Chapo Trap House: BONUS - Behind the Laughter: Mike Reiss

June 29, 2018 5:56 PM

Virgil and Matt sit down with longtime Simpsons writer Mike Reiss to discuss his new book "Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets and Outright Lies From a Lifetime of Writing For The Simpsons". Also the co-creator of The Critic and creator of Queer Duck, Mike has written for the Simpsons off and on since its creation, and with him we talk about our favorite family, Thomas Edison's cinema-busting goon squad, the traitor Leon Trotsky's whereabouts, and Star Trek cast members' thoughts on trains.

If you like Simpsons talk and you don't know about it already I highly recommend the Talking Simpsons podcast where they talk in-depth about one episode per week. This week's, timelyly enough, is Much Apu About Nothing with an Indian-American guest, Shivam Bhatt, who gives a lot of insight into just how much they get fractally wrong about Apu's background.

Soundcloud link

Reddit thread

posted by Space Coyote (2 comments total)

If you like Chapo and haven't heard Talking Simpsons, a good episode to start with might be Two Bad Neighbors, which guest-starred a couple of Chapo dudes.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:25 AM on June 30, 2018

I really had no idea Apu had been "retired" for two years before the documentary appeared, and the stuff about Marge being a rabbit from Life In Hell was probably known by a few people back then, at least those involved with the arcade game. It is by now common knowledge because it popped up on DVD commentary, interviews, books etc, I'm wondering how many people were "huh?"-ing with those three arcade sprites back in the very early 90s.

I wouldn't mind seeing a return of The Critic. I watched it recently (on youtube, as he mentions, it's all there) and there was a lot of good stuff in there, even if most of it were, yes, jokes.
posted by lmfsilva at 9:32 AM on June 30, 2018