Excerpted from My Life as a Ten Year Old Boy by Nancy Cartwright, Dan Castellaneta. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Starting in the spring of '87, Julie Kavner, Dan Castellaneta, Yeardley Smith and I gathered about once a week to record the Simpsons "shorts" or "bumpers," if you will, for The Tracey Ullman Show. We wedged ourselves into a tiny room, looked each other over, double-checked our armpits and got down to it.
The hierarchy of producers and creative staff we have come to rely on over the years may have existed inthose days but you would never have known it. Matt, our Creator, must have bbeen thrilled to have the opportunity to air something on prime time, but the whole thing was something of a lark, hardly on a par with a "real" series. There was that audition and then he, like the rest of us, probably didn't have a clue that these tiny vignettes would ever develop into a planetary-wide craze, capturing audiences from age two on up; entertaining them not only with the weekly series and all the syndicated episodes you can program your VCR to tape, but also with a billion-dollar merchandise-generating extravaganza, ranging from backpacks and talking dolls to key chains and Bart Bread! Believe me, everyone was surprised.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
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