I'm Pretty Sure...

...that I've never blogged about the Simpsons.  I may have posted a sentence or two back when there was a Hatch of purple, but not a show that I've talked a lot about over the years.

I think it's safe to say that over the course of 30 years, The Simpsons has made some very engaging television.  To my recollection, none of that has been in the last fifteen years.  These days, I watch The Simpsons much the same way I wear my seatbelt.  It's a habit that I feel uncomfortable skipping, even though I'm reasonably confident that my life would be exactly the same the next day if I didn't.

Sunday February 17, "The Clown Stays In The Picture" aired.  I watched it this evening and I gotta say, I'm gonna wear my seatbelt tomorrow.  For the first time in more than a decade, The Simspsons aired an episode that actually had me pausing during a snack run rather than just keeping an ear out while I raided the fridge.

I suspect most people won't have watched all the reference material that made this episode so compelling to me, so if you are interested, I shall present a primer.

The episode is a flashback to a young, idealist Krusty the Klown leveraging his box office success in a comedy that the studio wants to turn into a franchise in order to make his passion project.  The movie he wants to make is a riff on Frank Herbert's notoriously unfilmable Dune novel, called Sands of Space.  The studio agrees to let him do the project but on the cheap, with a director who couldn't care less about the source material or the film itself.  A young Marge and Homer somehow are on the crew and when Krusty takes over as director, he ends up hiring Marge as his assistant.

The plot resembles a mix between two movies you probably have never seen.  One is John Travola's infamously terrible passion project, a film version of a novel by the founder of his religion, the sci-fi opus "Battlefield Earth".  The book is actually pretty decent sci-fi (one of the biggest books you'll ever see in one volume as well, so large that the spine rarely survives more than one reading in a paperback) and in the cgi era it might actually make a great blockbuster movie or three.  Sadly at the time it was made, Travolta's reach far exceeded his grasp.  Krusty is in the same boat and he's not remotely qualified to direct.  With Marge's help, he manages to put the film in the can, but not before his jealousy sends Homer into the desert to free up Marge's time for the film. 

The resolution of all this is a pretty silly but Simpson-esque shootout with the gang that is holding Homer for ransom and it all wraps up nicely with Lisa and Bart getting Marge and Homer to recall the experience.  Nice as that was, it was the meaty middle act that really worked.  Krusty trying to film the unfilmable was 10 or so minutes right out of the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune.  If you haven't seen this gem and have any interest in filmmaking and/or sci-fi in general, find it tonight and prepare for 90 minutes of the most bat-shit insane "what if" you'll ever see.  Imagine the greatest sci-fi novel ever made turned into a movie with Orson Wells, Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali (seriously, Jodorowsky wanted him as the emperor!) made by some of the most creative minds in the business.  The aborted project launched a hundred careers and movies like Alien and Avatar owe more than a little of their dna to it.

The post credits tag showing Krusty seeing his film finally shown to an audience was a very personal thing for me.  The crowd thinks it's a comedy and Krusty is horrified by the revelation.  I had a similar experience in High School.  I wrote a serious fantasy short story based on my then favourite series of novels and then spent hours creating an audiobook for it, complete with music and all the gravitas I could muster.  When I played it for the class it was a huge hit, but as a comedy rather than the serious experience I had intended.  I was devastated.  I laughed along with them but I was dying the whole time. 

I feel you, Krusty.  Three decades later, it still stings a bit.  Now I can laugh about it, but it still smarts.

In short, if you've given up on The Simpsons (who can blame you?) I really suggest you hunt up this episode (The Clown Stays In The Picture, Season 30, Episode 14) and take 22 minutes to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear when Krusty had passion, Homer had hair and The Simpsons was entertaining. 

And while I reiterate my suggestion of Jodorowsky's Dune, unless you're a serious film nerd or a masochist, give Battlefield Earth a pass.