“But I thought I had you fooled.” – Hollis Hurlbut

“You did, until I realized that Jebediah’s confession was saying more than he meant it to.” – Lisa Simpson

The other day MovieWeb posted an interview with Al Jean about the Season 13 DVD release and the upcoming Season 22 premier. (Thanks to the usual source, Springfield Springfield’s Twitter feed.) It’s the standard model for a modern media mutual masturbation session. Jean gets his products plugged; MovieWeb gets some pageviews (and an excuse for a borderline obscene number of internal links); everyone goes home just a little bit richer. The first question is easily the highpoint:

You have the loveable Ralph Wiggum on the cover of this upcoming DVD set and there’s a new special feature about Ralph as well. Is it fun for you guys to showcase these secondary characters on these DVD sets? Are you kicking around ideas on who you’d feature on the cover of Season 14 as well?

Al Jean: It is a lot of fun trying to figure out which Simpsons character will be the most frustrating to DVD makers attempting to mold his head out of plastic. With that in mind, my pick for Season 14 would be Sideshow Bob.

Whenever I see answers like the one about creating frustrating heads for the packaging people, I’m always reminded of Krusty coming over to the Simpsons house in “Like Father, Like Clown”. Maybe Jean et al can toss off decent one liners so effortlessly that they don’t care, but it just looks tiring to have to be “on” in every interview. And it’s all downhill from here, literally every other question/answer is either about a) celebrities or b) when the show is ending.

Shorter MovieWeb & Al Jean:

MovieWeb: You’ve had lots of guest voices in the past (which I will now name drop with links to our archive for that person), what’s that like?

Al Jean: Great! We did Star Trek and the Beatles!

MovieWeb: Here are some more names, who are your guest voices now?

Al Jean: The people you mentioned.

MovieWeb: Halloween episodes often have guest voices, was it fun working with this year’s guest voices?

Al Jean: Yes.

MovieWeb: Golly gee, the show sure has been on a long time. Is it going to end soon?

Al Jean: Not that I know of.

[Ed note: I’ve said this before, but I have a lot of sympathy for Jean here. It’s got to be a little frustrating to have to answer a question akin to “But Krusty, why now? Why not twenty years ago?” over and over and over again.]

MovieWeb: You’ve worked with lots of other famous people, haven’t you?

Al Jean: Yes.

MovieWeb: Why should people buy Season 13 and watch Season 22?

Al Jean: Ah, the tables have turned. Now I will drop a bunch of names!

Then it ends. After eight questions, dozens of celebrity names, and about eleven hundred words, all that’s really here are the two things for which Zombie Simpsons is known: longevity and celebrity cameos.