The Simpsons has featured some fairly harsh movie star burns through the years — from poking enjoyable at John Travolta’s struggling profession (lower than two weeks earlier than the discharge of Pulp Fiction), to lampooning Robert Downey Jr.’s authorized troubles, to McBain’s brutal stand-up comedy routine about Woody Allen.
Then again, the movie star visitor stars who provide to voice cartoon variations of themselves on the present appear to get handled fairly effectively. Though Mark Hamill wasn’t loopy in regards to the present’s suggestion that he makes private appearances in his Star Wars costume for cash.
Even harsher was the present’s portrayal of legendary speak present host Dick Cavett. Within the Season Six episode “Homie the Clown,” Cavett is the host of Springfield’s Regional ACE Awards. A infamous name-dropper, Cavett ends his monologue by bluntly telling the viewers, “I do know Woody Allen” to a smattering of tepid applause.
He then tries to schmooze with “Krusty,” who’s really Homer in disguise, by bragging that he has some “great tales about different well-known those that embrace me not directly.” As Homer tries to evade him, Cavett remarks that his “churlish angle jogs my memory of a time I used to be having dinner with Groucho.” The scene ends with Homer threatening to punch poor Cavett within the face.
“I believe this most likely is … the meanest we ever had been to a visitor star,” Simpsons producer David Mirkin admitted on the episode’s DVD commentary. “And Dick was a incredible sport about it. We made actually nasty enjoyable of Dick, and we love him, however we did make good enjoyable of him.”
“Dick tends – he is aware of a whole lot of well-known folks, he is aware of Groucho, he is aware of Woody Allen. And he all the time tells tales that contain them with him,” Mirkin continued. “And so I used that remark in right here. And he didn’t have any sort of an issue with it. He was comfortable to do it.”
Regardless of ridiculing this explicit facet of Cavett’s character, the Simpsons staff had been all huge followers of the host. Mirkin known as him a “nice man and an excellent sport” and Matt Groneing supplied his presumably “controversial” take that The Dick Cavett Present was “possibly the most effective speak present of the Nineteen Seventies.”
The Simpsons creator particularly praised the oddball movie star panels, recalling an episode wherein surrealist painter Salvador Dali positioned a reside anteater on silent movie star Lilian Gish’s lap.
The writers’ admiration for Cavett might be the rationale why the jokes appeared so imply on reflection. In any case, none of them appeared in any respect remorseful about hiring Tom Arnold for an episode wherein humanity is so fed up with Tom Arnold that they condemn him to die in outer area.
