Information about John Swartzwelder

John Swartzwelder (born february 08, 1949) is an American writer, 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 (55 full episodes, with contributions to four others)^[7] by a large margin. 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, after which he began writing for Saturday Night Live, at which he met George Meyer.^[8] After Meyer quit, he created Army Man and recruited Swartzwelder to help him write the magazine.^[9] Along with Meyer, he was recruited to write for The Simpsons because one of their readers was Sam Simon, 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 just sending 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.^[10]

According to his longtime collaborators on The Simpsons, Al Jean and Mike Reiss, Swartzwelder is 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 DVD commentaries, 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 to smoke and write in peace.^[10]

At one point his identity was heavily debated amongst The Simpsons fans on the internet. Because he is such a prolific writer of The Simpsons episodes, yet did not appear on any commentaries up to and including season eight it had been theorized that "John Swartzwelder" was an pseudonym for writers either not taking credit for episodes written for one reason or another or episodes written by a number of writers.^[11]

He is also 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".^[12] 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.^[13]

Swartzwelder has been absent from writing episodes of The Simpsons since the sixteenth season (2004-05), with his last episode airing (The Regina Monologues) actually being a "holdover" from the fourteenth (2002-2003) season. Since he's stopped writing scripts he has begun writing novels, beginning with the 2004 publication of The Time Machine Did It (ISBN 0-9755799-0-8) starring Private investigator Frank Burly. A new book in the series has followed every year; Double Wonderful (ISBN 0-9755799-2-4) in 2005, How I Conquered Your Planet (ISBN 0-9755799-4-0) in 2006, and The Exploding Detective (ISBN 0-9755799-6-7) in 2007. ^[14] In 2007 Swartzwelder returned to The Simpsons as a contributing writer to The Simpsons Movie.^[15]

Reclusiveness

Swartzwelder is a notorious recluse and rarely, if ever, makes public appearances in connection with The Simpsons. He did not participate in any of the audio commentaries on the first eight Simpsons DVD sets. During the commentary for the ninth-season episode "The Cartridge Family," Mike Scully called Swartzwelder on the phone. After speaking for a few minutes Swartzwelder jokingly ended the call saying "too bad this is not really John Swartzwelder".^[16]

References on The Simpsons

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 is in a scene for no apparent reason, it is really John Swartzwelder.^[17] 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.
• In "Bart the Fink", he is one of the attendees at Krusty's fake funeral.
• 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 The Simpsons writing team at the time, one of whom is Swartzwelder.
• In "Hurricane Neddy", he can be seen pacing in a padded cell inside a mental hospital. 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 addition to his likeness being animated into the show, various other references to him have been slipped in, with his name being used to name various things in "freeze frame" jokes.

• The episode "Burns, Baby Burns" features a "Mt. Swartzwelder".
• In "Dog of Death", Santa's Little Helper is shown wandering through Swartzwelder County.
• In "The Front", Lisa and Bart read a book entitled How to Get Rich Writing Cartoons, which is written by John Swartzwelder.

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)
• "" (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)
• "" (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

References

External links

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

•  • [ edit] The Simpsons writers
Current writers
J. Stewart Burns Dan Castellaneta Daniel Chun Joel H. Cohen Kevin Curran John Frink Dan Greaney Matt Groening Ron Hauge Al Jean Deb Lacusta Tim Long Ian Maxtone-Graham George Meyer David Mirkin Bill Odenkirk Carolyn Omine Don Payne Michael Price Mike Reiss Mike Scully Matt Selman Matt Warburton Jeff Westbrook Marc Wilmore
Former recurring writers
Richard Appel James L. Brooks Donick Cary David X. Cohen Jonathan Collier Jennifer Crittenden Greg Daniels Larry Doyle Brent Forrester Dana Gould Ken Keeler Brian Kelley Jay Kogen Jeff Martin Tom Martin Dan McGrath Frank Mula Bill Oakley Conan O'Brien Rachel Pulido Jace Richdale Brian Scully Sam Simon David M. Stern John Swartzwelder Julie Thacker Steve Tompkins Jon Vitti Josh Weinstein Wallace Wolodarsky
One or two-time writers
Bob Bendetson Michael Carrington Robert Cohen Spike Feresten Ricky Gervais Ned Goldreyer Billy Kimball Andrew Kreisberg Bob Kushell Rob LaZebnik Ken Levine Steve O'Donnell David Richardson David Sacks Nell Scovell Joshua Sternin Jeffrey Ventimilia Patric Verrone Steve Young