The Most Oblivious People Are Often the Happiest

A conversation with Simpsons' writer George Meyer about marriage, hobos, religion, and why Frank Grimes probably deserved better.

George Meyer has led me into the mountains of northern Los Angeles. We’re here because he’s heard stories about an abandoned missile silo, though he has only a vague notion of where it might be. We take Mulholland Drive until it dead ends, then follow a dirt road on foot. Hours later, we’re hopelessly lost.

George Meyer was a television writer, probably the best television writer of his generation. Between 1989 and 2005, he was to The Simpsons what Doug Kenney was to The National Lampoon, or Michael O’Donoghue was to Saturday Night Live. He didn’t create it, but he’s largely responsible for its greatness. He was the show’s Grand Pooh-Bah, the silent architect behind TV’s most unexpected satire.

Given his reputation, I had imagined Meyer as a giant. But he’s thin and lanky, with a voice so soft you expect his words to evaporate into wisps of smoke. He smiles mostly when recalling his favorite Simpsons jokes, though he never takes credit for writing them. He also enjoys stale Botan Rice Candy, and he’s more than happy to share.

We eventually stumble across the silo. There aren’t any actual missiles, but it’s still a frightening discovery. Meyer is delighted by a sign affixed to the silo’s door, with a single quote by Nikita Khrushchev: “We will bury you.” He wonders aloud about its purpose. Was it meant to motivate the silo’s long-departed personnel? Maybe scare them? It’s unclear.

Eric Spitznagel: I should warn you right up front that I’m one of those obsessive Simpsons fans.

George Meyer: [Nervously] OK…

ES: It’s not something that I’m particularly proud of. I’m the kind of guy who’ll waste entire evenings dissecting obscure characters like Mr. Teeny, the chain-smoking monkey.

GM: That’ll bring the ladies a-runnin.’

ES: Does it disturb you that fans take this stuff so seriously?

GM: I find it intoxicating. I like that people are patterning their lives after our little fictional world. Even the non-fanatical fans have a weird relationship with the show. They want it to be like a dollhouse, and they’re enormously proprietary. When we’ve tried to change too much, they’ve gotten very upset with us. After we killed off Maude Flanders, people were in an uproar. They feel like these characters belong to them. I can understand that, but at the same time, as a writer you sometimes feel the need to shake things up.

ES: Do you get the sense that some fans have unrealistic expectations?

GM: Oh, certainly. They seem to believe that we have unlimited time and resources for each episode, and that we’re able to examine everything from every possible angle. And really, the show is more like a hurricane swirling around us. Every joke can’t be dazzling. And if you think you spotted an inconsistency, brother, you did!

ES: I’ve heard that any given episode is peppered with inside jokes. Is there anything that we may have missed?

GM: All of our inside jokes are fairly obvious, if you’re paying attention. We’ll slip in references to “golden showers” or “glory holes,” stupid things that are only there to make us laugh. We had a “chloroform” run for a while. We just thought chloroform was funny, so we tried to include it in as many episodes as possible. Somebody was always pulling out a rag soaked in chloroform and using it to render somebody unconscious for no good reason. We get these crazes every now and then. There was a period when we were obsessed with hobos. Specifically, hobos and their bindles. In the boxing episode, Homer was fighting a hobo who kept turning to check on his bindle. [Laughs] Stuff like that is basically about wasting the audience’s time for our own amusement.