The Monkey Suit - Production

Production

"The Monkey Suit" was written by J. Stewart Burns and directed by Raymond S. Persi as part of the seventeenth season of The Simpsons (2005–2006). Burns received inspiration for the episode from the Scopes Monkey Trial, a 1925 legal case in which high school science teacher John Scopes was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act which made teaching evolution unlawful. Clarice Drummond, the ACLU lawyer who represents Lisa, is a reference to the ACLU lawyer Clarence Darrow who defended Scopes, while Wallace Brady is a reference to William Jennings Bryan, an attorney in the Scopes Monkey Trial. American actor Larry Hagman guest starred in the episode as Wallace Brady, while American actress Melanie Griffith played herself as the narrator of an audio tour at the museum. Burns did research for "The Monkey Suit" by reading Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene and watching Inherit the Wind (a film based on the Scopes Monkey Trial). He also visited a natural history museum.

The opening of the episode, in which Bart rushes to do everything he planned on doing during summer vacation, was originally written and animated for the season fourteen episode "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can" (2003) but was cut. This episode came in short, and to fill in time, the sequence was added. Burns has said commented the episode "ended up being incredibly short because when you do an episode where there's really just one good side of an argument, you don't fill out as much time as you need to." The opening sequence features a large number of allusions to popular culture, including references to The Natural (1984 film), Happy Days (television sitcom), and Men in Black (1997 film).