Commentary:Xmas Story

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Commentary for
Xmas Story
Production number	2ACV04
Recorded date	2001
On DVD	Season 2 Disc 1
Additional
Transcript

Topics of Discussion

• When Conan O'Brien left The Simpsons, David immediately took his desk and started working there. O'Brien left a note for whoever would take the office informing them among other things that the window was sticky, where the garbage was and which corner of the office to urinate in.
  • Animation of heads in jars is harder if, like O'Brien, they stick out of the jar slightly.
• Matt says that Bender falling off the cliff and through the ice is one of the best moments in Futurama.
  • The skating kids are a homage to Peanuts, and are all dead now.
• The snow and rain in Futurama, according to Cohen, is better than any other show, including live action shows.
• The medal Farnsworth won is a bronze. It was decided that a gold would be too far fetched.
• A commentator's mother, a teacher, only ever commented on one thing in the series the use of "aks"
  • In early production they considered regular use of updated words such as "aks" and "li-bary".
• The scenes around the Xmas tree were written to be in the lounge, but they decided it would work better in the bigger room in which the Smell-o-scope is kept.
• Unlike The Simpsons, female characters are used for slapstick comedy.
• This episode's plot was one of the earliest developed, with the gist of it worked out before the pilot's
• It is incredibly difficult to storyboard movement of characters and the camera in a round room.
• Humans have designed and built robots that serve no purpose or endanger them, such as homeless robots, Santa and the Robot Mafia.
  • However this can be explained by the robots building themselves
• The Store Clerk was last seen in A Fishful of Dollars.
• Bongo from Life in Hell appears
• Frank Welker is the parrot, it took a lot of work to make it more and more annoying as the episode progressed.
• Hermes' chair was designed so that his butt would hang out of it.
• Clock tower is based on the film Safety Last, The New Yorker then stole the joke from them.
• Voice of Santa was John Goodman here but later became John DiMaggio
• Episode was controversial, and the network forbid them from airing the subsequent Xmas episode at 7pm.
  • The show was never intended to be aired at 7pm.
  • The the clock at the end is set to be the time at which the episode was to air.
• the "trash pickup" line was re-written about 10 times.

Highlights / Quotes

• Matt Groening: I'm Matt Groening. I hung around a little bit.
• Bill Odenkirk: It's only marginally more difficult to get a live head to live in a jar, than to animate it.
• Unknown: I always love doing Bender dancing, it always comes with a really good song.

Goofs

• Cohen mistakes "A Fishful of Dollars" for episode 104, whereas it was actually 106

Commentators

• Matt Groening
  • Executive Producer
• David X. Cohen
  • Writer
  • Executive Producer
• Rich Moore
  • Supervising Director
• Peter Avanzino
  • Director
• Paul Calder
  • Editor
• Bill Odenkirk
  • Producer
• John DiMaggio
  • Actor (Bender, miscellaneous)

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