John Swartzwelder

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One of the few pictures of John Swartzwelder

John Swartzwelder (born November 16, 1950) is a writer for the animated television series The Simpsons and a published author. He is credited with writing the largest number of Simpsons episodes. John was one of several writers recruited to The Simpsons from the pages of George Meyer's Army Man magazine.

1 Career
2 Appearances on The Simpsons
3 Reclusiveness
- 3.1 Season 9 DVD commentary
4 The Simpsons episodes by Swartzwelder
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Career

Before working on The Simpsons, Swartzwelder had a long career in advertising, after which he began writing for Saturday Night Live during the 1985–86 season. While working at SNL, he met George Meyer. After Meyer quit, he created Army Man and recruited Swartzwelder to help him write the magazine. Along with Meyer, he was recruited to write for The Simpsons because one of their readers was Sam Simon, one of the show's original executive producers.

Beginning with the show's sixth season, Swartzwelder no longer attended rewrites with the rest of the staff, having been given special dispensation to send in his drafts from home and let the other writers revise them. This was a result of a newly implemented policy which banished smoking in the writers' room.

According to his longtime collaborators on The Simpsons, Al Jean and Mike Reiss, Swartzwelder is a huge fan of Preston Sturges films and loves "anything old-timey American." This vaguely defined aesthetic presents itself in many of the episodes he has written, in the form of wandering hobos, Prohibition-era speakeasies, carnies, 19th-century baseball players, aging Western movie stars, and Sicilian gangsters.

According to the DVD commentaries, he used to write episodes while sitting at a booth in his favorite restaurant "drinking copious amounts of coffee and smoking endless cigarettes" (Matt Groening). When California passed an anti-smoking law, Swartzwelder bought the diner booth and installed it in his house, allowing him to smoke and write in peace.

His identity is heavily debated amongst Simpsons fans on the internet because he's the most prolific writer of The Simpsons and never appears on any of the commentaries up to and including season eight.^[1] It had been theorized by fans that John Swartzwelder is just a pseudonym for writers refusing to take writing credit for their episode.^[1]

In a Season Eight commentary, it was pointed out that Swartzwelder thought that using a thesaurus was 'cheating'. The other old-timey fans among the writers particularly use 19th Century slang thesauri for writing Mr Burns and Grampa speeches.

He is also a staunch libertarian as well as a gun rights advocate, and despite having written many of the environmentally driven episodes, he is described as an "anti-environmentalist." During the commentary of "The Old Man and the Lisa" David X. Cohen related a story of Swartzwelder going on an extended diatribe about how there is more rainforest on Earth now than there was a hundred years ago.

In 2004, following a short break from writing scripts, he wrote his first novel, The Time Machine Did It (ISBN 0-9755799-0-8). It was followed by Double Wonderful (ISBN 0-9755799-2-4) in 2005 and How I Conquered Your Planet (ISBN 0-9755799-4-0) in 2006. In March of 2007, the latest Frank Burly novel, The Exploding Detective, will be released.

The Simpsons' 16th season was the first in which no episodes were authored by Swartzwelder. It was confirmed that he would return for the 17th season, but this season also had no episodes penned by him. He has returned though, as he is credited as one of the eleven writers working on The Simpsons Movie.

[edit] Appearances on The Simpsons

Swartzwelder has been animated in the background of several episodes. His animated likeness resembles David Crosby; Matt Groening said during the commentary of "Bart the Fink" that anytime that it appears that David Crosby is in a scene for no reason, it is really John Swartzwelder. Some of the episodes in which John Swartzwelder appears include:

Springfield is right next to "Swartzwelder County".
In the episode "The Day the Violence Died", John Swartzwelder is one of the "surprise witnesses" called by Lionel Hutz. Others include Ralph Wiggum, a man with a dummy, and Santa Claus on crutches.
In the episode "Bart the Fink", he is one of the attendees at Krusty's fake funeral.
In the episode "Home Sweet Homediddly Dum Doodily", the animators paid homage to Swartzwelder with a statue of him (on a horse) outside a courthouse.
In "Bart After Dark", he can be seen as one of the clients watching the show in the Burlesque House.
In the episode "Hurricane Neddy", John Swartzwelder's name can be briefly seen during the fanfare of Ned Flanders' return from a mental institution. Behind Barney Gumble, a sign says, "Free John Swartzwelder". He also can be seen inside the institution pacing back and forth inside his room.
In the episode "The Front", Lisa and Bart read a book entitled How to Get Rich Writing Cartoons, which is written by John Swartzwelder.
Springfield is also home to the "Mt. Swartzwelder Historic Cider Mill".
In "Thank God It's Doomsday", John is guest on a blimp that crashes during a Krusty Special dedicated to Specials.
In "The Front", Bart and Lisa are shown around the Itchy and Scratchy studios and introduced to some of the writers. One of these writers is modelled on Swartzwelder whilst the rest are modelled on writers who worked on the show when the episode was produced.

[edit] Reclusiveness

John Swartzwelder is a notorious recluse and rarely, if ever, makes public appearances in connection with the Simpsons. He was one of few Simpsons writers to make no contributions to the first eight Simpsons DVD sets (refusing to participate in the audio commentaries).

[edit] Season 9 DVD commentary

Swartzwelder made one audio appearance, during the commentary of "The Cartridge Family". Mike Scully phoned him up to prove he exists. The phone is answered at 5 minutes, 29 seconds.