Production
The idea of The Krusty the Clown Show being cancelled was pitched by writer John Swartzwelder. The rest of the writers decided this would be an opportunity to include a group of celebrity guest stars. They had done a similar episode the year before called "Homer at the Bat" which starred nine Major League Baseball players and had hoped to emulate its success. At that point, the writers had a list of celebrities that had wanted to do a guest spot on the show and decided to use this episode to burn through some of them. However, the episode was described by executive producer Mike Reiss as "a nightmare" because several guests pulled out at the last minute and the script had to be changed several times. One of the goals for the episode was to have a living ex-President of the United States. They wrote "very respectful but cute" parts for every living ex-President at the time, but they all turned them down. Only Ronald Reagan responded, sending a politely worded reply.
All of the guest stars were recorded over a period of several months. One of the writers' goals was to get a musical act to appear, but several performers, including The Rolling Stones and Wynonna Judd, turned the role down. The Red Hot Chili Peppers finally accepted, and were directed by George Meyer who told them to ad-lib many of their lines. The celebrity aspect of the episode was almost canceled because the producers were unable to get an obligation before the record deadline. Johnny Carson appears in the episode, and it was one of the few televised appearances he made after he retired from The Tonight Show. He recorded his lines the night after the 44th Primetime Emmy Awards. The original role pitched for Carson was one where he visited the Simpson family's house and mooched off them. Carson turned down the role, so the writers went the opposite way and made him look extremely versatile with several different talents. Bette Midler's condition for guest starring was that the show promoted her anti-littering campaign. Elizabeth Taylor guest starred as herself and also recorded a part as Maggie Simpson in "Lisa's First Word" on the same day. Luke Perry was one of the first guest stars to agree to their part.
The character known as the Old Jewish Man appears in the episode.
The short cartoon "Worker and Parasite" is a reference to Eastern European cartoons. To produce the animation, director David Silverman xeroxed several drawings and made the animation very jerky. The scene where Krusty sings "Send in the Clowns" was very tricky for the animators because it involves two shots of the same scene from different angles. Parts of the scene were animated by Brad Bird.
Read more about this topic: Krusty Gets Kancelled
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“... 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)
“In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)