"COMMENTARY:" "Hi." "This is "Xmas Story," the first Futurama Xmas episode." "I'm David Cohen, executive producer and I wrote this episode so I was a very busy boy on this episode." "I'm Peter Avanzino." "I directed this." "I'm Rich Moore, the supervising director for the series." "I'm Matt Groening." "I hung around a little bit." " Paul Calder, editor." " John DiMaggio the voice of Bender and others." "Bill Odenkirk, writer and producer." "I watched it being made." "[GROUP LAUGHING]" " Really Conan." " Yeah, it's him." "Conan wrote for The Simpsons." "When he got hired to have his own late night show, he moved out and I immediately moved to his desk to start working at The Simpsons." "He left a little note welcoming me to the office." "He didn't know who'd be coming in." "It was, "To whom it may concern the window's sticky, the garbage is in the corner and there's a certain corner you're supposed to urinate in. "" "There was a lot of useful advice like that." "Very funny." " I had a Conan story but no time." " Go ahead, what the heck." "His head sticking out of that jar was a big technical problem." "In real life, he does have a giant head." "Those jars, digitally, are a bunch of layers of transparency." "His head sticking out added a level of water that made our tech guys mad." "It's only a bit harder to get a head to live in a jar than to animate it." "I like the way the ski lifts follow a track, but there's no track." "ZOIDBERG:" "At least you're not cold-blooded." "Sweet lion of Zion, look at the professor go!" "COMMENTARY:" "This is so cool." "Watch this shot." "Look at that!" " Amazing." " That is so cool!" "[SNORES]" "[MAN CHUCKLES]" "FRY:" "Look out for those trees!" "Yeah, yeah, relax." "Trees down!" "COMPUTERIZED VOICE:" "Trees down!" " Cool." "What if you want the trees up?" "COMPUTERIZED VOICE:" "Trees up!" " Trees down." "COMPUTERIZED VOICE:" "Trees down." "BENDER:" "Looking good, meatball!" "COMMENTARY:" "I love that hat." "This is one of the classic sequences on this show." "One of my favorite bits." "Here we go." "Great animation." "[GROUP LAUGHING]" " And they all died." " We didn't include that." " Every single one." " An homage to Peanuts,  of course." "This is so funny." "HERMES:" "Listen, you filthy crab." "[GROUP CHUCKLING]" "COMMENTARY:" "Filthy crab." " He's the Michelin Man." "[MAN CHUCKLES]" "I barely remember that." "They did advertise Bud Light or Miller Draft or something." "[MAN CHUCKLES]" " He laughs and gets his comeuppance." " Don't laugh in a cartoon." "[MAN LAUGHS]" "They all died too." "We have better snow than any show, including shows that have real snow." " You're counting Columbo." "That's 3-D snow." " Is this the first time we did snow?" " I think so." " It's beautiful." " It's 3-D." "He's got a bronze." "Or is that a gold?" " Anybody?" " I think it was bronze." "I think we decided that gold was too far-fetched." "[GROUP LAUGHING]" "FRY:" "Really puts you in the Christmas spirit." " What-mas?" " Christmas." "You know, "X-M-A-S. "" "You mean Xmas." "You must be using an archaic pronunciation." "Like when you say "ask" instead of "ax. "" "Xmas, huh?" "COMMENTARY:" "My mom's a teacher, and the one thing she's commented on in all the seasons is she loves "ax. "" " She liked it?" " She loves it." "She could've gone either way on it." "FRY:" "These aren't Xmas trees!" " Ho, ho, huh?" "[GROUP LAUGHING]" "COMMENTARY:" "Here comes my favorite moment." "Early on, when we were developing the show we often thought about always having them say "ax. "" " There it is." " "Li-bary. "" " Matt was always pushing "li-bary. "" " Sorry." "The Professor's naked, hugging Fry." "You at home, feel free to rewind and watch that again." " Here's a pretty one." " That is incredible." "We've gotta do this shot again." "I love it." "Can we do that again?" "Is that easy?" "That shot made our technical director's head spin." " Now that you have it, can you use it?" " Now that it's spinning." "Objects that are spinning tend to remain spinning." "This scene was originally written to be in the lounge, which is small." "We had this big room that the smelloscope's in so we designed it to be decorated for Christmas." "It seemed to work better with a tall tree in it." " Yeah, it did." " It worked out well." "This room got established, so we can use it." "Amy's very clumsy, and all these physical things happen to her like she just spun off-screen." "On The Simpsons,  almost all the physical mayhem happens to the men Bart or Homer and female characters are left untouched." "We wanted to see on Futurama...  ...if we could actually use slapstick with female characters and, you know, amuse people." " It turns out we could." " It always amuses the men." " It makes the misogynists crazy." "[GROUP LAUGHING]" "This whole story was pretty much the first one even before the pilot, that we had in some detail." "It was worked out before we pitched the show." "Not all the details, but the gist." "I like the idea of a character feeling sorry for themselves, like Fry and later realizes that someone else is worse off than them and they want to atone for it." "That's the emotion we were going for." "AMY:" "She's an orphan." "Yes." "And the only one of her species in all the known universe." "What a lonely life." "My God, poor Leela." "Heard you needed cheering up." "Well, old Bender will make you laugh." "Look at me, look!" "COMMENTARY:" "Oh, I love that." "I didn't remember that." "I always love doing Bender dancing." "It always comes with a good song." "That's where the show goes..." "The show's out of the writer's hands at a point like that." "We're like:" ""John, sing whatever you want." "Animators, animate whatever you want. "" ""Our job is done. "" " And then I go, "I wrote that. " - "I wrote that funny dance. "" ""Give us five seconds of gibberish, John. "" "[MAN SINGS GIBBERISH]" " "Five seconds, please. "" " Do that again." "[MAN CHUCKLES]" "MORBO:" "Earthlings do not yet know the meaning of suffering." "COMMENTARY:" "I love that." "LINDA:" "Earlier today, I visited a shelter for down-and-out robots." "Homeless robots, too poor to afford...  ... even the basic alcohol they need to fuel their circuits." "Is there anything sadder?" "Only drowning puppies." "And there would have to be a lot of them." "[GROUP CHUCKLING]" "COMMENTARY:" "That was an Eric Kaplan line." "About storyboarding, there's a lot of action coming up that was hard to do but anyone interested in storyboarding should look at this." "Doing characters in a round room and keeping the camera active and moving the characters is hard." " Who did the storyboards for this?" " Kevin O'Brien." "You have the best storyboarders at Rough Draft." " The storyboards are beautiful." " There's one... ." "You haven't even named our Emmy-winning storyboard artist, Rodney Clouden." "There's such a depth to the artists you have there." "FARNSWORTH:" "In 2801, the Friendly Robot Company built a robotic Santa to determine who'd been naughty and who'd been nice..." "COMMENTARY:" "One of the themes in the future is humanity building robots that endanger them or serve no good purpose." "Like the homeless robots we just saw Santa Claus, who is dangerous and kills people gangster robots." " Exactly." "Somebody built and programmed a robot to be a gangster." "Homeless robots are built to be homeless." "I guess the only reasoning is robots can do gangster-type stuff more efficiently than humans can." "It's Phil LaMarr as Preacherbot." "The sci-fi explanation is that the robots build themselves, isn't it?" " Oh!" "Yes." "That's now the explanation." " Why don't we get to that?" " I like that." " That's a good one." "This is the same guy in episode 1 04." " The store clerk." "Dave Herman." " Same store." "We haven't been to that store in a long time." "Yeah, let's go back there." "Oh, God." "It is a strange idea that they would build themselves with a bindle." "[GROUP LAUGHING]" " Built-in bindle." " And a built-in hat." "Excuse me, sir." "Tress MacNeille." "Tinny Tim." "That's Phil LaMarr." "We were so proud of the name Tinny Tim." "Originally he said, "I'm sorry, we ran out early today. "" "But Tinny Tim was so good in a crummy way that he has to say his name out loud." " Who's that, Matt?" " Bongo from Life in Hell." " A rare appearance." " Didn't you sue yourself?" "Yeah, it's still pending." "I love these animals." " There was a slug from episode 1 07." " A Neptunian slug." "FRY:" "Girls like swarms of lizards, right?" "Sir, the store is closing in 2 minutes." "Okay." "I'll take the 500 lizards." "No, wait." "Yes." "No." "Yes." "Yes." "Yes!" "The parrot!" "COMMENTARY:" "That's Frank Welker as the parrot." "Normally, I wouldn't mention who does the parrot but he's so funny that I have to." "That parrot took a lot of work to get it more annoying." "It started really annoying." "We said, "It has to get even more annoying. "" "That's another editing thing." "We had him do a hundred squawks and then Paul combs through them in the editing room." " Oh, he turned his chair!" " Oh, oh!" "[GROUP MUMBLING]" " That's his bum." " Look how untan the Professor is." "Did you design that chair specifically so his butt hangs out?" " I cut the back out of it." " Oh, yes." "Oh, yes." "Oh, my, yes." "This shot's pretty amazing." " Now I'm gonna..." " Yeah, you gotta brag about this." " Ah!" " Wow." "Both the look and the idea of this is based on that silent movie..." "Harold Lloyd's Safety Last." "But The New Yorker stole this from us." "They did a cover based..." "It was the same joke as this." " Much later." " We did it a year before them." "Of course, someone probably did it about 50 years before us, but... ." "No." "No." "It's pretty cool, though, this whole digital shtick that's coming up." "Cornered!" "[MAN CHUCKLES]" "Great." "I love these wide shots." "Incredible." "[GROUP LAUGHING]" "There's a bi." "The biggest one ever in the show, I think." "We had to plan a lot of times-of-day lighting systems on this show because during Act 1 and 2 it had to get closer to dark." " We're just about there." " The danger is now!" "FRY:" "Oh, boy!" "It's Santa!" " Ho, ho, ho!" "COMMENTARY:" "That's John Goodman." "John Goodman." "That's a cool idea, the eyes turning from smiling to evil." "FRY:" "Well, check it twice." "I perform over 50 mega-checks per second." "You're both naughty..." "COMMENTARY:" "Kids, this isn't the real Santa." "We're not ruining Christmas." "It's a robot." "The real Santa is at the North Pole." "But kids, if you do live another 1 000 years..." "IN FRIGHTENING VOICE:" "...it will be the real Santa!" "John DiMaggio played Santa in our second Xmas episode." "That's right, because John Goodman couldn't make it." "Honky." "This episode was very controversial." "We didn't know it would be." "I don't think people were upset but the network worried in general that advertisers would consider it a little too dark for 7:00 at Xmas time." "So we had this on the air." "We did one for the following season, and they forbid us to air it at 7:00." "They deemed it to be too adult for 7:00." "So, as of now, we've had our second Xmas episode sitting on the shelf for a year." "Supposedly, they'll show it this year, which is, as I speak, late 2001." "I'll believe it when I see it." "They'll air it at a later time slot." "The show was never meant to be on at 7:00." " It was always meant to be later." " I think this aired at 8:30." "This was on at 8:30." "The second year was when it was gonna be on at 7:00." "You'll see that clock tower at the very end says 8:59." "It was keyed to be the actual time people were gonna watch it." "We just talked through some good 3-D Santa flying." "I was watching." "I was watching it." "We learned that you could set your watch by Futurama." "People on the Internet really hate when they never kiss." "Over and over, we torment them." "Annoying squawk coming up." "[SQUAWKS]" "[GROUP LAUGHING]" "FRY:" "Your present may need some assembly." "[GROUP CHUCKLING]" "COMMENTARY:" "David talked over his favorite part." "As we edited the show, every time the home invasion robbery happened you were almost in tears." "[GROUP CHUCKLING]" "My favorite line from that is, "I said that's enough. "" "[GROUP LAUGHING]" ""That's enough." "I said that's enough. "" "That is dark." "But it's off camera, so it's only as dark as your mind." " Oh, my God." " She appears again." "That's Hattie." "These robotic reindeer are pretty cool." "How come we didn't do all of them?" " Well, you know, two's good." " Yeah." "SANTA:" "I N G... ." "Amy, this is for you." "COMMENTARY:" "I love this scene." "Why do they all have hats on?" "Oh." "Look how giant Hermes' head is compared to Amy." "ZOIDBERG:" "These'll come in handy for my new hair." "Finally I look as pretty as I feel." "[GROUP CHUCKLING]" "[SCREAMING]" "Oh, dear, they'll be killed on our doorstep." "And there's no trash pickup till January 3rd." "COMMENTARY:" "That was a rewrite line." " We rewrote it 1 0 times." "Paul would be cutting up the mouth in the hours before it aired to stick a new line in." "The chimney cover appears in the next Christmas episode too." "Bill wrote the second Xmas episode." "That's why you're here now." "Is it that or were you just loitering around?" "The first." "The better one." "The fact they fly through the chimney is why there aren't eight reindeer." "Imagine trying to squeeze eight in that room." "ZOIDBERG:" "A pogo stick." "[MAN CHUCKLES]" "COMMENTARY:" "Ever get a pogo stick?" " I have." "It's a very disappointing gift." "[GROUP LAUGHING]" "They're pretty disappointing any time you get them." "When you're a kid, you don't have the weight to make it go." "It hits you in the chin and you throw it out." " I used to be able to do it, though." " Well, look at your size!" "Well... ." " He used to be smaller." " I used to be smaller." " I don't believe it." " I grew six inches in one summer." "[MAN LAUGHS]" " Silence." " I know." "I'm not gonna..." "Oh." "[BEEPING]" " Wow." " That's great." "FARNSWORTH:" "Good thing I got us out of that one." "[GROUP CHUCKLING]" "Bender, where did you get that bird?" "I found it lying in the street, like all the food I cook." "Dig in, everyone!" "[GROUP CHUCKLING]" "COMMENTARY:" "What is that?" " Bender says, "You got the toenail. "" "You remember, there was a lot of Bender making that kid pay for booze." "Yes, you're right." "Bender was so much meaner till we cut this thing down." "This is the friendly version of this episode." "FRY:" "I've never felt more at home." "Hear, hear!" "Now, let's all of us shut up and sing!" "He knows when you are sleeping" "He knows when you're on the can" "He'll hunt you down and blast your ass From here to Pakistan" "You'd better not breathe You'd better not move" "You're better off dead I'm telling you, dude" "Santa Claus is gunning you down" "COMMENTARY:" "And... ." "[GROUP LAUGHING]" "Why did we get cards and letters and mail on this one?" " It's a sweet..." " Wholesome, family entertainment." "That's the 8:57:06." "You're right." " That was a good one." " Great." "When we were on in prime time." "SANTA CLAUS:" "I'll be back." "Back when you least expect it." "COMMENTARY:" "Okay." " Tell us when you'll be back, John." "I'll give you your gig back if you want it." "[GROUP CHUCKLING]" " The animation was spectacular." " It was beautiful." "It truly was." "It was great." "It stands out." "The writing was good too." " Very good writing." " Good editing, Paul."