Secrets of The Simpsons

Creators of the animated series and Fox lawyers did everything they could to stop John Ortved's unauthorized history. The inside story of why he wrote it anyway.

The letter referred to me as “Mr. Ortved”—my first sign that I was in deep, deep trouble.

No one calls me Mr. Ortved. I’ve been “Johnny O,” “Ortved” (at prep school) and even “John John.” The only time I’ve ever been “Mr. Ortved” is when addressed by the employees of telecommunications companies and lawyers. The letter was, unfortunately, from the latter, specifically the legal representatives of the Fox Corporation, which owns The Simpsons.

I should not have been surprised. I was writing a history of The Simpsons without their consent—as I had done the previous year in an article for Vanity Fair—for my book, The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History published this week by Faber and Faber. Hence the letter from Fox’s lawyers, none of whom I have ever met, but who I assume hold some very deep pockets and the temperate nature of a Nicaraguan death squad. (The letter itself contained very few specifics, but offered the vague threat of “carefully reviewing” my book for accuracy.)

One witness to the early days was particularly annoyed that Groening took so much credit for the show’s success, when “the fat fuck just sat up in his office all day, figuring out ways to make more money [with merchandising]” while Sam Simon and the writers churned out brilliant script after brilliant script.

The problem, or delight, in writing an unauthorized history is that someone’s feathers are bound to get ruffled (by the lawyer’s reaction to my book about The Simpsons—an entity that has earned upwards of $3 billion for its parent companies—it seemed that I had engaged less in an act of ruffling than total depluming). In the case of my Simpsons history, the squawking started early, only a few months into the project.

Back in 2006, as a 26-year old associate at Vanity Fair, I was delighted to be assigned my first feature—the oral history of The Simpsons, something I’d pitched knowing that it would be short, fun, pegged to the release of a major film; a cakewalk for a green reporter. Dead. Fucking. Wrong.

The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History By John Ortved 352 pages. Faber & Faber. $27. Fox wavered, and took their time getting back to me. Months, in fact. So I started interviewing. I spoke to former writers and producers like Conan O’Brien, Josh Weinstein and Jay Kogen; and a current one, Tim Long. People were fairly candid—I didn’t have their cooperation yet, but The Simpsons in Vanity Fair—it seemed like a no-brainer. Finally, the word came back from Fox’s flaks: no go. There would be no cooperation. Why? James L. Brooks, whose company, Gracie Films, produces the show along with Fox, had heard I’d been asking questions about Sam Simon, the show’s exiled executive producer, and the kibosh was on.

Now Sam Simon, along with Matt Groening and James L. Brooks, is one of the show’s original executive producers. He left the series in the fourth season among much acrimony, kept a big piece of the show, and now spends his untold millions rehabilitating abandoned dogs and donating them to the handicapped. All of this is well known. Why was Brooks going ballistic?

Well, The Simpsons is a brand, a very valuable one at that, and like Coca-Cola, Mickey Mouse, Tom Cruise, or Virgin Airlines, this brand’s profitability is directly related to its perceived image, an image my book would be challenging (most egregiously, by removing of some of the credit attributed to the series’ creator, Matt Groening, and giving it to Sam Simon and the writing team he assembled).