FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Watch ‘Drugs: Killers and Dillers,’ Matt Groening’s amusing anti-drug parody from 1972
12.18.2018
08:42 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
Matt Groening made his comedic name in the 1980s with the brutally nihilistic alternative comic Life In Hell (a favorite of mine in high school) and went on to far greater fame as the creator of the animated Simpson family as well as the TV series Futurama and Disenchanted.

One of Groening’s early forays into comedy occurred in 1972 when, as a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, he co-directed, co-wrote, and appeared in “Drugs: Killers or Dillers?,” a parody of the many inauthentically “authoritative” anti-drug propaganda film strips of that era. National Lampoon and the Firesign Theatre were a very big deal when Groening, Tim Smith, and Jim Angell teamed up to create the nine-and-a-half-minute movie—and you can see that influence pretty strongly here. The movie is amateurish but pretty good, considering.
 

 
Groening appears in the opening bit as a hippie degenerate who drinks way too much LSD. My favorite gag involves the eventual demise of a pair of cavemen who pop up to illustrate the origins of drug consumption. The montage of the various types of drugs is quite amusing as well.

The first title card of the movie reads “A TEENS FOR DECENCY PRESENTATION.” When Groening appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in 1989—there’s no way I didn’t watch this episode when it first aired—he mentioned that when he was in high school, he started a group by that name because a teacher had referred to Groening and his friends as “teens for filth.” The group’s motto was “If you’re against decency, what are you for?” and all the members secured election to the student body offices, yay.

Oddly, Fox, the network that hired Groening to make The Simpsons—the same network that series would eventually save from oblivion—was run by a man named Diller.
 
Watch the movie after the jump…......
 

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
12.18.2018
08:42 am
|
‘Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown’: Future ‘Simpsons’ director turns ‘Peanuts’ into a bloodbath
04.24.2017
02:57 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
In the mid-1980s, Jim Reardon was at the highly regarded Character Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, and one of his student projects was a remarkable mashup of the Charlie Brown universe and the Sam Peckinpah universe—all of it undertaken with what must have been a deep affection for both worlds. The four-minute film’s title is “Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown,” an obvious reference to Peckinpah’s 1974 movie Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

The short is presented as the commercial for a “heartwarming holiday special” featuring the Peanuts gang. So the Great Pumpkin places a bounty on Charlie Brown’s head, which causes an immediate death spiral into ultraviolence. All of the familiar characters (Lucy, Schroeder, Linus, etc.) attempt to assassinate Charlie Brown, until finally the hero is forced to take matters into his own hands, grabbing a machine gun and mowing them all down.

The second half of the short is truly a bloodbath, and definitely Reardon has Peckinpah’s masterpiece The Wild Bunch on the brain most of all. Peckinpah was known not just for violence but most of all for lush slow-motion sequences focusing on the carnage, and “Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown” certainly has several of those. The moment when Lucy nips Charlie Brown in the shoulder is a direct callback to a sequence from The Wild Bunch involving William Holden’s character Pike Bishop.

Reardon’s short, which is in black-and-white, is a little crude by professional standards, but for a student project it’s incredibly effective and engaging. “Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown” is dense, somewhat akin to MAD Magazine, with references covering everything from Popeye and Travis Bickle to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Godzilla. The closing zinger, spoken in Arnie’s trademark accent, is “Happiness is a warm uzi,” a remarkably canny mix of the strip’s treacly motto “Happiness is a warm puppy” and John Lennon’s memorable ditty “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” 

“Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown” also owes a debt to the old Warner Bros. cartoons, particularly in the bomb Lucy creates to dispose of her football-kicking buddy.

Based on the strength of this short—one imagines—Reardon was quickly hired by John Kricfalusi (later of Ren and Stimpy fame) as a writer on Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Later on he would be a supervising director for seasons 9 through 15 of The Simpsons  and co-wrote the script for WALL-E.

Watch it after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
04.24.2017
02:57 pm
|
Trump meets Ralph Wiggum: Quotes from one cartoon character put into the mouth of another

04trumpwig.jpg
 
When Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons grows up he’s gonna be Donald Trump. In fact, he already is.

Meet Trump Wiggum. A mash-up of non-sequitur quotes from one cartoon character put into the mouth of another cartoon character.

If I didn’t know this was a mash-up, I’d swear these were genuine quotes straight from Donald’s gob.

Find more of these delights at Trump Wiggum.
 
0000trumpwig.jpg
 
07trumpwig.jpg
 
06trumpwig.jpg
 
More from your future President, after the chump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
03.17.2016
01:01 pm
|
Simpsons tarot cards
02.22.2016
02:49 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
It’s been ten years since Matt Groening told The A.V. Club that “I honestly don’t see any end in sight” for The Simpsons because “the show is creatively, I think, as good or better than it’s ever been,” therefore “creatively there’s no reason to quit.”

It’s unclear whether the Simpsons faithful would wholly agree with that assessment, but it does seem difficult to imagine an end to the series, which will release episode number 600 (!) early next season.

User dustbean11 at Deviant Art provides an amusing take on a tarot deck featuring Simpsons characters. The set contains a dozen cards, which barely clears half of the 22 cards from the full Major Arcana. Many of the classic tarot tropes are represented, including The Hierophant (Ned Flanders), The Fool (Homer), the Empress (Marge), and the Sun (Maggie).

On the Hermit card, Grandpa Simpson assumes the well-known Hermit pose from the classic Rider-Waite deck.

Now if someone would just make me Temperance card featuring Moe, then I’ll really be satisfied!
 

The Hierophant and The Devil
 

The Chariot and The Tower
 

The Stars and The Hanged Boy
 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
02.22.2016
02:49 pm
|
Heavy Ned-al: there’s a Ned Flanders themed metal band called Okilly Dokilly
08.13.2015
09:24 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
God save us all, some Simpsons fans in Phoenix have started a Ned Flanders-themed metal band called Okilly Dokilly. They’ve only been together about a month, so they seem to have more band photos than songs at this point, but what band photos!
 

 

 

 
The band is singer Head Ned, keyboardist Red Ned, bassist Thread Ned, guitarist Stead Ned, and drummer (and pseudonym winner) Bled Ned. Head spoke with Rip It Up about the band’s formation.

Myself and our drummer were in line at a grocery store, entertaining ourselves by coming up with really cutesy names for really hardcore, brutal bands. The name Okilly Dokilly came up and was very funny to us. We ran with it. I contacted a few friends, and here we are. Most of us have played in other bands around our hometown. This is definitely the heaviest sounding project any of us Neds have done.

And in case the thought crossed your mind, yes, Head Ned is left-handed, so hooray for cosplay authenticity. The band’s debut performance is scheduled for September 5th, so Phoenician DM readers, mark your calendars. The rest of us will have to be content with scouring YouTube on the 6th, to see if Okilly Dokilly is as good in concert as all-time dork-metal champs BlöödHag.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Heavy metal T-shirts for inoffensive pop stars
Metal albums with googly eyes

Posted by Ron Kretsch
|
08.13.2015
09:24 am
|
‘Bartkira’: Japanese anime classic ‘Akira’ gets Simpsonized
07.06.2015
11:24 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
If you’ve not seen the definitive anime Akira, I highly suggest you make the time to watch it. If you’ve not read the comic it’s based on, I demand you get on that shit, like, yesterday. Set in post-nuclear Tokyo (well, technically “Neo-Tokyo,” an artificial island in the bay), Akira is a sort of post-apocalyptic coming-of-age story—just with telepathy, gang wars and terrorism. The first of the six volume series was released in 1982, but the decrepit futurism and universal themes have made it a timeless classic.It’s difficult to imagine anyone collaborating with or updating it, but the Akira/Simpsons mash-up, Bartkira, is positively inspired.
 

 
Hundreds of cartoonists are collaborating to re-create all six volumes of the series, panel by panel, recast with characters from The Simpsons—you can see the cast list (pre-determined for consistency) here. The project will run until the series is reproduced in its entirity, and you can actually submit your Bartkira fan art to the Tumblr (which has a ton of great art), or send samples of your work to bartkiracommittee@gmail.com if you want to contribute to the actual Bartkira comic.
 
As if that wasn’t ambitious enough, over fifty animators have actually produced a video trailer for the project, and it’s dead-on. If you’re wondering if this is legal, so are the artists involved:

We’re not sure. We kind of just leapt into it. To be on the safe side, we’re keeping Bartkira as an entirely non-profit operation and we’re giving all the proceeds from sales of books, shirts and so on to charity. If you’ve made merchandise from your Bartkira artwork, we encourage you to do the same. We suspect the project occupies a legal grey area protected by parody laws. Regardless, as of writing we’re a year in and we haven’t received our cease-and-desist yet.

Supposedly, Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo got a kick out of the project, and while Matt Groening hasn’t been reached for comment, he’s got a huge collection of bootleg Simpsons merch, and likely wouldn’t care. And who wouldn’t be flattered by a project this formidable? The scope and artistry of the parody is positively sublime.
 

 

 

 
H/t Jason Clarke

Posted by Amber Frost
|
07.06.2015
11:24 am
|
‘The Simpsons Tattoo’ collects the very best Springfield-inspired body art
03.23.2015
08:08 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
The Instagram account The Simpsons Tattoo is surprisingly delightful. I’m not shocked that a lot of people have body art inspired by the show, but it is a little unexpected that 1) these tattoos are done so well (as opposed to tragic crust-punk poke-and-stick) and 2) there are so many deep cuts (no pun intended). Fan tattoos of most cartoons tend to obsess over main characters and pivotal moments, but Simpsons fans may just be a more esoteric breed; so much of the work curated here features secondary, or even tertiary characters. Some of them aren’t even a character, but a bit of iconography (the diagram of the blowfish is particularly inspired).

What’s even more entertaining is your ability as a viewer to identify the most random reference—I haven’t seriously watched the show in years, and I laughed out loud in recognition of some of the one-off jokes that someone was daring and committed enough to permanently adorn themselves with.
 

 

 
More Simpsons ink after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Amber Frost
|
03.23.2015
08:08 am
|
Thousands of Bolivians take to the streets protesting ‘The Simpsons’ time slot
02.12.2015
12:33 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Austerity, repression, police brutality and skyrocketing unemployment—young people the world over have so much to fight for, but it’s the protesters of Bolivia who have stolen my heart. A few days ago an estimated 2000 Bolivians—most of them appearing to be under 30—took to the streets in a multi city defense of The Simpsons. No, the show was not canceled, nor was it censored—but the timeslot was changed, and the people were not having it. Perhaps even weirder than the mobilization itself is its success—a few hours of marching in the rain and not only did the network reverse the scheduling change, they bumped up the airtime from 45 minutes to two full daily hours of Springfield’s favorite family!

If it seems like a shallow crusade, it’s worth noting there may be more to this action than meets the eye. Latin Times ran this story under the decidedly bitter old man headline of “Don’t They Have Jobs?”—but likely, they do, as the Bolivian youth unemployment rate is less than half the youth employment rate of the US. The network that made the scheduling change however, Unitel Bolivia, is recognized as right-wing, so it’s possible “The Simpsons” are a sort of semiotic stand-in for other values. Either way, always nice to see civically engaged young people winning their battles, right? Viva Bolivia! And viva Bart!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Via New York Post

Posted by Amber Frost
|
02.12.2015
12:33 pm
|
‘Real-life’ Marge Simpson is jaw-dropping (and kinda terrifying)


 
This is truly something else. And before you all yell “photoshop” and “fake”—I monitor the comments here on Dangerous Minds sometimes so I’m accustomed to all the usual comment tropes—it’s very real. Moscow-based photographer Alexander Khokhlov captures these extraordinary images with super-talented make-up artists, designers and expert lighting.

While this “real life” Marge Simpson is simply fascinating to look at, she’s still somewhat unsettling and terrifying, right?!?

There’s a video below showing you how Khokhlov and his team created Marge. I highly recommend muting the music. It’s godawful and distracting.

 
Via Geekologie

Posted by Tara McGinley
|
03.26.2014
01:22 pm
|
Meet the real-life ‘Simpsons’ kids in a 1969 film made by Matt Groening’s father, Homer
01.30.2014
11:46 am
Topics:
Tags:
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
01.30.2014
11:46 am
|
Guillermo del Toro refused to insert a ‘Poochie’ into ‘Wind in the Willows’
11.09.2013
06:31 pm
Topics:
Tags:

The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show!
 
For my money, “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show,” episode #14 in the 8th season of The Simpsons, ranks as one of the most effortlessly resonant episodes they ever did. If you recall that one, the TV execs, worried about slipping ratings for “The Itchy & Scratchy Show,” decide to insert an “extreme” dog character named “Poochie” into the program. The surfboard-toting Poochie wears sunglasses, a backwards baseball cap, and torn shorts and generally behaves like the parody of edgy youth behavior he was intended to be. Eventually the kids start to hate Poochie because he always drags down the action, and they kill off the character. In a “meta” point to drive the point home, in the episode an additional, sassy Simpsons sibling named “Roy” materializes, whom all the characters acknowledge as always having been there.

The episode is studded with great dialogue, but here’s a bit in which all the relevant nonsense about Poochie is laid out in detail:
 

Network Executive Lady: We at the network want a dog with attitude. He’s edgy, he’s “in your face.” You’ve heard the expression, “let’s get busy”? Well, this is a dog who gets “biz-zay!” Consistently and thoroughly.

Krusty: So he’s proactive, huh?

Network Executive Lady: Oh, God, yes. We’re talking about a totally outrageous paradigm.

Writer: Excuse me, but “proactive” and “paradigm”? Aren’t these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important? Not that I’m accusing you of anything like that. [pause] I’m fired, aren’t I?

Roger Myers Jr.: Oh, yes.

 
The whole episode is a stone classic, and (in my mind at least, and I know I’m not alone) the word “Poochie” ever since has always been synonymous with gratuitous attempts to pander to audiences.

Everybody gets that Poochie-type behavior is a daily occurrence in Hollywood—but surely the makers of The Simpsons were exaggerating, right? To judge from the experience of Guillermo del Toro, apparently not!

Around 2003 del Toro was attached to a Disney animated adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s 1905 children’s favorite The Wind in the Willows. In an interview from Rotten Tomatoes’ “Dinner and the Movies” series, del Toro revealed that he had to leave the project because of the Disney execs’ request to “Poochie” up the character of Toad:

Wind in the Willows, which I adapted to do animated. ... “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” and all that - it was a beautiful little book, and then I went to meet with the executives and they said, “Could you give Toad a skateboard and make him say, ‘Radical, dude!’ things,” and that’s where I said, “It’s been a pleasure!”

The section with the Wind in the Willows stuff is embedded below, but you can watch the entire interview (12 files) if you like.

All in all, del Toro’s decisions to walk away from material—which happened often, apparently—seemed to work out well. He’s one of Hollywood’s most inventive and sought-after directors, and he just published a terrific book called Cabinet of Curiosities which we posted about a month ago.
 

 
Thank you Mark Davis!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Watching 100+ episodes of The Simpsons at the same time
The Simpsons laughing it up in Chernobyl
Guillermo del Toro’s incredible ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ sketchbooks to be published

Posted by Martin Schneider
|
11.09.2013
06:31 pm
|
If ‘Breaking Bad’ characters were on ‘The Simpsons’
10.10.2013
12:38 pm
Topics:
Tags:

Walter White and Jesse Pinkman
Walter White and Jesse Pinkman
 
Brussels-based illustrator and art director Adrien Noterdaem loves to make Simpsons-ized versions of TV and movie characters. Recently he turned his attention to Breaking Bad and came up with these delightful images.

I would still like to see Lydia! and Tuco! and Gomie! and Badger! and Gale Boetticher! Much like meth addicts, Breaking Bad fans are not famous for ever being satisfied.
 
Walter White
Walter White
 
Skyler White
Skyler White
 
Hank Schrader
Hank Schrader

More after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
10.10.2013
12:38 pm
|
‘No Prostitution’: The Simpsons instruct Chinese nightclub patrons on the house rules
09.05.2013
08:38 am
Topics:
Tags:

Simpsons prostitution
 
While Disney and Looney Tunes probably have him beat on sheer numbers, Bart Simpson has to have been bootlegged more elaborately and creatively than any other animated character in history. There’s even a Facebook group called “Bootleg Bart,” that curates knock-off Simpsons merchandise and art. “Safer Sex Bartwas my favorite, until I stumbled across these janky little posters from a Chinese nightclub.

The imitation of Groening’s art is just a superficial design element. It doesn’t seem to matter to the illustrator that the posters are obvious bootlegs, because a legitimate association with The Simpsons as a brand obviously isn’t really the point. Still, I can’t help but enjoy the irony of America’s favorite dysfunctional family used to foster public decency in a Chinese bar. (No fighting? Really?)
 
Simpsons drugs
 
Simpsons fighting
 
Simpsons gambling
 
Via Buried Above Ground

Posted by Amber Frost
|
09.05.2013
08:38 am
|
Homer Simpson’s headstone?

nospmisremohevarg.jpg
 
A suitable gravestone for Homer Simpson…or, even Matt Groening, at some future date?
 
Previously on Dangerous MInds

‘Adamson’: The original Homer Simpson from 1949?


 
Via Tam O’Shanter and b3ta
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
05.03.2013
11:01 am
|
‘Rich people feel things more deeply than the common man’: Mr. Burns explains the Fiscal Cliff
12.04.2012
06:16 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Still feeling the pain from Mitt Romney’s loss—not even Karl Rove can comfort him—Mr. Burns explains how that fiscal cliff thing works in this PSA from The Simpsons.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
12.04.2012
06:16 pm
|
Page 1 of 2  1 2 >