Web Exclusives
David Mirkin ’78
Writer, Director, Producer
“The Simpsons”
On Death, and Other Funny Subjects
David Mirkin has worked on some of the best-known shows ever to appear on television, including “The Simpsons,” “Newhart” and “Three’s Company.” In his Vistas interview, Mirkin talked about some of his experiences with “The Simpsons” and about how he broke into comedy. Here he talks about death, success and a few shows he likes. David Mirkin was interviewed by writer Aaron Smith.
What isn’t funny to you?
You can get into very dark areas as long as you’re illuminating them and there’s a reason behind it. I do an enormous amount of jokes about death, which is about as intense as you can get, but if they’re done right they’re still funny, because the joke is on all of us.
What’s the best thing you worked on that wasn’t a commercial success? Why?
Everything I’ve done has been wildly successful. No. I did a show called “Get A Life,” which was a psychotic comedy starring Chris Elliott as a person who is losing contact with reality. And the show itself had a flexible reality. In fact, “The Simpsons” took quite a bit from “Get A Life.” The main character was often killed at the end of an episode. It was the first TV job for Charlie Kaufman [executive producer and writer for “Being John Malkovich” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”], and his writing really fit. That show has a great cult following to this day.
In pilot land, I did a show called “Jeff of the Universe,” which was a comedy/science fiction/fantasy show about a very reluctant, very unskilled, very cowardly hero.
That never went past the pilot stage. It’s hard to do comedy/science fiction/fantasy. The networks have an enormous aversion to that, but “Jeff of the Universe” was great fun. And I speak at various colleges — not so often at LMU, because, very cleverly, they don’t ask me — and I play scenes from that show, and it gets a great response. It exists on that level.
Who makes you laugh these days?
“The Flight of Conchords” is absolutely brilliant. Steve Coogan did a show called “I’m Alan Partridge” that was stunning. “The Daily Show” is a fantastic source of great comedy. An American television show that is also funny in a twisted, nightmarish way is “Mad Men.”
On the process of writing:
It’s not a pleasant experience. It’s a very solitary experience that requires a lot of silence and downtime and space. When you’re very young and you’re living in an apartment and you don’t have money or many things, it’s easier to create that space and quiet because you can’t afford to do anything else. When you get a bit older and have some success, then there are cars and things in the house are breaking down and, heaven forbid, you have a family. It’s harder to find the time for the creativity to come.
Everyone’s best work is generally done before they’re very successful. Entropy comes for you. It’s usually in the form of money and women and cars and houses. It can be a lot more fun to play with those toys than to stare at a blank piece of paper. You really have to have an increased amount of discipline as you become more successful.
Forecasting the Economic Future
LMU professors on what happens next
What’s the future of the economy in the coming months and year? What are the prospects for the economic recovery plan? What do we do in the meantime? For answers to those questions and others, writer Jeremy Rosenberg e-mailed James Devine, professor of economics in the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, and spoke by phone with Jennifer Pate, assistant professor in BCLA.
Is the end of the downturn in sight?
“That’s a very tough question,” Pate says. “Obviously, our economy is not healthy at the moment. The main struggle is how to get our financial system up and running again. The main issue at the moment is that everyone is holding onto their money because there is an uncertainly about the future. What’s happened in recent months [with] the stock market and bankruptcies and takeovers makes everyone pull back on spending and also on loans. So there is less money moving around in the economy at the moment. The critical thing in the next few months [is] banks going back to their typical practices of loaning and people saving and investing. We need everyone to settle down and again have faith in the economy. Otherwise we’ll just sit in this spot where we are now.”
What are the prospects for success of the economic stimulus package?
“The economic stimulus package is a very good thing,” Devine says, “but it may be much too small. The White House hopes that its stimulus package will generate 3.5 million jobs. This is significantly less than the 4.4 million that have been lost since the recession began in December 2007. This looks as the stimulus package alone will only moderate the recession — and maybe not enough to prevent a period of stagnation that could last five years or more. Housing prices are still falling and will likely fall more, dragging down the economy.”
Some say military spending on World War II helped pull the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression. What is effect on the economy from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
“Even though World War II and the military build-up before it were crucial to getting us out of the Depression,” Devine says, “I don’t think that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are big enough to stimulate the economy to get us out of the recession. World War II was gigantic — much, much larger than these wars. It’s true that our economy isn’t in as bad shape as it was in the 1930s, but the downturn of the economy isn’t over. Labor markets seem to be in free-fall.”
On advice for the future:
“People need to work together, support each other,” Devine says. “Families and communities need to support each other and to reach out to those outside their circles who are doing poorly. We have to avoid blaming other working people for the crisis. It’s [the result of] a failure of policy, based on the false idea that if the government just lets people seek out profit in any way they can, everything will work out for the best.