Bart Simpson

For the filmmaker, see Bart Simpson (filmmaker) .

Bartholomew JoJo " Bart " Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television seriesand part of the Simpson family . He is voiced by actress Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in short " Good Night " on April 19, 1987. Bart was created and designed by cartoonist Matt Groening while he was waiting in the lobby of James L. Brooks ' office. Groening had been called to pitch a series of shorts based onbut instead decided to create a new set of characters. While the rest of the characters were named after Groening's family members, Bart's name was an anagram of the word brat . After appearing on The Tracey Ullman Show for three years, the Simpson family received their own series on Fox , which debuted December 17, 1989.

At ten years old, Bart is the eldest child and only son of Homer and Marge , and the brother of Lisa and Maggie . Bart's most prominent character traits are his mischievousness, rebelliousness and disrespect for authority. He has appeared in other media relating to The Simpsons , including video games ,, The Simpsons Ride , commercials, and comic books ; he has also inspired an entire line of merchandise. In casting, Nancy Cartwright originally planned to audition for the role of Lisa, while Yeardley Smith tried out for Bart. Smith's voice was too high for a boy, so she was given the role of Lisa. Cartwright found that Lisa was not interesting at the time, so instead auditioned for Bart, which she thought was a better role. Hallmarks of the character include his chalkboard gags in the opening sequence; his prank calls to Moe the bartender; and his catchphrases "Eat my shorts", " ¡Ay, caramba! ", and "Don't have a cow, man!"

During the first two seasons of The Simpsons (1989–1991), Bart was the show's breakout character and "Bartmania" ensued. Bart Simpson T-shirts sporting various slogans and catchphrases became popular, selling at a rate of a million per day at their peak. The song " Do the Bartman " became a number one charting single and the seventh best-selling song of 1991 in the United Kingdom. Bart's rebellious attitude and pride at underachieving caused many parents and educators to cast him as a bad role model for children. A T-shirt reading "I'm Bart Simpson. Who the hell are you?" was banned in several public schools. Around the third season , the series started to focus more on the family as a group, although Bart remains one of the most prominent characters on the series.named Bart one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century , and he was named "entertainer of the year" in 1990 by. Nancy Cartwright has won several awards for voicing Bart, including a Primetime Emmy Award in 1992 and an Annie Award in 1995. In 2000, Bart, along with the rest of his family, was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame .

The Simpsons uses a floating timeline in which the characters do not age, and as such the show is always assumed to be set in the current year. In several episodes, events have been linked to specific times, though sometimes this timeline has been contradicted in subsequent episodes. Bart's year of birth was stated in " I Married Marge " ( season three , 1991) as being in the early 1980s.He lived with his parents in the Lower East of Springfield until the Simpsons bought their first house . When Lisa was born, Bart was at first jealous of the attention she received, but he soon warmed to her when he discovered that "Bart" was her first word.Bart's first day of school was in the early 1990s. His initial enthusiasm was crushed by an uncaring teacher and Marge became worried that something was truly wrong with Bart. One day during recess, Bart met Milhouse and started entertaining him and other students with various gestures and rude words. Principal Skinner told him "you've just started school, and the path you choose now may be the one you follow for the rest of your life! Now, what do you say?" In his moment of truth, Bart responded, "eat my shorts".The episode " That '90s Show " ( season nineteen , 2008) contradicted much of the backstory's time frame; for example, it was revealed that Homer and Marge were childless in the early 1990s.

Bart's hobbies include skateboarding , watching television (especiallywhich includes), reading comic books (especially Radioactive Man ), playing video games and generally causing mischief.His favorite movies areand theTrilogy. For the duration of the series, Bart has attended Springfield Elementary School and has been in Edna Krabappel 's fourth grade class. While he is too young to hold a full-time job, he has had occasional part time jobs. He works as a bartender at Fat Tony 's social club in " Bart the Murderer " ( season three , 1991);as Krusty the Clown 's assistant in " Bart Gets Famous " ( season five , 1994);as a doorman in Springfield's burlesque house , the Maison Derrière in " Bart After Dark " ( season eight , 1996);and briefly owns his own factory in " Homer's Enemy ". ( season eight , 1997)

The entire Simpson family was designed so that they would be recognizable in silhouette .The family was crudely drawn, because Groening had submitted basic sketches to the animators, assuming they would clean them up; instead, they just traced over his drawings.Bart's original design, which appeared in the first shorts, had spikier hair, and the spikes were of different lengths. The number was later limited to nine spikes, all of the same size.At the time Groening was primarily drawing in black and "not thinking that [Bart] would eventually be drawn in color" gave him spikes which appear to be an extension of his head.The features of Bart's character design are generally not used in other characters; for example, no other characters in current episodes have Bart's spiky hairline, although several background characters in the first few seasons shared the trait.

The basic rectangular shape of Bart's head is described by director Mark Kirkland as a coffee can. Homer's head is also rectangular (with a dome on top), while spheres are used for Marge, Lisa, and Maggie.Different animators have different methods of drawing Bart. Former director Jeffrey Lynch starts off with a box, then adds the eyes, then the mouth, then the hair spikes, ear, and then the rest of the body. Matt Groening normally starts with the eyes, then the nose, and the rest of the outline of Bart's head. Many of the animators have trouble drawing Bart's spikes evenly; one trick they use is to draw one on the right, one on the left, one in the middle, then continue to add one in the middle of the blank space until there are nine. Originally, whenever Bart was to be drawn from an angle looking down so the top of his head was seen, Groening wanted there to be spikes along the outline of his head, and in the middle as well. Instead, Wes Archer and David Silverman drew him so that there was an outline of the spikes, then just a smooth patch in the middle because "it worked graphically."In " The Blue and the Gray ", Bart (along with Lisa and Maggie) finally questions why his hair has no visible border to separate head from hair.

In the season seven (1995) episode " Treehouse of Horror VI ", Bart (along with Homer) was computer animated into a three dimensional character for the first time for the "Homer 3 " segment of the episode. The computer animation directors was provided by Pacific Data Images .While designing the 3D model of the character, the animators did not know how they would show Bart's hair. They realized that there were vinyl Bart dolls in production and purchased one to use as a model.

Bart's voice is provided by Nancy Cartwright , who voices several other child characters on The Simpsons , including Nelson Muntz , Ralph Wiggum , Todd Flanders , and Kearney .While the roles of Homer and Marge were given to Dan Castellaneta and Julie Kavner because they were already a part of The Tracey Ullman Show cast,the producers decided to hold casting for the roles of Bart and Lisa. Yeardley Smith had initially been asked to audition for the role of Bart, but casting director Bonita Pietila believed her voice was too high. Smith later recalled, "I always sounded too much like a girl. I read two lines as Bart and they said, 'Thanks for coming!'"Smith was given the role of Lisa instead.On March 13, 1987, Nancy Cartwright went in to audition for the role of Lisa. After arriving at the audition, she found that Lisa was simply described as the "middle child" and at the time did not have much personality. Cartwright became more interested in the role of Bart, who was described as "devious, underachieving, school-hating, irreverent, [and] clever".Matt Groening let her try out for the part instead, and upon hearing her read, gave her the job on the spot.Cartwright is the only one of the six main Simpsons cast members who had been professionally trained in voice acting prior to working on the show.

Cartwright's normal speaking voice is said to have "no obvious traces of Bart".The voice came naturally to Cartwright; prior to The Tracey Ullman Show , she had used elements of it in shows such as,, and.Cartwright describes Bart's voice as easy to perform, saying, "Some characters take a little bit more effort, upper respiratory control, whatever it is technically. But Bart is easy to do. I can just slip into that without difficulty."She traditionally does five or six readings of every line in order to give the producers more to work with.In flashforward episodes, Cartwright still provides the voice of Bart. For " Lisa's Wedding ", ( season six , 1995) Bart's voice was electronically lowered.

Despite Bart's fame, Cartwright is rarely recognized in public. On occasions when she is recognized on the street and asked to perform Bart's voice in front of children, Cartwright will refuse because it "freaks [them] out".During the first season of The Simpsons , the Fox Network did not allow Cartwright to give interviews because they did not want to publicize that Bart was voiced by a woman.

Until 1998, Cartwright was paid $30,000 per episode. During a pay dispute in 1998, Fox threatened to replace the six main voice actors with new actors, going as far as preparing for casting of new voices.The dispute was resolved and Cartwright received $125,000 per episode until 2004, when the voice actors demanded that they be paid $360,000 an episode.The dispute was resolved a month later,and Cartwright's pay rose to $250,000 per episode.After salary re-negotiations in 2008, the voice actors receive approximately $400,000 per episode.

In the opening sequence of many Simpsons episodes, the camera zooms in on Springfield Elementary School, where Bart can be seen writing a message on the chalkboard. This message, which changes from episode to episode, has become known as the "chalkboard gag".Chalkboard messages may involve political humor such as "The First Amendment does not cover burping", pop culture references such as " I can't see dead people ",and meta-references such as "I am not a 32 year old woman" and "Nobody reads these anymore".The animators are able to produce the chalkboard gags quickly and in some cases have changed them to fit current events. For example, the chalkboard gag for " Homer the Heretic " ( season four , 1992) read, "I will not defame New Orleans." The gag had been written as an apology to the city for a controversial song in the previous week's episode , which called the city a "home of pirates, drunks and whores".

One of Bart's early hallmarks were his prank calls to Moe's Tavern owner Moe Szyslak in which Bart calls Moe and asks for a gag name . Moe tries to find that person in the bar, but rapidly realizes it is a prank call and angrily threatens Bart. These calls were based on a series of prank calls known as the Tube Bar recordings . Moe was based partly on Tube Bar owner Louis "Red" Deutsch , whose often profane responses inspired Moe's violent side.The prank calls debuted in " Homer's Odyssey ", ( season one , 1990) the third episode to air, but were included in " Some Enchanted Evening ", the first episode of the series that was produced.As the series progressed, it became more difficult for the writers to come up with a fake name and to write Moe's angry response, so the pranks were dropped as a regular joke during the fourth season.

The catchphrase "Eat My Shorts" was an ad-lib by Cartwright in one of the original table readings, harking back to an incident when she was in high school. Cartwright was in the marching band at Fairmont High School , and one day while performing, the band chanted "Eat my shorts" rather than the usual "Fairmont West! Fairmont West!"Bart's other catchphrases, "¡Ay, caramba!" and "Don't have a cow, man!", were featured on t-shirts manufactured during the production of the early seasons of The Simpsons ."Cowabunga" is also commonly associated with Bart, although it was mostly used on the show after it had been used as a slogan on the T-shirts.The use of catchphrase-based humor was mocked in the episode " Bart Gets Famous " ( season five , 1994) in which Bart lands a popular role on Krusty the Clown 's show for saying the line "I didn't do it."The writers chose the phrase "I didn't do it" because they wanted a "lousy" phrase "to point out how really crummy things can become really popular".

Bart commonly appears nude in the show, although in every case only his buttocks are visible.In(2007), Bart appears in a sequence where he is skateboarding while fully nude; several different items cover his genitalia , but for a brief moment his penis can be seen. The scene was one of the first worked on for the film, but the producers were very nervous about the segment because they thought it would earn the movie an R rating .The film was rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America and PG by the British Board of Film Classification .The scene was later included byin their list of "30 Unforgettable Nude Scenes."

Bart's character traits of rebelliousness and disrespect for authority have been compared to that of America's founding fathers, and he has been described as an updated version of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn , rolled into one.In his book, Chris Turner describes Bart as a nihilist , a philosophical position that argues that existence is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value .

Bart's rebellious attitude has made him a disruptive student at Springfield Elementary School , where Bart is an underachiever and proud of it.He is constantly at odds with his teacher Ms. Krabappel , Principal Skinner , and occasionally Groundskeeper Willie .Bart does poorly in school and is well aware of it, having once declared, "I am dumb, okay? Dumb as ...

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org