John Swartzwelder

John Swartzwelder
Swartzwelder in a 1992 staff photo for The Simpsons
Born	November 16, 1950 (1950-11-16) (age 58) United States
Occupation	television writer, novelist
Writing period	The Simpsons: 1990-2004 Novels: 2004-present
Genres	observational, surreal and black comedy, detective fiction, absurdism
Subjects	The Simpsons, Frank Burly

John Swartzwelder (born November 16, 1950) is an American comedy writer and novelist, best known for his work on the animated television series The Simpsons, as well as a number of novels. He is credited with writing the largest number of The Simpsons episodes (59 full episodes, with contributions to four others) by a large margin.^[1] Swartzwelder was one of several writers recruited to The Simpsons from the pages of George Meyer's Army Man magazine.

Career

Before working on The Simpsons, Swartzwelder had a long career in advertising,^{[citation needed]} after which he began writing for Saturday Night Live, where he met George Meyer.^[2] After Meyer quit, he created Army Man and recruited Swartzwelder to help him write the magazine.^[3] Along with Meyer, he was recruited to write for The Simpsons because one of their readers, Sam Simon, was one of the show's original executive producers.

In 1994, with the show's sixth season, Swartzwelder was granted a special dispensation and allowed to no longer attend rewrite sessions with the rest of the staff, instead being allowed to send his drafts in from home so other writers could revise them. This was a direct result of Swartzwelder's avid smoking coming into conflict with a newly implemented policy banning smoking in the writers' room.^[4]

His longtime collaborators on The Simpsons, Al Jean and Mike Reiss, describe Swartzwelder as a huge fan of Preston Sturges films and loves "anything old timey American." This vaguely defined aesthetic presents itself in many of the episodes he has written in the form of wandering hobos, Prohibition-era speakeasies, carnies, 19th-century baseball players, aging Western movie stars, and Sicilian gangsters.

According to The Simpsons DVD commentaries, which at times contain apocryphal or even fictional comments, he used to write episodes while sitting in a booth at a coffee shop "drinking copious amounts of coffee and smoking endless cigarettes". When California passed an anti-smoking law, Swartzwelder bought the diner booth and installed it in his house, allowing him to continue his process in peace.^[4] He is also reported to be a staunch libertarian as well as a gun rights advocate, and despite having written many of the environmentally driven episodes, he has been described as an "anti-environmentalist".^[5] David X. Cohen once related a story of Swartzwelder going on an extended diatribe about how there is more rain forest on Earth now than there was a hundred years ago.^[5]

With the exception of his contributions to the movie^[6], released in 2007, Swartzwelder has been absent from The Simpsons writing staff since the fifteenth season (2003-04), with his last airing episode ("The Regina Monologues") actually being a "holdover" written for the fourteenth (2002-03) season. Since leaving The Simpsons, he has taken up writing absurdist novels, beginning with the 2004 publication of science-fiction detective story The Time Machine Did It starring private investigator Frank Burly. The next year he published Double Wonderful, a Western, before returning to the Burly character for How I Conquered Your Planet in 2006, The Exploding Detective in 2007, Dead Men Scare Me Stupid in 2008, and Earth vs. Everybody in 2009.^[7]

Reclusiveness

Swartzwelder is a notorious recluse and rarely, if ever, makes public appearances. At one point fans of The Simpsons on the internet debated his existence, combining his reclusiveness with the amount of episodes credited to him, and theorizing that "John Swartzwelder" was actually a pseudonym for writers either not taking credit for episodes written or else ones penned by several writers.^[8]

He did not participate in any of the audio commentaries on the The Simpsons DVD sets, despite being asked multiple times. The Simpsons creator Matt Groening offered to pre-record him saying "No" to be inserted into a commentary as an answer that he didn't want to participate, but he refused. During the recording for the ninth season (released December 2006) episode "The Cartridge Family"'s commentary show runner Mike Scully called Swartzwelder on the phone. After speaking for a few minutes Swartzwelder ended the call by saying, "It's too bad this really isn't John Swartzwelder".^[9]

References on The Simpsons

Swartzwelder's animated likeness, from the episode "Hurricane Neddy"

"Free John Swartzwelder"

Swartzwelder has been animated in the background of several episodes of The Simpsons. His animated likeness closely resembles musician David Crosby; prompting Matt Groening to state that anytime that David Crosby appears in a scene for no apparent reason, it is really John Swartzwelder.^[10] Some of the episodes in which Swartzwelder has appeared include:

• In "The Day the Violence Died", Swartzwelder is one of the "surprise witnesses" called by Lionel Hutz while Bart goes to the Comic Book Guy's store to get the framed Itchy drawing.
• In "Bart the Fink", he is one of the attendees at Krusty's fake funeral with Kermit The Frog on his arm.
• In "Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily", his likeness appears as a statue (on a horse) outside a courthouse.
• In "Bart After Dark", he can be seen as one of the clients watching the show in the burlesque house.
• In "The Front", the Itchy and Scratchy writers are all caricatures of The Simpsons writing team at the time, one of whom is Swartzwelder. In addition, Bart and Lisa are seen reading a fictitious book titled "How to Get Rich Writing Cartoons" that was written by John Swartzwelder.
• In "Hurricane Neddy", he can be seen poking his head out of the door to his padded cell inside the Calmwood Mental Hospital, and then quickly closing it. Later in the episode a sign reading "Free John Swartzwelder" can be seen briefly (behind Barney Gumble) during the fanfare of Ned Flanders' release from the same hospital.
• In "A Fish Called Selma", a picture of him can be seen among the first group of celebrities on the wall.
• In "Thank God It's Doomsday", he can be seen on the blimp behind Krusty before it crashes.

In addition to having his likeness animated into the show, various references to him have been slipped in, such as his name being used in "freeze frame" jokes.

• The episode "Burns, Baby Burns" features a "Mt. Swartzwelder". (Interestingly, two episodes written by John Swartzwelder revolve around mountain-climbing ("Mountain of Madness" and "King of the Hill"), while in a third ("Homer Simpson in: "Kidney Trouble"") Homer claims the sea forgives all - "Not like those mountains!")
• In "Dog of Death", Santa's Little Helper is shown wandering through Swartzwelder County.

The Simpsons episodes by Swartzwelder

• "Bart the General" (7G05) (1990)
• "The Call of the Simpsons" (7G07) (1990)
• "Life on the Fast Lane" (7G11) (1990)
• "The Crepes of Wrath"^[1] (7G13) (1990)
• "Treehouse of Horror"^[2] (7F04) (1990)
• "Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish"^[3] (7F01) (1990)
• "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge" (7F09) (1990)
• "Bart Gets Hit by a Car" (7F10) (1991)
• "The War of the Simpsons" (7F20) (1991)
• "Bart the Murderer" (8F03) (1991)
• "Treehouse of Horror II"^[4] (8F02) (1991)
• "Homer at the Bat" (8F13) (1992)
• "Dog of Death" (8F17) (1992)
• "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?" (8F23) (1992)
• "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie" (9F03) (1992)
• "Whacking Day" (9F18) (1993)
• "Krusty Gets Kancelled" (9F19) (1993)
• "Rosebud" (1F01) (1993)
• "Homer the Vigilante" (1F09) (1994)
• "Bart Gets Famous" (1F11) (1994)
• "Bart Gets an Elephant" (1F15) (1994)
• "The Boy Who Knew Too Much" (1F19) (1994)
• "Itchy & Scratchy Land" (2F01) (1994)
• "Homer the Great" (2F09) (1995)
• "Bart's Comet" (2F11) (1995)
• "Homie the Clown" (2F12) (1995)
• "Radioactive Man" (2F17) (1995)
• "Treehouse of Horror VI"^[5](3F04) (1995)
• "Bart the Fink"^[6](3F12) (1996)
• "Homer the Smithers" (3F14) (1996)
• "The Day the Violence Died" (3F16) (1996)
• "You Only Move Twice" (3F23) (1996)
• "Mountain of Madness" (4F10) (1997)
• "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment" (4F15) (1997)
• "The Old Man and the Lisa" (4F17) (1997)
• "Homer's Enemy" (4F19) (1997)
• "The Cartridge Family" (5F01) (1997)
• "Bart Carny" (5F08) (1998)
• "King of the Hill" (5F16) (1998)
• "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace" (5F21) (1998)
• "Homer Simpson in: "Kidney Trouble"" (AABF04) (1998)
• "Homer to the Max" (AABF09) (1999)
• "Maximum Homerdrive" (AABF13) (1999)
• "Monty Can't Buy Me Love" (AABF17) (1999)
• "Take My Wife, Sleaze" (BABF05) (1999)
• "The Mansion Family" (BABF08) (2000)
• "Kill the Alligator and Run" (BABF16) (2000)
• "A Tale of Two Springfields" (BABF20) (2000)
• "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" (CABF02) (2000)
• "Hungry, Hungry Homer" (CABF09) (2001)
• "Simpson Safari" (CABF13) (2001)
• "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love" (CABF18) (2001)
• "The Lastest Gun in the West" (DABF07) (2002)
• "I Am Furious Yellow" (DABF13) (2002)
• "The Sweetest Apu" (DABF14) (2002)
• "The Frying Game" (DABF16) (2002)
• "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington" (EABF09) (2003)
• "Treehouse of Horror XIV" (EABF21) (2003)
• "The Regina Monologues" (EABF22) (2003)

1. ^  - with George Meyer, Sam Simon and Jon Vitti
2. ^  - "Bad Dream House" segment
3. ^  - with Sam Simon
4. ^  - contributor
5. ^  - "Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores" segment
6. ^  - teleplay, story by Bob Kushell

Books by Swartzwelder

• The Time Machine Did It (2004) - ISBN 0-9755799-0-8
• Double Wonderful (2005) - ISBN 0-9755799-2-4
• How I Conquered Your Planet (2006) - ISBN 0-9755799-4-0
• The Exploding Detective (2007) - ISBN 0-9755799-6-7
• Dead Men Scare Me Stupid (2008) - ISBN 0-9755799-8-3
• Earth vs. Everybody (2009) - ISBN 0-9822736-0-6

References

External links

• John Swartzwelder at the Internet Movie Database
• John Swartzwelder at TV.com