Meyer, George

Biography

George Meyer was born in Pennsylvania in 1957 and grew up in Tuscon, AZ. After graduating from Harvard in 1978, he applied to medical school, was accepted, but never enrolled. Midway through his sophomore year at Harvard, he joined the writing staff of the Lampoon where he established many long-term relationships. In 1981, he started writing for the David Letterman Show and is credited with a stunt that was the basis for many subsequent Letterman routines: squashing things with a steam roller. He also wrote segments in which Letterman would demonstrate a variety of strange gadgets, which were presented as new products but had actually been conceived by Meyer. Meyer left Letterman after about two years to take a job with New Show, Lorne Michaels's successor to Saturday Night Live. The show was cancelled after just two and a half months taking Meyer to Not Necessarily the News, and then to Saturday Night Live . Meyer also published a small, offbeat humor magazine called Army Man . The first issue (there would eventually be three) was written almost entirely by him and included eight typed pages; he printed two hundred copies, which he gave away to friends. The magazine attracted a loyal following and made Rolling Stone's Hot List in 1989.

Meyer began writing for The Simpsons in late 1989, a few months before the show's premiere, on Fox and went on to become an executive producer of the show. The show, created by Matt Groening, started as a series of short vignettes featured on the FOX variety program The Tracey Ullman Show starting in 1987. The Simpsons is the longest-running cartoon on American prime-time network television, chronicling the animated adventures of Homer Simpson and his family.

From the guide to the George Meyer Simpsons script files, 1990-2004, (University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Performing Arts Special Collections.)