Production
Director Brad Bird wanted to open the episode with a close up of Krusty's face. The staff liked the idea and he then suggested that all three acts of the episode, defined by the placement of the commercial breaks, should begin with a close up shot. Act one begins with Krusty's face introducing the audience at his show, act two begins with Krusty's face being locked up behind bars, and act three begins with Sideshow Bob's face on a big poster. Krusty's character is based on a television clown from Portland, Oregon, called Rusty Nails, whom The Simpsons creator Matt Groening watched while growing up in Portland. The original teleplay, written by Jay Kogen and Wallace Wolodarsky, was 78 pages long and many scenes had to be cut. One scene that had to be cut down was the scene where Patty and Selma show the slideshow of their vacation; it originally contained images of them being detained for bringing heroin into America.
Sideshow Bob's first major appearance on The Simpsons was in this episode, but he first appeared in the background of a scene in the season one episode "The Telltale Head". In that appearance, his design was more simple and his hair was round in shape. Bob's design was updated for "Krusty Gets Busted", and the animators tried to redo his scenes in "The Telltale Head" with the re-design, but did not have enough time. The script for "Krusty Gets Busted" called for James Earl Jones to voice Bob, but the producers instead went with Kelsey Grammer, a cast member on Cheers at the time. Kent Brockman and Scott Christian make their first appearances on The Simpsons in this episode.
Read more about this topic: Krusty Gets Busted
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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.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)