Production
"Much Apu About Nothing" was written by David S. Cohen and directed by Susie Dietter. Joe Mantegna guest stars in the episode as Fat Tony. Much of the inspiration for the episode came from news reports of bears roaming streets in Southern California around the time when the episode was in production. Cohen said that when a bear swims in somebody's pool or goes in somebody's garbage can, it becomes a popular news item in California. The show runner of The Simpsons at the time, Bill Oakley, commented that the news reports often create an anti-bear hysteria, and that is one of the inspirations for the episode.
Another inspiration for the episode came from California's Proposition 187, which proposed the rescinding of employment rights and benefits from illegal immigrants. Cohen decided to name the referendum "Proposition 24" because 24 was the number he had on his Little League Baseball uniform. Cohen commented that "the main theme of the episode is illegal immigration and anti-immigration sentiment, which is a big issue here in California. So both the intro with the bear and the main theme are yanked from the California headlines."
The final script of the episode was "very close" to Cohen's first draft. "I was looking at the old drafts and this episode probably changed as little as any script I've written from the original inception to the final aired version," Cohen said. Oakley commented that some writer's scripts get rewritten many times but Cohen's "usually do not get rewritten that much because they are so good". Oakley added that Cohen has a very distinctive comedy style so there are certain jokes in the episode that "just really sound like Cohen".
Something Oakley and his partner Josh Weinstein wanted to do while they were show runners of The Simpsons was to explore side-characters, such as Apu, "a little deeper". Apu's origin is revealed in this episode, and Oakley is proud of being the one who suggested that. Another character that was explored deeper in their period as show runners was Ned Flanders in the episode "Hurricane Neddy".
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Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
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“The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“... 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)