Honoring Simpsons Mania

2010-01-06 (수) 12:00:00

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By DAVE ITZKOFF

As a documentarian and one-man lab experiment, Morgan Spurlock has recorded himself in all manner of endurance tests. He has famously subsisted on a diet of McDonald’s menu items (in his breakthrough film, “Super Size Me”); traveled to the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan (“Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?”); and lived for a month as a prison inmate (on his cable television series “30 Days”) .

Finally he found a challenge he could not complete: watching more than 440 episodes of “The Simpsons” in a row.

“It was my fantasy in the beginning,” Mr. Spurlock said . With an air of resignation, he added: “I did it for about two days. Literally, you feel like your head’s going to explode.”

A time-lapse chronicle of this Homeric odyssey can be seen fleetingly in his latest work, “The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special ? In 3-D! On Ice!,” a documentary special commemorating that long-running animated comedy that the Fox television network will show on January 10.

Mr. Spurlock found obsessive fans .

“You talk to these people, and it’s almost like they’re talking about one of their own family members,” he said.

“Like the fifth Beatle, they are the sixth Simpson.”

His film, which is both a recounting of the history of “The Simpsons” and a tribute to its far-reaching and unpredictable cultural influence, was commissioned by that show’s producers .

The “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening and the executive producers James L. Brooks and Al Jean turned to Mr. Spurlock without too much fear that he would turn his wry muckraking style against them.

“Nobody’s perfect,” Mr. Jean said . “But I don’t think we have terrible secrets to hide. We thought, we don’t want to do something that’s pompous or takes itself too seriously. ”

Mr. Spurlock and his crew scoured the globe for “Simpsons” fans . In Wakefield, England, Mr. Spurlock spoke with 12-year-old Alex Hardy, who saved the life of his young friend Aiden Bateman when Aiden began choking on a piece of food and Alex remembered seeing the Heimlich maneuver demonstrated on a “Simpsons” episode. In two Scottish cities, Aberdeen and Glasgow, the director found residents who make equally compelling cases that their hometown is the true birthplace of the show’s guff-talking Groundskeeper Willie.

But Mr. Spurlock’s documentary also reminds viewers that the show was unpopular in schools (many of which banned Bart Simpson T-shirts); denounced by President George H. W. Bush ; and pulled from broadcast in Venezuela (where it was deemed inappropriate for children and replaced with “Baywatch”).

He also gives time to several residents of Brazil who were offended by a notorious 2002 episode that depicted their country as being overrun with monkeys and multicolored rats.

Mr. Jean said he and his “Simpsons” colleagues welcomed the presence of these criticisms . “We were willing to take that risk in exchange for something that was sharper and more interesting, and I think that’s what we got,” he said. “You can go almost anywhere, and if you say that you work for ‘The Simpsons,’ people want to talk to you. I think he really captured that.”

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