Production
This was the first episode Frank Mula wrote for The Simpsons. Mula had previously worked with Simpsons executive producer Sam Simon at another Gracie Films show. This was the first season four episode that Wes Archer directed. Jeff Martin and Mula wrote the music for the President's Day pageant. Michael Carrington guest-stars in the episode as Rex, the boy who auditions for the role of George Washington but is beaten by Ralph, as well as Sideshow Raheem.
The story of "I Love Lisa" originated from a personal episode of Al Jean's life; when Jean was in third grade, he received a valentine from a girl that read "I Choo-Choo-Choose You". Years later, Jean wondered if the girl had really liked him. He told writing partner Mike Reiss about it and they thought it could be an idea for an episode where Lisa could give such a valentine to Ralph Wiggum, who would then take it too far. At that time, Ralph, a character they had put in the "Moaning Lisa" episode, and Chief Wiggum were not established as being related. Jean thought it would be funny if Ralph was Wiggum's son, considering both characters are "fat and dumb". A technique the staff used to come up with stories and ideas was to think "what holiday haven't we done on The Simpsons, or done lately?". As they had done several Halloween and Christmas episodes before, the staff liked the idea of doing a Valentine's Day episode.
Read more about this topic: I Love Lisa
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)