Production
"Bart's Inner Child" was written by George Meyer and directed by Bob Anderson. It was Anderson's directorial debut on The Simpsons. Meyer's inspiration for the episode came from the fact that he was going though therapy at the time and he thought it would be a good idea "to send up these self-help gurus".
Actor Albert Brooks guest starred in the episode as Brad Goodman. It was Brooks' third appearance on the show after playing Jacques in "Life on the Fast Lane" and Cowboy Bob in "The Call of the Simpsons". He would later guest star as Hank Scorpio in "You Only Move Twice", Tab Spangler in "The Heartbroke Kid" and Russ Cargill in The Simpsons Movie. Executive producer David Mirkin describes Brooks as "really weird to direct" because "almost every one of his takes is flawless, but each one has different material. He makes up the stuff as he goes." He uses a combination of the jokes in the script and his own material and because many of his takes are different, it is difficult for the producers to decide which lines to use. Goodman was based on the American self-help author John Bradshaw, who popularized such psychological ideas as the "wounded inner child" and the dysfunctional family.
Singer James Brown guest stars as himself. Brown makes an appearance at the "Do What You Feel" festival, during which he sings his 1965 song "I Got You (I Feel Good)". After a bandstand collapses, he proclaims "Hey, wait a minute, hold on here. This bandstand wasn't double-bolted." He described the experience as "good, clean, and humorous. And we need more of that around." According to Mirkin, the writers like to give guest stars awkward lines which then sound funny coming from them. They knew Brown would not be "the greatest actor in the world" but still "gave him these incredibly hilarious, stiff lines that killed." Mirkin described Brown's line as "horrible" but because of Brown's reading, "you have something that just sounds perfectly wrong and it makes it funny." In his book Planet Simpson, Chris Turner describes James Brown's performance as "hilariously over-the-top" and uses it as an example of how the early seasons of the show would include celebrity cameos and not point out the "enormity of their fame."
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“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
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