Simpsons Tall Tales - Production

Production

On April 4, 1999, "Simpsons Bible Stories" aired in the United States. The episode, which contains three self-contained segments in which the Simpsons play different characters from the Bible, was written after Fox requested a Bible-themed episode that would air on Easter. The Simpsons' staff enjoyed writing the episode and it was generally well received by viewers. When pitching stories for the twelfth season, the writers decided to make another episode based around three segments that are all related to a certain theme.

The singing hobo would originally be played by Jim Carrey (left), but because he was busy during the recording sessions, the role was given to Hank Azaria (right).

"Simpsons Tall Tales" was written by Matt Selman, John Frink, Don Payne, and Bob Bendetson. The idea for a trilogy episode based on tall tales was pitched by Frink and Payne, according to co-executive producer Ian Maxtone-Graham. While the episode's introduction was written and conceived by Selman, the first segment was written by Frink and Payne. The second and third segments were written by Bendetson and Selman respectively. Writing segments for "Simpsons Tall Tales" was much different from normal episodes; for example, the writers only had one day to outline each segment's plot, and three to four days to write the first draft of each script, which is much less time than the writers usually get for an episode. Still, Selman has said that working on the episode was "very fun" for the writers. While writing the third segment, Selman listened to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective on tape to "get some of the lingo" that Mark Twain used in his books. He found so many unusual words in the books that he compiled a "giant" list of them. "We wanted to cram in every single as we could", Selman said in the episode's DVD commentary.

"Simpsons Tall Tales" was directed by Bob Anderson and is one of his favorite episodes that he directed. Because the segments take place in different places and time periods, the animators had to create new designs for characters and backgrounds. Even though it took a lot of work, Anderson maintained that the episode was "fun to work on." In a scene in the episode, Moe holds a giant pill that he made Homer sleep with. At one point in the episode's production, the pill would read "Roofie", but it was eventually removed. Another scene that changed during production was the scene in which Homer uses Marge's hair to clean him up for their date. After he takes Marge's hair out of his ear, her hair would originally be covered with earwax, but it was removed when the animators looked over the episode's storyboard. The second segment originally had many more shots of buffalo being shot, but some were changed so that the deaths were off-camera.

The singing hobo was voiced by regular cast member Hank Azaria, who voices Moe and Comic Book Guy among other characters in the series. Originally, the part would be played by Canadian-American actor and comedian Jim Carrey, who had asked for a role in an episode. Because Carrey was busy with other projects and did not have time to record any lines, the role was instead given to Azaria, who Scully said did a "great job". While most of the hobo's songs were written by Frink, the song that the hobo sings at the beginning of the episode was written by executive producer and former showrunner Mike Reiss. The dialog between Homer and the hobo at the end of the episode was ad-libbed by Azaria and Dan Castellaneta, who portrays Homer in the series.

Like many other trilogy episodes, "Simpsons Tall Tales" ended up very long and the staff were obliged to cut some scenes in order to fit with the program's maximum running time. The scene in which Homer first meets Babe was also cut short; originally, it would show Babe kicking Homer in the crotch after Homer says that he will "whip from dawn to dusk." A similar joke was later used in The Simpsons Movie. The last removed scene was from the episode's third segment. It would show Lenny and Carl eating buffalo meat, while Carl speaks like a stereotypical Native American.