Ian Maxtone-Graham

Ian Maxtone-Graham, born July 3, 1959, is a television writer and producer. He has written for Saturday Night Live (1992-1995) and The Simpsons (1995-present), and has also served as a co-executive producer and consulting producer for The Simpsons.

Family and earlier work
Maxtone-Graham was born in New York City, the son of naval historian and author John Maxtone-Graham and author Katrina Maxtone-Graham (née Kanzler), and the great-nephew of the British author and poet Joyce Maxtone-Graham (pen name Jan Struther). His younger brother is Guy Maxtone-Graham, a onetime writer and actor for Beavis and Butthead.

He attended Brown University, in contrast to much of the other Simpsons crew, who went to Harvard. While at Brown, he wrote for and later served as Editor-in-Chief of the Critical Review, Brown's student publication of course evaluations. He entered Brown with the class of 1981 but graduated in January 1983.

Maxtone-Graham is a triathlete, and swims with the UCLA masters team. He also kayaks, and in college was a rower.

Saturday Night Live
While at Saturday Night Live, Maxtone-Graham co-wrote the first version of The Chanukah Song with Adam Sandler. Maxtone-Graham once dumped a cup of water on Norm MacDonald's head for smoking in the writer's room. MacDonald responded by punching Maxtone-Graham, who went home and did not return for a week. Maxtone-Graham considered filing charges against MacDonald for assault and battery, and against NBC for not enforcing the no-smoking policy, but decided against it.

The Simpsons
Maxtone-Graham was one of several writers recruited to The Simpsons from the pages of George Meyer's short-lived Army Man magazine. He joined the Simpsons crew in the seventh season (though he only began writing episodes in the eighth season) and has since written some important episodes, such as "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily," in which Maude Flanders dies. In 2005, he won a Writers Guild of America award.

However, Maxtone-Graham has also become wildly unpopular among Simpsons fans on the Internet. The animosity kicked off in 1998, when he stated that he had never watched the show prior to working on it. In the same interview, he contrasted the Simpsons writers' somewhat lackadaisical approach (saying, for example, that they sometimes confused Rod and Todd) with the Internet fans' apparent obsession with continuity, and remarked, "That's why they're on the Internet and we're writing the show." The interviewer Charlotte O'Sullivan expressed discomfort with his assertion that female writers were not often part of the writing staff, as the "guy humor" of Bart and Homer dominated the show's plotlines over the characters of Marge and Lisa.

The design of the occasionally-appearing Simpsons character "Very Tall Man" (his most notable appearance being "22 Short Films About Springfield") is based on Maxtone-Graham, who in real life measures in at 6'8".

Simpsons episodes
Among the episodes he has written are:


 * "Burns, Baby Burns"
 * "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson"
 * "The Trouble with Trillions"
 * "Trash of the Titans"
 * "Lisa Gets an "A""
 * "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)"
 * "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily"
 * "Tennis the Menace"
 * "The Blunder Years"
 * "Large Marge"
 * "Dude, Where's My Ranch?"
 * "Catch 'em If You Can"
 * "The Heartbroke Kid"
 * "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story"

Trivia
Eric Idle's character in the sitcom Suddenly Susan was named after Ian Maxtone-Graham.