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When referring to The Simpsons, one refers to its fast-paced humor, its yellow stars as familiar as the tip of one's nose, and its decades of TV history. Never mentioned is the fact that the show's life is a byproduct of a sentimental family saga from 1983, Terms of Endearment. It's a far-fetched background—a weepy, Oscar-winning movie giving birth to an animated fantasy sitcom series—but the behind-the-scenes tale is not only factual but among the more fascinating TV reinventions ever.
And at the heart of it all was producer-director James L. Brooks, a guy with a personal stake in both productions. His efforts on Terms of Endearment paid off with three Academy Awards, two of which were for Best Picture and Best Director. Those awards were not hollow—those awards gave Brooks a lot of clout in Hollywood. And Brooks exercised that clout to make creative decisions that would ultimately give The Simpsons its initial breath of life.
The Simpsons would not have been possible without Terms of Endearment
Terms of Endearment won both critical and box-office acclaim in 1983. It was an on-screen adaptation of a book by master storyteller Larry McMurtry and the difficult mother-daughter relationship between Debra Winger and Shirley MacLaine. It swept the Oscars, winning five Academy Awards. More significantly for this narrative, it made James L. Brooks a Hollywood player.
That success led Brooks to establish a production company, Gracie Films, and ink a deal with the then-emerging Fox network. Under the terms of this deal, he developed The Tracey Ullman Show, a sketch comedy series that required brief animated bumpers between sketches. With the success of Terms of Endearment, Brooks was granted complete carte blanche—and used it to craft a pitch that would ultimately transform the face of television: brief animated cartoons that would become The Simpsons.
Why Fox said "Yes" to an animated family with yellow skin
It wasn't quite trendy at the time to have animated shorts on an evening variety show, after all. Animated shows tended to be kids' stuff, and networks did not want to pay for those productions. But because Brooks swept the Oscars, Fox was bold enough to agree, even though it was a novel concept.
Brooks approached Matt Groening, who was a cartoonist and best known for his alternative comic strip Life in Hell. Groening had originally wanted to do work on refining Life in Hell into shorts, but found he would be alienating rights on his favorite characters. He thought up a replacement idea—The Simpsons. The characters were loosely based upon his family members, with minimalist designs and oversized personalities.
Groening sketched out the characters hurriedly and carelessly, hoping that they would be cut down later. They weren't. Those same rough-around-the-edges cartoons showed up on The Tracey Ullman Show back in 1987, and within a couple of years, The Simpsons was a television show.
From short skits to TV history
Those first Simpsons shorts were a little rough around the edges, yet they functioned. Fans of the show adored them because they were real, they were funny, and because they were irreverent. If it wasn't for James L. Brooks' acclaim thanks to Terms of Endearment, he likely would not have witnessed those shorts get on the airwaves.
More critically, Fox likely would never have greenlit an entire half-hour animated series from those shorts. When The Simpsons premiered as a weekly series in December of 1989, it was an overnight phenomenon. It was incendiary and subversive like nothing else on television.
It brought animation to prime time, ironized social issues, and had its own internal world in Springfield. And although Matt Groening is credited as creator, it is James L. Brooks—himself fired up from his Oscar win—who brokered the opening day of the series.
Creative freedom, courtesy of the academy
The one thing that truly made The Simpsons unique when it premiered was the amount of creative freedom its writers had. Brooks negotiated Fox deals that were almost unprecedented at the time. He insisted that the show be off-limits to network executives and that the writers be allowed to create material without censorship. It wasn't just a typical contract—this was freedom for one who had much industry sway, garnered by the gigantic hit that was Terms of Endearment.
Backed by Brooks, The Simpsons brought in the best writers and voice artists. Some of them had never done animation at all, but were signed up since Brooks' involvement lent credibility to the project. Fox also used that credibility to provide the show with greater freedom to get underway, even when the first few episodes tanked.
Two drastically different projects—one common thread
It's amazing even today that The Simpsons, a show all about parodies, in-jokes about popular culture, and goofball sensibilities, originated from a weepy disease film and a dysfunctional family relations movie. It is, though, a testament to how pervasive Hollywood really is. If it wasn't for Terms of Endearment's unchallenged, untainted sweep of the Oscars, Brooks perhaps may never have been allowed to create such an outlandish, cartoon ancillary project as The Simpsons.
This sequence of events further reveals how one hit movie can reset entertainment history. It paved the way for what turned out to be the most successful animated franchise ever. To this day, decades later, The Simpsons continues to push boundaries.
A comedy born out of a drama
The link between Terms of Endearment and The Simpsons is TV trivia, an asterisk in television history. But it is a turning point. One spawned the other, not because they have a tone or message in common, but because one enabled the creator to be free to bring the other to life.
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So the next time you sit down to watch an episode of The Simpsons, keep in mind that donut-beer-screwed-up-dinner-family sitcom owes an enormous debt of heritage to a heart-wrenching drama of life and death. And in the crazy ways of Hollywood, that is precisely the way it should be.
Also read: Where can I watch The Simpsons?
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