Production
"Bart the Fink" was written by John Swartzwelder, but Bob Kushell came up with the idea for it. The episode was based on the "big tax problems" that American country singer Willie Nelson had at the time. The idea of Krusty faking his own death was an idea the production team had wanted to do for a long time, and it was inspired by the rumored fake death of American actor Andy Kaufman. Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, the show runners of The Simpsons' seventh and eighth season, thought the beginning of the episode in which the family spends the night in a haunted house would have been "the cruddiest beginning of any cruddy thing", if they had not added the twist that the family did not encounter any ghosts in the house and had their "best night's sleep ever". The twist was Oakley's idea and he thought it "worked out great".
The episode was directed by Jim Reardon. Consultant David Mirkin suggested that the animators should add "some funny things" to the episode to "spice it up", such as the gorilla suit that one of the bank employees wear. After the audio recording of the script by the Simpsons cast, the episode ended up too long. Weinstein said one of the reasons for it was that Krusty talks very slowly, which drags out the time. They were only allowed to send twenty minutes worth of audio to Film Roman for them to animate, but the audio track for the episode was twenty-six minutes long. American actor Bob Newhart guest starred in the episode as himself. Oakley said Newhart also talked very slowly and they had to cut out more than half of his recorded lines. Many of the writers were big fans of Newhart and everybody wanted to see him record his lines. Oakley and Weinstein decided to shut down production so that the whole writing staff could go to the recording studio. The episode was recorded in a big room so everyone had to be really quiet. It took Newhart two and a half minutes to record his first take, and, as no one was allowed to laugh during that time, there was an "explosion" of laughter in the room when he finished. Parts of Phil Hartman's appearance as Troy McClure were also cut from the episode due to time limits.
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Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)