If at first you don't succeed, wait 25 years and try again. Comedy auteur Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-old Virgin, Knocked Up) wrote the Sunday, Jan. 11 episode of Fox's The Simpsons — "Bart's New Friend" — way back in 1990, mere weeks after the series debuted. Why did his work take so long to hit the air? Apatow gave us the d'oh-down.
TV Guide Magazine: What made you write this thing?
Apatow: I was 22, a huge fan of The Simpsons, and hoping for a TV writing career. At the time I was a fledgling standup comic and people said, "If you want to write for sitcoms, you need to do spec scripts." Only six episodes of The Simpsons had aired at that point but I tried to copy the style and did a spec script where Homer gets hypnotized and thinks he's a 10-year-old. He has such a great time being Bart's friend that he doesn't want to become an adult again. I sent it in — in fact, I sent it to all my favorite shows — and got no job offers. I also wrote a spec script for the great Chris Elliott show Get a Life. They at least brought me in for a meeting, but that didn't lead to any work, either. Then, all these years later, [Simpsons executive producer] Al Jean calls and says, "Hey, we'll make it now!" ...
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