Commentary:Xmas Story

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Commentary for
Xmas Story
Production number	2ACV04
Recorded date	2001
On DVD	Season 2 Disc 1
Additional
Transcript
Participants
Matt Groening Executive producer David X. Cohen Writer, executive producer Rich Moore Supervising director Peter Avanzino Director Paul D. Calder Editor Bill Odenkirk Producer John DiMaggio Actor (Bender, etc.)

Topics of Discussion

• When Conan O'Brien left The Simpsons, David immediately took his desk and started working there. O'Brien left a note for whoever would take the office informing them among other things that the window was sticky, where the garbage was and which corner of the office to urinate in.
  • Animation of heads in jars is harder if, like O'Brien, they stick out of the jar slightly.
• Matt says that Bender falling off the cliff and through the ice is one of the best moments in Futurama.
  • The skating kids are a homage to Peanuts, and are all dead now.
• The snow and rain in Futurama, according to Cohen, is better than any other show, including live action shows.
• The medal Farnsworth won is a bronze. It was decided that a gold would be too far fetched.
• A commentator's mother, a teacher, only ever commented on one thing in the series the use of "aks"
  • In early production they considered regular use of updated words such as "aks" and "li-bary".
• The scenes around the Xmas tree were written to be in the lounge, but they decided it would work better in the bigger room in which the Smell-o-scope is kept.
• Unlike The Simpsons, female characters are used for slapstick comedy.
• This episode's plot was one of the earliest developed, with the gist of it worked out before the pilot's
• It is incredibly difficult to storyboard movement of characters and the camera in a round room.
• Humans have designed and built robots that serve no purpose or endanger them, such as homeless robots, Santa and the Robot Mafia.
  • However this can be explained by the robots building themselves.
• The Store Clerk was last seen in "A Fishful of Dollars".
• Bongo from Life in Hell appears
• Frank Welker is the parrot, it took a lot of work to make it more and more annoying as the episode progressed.
• Hermes' chair was designed so that his butt would hang out of it.
• Clock tower is based on the film Safety Last, The New Yorker then stole the joke from them.
• Voice of Santa was John Goodman here but later became John DiMaggio
• Episode was controversial, and the network forbid them from airing the subsequent Xmas episode at 7pm.
  • The show was never intended to be aired at 7pm.
  • The the clock at the end is set to be the time at which the episode was to air.
• The "trash pickup" line was re-written about 10 times.

Highlights / Quotes

• Matt Groening: I'm Matt Groening. I hung around a little bit.
• Bill Odenkirk: It's only marginally more difficult to get a live head to live in a jar, than to animate it.
• Unknown: I always love doing Bender dancing, it always comes with a really good song.

Goofs

• Cohen mistakes "A Fishful of Dollars" for episode 104, whereas it was actually 106
• The time on the tower clock sometimes first has six digits, then viewed up close five digits and in the credits it has six digits again.

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