The Kirkland Conversations
Part II. The second in a series of dialogues with animator, artist, director and filmmaker Mark Kirkland.
Edited for brevity and clarity! And to excise some of the interviewer’s gushing and rambling! Fortunately Mark is a gentleman and a pleasure to speak with.
If you want to get caught up on what I’m doing here, check out the first of these talks as transcribed in a previous entry.
I’d love to hear more specific memories about “Sideshow Bob Roberts.” But I was also interested in if you want to go into more detail about some of those technical considerations.
I just remembered sitting there and going over that laugh timing-wise, to make it feel really good. That was getting in the weeds for me, but what a director does is: where do they put their attention. I used to think of it as triaging. Cause like I say, there’s thirty thousand possible things to go wrong.
Do you have a vocal track that they’ve locked in, or do you do get to choose from different takes of, let’s say, that laugh? Or different pieces of that laugh?
They’ve locked it in. I’ve been in those tape-recording sessions and they are working so fast. The actors can get a script from a table read…like, they spend two weeks to write a first draft of a script, and then I think they get a little bit more time, like maybe a week, to put in more time on it. Although they may have kicked the story around a bunch.
But when you go in for a table read, you’ll go in on a Thursday and it just seemed like overnight we were in doing the actual recording. So they would often do a rewrite overnight with the writers’ room. The writers would all go through it and sometimes fix structure, strengthen lines…but then the actors would come in with their scripts and we would record the show, get as many of the original actors in the room as possible. And they also have stand-in people too. But they would bounce off each other, kinda like a radio show, and they would do four, five takes per line.
And I used to think it was a matter of the producer sitting down with the editors and carefully picking the lines. Well, that’s not quite how it worked. They would circle takes that they liked while they heard them, and then a circle-take script would go over to an editor who would then assemble what from the memory of that producer, what they thought was the best lines. And that’s what we got.
And it’s full of temp lines in there. There’s temporary actors, Harry was in New York so they’d have Carl, another guy, do his lines and then Harry’s gonna come in at the end and do his lines. But you have something to work with.
So they picked those tracks. And sometimes they could change ‘em even much later, but that’s what we worked to.
I just remember on “Sideshow Bob,” I remember that scene of Homer on a wrecking ball.
Bob, under the pretense of building the “Matlock Expressway” to placate the senior voting bloc, he wants to demolish the Simpson house.
I remember the Birch Barlow scene — tryin’ to think, we had an animator named Sarge Morton, and he did some of those acting moments. I’m a little afraid because it may have been fixed by somebody else…
Yeah, I understand; you don’t want to deny somebody the credit for their work…
But I remember the little hand gestures that they came up with for Birch Barlow.
Yeah, you’re right! That’s very evocative, the way he moves. You remember at the end in the A Few Good Men parody where…
Yeah! That’s another movie we did reference, was A Few Good Men. And — courtrooms. I’ll talk about that.
Oh, please! If you want to get into that now I’d love to hear whatever you have to say.
Courtrooms are another tricky thing to have to stage. Cause you’re trying to make them feel believable. I had served on a jury once.
Yeah, I did once, yeah.
But at that time I did that show I had not served on a jury. And the other courtroom scenes, like “Bart Gets Hit by a Car,” that was one of my first courtroom scenes.
That is one of my very favorite episodes from the first couple of years. To me that was like one of the moments where I feel like the show’s really subversive sense of humor kind of switched on. To a new level of intensity.
And I watched different movies for courtroom scenes.
I was gonna ask, was that your research process, to watch movies?
Yeah, I would. Witness for the Prosecution, Anatomy of a Murder. And I would watch To Kill a Mockingbird. Just to see the camera angles, the jury. And I would have had input on, like, how do we set this up. A Few Good Men, we watched that one, obviously.
We would inch over the storyboards to get the camera angle correct. And one of the big acting jobs would have been Birch Barlow and all his hand gestures. Birch Barlow is not a very physical person; he’s a big guy, he’s basically sitting and he sputters a lot. And so the animator, “actor,” he’s listening to the track and hearing every sputter, and trying to figure out “What do I do here?” Even if it’s tapping his finger or pointing into the palm of his hand…
You’re saying that this is with regards to him as an unusually fidgety character?
Yeah. One of the reasons is: he’s a liar.
He’s constantly nervous, or…
Yeah, yeah. So there’s an agenda underneath. Whatever he’s saying, he’s covering, he’s blustering and stuff like that.
You have to think like an actor in that sense.
Totally. Animators are actors. The animator did a hell of a job. You know, you’re boxed in in a way; it’s a fun problem because character’s not dancing all around the room or anything but he’s just sitting at a table, and then he’s sputtering and doing all those eye-shifts…so that’s something the Simpsons animators I think really specialize at. And for TV animators I think they took it further than really a lot of television animation had ever really gone.
I never really thought about that as a key factor in what might have been one of the things that was so arresting about the show, that really set it apart — was that that level of detail in those little gestures and acting choices, maybe that really helped people like me who were just having our senses of humor reshaped developmentally by the show to get more emotionally invested in those characters as these real, lived-in entities. Does that make sense?
Yeah. That attention to detail in the acting, what made the characters feel alive.
And obviously the fact that that is downstream of the writing and the voice acting all being so brilliant and subversive. But then you guys have to carry it into the end zone as the animators and make it visually interesting.
That’s what the animators do. They bring that stuff alive. But I remember that detailing of that acting being really important. And the director is looking for that. You need to delegate that to someone and they may spend a whole day on that one scene, two days on that scene. But it’s something that if the director were to do it, what happens to the rest of the show? The director has to be thinking of all those camera angles. But the director has to hand it to the right person, ‘cause casting is really important just like it is in the movies for an actor. The director and the assistant director have to know who’s gonna do a really good job with this acting. You don’t want to give that to a beginner.
That episode to me is really, really beautifully animated. My really beloved years of the show — like a lot of hardcore fans I’m very devoted to the first eight seasons in particular. But I was the exact right age and I think the show had really also hit a certain stride in about Seasons Six, Seven and Eight. The sense of humor was so subversive and the writing was so tight. And the look of it felt really comfortable, like the visual aesthetic had settled in somehow so that it felt looser but the draughtsmanship was tighter, if that makes sense.
Like when I think of that episode and I visualize like the exterior of the Springfield Republican Party Headquarters, it’s such a beautiful drawing. It’s simple enough so you know what you’re looking at but it looks really three-dimensional and lived-in and real. And I feel like it’s so fascinating how in like five years you guys went from something that went on to be thought of as crude retrospectively a few years later…to these classic episodes in the end of the Golden Age run where the visual style to me was very, very sophisticated and sharp. It seems like you guys figured out what you were doing and then were going from strength to strength and improving very quickly.
The team, we were cohesively working together. We knew each other well by that point. But it’s probably very similar to a band playing. The more time you have to gel together, you can do better work.
Become fluent in that second language together.
We did. I just remember the humor, Birch Barlow, I remember him saying, you know, what liberals really want is for some person to rule them like a dictator, or…
Yeah, that line actually comes out of Bob’s mouth, I think. Which is one of the things that’s so great about the show — when you need to make recourse to those stereotypes and those tropes, you’re ready. Bob is gonna run as a Republican to become the Mayor; well you’ve already got Diamond Joe Quimby as this parody of all things Kennedy and Clinton.
I’m not a real deep-dive follower of politics; I know people much deeper than I am. But I know there’s so much truth in the humor, in the Birch Barlow character, like a Rush Limbaugh…
Well it’s like, Rush Limbaugh was already such a cartoon. So it’s almost more real in a way, Birch Barlow.
And the same with Diamond Joe. The more I’ve learned about Ted Kennedy, the more I go, “Oh my God.”
Yeah, “If anything we didn’t go hard enough on the Kennedys.”
Yeah, it’s crazy despicable what kind of person…he championed things I like more than anybody on the far right did, but…
Yeah, I thought it was tasteful but it was also confrontational and toothsome. It wasn’t pulling any punches. And you guys gave it to everybody who deserved it, regardless of their party affiliations.
I do remember laughing myself at the reveal of: who are these Republicans?
It’s a brilliant piece of writing and animation.
One of ‘em’s a vampire; one of ‘em’s the Texan who’s shooting off guns…
Rich Texan, Kent Brockman…
Kent Brockman, that’s more of a surprise.
What about — Dr. Hibbert, isn’t he in there?
Dr. Hibbert…
Burns, of course, is leading the meeting…
Burns, of course he would be. But the fact there’s a vampire…like, oh God, you know?
It’s such a brilliant piece of writing that after all that we had already been through with Sideshow Bob, that of course this is gonna be his angle into politics. Is that he’s gonna make a splash on conservative talk radio and become the Republican nominee for Mayor.
I’m not remembering the script very well ‘cause I probably haven’t seen it in all that time but it has to snake back to — he wants to kill Bart, right?
I think there’s not actually really a direct confrontation between him and Bart. I think the closest it comes is when he’s going to demolish the Simpson house.
He’s got it in for all the Simpsons.
But that’s one of the things that’s great about him is that he appears to be one of the absolute smartest people in Springfield. Notwithstanding the fact that he keeps getting caught and sent to prison. But he’s Ivy League-educated and he’s got that incredibly mellifluous voice and that well of knowledge and sophistication.
I love the fact that there’s just really these two characters, him and Fat Tony, who are both nefarious, both fixtures in the Springfield community — and they’re both returning characters who are voiced by celebrity actors who only come in to do those characters. And don’t do anything else for the show. I’ve always found that very charming somehow. Does that make sense?
Sure, it adds a lot of quality to the show to have those great actors. If you are familiar with Frank and Ollie, the Disney animators..?
I’m really not.
Old-school; they did Pinocchio and stuff.
I love those early Disney feature films. I’ve actually seen every single full-length feature film from Walt Disney Animation Studios in chronological order. That was like a Covid hobby for me.
Frank and Ollie wrote a lot of books that we referred to. They wrote a book on villains, Disney villains, and they categorized their villains. One of the interesting ones, like Captain Hook, Cruella de Vil, Shere Khan the tiger…
Sort of like sophisticates?
Yeah, they’re Sophisticated Villains. You could think of King Kong as a villain if you wanted to.
But he’s like this mindless brute?
He’s an animal, therefore more innocent; we’re more empathetic to him. Or let’s say Frankenstein’s monster is not sophisticated. But Shere Khan, or the character actors like Basil Rathbone could always play, a very Sophisticated Villain.
Was he from the old Sherlock Holmes films?
Yeah, Sherlock Holmes. That guy, if you’ve ever seen him play a villain, was great.
I never got around to it but I will now, after this conversation.
Christopher Lee.
Lord of the Rings films.
Or in Star Wars when he’s the guy who’s putting together the Death Star. And so Sideshow Bob is a Sophisticated Villain, because he has all of that education and background and he speaks beautiful English, like a Shakespearean actor, but his motives are always going for something evil.
It might have been the Sideshow Bob episode right after “Sideshow Bob Roberts” where he sets his sights on television and how much he despises lowbrow culture. So then it’s like his snobbiness is directly enfolded into his villainy.
But yeah, we did watch and refer a lot to the Tom Cruise film with Jack Nicholson…
A Few Good Men, yeah.
We definitely watched that over and over and over and structured it to go off at that moment. But we did watch that movie and I always would…I had a TV set in my office at that time with a VHS player, all built into it.
So would you like send some intern out to get all these films for you?
We actually had a cabinet that we stored VHS films in and they were all numbered and we had a list. So we could track ‘em, but it might have been in a library already. And if we didn’t have one, down the street was a place called Eddie Brandt’s. And it was a big video rental, you could buy videos from them. So generally for a show like that they would have bought the video for us. And then we would live with that and any spare moment we had, we’d be like popping in those scenes and watching ‘em.
And then sometimes if I were handing out a scene to an animator, going over what we needed, we would have the storyboard in front of us, the soundtrack, and sometimes “Oh, now let’s watch this clip and let’s try to get some of this.” And we would sit and watch the film together. And sometimes they would borrow the tape and take it back to their desk. By that point a lot of ‘em had little TV sets with a VHS and we would watch, you know.
So that was useful for referencing. And The Simpsons was filled with references.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Can I ask about that other episode?
Yeah, sure.
“A Fish Called Selma” is a really important one to me, as I mentioned earlier. And you kind of actually alluded to this when you were talking about “Principal Charming.” Cause that connects to that a little bit, how it’s about a lesser character’s personal life and she becomes the main focus of the story. But there’s just so much that I love about that show. I think that the look of it is my favorite kind of visual style, probably that the show ever had. And it’s screamingly funny. And speaking of references and parodies: there’s two that really slay me in that episode and I don’t know if you remember working on these sequences. But there’s the Muppets parody in the beginning, which is maybe like the first scene of that episode. And then there’s the legendary “Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off!”
I will take you back even further.
Sure, please.
You can’t discuss that episode without mentioning Phil Hartman.
Of course.
And I was the first director on The Simpsons to use one of his soundtracks on our show. Which was Lionel Hutz and it was “Bart Gets Hit by a Car.”
That was Phil’s first appearance on the show?
Yeah. So, going back to “Bart Gets Hit by a Car,” we introduced Lionel Hutz.
Right.
And also Dr. Nick Riviera.
Yes.
That was, I guess, Hank did that voice. But I was the first director to direct an episode with Phil Hartman and sadly I was the last.
Was that “A Fish Called Selma”?
Yeah.
Did you get to meet him?
Never met him. And in a way…I wished I had, but knowing the tragedy…maybe I was spared.
Yeah, in a way, yeah, it woulda hurt even worse. He was really one of the all-time greats in the entertainment business ever.
And I think I was the first one to do Troy McClure. I think he was designed for an episode that I also directed which was called “Homer Alone.”
Yeah, that’s a good one, where Marge goes away to the Rancho Relaxo.
Yeah. She watches a video that sells her on it or something.
Oh yeah! Was that the first Troy McClure appearance?
It was! “I’m an actor, from movies, remember like…” And so all that stuff was also a first. So any time I worked on the episodes with his tracks, we loved ‘em. They were hilarious. Really good reads, very clear…
He’s all over “A Fish Called Selma.”
The first time we see him is in that Rancho Relaxo video.
Which is great.
Yeah, and then there was another episode I did where he takes Ralph through a slaughtering house…?
Oh yeah, that’s one of the all-time greats, yeah. It’s the one where Lisa becomes a vegetarian and they’re trying to show her a propaganda film in school to convince her that she should go back to eating meat. It’s not Ralph, actually; Ralph is watching it with Lisa in the classroom.
It’s a little character named Jimmy.
Yeah, it’s a sickly little boy named Jimmy or Billy.
That was it. So I had done those with his voices, and then by the time I got “A Fish Called Selma” we knew the character well.
You knew the character well and you then explored this whole thing of a washed-up actor who’s out of work, trapped in the Seventies mentality and stuff, which was like…
It’s a deep dive of vanity. You know, vanity corrupts.
The idea that that’s gonna intersect with Marge’s sister wanting to invite love into her life and to make a serious commitment…
For me personally, directing that episode was tying up a lot of like fuses that had been lit in earlier episodes I had directed. Like that Patty and Selma wanna date. Right? And then in this case like also introducing Troy McClure as kind of a washed-up actor personality, with a huge ego. You question whether he has talent or not — he certainly has bad taste.
In terms of the projects he picks, you mean?
Yeah, like the “Planet of the Apes,” that he’s in that. And that too was also a spoof at the time of these movies that Andrew Lloyd Webber would take; the most famous one was Phantom of the Opera which was good, I liked it. But then he did Sunset Boulevard…it’s like, okayyy…I saw that one too but it’s a stage musical based on kind of a creepy old movie. And the concept then of that they go further with it and take Planet of the Apes and make that into a musical…
That’s what I love; there’s so many layers of genius that are encoded in that sequence. But I love that idea that you guys were parodying that trend in Broadway…
Yeah. I want to give credit to Mike Marcantel, animated a lot of that sequence. Including the breakdancing. Which is not an easy thing to do on the time limit we had.
When you see that in the script and it’s this whole extended sequence, do you get excited? Or do you sort of like sigh with a little bit of frustration at the challenge they’ve given you?
There’s a bit of both. But sometimes the laughter is what makes it work. But when you’re first reading that, you’re going “Oh man, I have to pull off a courtroom,” or…I did one where they go to India and we had to do Bollywood-style filmmaking. Any time you do musical numbers, too, that’s a big challenge. ‘Cause all the editing and camera shots, you don’t wanna let anybody down.
Any time you have an audience means you have to draw all those people! Homer, Marge, Bart and Lisa are sitting in the audience.
We’re gettin’ up to about a minute left on this one. How are you feeling; do you have more of this in you, or…?
Yeah, we can go on.
Next in Part III of “The Kirkland Conversations”: In discussing Mark’s background and training in filmmaking we stumble upon the realization that a teacher who was one of his key influences was the director of one of my very favorite films. We also talk more about working on The Simpsons, including the challenges in directing elaborate musical sequences.
This interview/exchange was so fun and delightful to read! I personally learned a ton and now have even more good bits to be on the lookout for as I continue to explore some upcoming episodes on my list (especially A Fish called Selma). It is genuinely awesome to kind of clearly sense that both you and Kirkland just had such a blast talking shop with each other. I am looking forward to reading Part III. And, is there a Bollywood or musical-themed episode on the syllabus? I recall the Monorail song (from Marge vs. The Monorail), but let me know if another one or two might come to mind. Such a great piece to read--thanks for sharing this.