Matt Groening greenlighted a live-action version of the iconic opening sequence to The Simpsons. This month, it aired in the United Kingdom as a promotional spot for the 17th season of the show. Before that however, it did the Internet viral thing. The Simpsons is so firmly ensconced in the pop culture pantheon, the spot casts light on a wide array of things that interest me. I will now indulge myself.

The Spot
First of all, the film itself: It is entirely charming and a close enough facsimile of the animated version that it may well cause some people to say, "Wow, that's a very close facsimile of the animated version." Great attention has been paid to detail (there's Montgomery Burns in the background shaking his broken wristwatch) and the differences are hardly perceptible until compared directly with the original. Some of the changes are due to obvious limitations of the live-action medium. When cartoon Maggie is swiped across the scanner in the supermarket she really moves. The real baby is handled much more gently since she's a real baby. The glowing nuclear material Homer handles is a little less acrobatic, never making it down the back of his shirt. Locations are, naturally, not just so. These alterations make sense and are worked around in an unobtrusive way and, apparently, at great cost and over the course of a reported 18-month production.

The Weirdness of the Clothes
Lisa's music scene exemplifies the thing most jarring about the promo. Every time a character appears I found myself thinking, "That's what they wear?" It is. There's no denying Lisa sports a knee length red dress at all times. But to see it on a person is strange. This shouldn't really come as a surprise, but Lisa only looks like Lisa as a cartoon. The broadest strokes of the animation unfortunately must be rendered with life-like detail in the live-action sequence. Like the clothes, the rural drive Marge and Maggie take is at first unrecognizable for being so specific where the animation is so charmingly vague.

American Ballyhoo
The spot got a bit of traditional press during the run-up to its premiere in Britain. It didn't play in America. It is clearly a British-executed project, and while its novelty seems to make it an excellent way to promote the show in any country, the whole thing has distinct British overtones. Done essentially without special effects, it is amusing and wry but it is not cool. It is not awesome. It does not promote Event Television. Perhaps it would never work as an American ad for those reasons. Our commercials, after all, are on the whole more bombastic than those across the Atlantic. Perhaps given this British spots success someone with fistfuls of money and many, many computers is working on a louder, flashier American version.

Funny Internet Video for Sale
But this ad did find its way to me, of course. Even before it aired on British teevee, it had made a happy home on the Internet. Perhaps this spot was always meant to reach an American audience and someone was just savvy enough to realize it plays much better as a viral Internet promotion than anything else. This opening sequence is so recognizable the live-action spot is the sort of thing people want to email to each other and talk about at the office. And so they did when it first appeared. Most commercials aspire to be talked about, but those that actually do will find life is good on the Internet; all that talk can turn into many a quick jaunt online for a viewing. Maybe no one was crafty enough to think this through, but considering the popularity of the Funny Internet Video phenomenon, major marketers will get there soon enough and they'll need ideas this clever to make a go of it.

A Brief Sidebar on the Vendors
I found the promo through, of course, a Google search. But Google did not, to their credit, lead me directly to Google Video. Google Video is that rare product that Google launched that was not greeted with almost audible shrieks of joy from users and critics alike. (Enthusiasm also seems low for Google Chat. Maybe they're slipping.) I found The Simpsons intro at YouTube.com and it was the second time in as many days that the site had turned up what I was looking for. Google is never the first company into an Internet niche, usually just the best. But unlike with the search engine and the email and the image search and the maps, Video pales next to YouTube which is easier to get around and seems to actually be pulling off some digital community building. It's a rite of passage Google was bound to pass eventually, but it's still a little sad to see them come up short.

Still Mediocre After All These Years
Finally, The Simpsons is still on. It has long since become the longest running American sitcom. But that seems such a bleak triumph. The Simpsons is a great show. With a great cast. But 350+ episodes? The latest are not up to the (very high) mark set before the show hit double digit seasons. It's intriguing to me that this promo to promote the 17th season was so decidedly British (Marge, indeed, drives behind the right side of the car) since most British shows have the good sense to knock off after just a few seasons. The Office, the greatest British export in many moons, consisted of eight hours of show. Total. The American version has already surpassed that mark. There's too much money in hit shows to let them go off the air because of something as silly as depleted material.

Danny Elfman Makes $11.50 Every Time That Song is Played
The wonders of syndication have kept alive the shockingly good Simpsons episodes from those glory seasons and now the glory of DVD does it one better. No commercials and, if we so choose, nothing after season 10. And if, you ever glance back at the DVD of the first season you'll find the original Simpsons opening credit sequence. It too is slightly different (missing a few characters but with two more gags) in ways that make you appreciate how indelible, unforgettable the standard version has become.

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