It seems Judd Apatow is revisting his past this fall. His upcoming "This Is 40" plucks two characters from 2007's "Knocked Up" and refreshes them with a new tale, and it looks like something he wrote two decades ago is getting a fresh coat of paint.
Among the anecdotes Apatow is sharing on the press rounds this fall, is that 20 years ago, once of his first attempts to break into the biz found him writing a spec script for "The Simpsons" that was ultimately rejected. Well look at what two decades and massive success will bring you. Sitting down with Conan O'Brien recently on the talk show host's new, much more sober web chat series "Serious Jibber-Jabber," Apatow reveals that his script for "The Simpsons" is going into production for an episode next year. So what is it all about? Here's what Apatow said about it during a Q&A following a screening of "This Is 40" at Film Independent earlier this month:
The first thing I ever wrote was a spec episode of The Simpsons. After only five Simpsons episodes aired, I sat down and tried to write one when I was in my early twenties. And what it was about was they went to see a hypnotism show and at the hypnotism show, they made Homer think he was the same age at Bart. And then the hypnotist had a heart attack. So now Homer and Bart became best friends and they spent the rest of the show running away because Homer didn’t want responsibility and didn’t want to be brought back to his real age. So I basically copied that for every movie I’ve made since.
Sounds pretty perfectly 'Simpsons'-esque and if anything it will be an interesting curio of an episode. We kind of hope they just use that 20 year old script as it was with little retouching if only because it will be pretty fun to see how much the comedy on the show has drastically changed. Anyway, give a look at Apatow and Charlie Rose O'Brien having an hour long chat below. [Vulture/SlashFilm]