George Meyer | |
|---|---|
 Meyer in 1992 | |
| Born | 1956 (age 68–69) Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Occupation | Television writer |
| Period | 1981–present |
| Genre | Humor |
| Partner | Maria Semple |
| Children | 1 |
George Meyer[1] (born 1956) is anAmerican producer and writer. Meyer is best known for his work onThe Simpsons, where he served as a scriptwriter and gag writer (for which he is credited as a producer) and led the show's communal rewriting process for much of its earlier run. He wrote such episodes as "Homer the Heretic" and "Bart's Inner Child" and has been publicly credited with "thoroughly shap[ing] ... the comedic sensibility" of the show.[2]
Raised inTucson,[3][4] Meyer attendedHarvard University. There, after becoming president of theHarvard Lampoon, he graduated in 1978 with a degree in biochemistry. Abandoning plans to attend medical school, Meyer attempted to make money through dog racing but failed after two months. After a series of short-term jobs he was hired in 1981 byDavid Letterman, on the advice of two of Meyer'sHarvard Lampoon cowriters, to join the writing team of his showLate Night with David Letterman.
Meyer left after two seasons and went on to write forThe New Show,Not Necessarily the News andSaturday Night Live. Tired of life in New York, Meyer moved toBoulder, Colorado where he wrote a screenplay for a film for Letterman to star in. The project fell through and Meyer then founded the humor zineArmy Man which garnered a strong following, although Meyer ended it after three issues. The producerSam Simon was a fan and he hired Meyer to write for the animated sitcomThe Simpsons in 1989. He has held a number of positions on the show and also cowroteThe Simpsons Movie. Meyer is in a relationship with the writerMaria Semple and the two have a daughter.
Born inPennsylvania, United States in 1956,[5] Meyer grew up inTucson, Arizona.[6] He is the eldest of eight children in aRoman Catholic family ofGerman ancestry. His parents both worked in the real estate business.[2] Meyer has made jokes about his somewhat unhappy childhood, stating that one common argument in his household was "which family member ruined a holiday",[7] while his sister noted Meyer was frequently blamed for the family's problems. Due to its size, family activities were limited so Meyer watched lots of television and readMad magazine.[2] He is anEagle Scout and an altar boy and wrote for the student newspaper.[2][8] He grew up hoping to one day become either a priest or ballplayer.[9] He was uninterested in television, only finding humor inGet Smart andBatman, where he appreciated its "loopy, irreverent humor."[9]
Meyer attendedHarvard University, where he served as president of theHarvard Lampoon. The fact that people took humor "very seriously" at theLampoon "changed [Meyer's] life."[2] In 1977, he and several otherLampoon staffers wroteThe Harvard Lampoon Big Book of College Life (ISBN 0385134460), a volume commissioned byDoubleday.[1] Aside from theLampoon, his grades at Harvard were average and he suffered several bouts of depression. He graduated in 1978 with a degree in biochemistry and was accepted into medical school, but decided not to enroll.[2][10]
Meyer commented on his Roman Catholic upbringing in a 2000New Yorker profile:
People talk about how horrible it is to be brought up Catholic, and it's all true. The main thing was that there was no sense of proportion. I would chew a piece of gum at school, and the nun would say, 'Jesus is very angry with you about that,' and on the wall behind her would be a dying, bleeding guy on a cross. That's a horrifying image to throw at a little kid. You really could almost think that your talking in line, say, was on a par with killing Jesus.[2]
I don't remember a lot of what I write. I try to release it after it's out there so that I can be fresh again. I find that the creative side of my brain and the archival side of my brain don't work well together. When I've done my best work, I've been in a trance-like state. I write jokes that are more by-the-numbers, but they tend to have a flat, pedestrian quality compared to the dizzying flights of silliness that we occasionally achieve.
After college, Meyer moved toDenver, Colorado, planning to "scientifically" win a fortune throughdog racing. However, he ran out of money after two weeks. He then worked in a variety of jobs including substitute teacher and salesman in a clothing store, and also won $2,000 on the game showJeopardy!.[2] At one point he worked in a research lab as an assistant, studyingglycoproteins "in the hope that they would prove the key tocell-cell recognition."[11] Meanwhile, fellowLampoon writersTom Gammill andMax Pross suggested Meyer to comedianDavid Letterman who, along with head writerMerrill Markoe, hired him as a member of the writing staff onLetterman's new late night show.[12] Letterman noted: "Everything in his submission, down to the last little detail, was so beautifully honed." Meyer wrote several recurring gags for the show, including "Crushing Things With A Steamroller".[2] His ambitions for the show were grandiose; "I wanted to challenge the audience every night, stagger them with brilliance, blast them into a higher plane of existence," he later explained.[13]
Meyer left to write forThe New Show in late 1983, a short-lived variety series fromSaturday Night Live creatorLorne Michaels. He shared an office with writerJack Handey, whom he credited with giving him comedy advice.[14] Following this, he joined the writing teams atNot Necessarily the News, andSaturday Night Live beginning in 1985.[2] He later called working onSNL an "exhilarating, frustrating, stressful, and indelible experience."[15] Meyer's work was not well regarded among theSNL writers and producers. He said: "My stuff wasn't very popular atSaturday Night. It was regarded as really fringey, and a lot of times my sketches would get cut. Sometimes they would get cut afterdress rehearsal, and I would have the horrible experience of looking out and seeing a painter carefully touching up my set and getting it all ready to be smashed to pieces and sent to a landfill in Brooklyn. It was just a mismatch, although I didn't realize it at the time."[2] He left the show in 1987.[2]
Meyer moved toBoulder, Colorado because he "just wanted to get as far from the New York environment as [he] could."[8] There, he wrote a film script for Letterman; the project was dropped due to the success of Letterman's show, although several of its jokes were later used inThe Simpsons when no other ideas could be found. He spent time "skiing, going to poetry readings, and trying to meet girls from theUniversity of Colorado."[16] He founded the humorzineArmy Man; he wrote the eight-page first issue almost wholly by himself, publishing just 200 copies which he gave to his friends. Meyer had been disappointed by the decline ofNational Lampoon and felt that there was no longer a magazine which has the sole purpose of being funny. WithArmy Man he "tried to make something that had no agenda other than to make you laugh." He claimed that "[he] didn't know what [he] was doing," and reprinted material without obtaining permission, including a review ofCannonball Run II. He added: "I like to think thatArmy Man was somewhere between a real publication and a very irresponsible, lawbreaking zine."[8]Army Man gained a strong following and was listed onRolling Stone's "Hot List" in 1989. Meyer noted: "The only rule was that the stuff had to be funny and pretty short. To me, the quintessentialArmy Man joke was one ofJohn Swartzwelder's: 'They can kill the Kennedys. Why can't they make a cup of coffee that tastes good?' It's a horrifying idea juxtaposed with something really banal-and yet there's a kind of logic to it. It's illuminating because it's kind of how Americans see things: Life's a big jumble, but somehow it leads to something I can consume. I love that." Meyer suspended publication with the third issue, after offers to take the magazine national made him fear that it would lose its best qualities.[2] According toThe Believer: "In comedy circles, [Army Man has] taken on almost mythological proportions."[8] This was met with varying reactions from Meyer, who felt "embarrassed when people build it up as this monumental work of comedy. It was just a silly little escapade, never meant to be enshrined."[16]
One reader wasSam Simon, a producer of the animated sitcomThe Simpsons. He sent Meyer a compilation reel ofSimpsons shorts from Fox variety showThe Tracey Ullman Show that preceded the development of the series. Meyer turned down the job initially, but was offered a second chance to work as a creative consultant in the fall of 1989, which he accepted.[17] Simon hired Meyer along withArmy Man contributors Swartzwelder andJon Vitti;[2] the earliest episode produced on which Meyer is credited is the first season episode "Homer's Night Out". Promoted to a producer in the show's second season, Meyer, for much of the following decade, played an active role in the show's extensive group script rewriting sessions in the "rewrite room", a role he performed more than solo script work; indeed he has only been credited for writing or co-writing twelve episodes.[2][1]A. O. Scott described him as the "guru" of the room.[18] In the room, according toMike Reiss, writers would "involuntarily glance at Meyer for approval when they pitch lines of their own".[2] By 1995, Meyer became tired of the show's lengthy writing schedule and decided to leave after thesixth season to work on a film or TV pilot script. He soon returned, however, as an executive producer and full-time member of the writing room the following season.[2] Following the departure of showrunnerMike Scully in 2001, Meyer (beginning with season 13) assumed a reduced role on the series as a non-executive producer, but remained moderately involved in the rewrite process. In 2004 he noted: "It's hard to leaveThe Simpsons. Every once in a while I get romantic notions that I should be doing something much more subterranean. Something likeArmy Man, or maybe guerrilla filmmaking." He has attempted several TV projects that were not picked up.[8] He ultimately left the show in 2005 (following the writing of season 16), and received his final credits in episodes held over forseason 17.[19] In 2007, Meyer returned to co-writeThe Simpsons Movie,[20] which he later had mixed feelings about: "We worked so hard, and people liked it, but it still feels slapdash to me."[21]
Meyer has been credited with "thoroughly shap[ing] ... the comedic sensibility" ofThe Simpsons;[2] in 2000,Mike Scully, theshow runner for the series at the time, called him "the best comedy writer in Hollywood." Scully said he was "the main reason" whyThe Simpsons [was] still so good after all these years."[2] Vitti has said Meyer's "fingerprints are on nearly every script" and he "exerts as much influence on the show as anyone can without being one of the creators,"[1] while recounting how "a show that you have the writer's credit for will run, and the next day people will come up to you and tell you how great it was. Then they'll mention their two favorite lines, and both of them will be George's."[2]Bill Oakley noted Meyer has "been there since the beginning adding thousands of jokes and plot twists, etc., that everyone considers classic and brilliant.[22]
Meyer has a "deep suspicion of social institutions and tradition in general," which has affected the writing of his own episodes ofThe Simpsons such as "Homer the Heretic", "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington" and "Bart vs. Thanksgiving".[8] For his work onThe Simpsons,Saturday Night Live andLate Night with David Letterman, Meyer has won and received multiplePrimetime Emmy Award nominations, including the award forOutstanding Writing in a Variety Or Music Program in 1989.[23]
In addition to his work onThe Simpsons, Meyer wrote, directed, and starred in his own play,Up Your Giggy, which ran for two weeks at aWest Hollywood theater in 2002.[24] In 2005, Meyer cowrote theTBS specialEarth to America.[25]
Meyer is in a relationship with the writerMaria Semple. They lived together during the 1990s and broke up in 1999,[2] but later got back together.[26] Their child, named Poppy Valentina afterValentina Tereshkova, was born in 2003;[5] being a father gave Meyer a "sense of hopefulness".[8] They live inSeattle.[27] Although raised a Catholic, Meyer hated it and later became agnostic. While working atThe Simpsons he became anatheist, taking the advice of fellow writer Mike Reiss.[8] He is gambler, collector of space program memorabilia and practices yoga. Meyer is a fan of theGrateful Dead withJerry Garcia being the "closest thing in Meyer's life to a spiritual figure."[2] His sister Ann is married toJon Vitti.[2]
Meyer has a strong interest in the environment and notes that "the only organization that I really care about these days" isConservation International.[8] In 2005, a newly discovered species ofmoss frogs fromSri Lanka was namedPhilautus poppiae after Meyer's daughter Poppy, a tribute to Meyer's and Semple's dedication to the Global Amphibian Assessment.[5]
In 2006 he wrote a comic, cautionary opinion piece about the environment forBBC News. It begins:
Are you a hypocrite? Because I certainly am. I'm an animal lover who wears leather shoes; a vegetarian who can't resist smoked salmon. I badger my friends to see theAl Gore movie, but I also fly on fuel-gulping jets. Great clouds of hypocrisy swirl around me. But even a fraud has feelings. And this summer, I'm feeling uneasy; I'm starting to think that our culture's frenzied and mindless assault on the last shreds of nature may not be the wisest course.[28]
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