Comedy writer, director, consultant and producer Sam Simon, who was one of the major creative forces behind "The Simpsons," passed away yesterday at his home in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. Simon was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer since November 2012. He was 59 years old. The Simpsons were brought to life, first as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987 and two year later, as a FOX network series that has since helped make TV animation history. Simpsons show-runner Al Jean confirmed the news via Twitter on Monday, followed by Mr. Simon's agent Andy Patman, Variety and numerous news outlets.
Beyond animation, Simon was quite accomplished as a writer/producer of TV comedy classics “Taxi,” “Cheers” and “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show” and served as EP of The Tracy Ullman Show before teaming up with Matt Groening and James L. Brooks to develop The Simpsons in 1989. Simon’s live-action TV writing-producing credits include The Drew Carey Show (executive producer, 1998-2003), The George Carlin Show (creator/executive producer, 1994-95), The Tracey Ullman Show (executive producer, 1988-1990), Cheers (1984-85), and Taxi (1982-83).
Simon grew up in Beverly Hills and Malibu, California, and began drawing professionally while he was a student at Stanford where he was the cartoonist for the school paper and also published sports cartoons in The San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner. After graduating, he eventually began to work at Filmation Studios in the 1970s - writing Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle cartoons. He soon left animation and moved into live action selling scripts in 1981, returning to cartoons with a vengeance to help launch The Simpsons.
He joined the Simpsons development team alongside cartoonist Matt Groening and James L. Brooks after a stint on The Tracy Ullman Show and was creatively involved since the record-breaking animated series' inception, helping to hire many of the show’s initial writers and insisting they work together on creating each episode. Simon co-wrote several Simpsons episodes during the show's first seasons, serving as co-showrunner, character designer, creative consultant, creative supervisor, developer, and writer. He left the show day-to-day in 1993 after just four seasons - but remained involved an executive producer and continued to receive royalties for nearly 500 episodes over the series’ nearly 25-year run, making it the longest-running American scripted prime time TV series of all time. Named “the 20th century’s best series” by Time Magazine and having received numerous industry accolades over the years, The Simpsons earned a #11 rank on the WGA’s own 101 Best Written TV Series list announced this past summer. “Sam Simon taught me everything about animation writing, and even more about life,” Al Jean said. He won nine Emmy Awards (seven for The Simpsons: Outstanding Animated Program for Programming Less Than One Hour in 2001, 2000, 1998, 1997, 1995, 1991, 1990 / two for Tracey Ullman: Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Program in 1989 and Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program in 1990) for his work.
A 22-time Emmy nominee for The Simpsons, he shared multiple Emmy nominations for his work on Fox’s Ullman show (Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program, 1987, -88, -89) and on the comedy TV series It’s Garry Shandling’s Show (Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series, for the episode “Angelica II aka It’s Garry and Angelica’s Show”), in addition to Cheers (Outstanding Comedy Series, 1985), and Taxi (Outstanding Comedy Series, 1983), for which he served as showrunner at the young age of 24. He has also received a Peabody Award for his work, as well as earned a 1986 WGA Episodic Comedy nomination for penning the Cheers episode “Fairy Tales Can Come True.”
Since his terminal diagnosis, he was also a well-known and devoted philanthropist, especially dedicated to animal causes. Simon had been giving away most of his fortune to save animals from harmful and abusive situations worldwide. He created the Sam Simon Foundation (which funded numerous food for the hungry, animal rescue and global marine conservation projects among others; Providing service dogs for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD as well as training dogs rescued from animal shelters to become hearing dogs for the deaf and hard of hearing were just a few of the foundation’s programs geared to enriching the lives of others), supported Save the Children, and donated much of his wealth to charities, including groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) (which named its Norfolk, Virginia offices the Sam Simon Center) and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Even after given three to six months to live, Simon began purchasing zoos and circuses in order to free the animals. The WGA presented him with the Valentine Davies Award for his humanitarian work in 2014.
In 2013, he appeared on comedian Marc Maron’s WTF podcast to speak about his cancer diagnosis, where he announced his intentions to donate most of his remaining Simpsons royalties to charity.
Many former Simpsons colleagues, like Conan O'Brien, Brad Bird, David Silverman, Al Jean, Bill Oakley, and Josh Weinstein have been expressing their condolences on Twitter, giving an indication of how highly he was valued as a creative person.
Other co-workers and admirers, like Garry Shandling, Ricky Gervais, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, and Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch have also been expressing their condolences.
No comments:
Post a Comment