Commentary:Bend Her

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Commentary for
Bend Her
Production number	4ACV13
On DVD	Season 4 Disc 3
Additional
Transcript
Participants
Matt Groening Creator David X. Cohen Executive Producer Rich Moore Supervising Director Michael Rowe Writer James Purdum Director John DiMaggio Actor (Bender, miscellaneous) Billy West Actor (Fry, Professor Farnsworth, Zoidberg, miscellaneous) Maurice LaMarche Actor (Calculon, miscellaneous)

Topics of Discussion

• They had to make some changes to the episode due to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
  • Specifically, Bender had originally claimed he was from Afghanistan when trying to enter the Olympics. This scene was a deleted scene on the DVD.
• Michael Rowe was originally going to be credited as "Mike Rowe", but his wife convinced him otherwise.
• The commenters discuss whether there are commentaries for horror movies or not.
• This episode was the second time Unbendable girders were bended, the first time being in Bendless Love.
• Michael tells the story of how the story for this episode came about; he was pitching stories to David X. Cohen and Ken Keeler, but they were unexcited. The last story he pitched to them simply said "Bender gets a sex change operation."
  • David joked that they perked up at this suggestion because they heard the word 'sex'.
• Keeler was instrumental in this episode.
• The writers wanted to do an episode centered on Barbados Slim, but they couldn't think of one.
• The writers had wanted to do an episode involving the Olympics for a long time.
• Whenever David sees a shot in slow motion, he feels sorry for the animators.
• Michael was not a big sci-fi fan, so it was hard for him to write an episode of Futurama.
• Originally, Bender was going to be impersonating a woman's voice in Act 1, but the writers soon realized that this would mean three acts of Bender impersonating a woman's voice.
• There is another movie about a man who pretends to be retarded to be in the Special Olympics; the commenters wonder if they got the plot idea from this episode.
  • Billy West jokes about suing them.
• The commenters wonder why they designed female robots, kid robots, ect.
• Bender retains his love for himself even after he becomes Coilette.
• David asks John DiMaggio if he had to dig deep for the Coilette voice. He says no.
• David was worried about the response to Bender getting a sex change.
• The commenters think the barbecuing pirate in the All My Circuits episode is odd.
• Rowe has kids, who he hopes will become Futurama fans when they're older.
  • The commenters all jokingly say 'hi' to their kids.
  • They also joke about their kids bringing the Futurama DVDs in for show-and-tell, but no one would know how to play DVDs anymore.
  • Later in the commentary, Mike jokes that his kids were adopted.
• James Purdum thinks David designed the spinning robot hands, but David says he was thinking of the stripper robot in The Lesser of Two Evils.
  • The spinning hands were relatively hard to animate.
• John wonders why Coilette's breasts aren't bigger; James jokes that they went by John's breast size.
• Mike tells a story he calls 'The Gay Guy and the Ghost' about his gay roommate from some time ago that had a romantic interest in him. He didn't know the guy was gay until years later. This story was apparently a big influence on the episode.
  • The writers joke about making the story into a sitcom.
  • They also joke about what they would do if they found a ghost in their house.
• The writers weren't sure how physical Coilette's relationship with Calculon should be.
• Maurice LaMarche claims that Calculon sounds nothing like the Transition Announcer.