Mike Reiss

Reiss: (on Conan O'Brien) I get to call him Connie.

Reiss: (on The Simpsons)In all the episodes me and Al [Jean] wrote for the show, and we didn't write many because we were running it, they all seem to be about Lisa in one way or another. I mean, we loved the character.

Reiss: I always loved Jim Brooks' contribution to The Simpsons, and I tried a few lines that were imatations of him and I'm not sure if they worked or not.

Reiss: I've been on The Simpsons fifteen years, I've been there for all the good shows and all the bad ones! I mean, remember when they went to Africa and we had chimpanzees digging crystals out of mines, working in and out of it. What the Hell was that about!?!

Reiss: (on The Critic) When you watch the episodes, you at least remember the movies we parody. And I'm glad something just, sort of ripped out of pop culture, still is recognizable, today.

Reiss: (on The Simpsons) I think there's no end in sight. I have to give credit to Al who went back to the show. I feel he rejuvenated it. It might have gotten a little tired but there's a lot of fresh blood in the show. We're writing next year's episodes already and it looks good. There's plenty of juice left in it. I think The Simpsons conceivably, if they run it right, could run like SNL, where it just runs and runs and runs and keeps refreshing and rejuvenating itself.

Reiss: I love Family Guy. I think it's great. It's a show that shocks me, jaded as I am.

Reiss: I'm so famous, I have to tell people who I am.

Reiss: (on David M. Stern) He was a much younger writer than I was and he was the only writer I envied, he would always come into the show with these perfect pitches and well thought-out episode ideas.

Reiss: (talking about Queer Duck: The Movie) I think it's the best thing I ever wrote.

Reiss: If I didn't write comedy, I'd write for King of the Hill.

Reiss: (on the current state of Hollywood) There's no idea too stupid that you can't spend 80 to 100 million dollars on it!

Reiss: (talking about Queer Duck) I know a lot of gay people. I watch any gay movie that comes on TV. I see all the gay films. I read gay magazines. I took a gay history tour in New Orleans and turned that into an episode. I write about gay life the way someone would write a Civil War novel. I just research, research, research. And the other thing is getting at the underlying humanity. We're all just people.

Reiss: I was the worst possible college student you could imagine. I never went to classes and everything was turned in months late and I was a B- student.

Reiss: I was really good in math, I got into college on my math skills and then I never really did any math again.

Reiss: (talking about The Critic webisodes) The webisodes were frustrating. We were part of this separate deal where Jim Brooks had to do ten different series on the web and we were the only suckers that went and executed everything. We worked like dogs to do them. It was just Al and I working from ten to midnight every night after we had already put in a workday. We were really thrilled but then nobody saw them. They put the things on without any fanfare. It was pitched to us as free work but we were told that we could do what The Critic could never do before, a movie will be in theatres one week and you could parody it that week. We would write them quickly and they would animate them quickly and then they sat on them for nine months. That's even slower than it was to put a regular episode on TV.

Reiss: (talking about The Critic) When we went on ABC we knew they were not FOX so we felt we were soft-pedaling The Critic just a little bit. Two days later our assistant walked in with a crate and said "That's hate mail." We were the most shocking thing, anything, anyone had ever seen on ABC. Then when we made the jump to FOX we were doing the same show and the censors said we could be a lot "foxier." They were complaining we weren't raunchier enough.

Reiss: Even if I didn't love to write, it's what I do – I can't stop it. I think of things and want to express them.

Reiss: (talking about The Simpsons) I think there's no end in sight. I have to give credit to Al who went back to the show. I feel he rejuvenated it. It might have gotten a little tired but there's a lot of fresh blood in the show.

Reiss: (talking about The Simpsons Movie) You know, it's like the South Park movie where it's just a bigger, longer, amplified version of the show. I can't tell you anything specific about it. My wife doesn't even know the secret.

Reiss: (talking about The Simpsons DVDs) You know, I own these DVDs, I comment on them, but I never watch any of them! I don't know what bonus material they have but they always seem to deliver. They take these DVDs very seriously so there is certainly a lot of commentary. There is commentary on every episode and we're getting the cast in more to do commentary so that's something.

Reiss: Sometimes I think there is a little bit of a dark cloud that hangs over The Critic.

Reiss: (talking about The Critic DVD sales) It's selling great. I always say that this show failed and failed so after nine years I can finally say that The Critic is a hit. It just jumped onto the DVD list at 14 on Amazon. It sold a bunch really fast. We went through five issuings really fast.

Reiss: (talking about Al Jean) I think Al likes being the boss. He seems to have a knack for being in control. I like to be a guide there, throwing out ideas and having someone else sort out what is good and what isn't. I never liked being the arbiter of comedy or deciding what will be good.