'The Simpsons' producer Al Jean looks back on 20 years

"The Simpsons" begins a remarkable 21st season on FOX Sunday, and for the 21st straight season Bart is still 10 years old, Homer is still a buffoon and the precocious Lisa is still in second grade. That's by design, executive producer Al Jean says.

"My goal is if you see an episode from season 21 that you like, that it would really fit in well with a good episode from season three," says Jean, who's been with the show since its beginnings as a weekly series in the 1989-90 season.

Jean spoke with Zap2it this week about the new season -- which kicks off with an episode co-written by and guest-starring Seth Rogen -- the show's longevity and the growing, but not really changing, world of Springfield.

Zap2it: How do you still find new beats and new stories to tell after 20 years?
Jean: I think these are troubled times, and when you have a family that stories come from experiencing their problems, I think there's still a lot to be said. Once you have an idea, it's just a great structure. It's as exciting to write a script for a "Simpsons" episode as it's ever been.

What sort of trouble might there be this season?
Well, in our premiere, Comic Book Guy creates a new comic called "Everyman," who's a hero who gets the power of any comic he touches. He has cast approval for the lead [in the movie version], and he picks Homer because he's an everyman. Homer tries to get in superhero shape, which is something Seth told us about when he was doing "The Green Hornet." They have a trainer [Rogen] but he quits, so Homer's weight fluctuates wildly throughout the movie. ...

There's a show where Krusty gets a sidekick, a princess character, because they think he's not relating well enough to young girls. She's voiced by Anne Hathaway, who sings. She gets so popular that he wants to fire her, and then she falls in love with him. ...

And our Halloween episode is actually going to air before Halloween [on Oct. 18], which is a first for many years. We have a Hitchcock segment called "Dial M for Murder, or Press the Pound Sign to Get the Operator." ... We also have a "Sweeney Todd"-type segment where Moe opens a microbrewery, and when he mixes Homer's blood with the beer it makes people feel really romantic. There are a lot of love songs.

Then we just recorded an episode with Sacha [Baron] Cohen where the Simpsons go to the promised land. He's an Israeli tour guide who's very angry.

You haven't done a "Simpsons go somewhere" episode for a while, have you?
No. We do a little bit where they go to Vancouver, because Homer and Marge are part of the first ever mixed curling team. But that's more about the Olympics. ... We try not to just have every week, here they go to a different country. But if there's some storyline we have -- there's a thing called Jerusalem syndrome where people go to Jerusalem and think they're the messiah, so we thought it would be a funny thing for Homer to do.

Did you have a sense early on that the world of the show would grow as big as it has?
At the beginning, it was a two-day-a-week job, and it was animation. Other people I know didn't want to do it. My partner and I did; we were two of the first writers hired when it became a series. I thought it would be a really good show, just because of [executive producers] Jim Brooks and Matt Groening and Sam Simon. But I'd be lying if [I said] I thought it would run for 20 years and have a film and a ride. The characters kind of evolved through the first and second years and a little more slowly through three and four. We'd have an episode where we needed a character, and we'd create a character.

Are the times where you've sort of updated the timeline just a function of having been on so long?
My goal is if you see an episode from season 21 that you like, that it would really fit in well with a good episode from season three. So there are very few -- considering how long we've been on, we have very few arcs, very few major character changes. Maude Flanders passed away and Apu had octuplets. But in general, we want it to be the same thing people have loved all these years.

And obviously that's something you can get away with in a cartoon.
Yeah, it's a huge blessing. If they were real, Bart would be 30 and wearing short pants and living at his parents' house, and Homer would be dead. [Laughs] So we probably wouldn't be on.

Can you talk a little about the voice cast?
It hardly needs to be said, but they're all perfect. I don't think of the characters without thinking of those voices and the people doing them. I'm proud to say Dan [Castellaneta] just won an Emmy for voiceover, and Hank [Azaria] and Harry [Shearer] were also nominated this year. As a writer, the biggest compliment I can pay is that if a joke bombs, it's the writing, not the acting.

Any other guest voices this season?
We have Jonah Hill [as a legendary former Springfield Elementary student], and Sarah Silverman plays a girl Bart falls in love with. She's alternately really nice and really mean to him, and he can't figure out what's going on.

I know FOX is doing a documentary for the 20th anniversary, but are there also special episodes?
Yes. They wanted us to do a two-hour block, on Jan. 14, 2010, so we suggested one hour be the documentary, but get someone like Morgan [Spurlock] to give and outside-inside look at the show. It's not a reverential treatment but something -- we find the person with the most Simpsons tattoos in the world, things like that. And then we have two new shows that will air: One is the Anne Hathaway show I mentioned earlier, and another which has a guest part for Chris Martin from Coldplay.