Production
"The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" was written by John Swartzwelder and directed by Mark Kirkland. It was first broadcast on the Fox network in the United States on December 3, 2000. Originally, the episode was about Homer becoming Matt Drudge, the creator and an editor of the news aggregation website the Drudge Report, which Swarzwelder is a fan of. At that point, the episode was called "Homer the Drudge". The chalkboard gag was written by staff writer Don Payne, and the couch gag was conceived by producer Laurie Biernackie. Because it was accidentally commissioned without his approval, the animators had to apologize to Scully. When he looked at the couch gag however, he was pleased with it and ordered the animators to "go with it". At one point in the episode, Homer wins a Pulitzer Prize for his achievements in journalism. According to Kirkland, none of the animators knew what the prize looked like and had to do some research in order to make it accurate.
The third act of "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" is a pastiche of the 1967 science fiction television series The Prisoner. In order "get the feel" of The Prisoner, the writers watched its opening sequence, which summarizes the story of the series. Kirkland, who had seen a couple of episodes as a child, watched several episodes of the series with The Simpsons' animators in order to make "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" resemble it. They were also influenced by 1960's modernism and furniture designs from the 1971 science fiction film A Clockwork Orange. The episode features American-born actor Patrick McGoohan as Number Six, the central character in The Prisoner, which McGoohan created. Aside from The Prisoner, McGoohan did not do a lot of television work, and "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" was the only time he reprised his role as Number Six. In the DVD commentary for the episode, Payne said that McGoohan was "very funny", and that all the writers wanted to meet him when he came to record his dialogue for the episode. McGoohan was reportedly very pleased with his role in the episode; when his wife Joan McGoohan, who is a real estate broker, helped staff writer Max Pross buy a house, she told him that Patrick McGoohan was as proud of the episode as anything in his career.
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Famous quotes containing the word production:
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“Perestroika basically is creating material incentives for the individual. Some of the comrades deny that, but I can’t see it any other way. In that sense human nature kinda goes backwards. It’s a step backwards. You have to realize the people weren’t quite ready for a socialist production system.”
—Gus Hall (b. 1910)
“The society based on production is only productive, not creative.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)