff maintains that it is something that they would still be interested in doing,[4] and that it "could happen someday."[18] "22 Short Films About Springfield" also helped inspire the Futurama episode "Three Hundred Big Boys".[5]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Martyn, Warren; Wood, Adrian (2000). "22 Short Films About Springfield". BBC. Retrieved 2007-10-19.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Groening, Matt (1997). Richmond, Ray; Coffman, Antonia, eds. The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family. Created by Matt Groening; edited by Ray Richmond and Antonia Coffman. (1st ed.). New York: HarperPerennial. pp. 202–203. ISBN 978-0-06-095252-5. LCCN 98141857. OCLC 37796735. OL 433519M..
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Oakley, Bill (2006). The Simpsons The Complete Seventh Season DVD commentary for the episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Weinstein, Josh (2006). The Simpsons The Complete Seventh Season DVD commentary for the episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  5. 1 2 3 Cohen, David (2006). The Simpsons The Complete Seventh Season DVD commentary for the episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  6. ↑ Appel, Richard (2006). The Simpsons The Complete Seventh Season DVD commentary for the episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  7. 1 2 Reardon, Jim (2006). The Simpsons The Complete Seventh Season DVD commentary for the episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  8. ↑ Pulido, Rachel (2006). The Simpsons The Complete Seventh Season DVD commentary for the episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  9. 1 2 3 Murray, Noel (2010-03-25). "The Simpsons, "22 Short Films About Springfield"". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 2011-07-17.
  10. ↑ "Nielsen ratings/April 26-May 2". Long Beach Press-Telegram. 1993-05-05. p. C–6.
  11. ↑ Madden, Damian (March 31, 2002). "Simpsons: Film Festival". DVD Bits. Retrieved December 19, 2011.
  12. ↑ "The Family Dynamic". Entertainment Weekly. 2003-01-29. Archived from the original on 10 May 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
  13. ↑ Goldman, Eric; Dan Iverson, Brian Zoromski (2006-09-08). "The Simpsons: 17 Seasons, 17 Episodes". IGN. Retrieved 2007-10-19.
  14. ↑ Kennedy, Colin (September 2004). "The Ten Best Movie Gags In The Simpsons". Empire. p. 77.
  15. ↑ Jo Hunter, David Mattin, Jonathan Richards, Phoebe Greenwood, Jeremy Hazlehurst (2003-04-14). "Why there's no place like Homer's". The Times. p. 24.
  16. 1 2 Groening, Matt (2006). The Simpsons The Complete Seventh Season DVD commentary for the episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  17. 1 2 Jeffery, Morgan (2014-12-12). "The Simpsons spinoff was once planned, reveals ex-showrunner". Digital Spy.
  18. 1 2 Richards, Olly (2007-05-24). "Life In Development Hell". Empire. p. 76.

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