The Simpsons premiered on December 17, 1989 and one of the show’s biggest fans from that very first episode was none other than Judd Apatow. Five weeks and five episodes later, 22-year-old Judd was officially obsessed with the show — just like millions of others — and he wrote a spec script of his own.
Judd is in the midst of a huge press tour for his brand new comedy This Is 40, starring Paul Rudd and Judd’s wife in real-life Leslie Mann (oh, and by the way: those are also Judd and Leslie’s real-life daughters in the movie as well). And in a recent interview Judd told the story of that Simpsons script he wrote 23 years ago. The premise has the family attend a hypnotism show where Homer gets put into a deep hypnosis where he thinks he is the same age as Bart. As Homer is deep into his new youthful state, the hypnotist suffers a massive heart attack and dies. The Playlist published a snippet of Judd’s recent interview during a Q&A which followed Apatow’s screening of This Is 40 at Film Independent earlier this month: “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.”
Well, looks like that Simpsons spec script is finally getting made after all, and it’s going into production for an episode set to air in 2013. You can read the full story as well as watch a brilliant 70-minute interview between Apatow and Conan O’Brien by visiting The Playlist. This Is 40 opens in North America on December 21, 2012.
