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‘Never shoot down an idea, no matter how crazy or stupid it may sound’
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Anyone who’s ever had to sit through a corporate brainstorming session knows that stupid ideas are a dime a dozen. Looking at you, Kevin from Human Resources. But formerSimpsonswriter and showrunner Josh Weinstein reminds us that the funniest comedy is often the child of stupid ideas. He recently took to Twitter to “repeat this writing tip I learned atThe Simpsons: Never shoot down an idea, no matter how crazy or stupid it may sound. Lean into it. It may be nothing OR it becomes theDr. Zaius scene, which is, in fact, the combo of 5 separate ‘crazy’ ‘stupid’ pitches.”
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ThemusicalPlanet of the Apes parody is considered a glittering gem from the show’s golden era. If nothing else, it’s aTroy McClure tour de force. And it all came from stupid, says Weinstein. Here are the five crazy pitches that led to the scene…
Weinstein says it all started with “Steve Tompkins pitching, ‘What if we did a musical of Planet of the Apes?’ This is either a crazy or a stupid idea or both, but we all loved it and we could all feel the potential so I say at least let’s explore this and see if it goes anywhere…”
Weinstein, who was running the writers' room at the time, had never seenPlanet of the Apes. “But I knew a few key things like Statue of Liberty, ‘it was earth all along’ end, ‘get your hands off me’ line.” He also knew there was a character named Dr. Zaius, a name that just so happened to rhyme with Amadeus. “I asked (the) room to verify this, then pitched ‘So you know that Falco song?’"
Next, all-starSimpsonswriter George Meyer did a classic “Now hear me out on this.” Since Zaius was a doctor, Meyer pitched, what if the writers interspersed Broadway song segments with corny/stupid vaudeville-style joke breaks about doctors, like this hokey chestnut:
PATIENT: Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after the operation?
DOC: Yes, of course.
PATIENT: Great. I never could before.
Dumb as it was, “we agree to give that a go.”
Another writer piped up. Since Zaius is a doctor, why not have his nurse begin the song with “Ooo, help me, Dr. Zaius!” Weinstein had no clue if a nurse even existed inPlanet of the Apes
The last dumb idea? Another writer pitched that there should be a lot of breakdancing. Why? In the mid-1990s, Broadway musicals were getting in late on the breakdancing trend. Any musical theater parody of the time needed to include our newest Olympic sport.
It would have been easy for Weinstein to shoot down any of the individual ideas. But “in the whole musical, there are so many ‘stupid’ or ‘crazy’ things that just worked,” he said. “We just had to have faith in the comedy of it all.”
“The lesson here?” he continued. “If you have an idea and right after it comes to you, you have a feeling ‘there’s something special there,’ lean into it. The worst that can happen is you waste a few minutes or hours. The best? Something that speaks to a whole bunch of people and makes them happy.”
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