TMC
07-16-2017, 02:58 AM
http://www.vulture.com/2017/07/the-simpsons-planet-of-the-apes-musical-oral-history-zauis.html
In a show as jam-packed with memorable moments as The Simpsons, it’s hard to say with any certainty where any one bit ranks. What I do know is when you mention anything about Planet of the Apes to a fan of the show, their mind will instantly jump to the words “Dr. Zauis, Dr. Zauis.” Others will happily sing the whole dang score for you. The memory of the show’s fictional Planet of the Apes musical has lasted the 21 years since it aired as part of the episode “A Fish Called Selma” in season seven.
The musical, officially titled Stop the Planet of the Apes. I Want to Get Off!, similarly made a mark on those who created it, if only because how relatively easy it came together. “Usually, we sit around and think for hours and hours until our brains are smoking,” longtime Simpsons writer David X. Cohen told Variety about the show’s famously laborious writing process in 1998. “But once every few months, like the time we wrote the musical version of The Planet of the Apes, we really had a blast. I cried with laughter.” The bit has so many disparate parts — ’80s Austrian-pop parody, old-school-musical homage, Planet of the Apes, break-dancing, old vaudeville-style jokes — but in the hands of The Simpsons and its writers, it works. Or as Bill Oakley, one of the two showrunners at the time, told Vulture, “[It] was just a magic visit from the joke fairy.”
With the third installment of the rebooted Planet of the Apes series coming out this weekend, here is the story of how the musical came together, from chimpan-A to chimpan-Z.
In a show as jam-packed with memorable moments as The Simpsons, it’s hard to say with any certainty where any one bit ranks. What I do know is when you mention anything about Planet of the Apes to a fan of the show, their mind will instantly jump to the words “Dr. Zauis, Dr. Zauis.” Others will happily sing the whole dang score for you. The memory of the show’s fictional Planet of the Apes musical has lasted the 21 years since it aired as part of the episode “A Fish Called Selma” in season seven.
The musical, officially titled Stop the Planet of the Apes. I Want to Get Off!, similarly made a mark on those who created it, if only because how relatively easy it came together. “Usually, we sit around and think for hours and hours until our brains are smoking,” longtime Simpsons writer David X. Cohen told Variety about the show’s famously laborious writing process in 1998. “But once every few months, like the time we wrote the musical version of The Planet of the Apes, we really had a blast. I cried with laughter.” The bit has so many disparate parts — ’80s Austrian-pop parody, old-school-musical homage, Planet of the Apes, break-dancing, old vaudeville-style jokes — but in the hands of The Simpsons and its writers, it works. Or as Bill Oakley, one of the two showrunners at the time, told Vulture, “[It] was just a magic visit from the joke fairy.”
With the third installment of the rebooted Planet of the Apes series coming out this weekend, here is the story of how the musical came together, from chimpan-A to chimpan-Z.