Mike Scully | |
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 Scully in 2011 | |
| Born | Michael C. Scully (1956-10-02)October 2, 1956 (age 68) |
| Occupation | Television writer |
| Years active | 1986–present |
| Spouse | Julie Thacker |
| Children | 5 |
Michael C. Scully[1] (born October 2, 1956) is an Americantelevision writer and producer. He is known for his work asexecutive producer andshowrunner of theanimated sitcomThe Simpsons from 1997 to 2001. Scully grew up inWest Springfield, Massachusetts, and long had an interest in writing. He was anunderachiever at school and dropped out of college, going on to work in a series of jobs. Eventually, in 1986, he moved toLos Angeles where he worked as a stand-up comic and wrote forYakov Smirnoff.
Scully went on to write for several television sitcoms before 1993, when he was hired to write forThe Simpsons. There, he wrote twelve episodes, including "Lisa on Ice" and "Team Homer", and served as showrunner fromseasons 9 to12. Scully won threePrimetime Emmy Awards for his work on the series, with many publications praising his episodes, but others criticizing his tenure as a period of decline in the show's quality. Scully still works on the show and also co-wrote and co-produced 2007'sThe Simpsons Movie.
More recently, Scully co-createdThe Pitts,The Boy Who Lost His Schoolbag andComplete Savages as well as working onEverybody Loves Raymond andParks and Recreation. He co-developed the short-lived animated television version ofNapoleon Dynamite, as well as co-creatingDuncanville with his wife,Julie Thacker, and comedianAmy Poehler.
Scully was born October 2, 1956, atSpringfield Hospital inSpringfield, Massachusetts, and grew up in the Merrick section ofWest Springfield.[2][3] His father, Richard, was a salesman and owned a dry cleaning business, his mother Geraldine (d. 1985) worked for theBaystate Medical Center once Scully and his brothers were old enough to be left at home alone.[3] Scully is of Irish ancestry.[4]
As a child Scully "hoped to be a musician or a hockey player."[5] At Main Street Elementary School, with the encouragement of his teacher James Doyle, he developed an interest in writing, serving as editor for his school newspaper.[2][3] He graduated fromWest Springfield High School in 1974, having been voted "Most Likely Not to Live Up to Potential" by his classmates,[1] and dropped out ofHolyoke Community College after one day, undecided about what he wanted to do with his life.[2][5][6] He took up work in the clothing department at Steiger's department store,[2] as ajanitor at the Baystate Medical Center and also as a driving instructor.[3] He commented: "I think if I had actually succeeded at college and gotten a degree in accounting or something, I might have given up too quickly on writing. Having no marketable job skills was a tremendous incentive to keep trying to succeed as a writer."[5] He realized "there probably wasn't going to be a career in riding around with my friends listening toFoghat,"[3] so Scully decided he "definitely wanted to break into comedy" even though he "really had no reason to believe [he] could succeed." Regardless, he moved toLos Angeles, California, in 1982.[5][7]
In California, Scully worked in a tuxedo store. He also got a job writing jokes for comedianYakov Smirnoff and developed his joke writing skills by performing himself at amateur stand-up comedy nights.[2][5][7] He purchased scripts from a variety of half-hour comedy shows, includingTaxi, to train himself to write them and had numerous speculative scripts rejected.[7] He started "bouncing around Hollywood working on some of the lousiest sitcoms in history."[5] He served on the writing staff ofThe Royal Family,Out of This World,[8]Top of the Heap andWhat a Country!, where he did audience warm-up, a role he also performed onGrand.[2][7]
"There's one web site where they're always calling for me to be fired, where they really hate me. They find targets and they'll go after you. I think their expectations are unrealistic. People want everything to stay the same. I think it's easier for people to go in and just criticize and say what they hate about something, rather than find out what they like."
In 1993,David Mirkin hired Scully to write forThe Simpsons, as a replacement for the departingConan O'Brien,[1] after reading some of his sample scripts.[5] He began as a writer and producer for the show during itsfifth season and wrote the episodes "Lisa's Rival", "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds" and "Lisa on Ice" which aired inseason six. "Lisa's Rival" was his first episode; he wrote the script, but the original concept had been conceived by O'Brien.[10] Similarly, he wrote the script for "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds", which was based on an idea byAl Jean andMike Reiss.[11] "Lisa on Ice" was inspired by Scully's love ofice hockey and featured many experiences from his childhood,[12] as was "Marge Be Not Proud" (which he wrote forseason seven) which was based "one of the most traumatic moments" of his life, when he was caught shoplifting at age 12.[13] He jokingly toldVariety that "It's great to be paid for reliving the horrors of your life."[8] He also wrote "Team Homer" and "Lisa's Date with Density".[14][15] Scully noted: "I wrote a lot ofLisa's shows. I have five daughters, so I like Lisa a lot. I likeHomer, too. Homer comes very naturally to me: I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. A lot of my favorite episodes are the ones when Homer and Lisa are in conflict with each other ... They're very human, I think that's their appeal."[9]
Scully becameshowrunner ofThe Simpsons in 1997, during itsninth season.[1] As showrunner and executive producer, Scully said his aim was to "not wreck the show",[9] and he headed up the writing staff and oversaw all aspects of the show's production.[7] During his time as showrunner he was credited with writing or co-writing five episodes: "Treehouse of Horror VIII" ("The HΩmega Man" segment),[16] "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday",[17] "Beyond Blunderdome", "Behind the Laughter"[18] and "The Parent Rap".[19] Scully was popular with the staff members, many of whom praised his organization and management skills. WriterTom Martin said he was "quite possibly the best boss I've ever worked for" and "a great manager of people," whileDon Payne commented that for Scully "it was really important that we kept decent hours".[20][21] Scully served as showrunner until 2001, duringseason 12, making him the first person to run the show for more than two seasons.[20] He returned inseason 14 to write andexecutive produce the episode "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation",[22] and co-wrote and co-producedThe Simpsons Movie in 2007.[23]
Scully's tenure as showrunner ofThe Simpsons has been the subject of criticism from some of the show's fans.[24][21] John Ortved wrote "Scully's episodes excel when compared to whatThe Simpsons airs nowadays, but he was the man at the helm when the ship turned towards the iceberg."[20] TheBBC noted "the common consensus is thatThe Simpsons' golden era ended afterseason nine",[25] while an op-ed inSlate by Chris Suellentrop arguedThe Simpsons changed from a realistic show about family life into a typical cartoon during Scully's years: "Under Scully's tenure,The Simpsons became, well, a cartoon. ... Episodes that once would have ended with Homer and Marge bicycling into the sunset (perhaps whileBart gagged in the background) now end with Homer blowing a tranquilizer dart into Marge's neck."[26]The Simpsons under Scully has been negatively labelled as a "gag-heavy, Homer-centric incarnation" by Jon Bonné ofMSNBC,[27] while some fans have bemoaned the transformation in Homer's character during the era, from dumb yet well-meaning to "a boorish, self-aggrandizing oaf",[28] dubbing him "Jerkass Homer".[27][29][30]
Some of Scully's work on the show also received critical praise. Scully won fivePrimetime Emmy Awards for his work onThe Simpsons,[31] whileEntertainment Weekly cited "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation" as the show's 22nd best episode.[32] Robert Canning ofIGN also gave the episode a positive review,[33] something he also did for "Behind the Laughter" and "Trilogy of Error", which aired during season 12. He called the latter "one extremely enjoyable misadventure.The Simpsons may have peaked in the '90s, but that doesn't mean the eight years since haven't delivered their share of quality episodes. This was one of them."[34][35] Tom Martin said that he does not understand the criticism against Scully, and that he thinks the criticism "bothered [him], and still bothers him, but he managed to not get worked up over it."[36] Ortved noted in his book that blaming a single show runner for what some perceive as the lowering quality of the show "is unfair."[37] When asked in 2007 how the series' longevity is sustained, Scully joked, "Lower your quality standards. Once you've done that you can go on forever."[38]
Scully was a writer and co-executive producer onEverybody Loves Raymond[2] for part of season seven and all of season eight, winning an Emmy for his work.[31] Scully co-created (with wifeJulie Thacker)The Pitts for Fox andComplete Savages forABC, which was produced byMel Gibson.[5]The Pitts was a sitcom about a family suffering from bad luck. Thacker stated the show was designed "as a companion piece forThe Simpsons. It had a very cartoony feel to it. We always knew the initial audience for the show would be 12-year-olds to start, and then when families saw that the writing was verySimpsons - like, because many of the writers were fromThe Simpsons, [we thought] families would start to watch it together." It was canceled after six episodes; Scully and Thacker laid the blame for this on the show's timeslot, 9:30 P.M., which was too late for the target audience.[39]Complete Savages, which Thacker and Scully wrote with the "Simpsons sensibility" of layered jokes,[39] was canceled in January 2005 due to low ratings and network anger at Scully and Thacker's decision to write to TV critics in what theHartford Courant labelled "unsanctioned promoting".[40] A fan ofNRBQ, Scully produced, with Thacker, a documentary about the band in 2003 entitledNRBQ: Rock 'n' Roll's Best Kept Secret; Scully employed the group as the "unofficial house band" ofThe Simpsons during his tenure as showrunner.[41] Scully also created a pilot for Fox calledSchimmel in 2000, starringRobert Schimmel, which was dropped after Schimmel was diagnosed with cancer.[42]
Scully served as a consulting producer on theNBC seriesParks and Recreation,[3] and wrote the episodes "Ron and Tammy" in 2009,[43] and "The Possum" in 2010.[44] Scully also had cameo roles in the episodes "Eagleton" and "Soda Tax" as a speaker at the Pawnee community meeting.[45][46]
In 2012, Scully co-produced and co-wrote ananimated TV version of the filmNapoleon Dynamite,[47] which was canceled after six episodes.[48] That May, Scully signed a seven-figure, multi-year overall deal with20th Century Fox Television to develop several projects.[3][49] He served as co-executive producer on the single-season NBC sitcomThe New Normal (2012–2013), alongsideAllison Adler andRyan Murphy.[49] Scully held the same title for Fox'sDads (which debuted in 2013).[50] In 2018, he signed an overall deal with 20th Century Fox Television.[51]
He is married to writerJulie Thacker; the couple have five daughters.[2][52] His elder brotherBrian Scully is also a comedy writer; his younger brother, Neil, is anice hockey writer.[1][5] His mother died in 1985.[2] Scully was awarded an honorary doctorate in fine arts fromWestfield State University in 2008.[6][53] While on crutches, Scully walked the picket line during the2007–2008 WGA strike.[54]
Scully received a lifetime achievement award by the WGA West in 2010.[55][56]
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