Simpsons innovation

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

After a talk that featured drawings and video clips from The Simpsons and was filled with anecdotes and, of course, much humor, writer Joel Cohen summarized his main points with the “copyrighted” acronym ERNFCA.

Cohen entertained and educated the approximately 650 people at the ninth annual Jewish Family Service Agency Innovators Lunch about what keeps the iconic animated television show innovative and fresh after almost 25 years. He spoke a bit about how The Simpsons got started, with Matt Groening initially creating Simpsons family vignettes for The Tracey Ullman Show. It became a show in its own right in 1989. Calgary-born and -raised Cohen also shared some of his own background, and how he came to work on The Simpsons almost 13 years ago.

In his lecture at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on April 10, Cohen gave many examples of scenes that required some form of creativity, such as getting a difficult segment to transition to a commercial with a joke, and why certain jokes never made it to air even though they were funny. He summed up his ideas with the aforementioned acronym that seems to vary from six to seven letters depending on which points Cohen is highlighting in his speech. For the JFSA lunch, it was the six-letter version, ERNFCA, which roughly encapsulated the following concepts that have kept The Simpsons a top-rated show.

• Environment of creativity, where no one is embarrassed to share their ideas because even “bad” ideas can have their nugget of genius picked up on by another writer.

• Relatable: always think about connecting to the audience.

• Novel ideas are more likely to come from group work, especially when the group is comprised of diverse people.

• Fight your first instinct, which is quite often the most obvious thing and not necessarily the most interesting or funniest thing.

• Context: ask yourself whether your particular idea fits the bigger purpose – as funny as a joke may be, if it takes away from the story being told, then it shouldn’t be used.

• A humble filter: be able to take yourself out of the process so that the best ideas, not just your pet ones, make it into the episode (or other venture on which you may be working).

Prior to the Innovators Lunch, the Independent had the opportunity to interview Cohen, the content of which appears below. With the paper, he discussed the creative process for an episode – Cohen is one of about 15 full-time writers and five part-timers – dealing with controversy, his Jewish upbringing and writing for animated characters as opposed to real-life actors. In conversation with other media, he shared why he accepted JFSA’s invitation to speak:

“I’m here most of all to support the Jewish Family Services [Agency], which is this amazing charity that itself is helping hundreds, thousands of people, so they asked me to come and I was thrilled to accept. The specific lunch, as you know, is the Innovators Lunch, and the message ... is basically talking about The Simpsons and how we create the show and what our process is ... and then, through that process, perhaps somebody listening in the audience today at least can recognize a little bit of a creative process that they, too, can emulate or copy for their person or their business or whatever the case may be. So, I’m trying to use The Simpsons as an example that, dare I say, hopefully people can learn from a little bit about creativity and innovation.”

Cohen put his money where his mouth is, donating $10,000 to JFSA at the lunch, which raised a total of $272,000. In welcoming the audience and thanking various people for their work and/or support, Greg Samuels, lunch chair and JFSA board chair, took a moment to remember Naomi Gropper Steiner: “The Innovators Lunch was Naomi’s brainchild,” he noted, “and she touched so many lives with her incredible wellspring of energy. May her memory be a blessing.”

Charlotte Katzen, who has been with the agency for 23 years and recently became its executive director, also paused to remember a community member. Of Rabbi Lipa Dubrawsky, who passed away on April 7, she said, “His loss has rippled through our community, as there is no one who has not been touched by the rabbi’s exceptional humanity and humility. The rabbi embodied the soul-trait of chesed, translated as loving-kindness, always careful of another’s honor and dignity, utilizing every opportunity to benefit others.”

Katzen introduced a video, produced by Eli Goren, highlighting thee JFSA departments: seniors outreach, youth-at-risk and basic resources. Afterward, Michael, a recovering drug addict who has reclaimed his life with the help of JFSA, and whose story was one of those featured in the video, also addressed the audience, providing more of his story and sharing the good news of his current situation, including getting married and procuring full-time employment.

When discussing the JFSA Friends Campaign, Samuels referred to the people featured in the video: “We have 282 people we’ve helped this year like Michael.... We provide almost 24,000 hours of home support to people like Ilana. We assist more than 40 youth-at-risk and their families. We make a difference in the lives of over 2,000 people. Our services are directed principally at the Jewish community, but hunger and crisis don’t discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, and neither do we. As much as 25 percent of our services reach the general community.”

Rounding out the speakers was Telus representative Steve Podborski, national director, Community Sports and Community Affairs. He noted that this was Telus’ “third year participating at the Innovators Luncheon and the second year in a row that we’ve been proudly co-presenting sponsors.” In introducing Cohen, he referred to him as “a Simpsons writer and producer who managed to completely waste his MBA and successful business career to become a television writer. But thankfully it did pay off.” It did, indeed.

Highlights from the JI’s interview with Joel Cohen
prior to the JFSA Innovators Lunch on April 10/13

JI: The Simpsons is an equal-opportunity insulter, but also, it usually has a moral. Is this intentional?

JC: “We always write an episode and a lot of times we'll say, aside from the plot, what is the theme, what is this about. We do an episode about, coming up in a year or so, about people stealing content off the Internet ... we had a whole story and, of course, Homer gets into all sorts of hi-jinks, but we always try to have a point and then a point is often best made by connecting with an audience through emotion as well, which, obviously, I think, as humans, we want there to be some conclusion and hopefully a warm feeling at the end as opposed to a sour feeling. So, both of those elements combine [and] as much as there is a plot, there is also what is our take on this issue.”

JI: Do you ever have trouble with the censors?

JC: "We have conflict with the censors a lot. We kind of ignore it ... we try to ignore it. Occasionally, they will insert themselves and dig their heels in, so we have to make a change. But, one of the things about the show is that we started out in 1989 as one of the most controversial things on TV and we've been usurped now by a million shows so, really, compared to the shows that follow us, Family Guy, Cleveland, American Dad, we're so mild, so, I think – and even TV has just changed so much – it's hard to offend people now, particularly with this track record of, as you said, offending everyone and hopefully offending nobody as a result. We're not that controversial anymore, but we do touch on religion, and we do touch on gender politics and sexuality and the education system and politics and everything so, hopefully, I don't know if we've had people point to us as a source of controversy anymore.”

JI: How does it feel to be the older brother of so many other shows, and how do you keep relevant after so many years?

JC: “I'm lucky to just jump on this train mid-run, but it's cool. The show is incredibly iconic and is so deep in culture in so many ways and it's very cool to think, which I don't often, think at all, but to think that I could write something that someone in Bulgaria is going to have on their T-shirt, it's amazing. I am just a small part of this giant brand, but I've been on lots of crappy brands, so it's nice to be on a giant one.”

JI: Can you share a bit about your background, your Jewish upbringing?

JC: “I graduated from a Yiddish school in Calgary," said Cohen, adding that the school has since merged with another and they're celebrating 100 years of Jewish education in Calgary. He was one of six in his graduating class.

About his upbringing and how it might relate to his comedic talent, Cohen said, "I mean, obviously, people talk about there's a Jewish sense of humor, there's also people talk about a Canadian sense of humor and I guess both of those in some way have combined. My father was very funny, I have a brother, who's a writer who's also very funny, I have another brother, who's not a writer and is not funny, at all, but he paid for breakfast.... So, you know, I guess, it's just you take all of these things from your background, and I work with – frankly, I'm the only Jewish full-time writer on The Simpsons – so, it's obvious that there's people from diverse backgrounds and most of them non-Jewish but, for whatever reason, people develop a sense of humor, and the show is as successful as it is, I think, because you have this sort of melting pot of all these different perspectives."

There are about 15 full-time and about five part-time writers (some of whom are Jewish) on the <I>The Simpsons<P> payroll, said Cohen.

***

Cohen has a degree in biology from the University of Alberta, a master's in business administration from York University and he worked for seven years in the corporate world. When he saw the success that his brother Rob was having in Los Angeles as a writer (and director), Cohen began to think of writing as a serious career path, and, with Rob's help, he got started in that profession. The other Cohen brother, Mark, is a Mac computer specialist who lives and works in Vancouver.

"My dad spoke Yiddish fluently. My mom did not speak Hebrew nor Yiddish, but my dad was fluent in both. My wife went to Hebrew school and my kids go to Jewish school and you would think that all of them would speak Hebrew, sadly, as you know, that's not the case.... I come from a huge family in Calgary, and lots of Jewish experience."

JI: Were you a wise-ass as a kid?

JC: "I'm going to say something non-humble. I think I was the right level of wise-ass that didn't get into a ton of trouble. I was able to find just the right amount of wise-assery to stay mostly out of trouble, but I do remember being a wise-ass, and I'm sure people would confirm that."

JI: How do you remain humble on being with such a popular show for so long, some 13 years now?

JC: "We really incredibly work as a group, so everything is so heavily rewritten as a group that often what gets on air only has about, honestly, five percent of the writer's original draft, so if it's good or bad, it's hard to feel too good or bad about yourself because it's more a process of the group. There is occasionally an episode where I have really pitched a story all the way through and it has gone to air with that story all the way through, the jokes and lines have all changed, but that does feel good. I'm like, alright, this story I pitched and held together all the way through to air is really a good feeling, so I feel better about that stuff. Every now and then there's a joke, that I wrote a joke in my first draft that made it to air, made it through this gauntlet, which is a good feeling as well."

About the lack of autonomy, Cohen said he has "so many failing side projects, it's amazing, as do all my colleagues, I mean, we're all doing stuff outside the show.... I think everybody's goal is to eventually create something 1/95th as successful as The Simpsons. So, we're all doing stuff, and there's autonomy in that, certainly. I can say, 'See this horrible script? I wrote it myself.'"

JI: How is writing for an animated character vs. a real-life actor?

JC: "It's sort of twofold. One, it's sort of freeing, another it's limiting. In The Simpsons sense, it's freeing because if we want to make a joke where the Simpsons go to Paris, even for a second, we can do it, because it's animated. The limit is that we have constructed – which I think was a great idea – no one ages, every day is the same thing, Bart is always going to be 10 years old, Lisa is always going to be eight, etc. So, we're limited in that, you know, Bart can't get his driver's licence, although I helped somebody write an episode where Bart did get his driver's licence but, you know, Bart can't get drafted, for example, although we wrote an episode where Bart almost got drafted. Everything I say, I can undercut myself, but he's always a kid and Homer's always this middle-age father and stupid, so we're stuck in this little slice of life, which is this incredibly rich generous slice of life, but we're limited by that, but, by the same token, if you wanted to do a joke, as I said, where Homer's eye falls out, I write it and it happens. You can't do that with Brooke Shields, although you might like to." (Cohen was a writer on Shields' Suddenly Susan.) He added that it's almost like making a film because you can put the camera anywhere, any way you want.

JI: What is the creative process on The Simpsons?

JC: "Pitch an idea. You know, Homer joins the RCMP, and my boss would say yes or no. Hopefully, for the purposes of this example it would be better if he says yes, so he says yes. Then I would go off, hopefully a couple other people would just help me think about it a day or two, and here's what's going to happen, here's where we going to put the commercials, and then I would go off and write the first draft. I'd bring it in, completely gone over line by line by every other writer and [their] ideas – what if he doesn't become an RCMP, what if he becomes a border patrol agent, whatever, and the story changes, and moves and shifts, and then we read it with the actors and then we get to see it two or three times in the animation process, where we'll rewrite it again. The whole thing takes nine months before it gets on the air, sometimes even longer, sometimes a year.... We don't do topical jokes very often because what's going to be topical nine months from now, we don't know and what we know now is not going to be topical in nine months, so that's kind of the process."

JI: What do your children think about your job?

JC: Cohen said that his 16- and 12-year-old daughters are "entirely unimpressed" and, "unless it's like Selina Gomez is recording a voice, and then they're, alright, we'll see if we can come by [the lot], but otherwise, they're kind of like over it."

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