Comic-Con Diary 7: Saturday

Michelle and I let Anita sleep in on Saturday morning while we went over to sell swag. Sales were decent - they topped Wednesday, but Thursday and Friday had been significantly better. Foot traffic in the dealers' room was brisk, but it wasn't turning into sales. Generally, the weekend is spent by many of the guests in panels and pursuing celebrity appearances, so I wasn't surprised.

Since we got over to the convention center earlier, I took another crack at the toy exclusives. This time, things went swimmingly - the Mattel ticket table (in the autograph area) was almost completely deserted, so I snagged my allotment (the ticket lasts for two hours - mine went from 9-11AM) and headed downstairs. I think I was only in the line for a half hour or so. I happily discovered that once you were at the counter with your ticket, you could get all of the exclusives if you wanted them (rather than having to get a ticket for each toy). I snagged a Justice League Unlimited Giganta figure set and one of the Cars Lightning Storm McQueens.

Anita was able to savor a hotel waffle, joining us later on - I had my sandwich for lunch, and was preparing for another run through the dealers' room when who should appear but John Landis! I'd met him a few years ago at a San Francisco screening of An American Werewolf in London and invited him to visit the studio. He gave such a good talk that it set a new benchmark for visiting lecturers - he's still mentioned as one of the best!

He's a Comic-Con regular, but he had an extra-special reason to attend this time - his wife Deborah was presenting her new book, Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design. We exchanged hellos, and he 'berated' me for not having seen his latest film, Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project. D'oh! He took his leave after a couple of geeky pictures, and I began another round of shopping and picture-taking. My camera was still battery-bereft, so I borrowed Anita's here and there. I did pick up some more toys, but the specifics have slipped my mind.

Anita went to watch Karen rehearse for Red Fraggle's Sunday appearance, and I wandered up to the Acme Archives Ltd. booth, promptly running into David Silverman and Mike Anderson, long-time buddies from my way-back stint on The Simpsons (season two)! Who needs celebrity panels?

Unfortunately, Mike had to bolt, so David and I caught each other up on our recent mischief. Acme's Lisa McLain and Chris Jackson had been chatting with David earlier - so we all began talking, and Chris mentioned he was a fan of my work, and would I be interested in contributing to Acme's line of custom, limited-edition Lucasfilm-inspired art? Well, yes!

Leaving David, I floated over to pick up Michelle and meet Anita over at McCormick & Schmick's for dinner. We were gathering there to celebrate Karen Prell's birthday, which we did in grand style! The Skellys joined us, as well as several more of Karen's puppetry friends. Mr. Silverman was going to join us, but sadly missed our group and wound up fêting elsewhere. The food was great and the conversation was lively - I was going a little hoarse from the week's relentless gab, but it was lots of fun!

I was so tired from the demands of the convention (and the previous late nights of blogging) that I collapsed without writing anything. More tomorrow about three days ago!

David Silverman Directing For Disney

"David Silverman, who most recently helmed 'The Simpsons Movie,' has signed on to develop and direct 'The Pet,' a live-action sci-fi family comedy for Disney. Scott Rudin and Craig Perry are producing."

To read the rest of Borys Kit and Gregg Goldstein's THR article, click here. Photo by Ronnie Del Carmen.

Congratulations, David! Have fun!

No Real News On The Simpsons Movie

LA TIMES: SNEAKS 2007 - Yellow but not mellow
Pretty much all we know about 'The Simpsons Movie' is: It'll be funny.
By Michael Ordoña, Special to The Times

NOT even threats of visits by Sideshow Bob or Fat Tony and the boys could wheedle many details of the upcoming "The Simpsons Movie" out of the series' powers that be. Fans can only speculate on what kind of treatment it will get — there's the bloated, inflated episode route (think "Star Trek: The Motion Picture") or the movie as extension of the series option ("The X-Files").

Specifics remain as closely guarded as the identity of the state in which Springfield is located. (Geography enthusiasts: the city has a gorge, an ocean port, a volcano and a desert.) "I can't really tell you much," said director David Silverman, "other than the Simpsons will be in it. Springfield will be in it; it's not being shot in Vancouver. Very few animals were hurt in the shooting of this film … a couple."

Speaking from their sanctum sanctorum (an unremarkable writers' room with a poster of dozens of the show's characters on the wall) on the 20th Century Fox lot, executive producers James L. Brooks, Matt Groening and Al Jean vacillated between stoking expectations and throwing them in with the kindling.

"We're doing things we never could have done on the series," said Brooks, who won his 19th Emmy last year. "Obviously, there's that much more manpower brought into it, and hopefully we're telling a story that requires this length."

"Pixar movies are so good," said Jean, "we want to live up to that too."

"No, we're not going to look as good," Brooks hastily added with a laugh. "Don't go away thinking that!"

Although all three stressed the importance of a strong emotional component, they made clear that their intentions were still sufficiently low-falutin.

"We want to make people laugh," said "Simpsons" creator Groening. "Not that it's a role model in content, but the 'South Park' movie was proof that you could do a movie that didn't have the greatest animation but was really funny from beginning to end."

The notion of a big-screen version of America's longest-running sitcom has been around since at least its third season. But because of the talent drain caused by Hollywood's animation boom and the insistence of the show's brain trust on complete control, it wasn't until a couple of years ago that the idea gained any real traction. The show has generated billions of dollars in revenue and has become culturally iconic, to the horror of some — former President George H.W. Bush once said, "We're going to keep trying to strengthen the American family, to make them more like 'The Waltons' and less like 'The Simpsons.' "

The film's release, scheduled for summer, will roughly coincide with the TV show's 400th episode and the 20th anniversary of America's favorite insanely dysfunctional family's debut on "The Tracey Ullman Show." (The show's run "is beyond my wildest dreams. And I have really wild dreams," Groening says.)

The honor and burden of directing the highly anticipated film version falls to Silverman, whose credits include some of the "Ullman" shorts and the series' first episodes as well Pixar's "Monsters, Inc."

Since Silverman was one of the only experienced animators at the show's inception, Groening said he "invented a lot of the rules on how to draw the characters. Like Bart has, I don't even know, 13 spikes or 11 spikes? And Marge's hairdo is nine eyeballs tall."

From the movie's production hub at Film Roman in Burbank, the wild-eyed, enthusiastic Silverman lacked only a lab coat and soda-bottle glasses to complete the mad-scientist persona.

"I thought it should be basically Panavision as opposed to American widescreen," he said. "If you're going to go from roughly a square format to a feature, let's really go for it, let's go for it as wide as possible."

The director also highlighted that, although the look would still be identifiably Simpsons, small additions like tone shadows would provide new dimension for these "big yellow characters."

It may just be compression madness from the upcoming deadline — culminating a year of physical production as opposed to six months for a single TV episode — but they seem almost giddy at the challenge of meeting fan expectations.

"People have had a lot of dreams of what this might be, over 18 years," said Jean in an unconvincing deadpan, "and I think it will match or exceed all of them."

"I'm not sure we can live up to our secrecy," said Brooks.

"I think it'll be a cultural experience somewhere between 'Sgt. Pepper's,' the record, and 'Sgt. Pepper's,' the movie," said Jean.

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Now that's a funny sound bite! It's cool that David got to sign his own name to his drawing, too.