Production
The episode was written by George Meyer. It is one of The Simpsons creator Matt Groening's favorite episodes of the earlier seasons because he thought it took the show to another level. Meyer said he has a "deep suspicion of social institutions and tradition in general," which affected the way he wrote the episode. Al Jean and Mike Reiss, who had written for The Simpsons since the start of the show, took over as show runners for the third season. Their first episode as show runners was "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington" and they felt a lot of pressure about running the show. Jean and Reiss were so pressured that they did six to seven rewrites of the script to make it funnier. Jean said "one reason for doing all these rewrites is because I kept thinking 'It's not good enough. It's not good enough'," and Reiss added that "we were definitely scared. We had never run anything before, and they dumped us on this."
Wes Archer directed "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington", which was one of the first episodes to feature the Simpson family traveling to a real-life location. Because much of the episode takes place outside of Springfield, new background and character designs had to be animated. The Simpson family visits several real-life landmarks in Washington, which the animators were able to draw with the help of photographs from the animation studio's library. The Simpsons director David Silverman grew up in the Washington area so he was able to help out with the designs. Marge's voice actor, Julie Kavner, said she loved the charm of the family "just being on a trip and experiencing the hotel room they're staying at, and the integrity of Bart's character. You know, you just want to kill him for doing all those tricks and pranks." Jean believes this is one of the secrets of show's success, the fact that it is about a family and the writers can use experiences from their own or their family's life as an inspiration in their writing. He thought "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington" was a perfectly constructed episode in that sense.
Read more about this topic: Mr. Lisa Goes To Washington
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“... this dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“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)
“... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)