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David Mirkin

David Mirkin (born 1957 (age 38)) is an American feature film and television director, writer and producer. Mirkin grew up in Philadelphia and intended to become an electrical engineer, but abandoned this career path in favor of studying film at Loyola Marymount University. After graduating, he became a stand-up comedian, and then moved into television writing. He wrote for the sitcoms Three's Company, It's Garry Shandling's Show and The Larry Sanders Show and served as showrunner on the series Newhart. After an unsuccessful attempt to remake the British series The Young Ones, Mirkin created Get a Life in 1990. The series starred comedian Chris Elliott and ran for two seasons, despite a lack of support from many Fox network executives, who disliked the show's dark and surreal humor. He moved on to create the sketch show The Edge starring his then-partner, actress Julie Brown.

Mirkin left The Edge during its run and became the executive producer and showrunner of The Simpsons for its fifth and sixth seasons. Mirkin has been cited as introducing a more surreal element to the show's humor, as shown by his first writing credit for the show, "Deep Space Homer", which sees Homer Simpson go to space as part of a NASA program to restore interest in space exploration. He won four Primetime Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award for his work on The Simpsons. Mirkin stood down as showrunner after season six, but produced several subsequent episodes, co-wrote The Simpsons Movie (2007) and in 2013 remains on the show as a consultant. Mirkin has also moved into feature film direction: he directed the films Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997) and Heartbreakers (2001).

Early life
Mirkin was born and raised in Philadelphia and graduated from Northeast High School in 1975. He is Jewish. His father was a computer engineer until his death in 1960. Mirkin's older brother Gary worked as a television engineer for the Philadelphia NBC affiliate, KYW-TV, now a CBS owned-and-operated station. Throughout his childhood, Mirkin had an interest in film, and explored both writing and filming. Mirkin has described himself as a "nerd" and was often in trouble as a child because he was "in another world". At high school, he felt the teaching was "too slow" and was allowed by his teachers to "skip class two to three days a week".

Mirkin intended to pursue a career in electrical engineering, which he saw as a more stable employment opportunity than writing or film making. He took a course at Philadelphia's Drexel University which offered six months of teaching followed by a six-month internship at the National Aeronautics Federal Experimental Center. Mirkin found the experience to be monotonous and unenjoyable and chose to abandon this career path. He decided that "making no money doing something I loved was going to be better than making a good living doing something I didn't", so took "an enormous chance on show business" and moved to Los Angeles. He attended film school at Loyola Marymount University, and graduated in 1978.

Mirkin lists Woody Allen and James L. Brooks as his writing inspirations and Stanley Kubrick and the work of the comedy group Monty Python as developing his "dark sense of humor". He considers Mike Nichols's film The Graduate to be what inspired him to enter directing.

Early career on Three's Company and Newhart
Mirkin started out as a stand-up comedian in 1982 and performed across the United States, including at The Comedy Store, where he became a regular, and at The Improv. The first joke he used in his routine was, "Is it just me or has everybody been coughing up blood lately?" Mirkin considers the joke to be "an insight into the way [he writes]". Stand-up comedy was the most profitable and easily accessible route Mirkin found into the comedy industry, but "it wasn't a lifestyle that [he] particularly coveted," especially due to the traveling required.

He got his first job writing for television on the sitcom Three's Company in 1983. Through his cousin, Mirkin met writer George Tricker who became his mentor. Tricker wrote for the Three's Company spin-off The Ropers so Mirkin wrote a spec script for an episode of The Ropers. Although rejected by the producers of The Ropers, Three's Company creator Bernie West was impressed by the script and Mirkin began pitching ideas for that series instead. Mirkin pitched to the series' story editors for several years without success because they had very limited script buying power. He was eventually able to pitch to the show's producers, who bought a script from him, and then hired him as a staff writer. Mirkin was apprehensive about the job because he was aiming to work on Cheers, a show more focused on character-driven humor which Mirkin preferred writing, but felt he could not turn the opportunity down. Mirkin considered Three's Company to have "a classic French farce structure", as "the characters were so stupid they could never say anything clever." This meant Mirkin had to adapt his preference for character-driven comedy to fit the show; it "forced you to put all the cleverness into the plot, a much more difficult thing to do. The plot had to get all the laughs". Mirkin felt the experience "taught [him] a lot about structure" which greatly aided his later work on character-focused shows.

Still hoping to work on Cheers, Mirkin sent a spec script of an episode of Taxi to Cheers writers Ken Levine and David Isaacs. The two approved and offered Mirkin a freelance job writing one of the final nine episodes of the show's first season, pending their commissioning by NBC. The episodes were commissioned, but Mirkin's agent rejected the Cheers job without telling his client, failing to see why Mirkin would want to work on what was then the lowest-rated comedy on television. Mirkin sacked the agent and signed on with Robb Rothman. Rothman knew Dan Wilcox, the executive producer of Newhart, which like Cheers was more character-focused. Rothman persuaded Wilcox to hire Mirkin. Mirkin wrote a freelance script and in 1984 beat seven other writers to a staff position on the series. He served as a writer and supervising story editor, before being promoted to executive producer and showrunner after one and a half years. Mirkin "felt [Newhart] was where I belonged. I'd finally come to a place in my life where everything I'd ever wanted had come together." In 1987, he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for Newhart. It was the first nomination the show had received in that category and for the first episode Mirkin wrote as the series' showrunner. Mirkin directed several of the Newhart episodes he wrote because he saw directing as "a means of protecting the writing". A philosophy he carried into his later work, Mirkin felt that "being the head writer... was not enough; you had to see the material through its execution – especially the weirder stuff. You had to be right there to make sure every sick idea didn't lose any disturbing nuance." Mirkin left Newhart in 1988, desiring to work on a single-camera sitcom.

After leaving Newhart, Mirkin wrote freelance scripts for It's Garry Shandling's Show and The Tracey Ullman Show. Garry Shandling asked Mirkin to co-create The Larry Sanders Show with him. Mirkin did not have time, but worked as writer and consultant on the show's first season, and later returned to direct the 1998 final season episode "The Beginning of the End".

Get a Life and The Edge

Mirkin wanted to produce a surreal, Monty Python-esque, single-camera comedy series. He had a development deal with Newhart's producers MTM Enterprises and persuaded them to buy the rights to produce a pilot for an American adaptation of the British sitcom The Young Ones. The pilot was entitled Oh No, Not Them!, and featured Nigel Planer from the original series, as well as Jackie Earle Haley and Robert Bundy. Mirkin had wanted to cast comedian Chris Elliott in the pilot, but was prevented by Fox, which wanted Elliott for another show. Oh No, Not Them!, in Mirkin's words, "tested through the floor" because it was too "surreal" and "sarcastic" and was not picked up. Mirkin and Elliott decided to develop a show together, along with Adam Resnick. In 1990, they created the sitcom Get a Life, which was conceived as a dark, surreal, psychotic version of the cartoon Dennis the Menace. The show stars Elliott as Chris Peterson, a 30-year-old newspaper delivery boy who still lives with his parents, and who is increasingly losing his grip on reality. Fox was lukewarm about the idea, but Mirkin convinced them to order a pilot by understating how dark the show would be. The network executives disliked the pilot after seeing an initial run-through, but Mirkin felt that this was because they "didn't get" the show and opted not to change it. The executives enjoyed the finished pilot and it was aired. However, throughout the show's run, the network's initially negative attitude prevailed. According to Mirkin, many of the executives struggled to understand it and objected to the darkness and surrealism of the show's humor, which included the frequent death of Elliott's character, and regularly threatened to shut down production. After its first season, on the insistence of the network, Chris moves out of his parents' garage, attempts to get additional jobs to his paper route, and attempts to get a girlfriend. However, Mirkin and Elliott refused to "[compromise on] the essential goofiness of the show".

Mirkin served as executive producer for the series, directed most of the episodes, wrote several of them, and oversaw the filming and production of them all, to ensure that they had the correct "tone". The show's production process was lengthy; Mirkin would rise at 5 a.m. to film the show, write further episodes from 7 p.m. until 1 a.m., and then repeat that the following day. Unlike most single-camera shows, which have around six days to film, Mirkin had to film each episode in two days. He enjoyed doing it, but described it as "not a healthy way to live". Due to the logistics of filming the show, especially its many sets and effects, Mirkin convinced Fox to not film it in front of a studio audience and use a laugh track instead. The show achieved steady ratings in its first season, finishing 92nd out of the 129 shows listed in the Nielsen ratings. However, for its second season, it was moved from 8:30 p.m. on Sunday to 9:30 p.m. on Saturday and lost the bulk of its audience; it was canceled after that second season finished in 1992. In a 1999 piece about the show's DVD release, Tom Shales praised the show, concluding, "At its best, Get a Life achieved dizzying heights of surrealist farce. At its worst, it was at least amusingly idiotic existential slapstick. Get a Life is a television classic unlike any other. For one thing, most of the others are better. We're not talking Playhouse 90 here, after all. But we are talking riotous nonsense, and that's not to be sneezed at. It's to be laughed at. Hard." A strong cult following subsequently developed, and Mirkin noted that although the show was canceled "ultimately we got the audience I was hoping for and they are super dedicated and passionate to this day."

In 1991, Mirkin wrote a pilot with Julie Brown entitled The Julie Show, starring Brown, but NBC did not produce it. Several people at the network enjoyed it and commissioned The Edge, a sketch comedy show also written by Mirkin and Brown, with Mirkin directing. NBC opted against production, but Fox ran it from 1992 to 1993. Mirkin had long wished to produce a sketch show, and designed The Edge to be "fast-paced" and "some skits overlap, end abruptly or are broken into segments", in order to maintain attention. The Edge was a ratings success and was supported by the network. Mirkin considered it "the first time I experienced the feeling of having a hit that I created. It just kept building and growing." The show's material often inflamed its targets, particularly producer Aaron Spelling. Spelling objected to a sketch mocking his series Beverly Hills, 90210, another Fox show, and its lead actress Tori Spelling, who is his daughter. He demanded a public apology and that no further episodes contain the parody, threatening to sue. The show's production company TriStar Television refused, while Mirkin responded: "The thing about these parodies is they don't hurt a show. It's only cross-promotion. The viewers who like the show always come back the next week. What's upsetting to me is it shows absolutely that Mr. Spelling has no sense of humor." Mirkin left his role as executive producer of The Edge during its run. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Mirkin had been "forced off the show", due to the negative reaction of Spelling and others, though in 2012, Mirkin stated that he left the series after refusing to accept a substantially reduced budget. The show's producers Sony failed to persuade him to stay but he returned to the series to produce its final "Best Of" compilation.

The Simpsons
Mirkin was the executive producer and showrunner for the animated sitcom The Simpsons, during its fifth and sixth seasons (1993–1995). Following the end of the show's fourth season, most of the original staff members left the show; only Bill Oakley, Josh Weinstein, Conan O'Brien and Dan McGrath remained, and O'Brien soon left to replace David Letterman as host of Late Night. Executive producers James L. Brooks and Richard Sakai hired Mirkin following his exit from The Edge. He had been asked to join the show's writing team when it started in 1989, but decided instead to work on Get a Life. He was a fan of The Simpsons before being hired for the show, and started work in November 1992. Due to the show's long production cycle, season five did not air until the following September. Mirkin was the program's first solo showrunner. Due to the high staff departure at the end of season four, Mirkin "pretty much had to build [the] show from the ground up again", and noted that this "was exciting but also a big challenge". He hired several new writers, including Richard Appel, David X. Cohen, Jennifer Crittenden, Greg Daniels, Bob Kushell, Jace Richdale and Mike Scully.

Mirkin's tenure on The Simpsons has been cited as a period where the series evolved to focus more on abstract and surreal stories and humor. A. O. Scott notes that "several veterans recall the 'crazy David Mirkin years' as a time of wild inventiveness." In The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History (2009), John Ortved describes Mirkin's era as moving the show away from more "realistic" emotional and character-based stories to "pure comedy" and "surreal" humor. In a 2004 interview with Animation Magazine, Mirkin stated that he felt that he "brought [the show] back to a more story-oriented" approach and increased the focus on characters and their emotions, although "at the same time still keeping it surreal and weird". Mirkin moved the show's focus toward Homer Simpson, and also developed some of its secondary characters, including Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. He also strongly opposed censorship and network interference, telling post-production supervisor Colin A.B.V. Lewis to ignore the list of changes sent by the Fox censors. He aimed to put "as much blood and guts" as possible into the episode "Treehouse of Horror V" as an attack on the censors.

Ortved—using interviews with writers Bob Kushell and Brent Forrester and Mirkin's assistant Charleen Easton—describes Mirkin as an "outsider" on the show, with the writing staff, at least initially, divided with respect to Mirkin's comedy and leadership style. Forrester described the latter as "a little bit dictatorial". Mirkin conducted the show's writing sessions in one room, rather than splitting the writers into two groups, as later showrunners would do, and often worked late into the night. Some praised Mirkin's leadership, including Appel, who felt that "the shows were great under him." Others criticised him, including Kushell, who clashed with Mirkin over the episode "A Star is Burns", a crossover with The Critic. In 2004, Mirkin stated that he "really wasn't at all intimidat[ed] to join [the show's writing] crew", because he "had worked with and written with" many of his fellow writers previously and concluded that, "[I took] this show in a direction that is more personal to me. I did that, had a great time doing that, and everyone was very receptive to that." Mirkin's era and style of humor are popular amongst the show's fans.

The season five episode "Deep Space Homer", in which the characters Homer and Barney are recruited by NASA, is Mirkin's first writing credit on The Simpsons, the second being "The Man Who Came to Be Dinner", which was co-written with Al Jean. Mirkin worked on the concept for a long time, basing the story on NASA's Teacher in Space Project scheme to send ordinary civilians into space in order to spark interest amongst the general public. The idea proved controversial to some of the show's writing staff, who felt that having Homer go into space was too "large" an idea. Series creator Matt Groening felt that the idea gave the writers "nowhere to go". Based on these attitudes, several jokes were toned down to make the episode feel more realistic, including the impression that everyone at NASA was as stupid as Homer. During re-writes, Mirkin and the other writers placed greater emphasis on the relationship between Homer and his family and on Homer's attempts to be a hero, but most of Mirkin's original script was retained. The episode is considered one of the show's best. Colin Kennedy of Empire magazine named it a "contender for greatest ever episode", and in Chris Turner's book, Planet Simpson, he says the episode is "second to none". Regarding the long sequence that begins with Homer eating potato chips in the space shuttle and ends with Kent Brockman's dramatic speech, Turner claimed that it was "simply among the finest comedic moments in the history of television". A copy of the episode was later sent to the International Space Station for astronauts to view. Mirkin considers the episode to be "very very special". Ortved says the episode, in its plot and surreal humor, epitomizes Mirkin's era.

Mirkin pitched the plots for the episodes "The Last Temptation of Homer", "Bart's Girlfriend" and "Homer the Great". He also produced the two-part episode "Who Shot Mr. Burns?", which aired as the finale of season six and the premiere of season seven. The writers decided to write the episode in two parts with a mystery that could be used as a contest. Mirkin suggested Maggie Simpson as the culprit because he felt it was funnier and wanted the culprit to be a family member.

After season six, Mirkin suggested Oakley and Weinstein take over as showrunners, but remained on the show in an advisory capacity, helping them with technical aspects of the show such as editing and sound mixing, and attending table readings of the scripts. He was the executive producer for three other episodes from season seven: "Lisa the Vegetarian", "Radioactive Man" and "Team Homer". "Lisa the Vegetarian" was approved by Mirkin after the story was pitched by Cohen; Mirkin had just become a vegetarian himself, and so many of Lisa's experiences in the episode were based on his own. Mirkin flew to London to record the episode's guest stars Paul and Linda McCartney at Paul's recording studio, where the McCartneys spent an hour recording their parts. Mirkin later said that recording with the McCartneys was one of the most "amazing" experiences of his life and considers the episode to be one of his favorites. Mirkin returned to the role of showrunner to produce the episodes "The Joy of Sect" and "All Singing, All Dancing" for season nine. He pitched the plot for "The Joy of Sect", because he was attracted to the notion of parodies of cults, calling them "comical, interesting and twisted".

Mirkin still works part-time on the show as a consultant, helping with the re-write process. The show's nine-month production cycle allows him to contribute to each episode in some form, whilst engaging in other projects as well. Mirkin also co-wrote The Simpsons Movie in 2007, and the 3D animated short The Longest Daycare in 2012, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Mirkin won four Primetime Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award for his work on The Simpsons.

Subsequent work
Mirkin directed the feature film Romy and Michele's High School Reunion in 1997. The film stars Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow as two friends determined to show their former high school tormentors at their 10-year reunion that they have led successful lives. Mirkin said of the film: "These are women characters we haven't seen before. There are so few female buddy movies, written funny for women. Women don't get to do odd, strange, self-involved roles like these." He knew Kudrow previously and felt she was "perfect" for the role, but did not expect Sorvino would take the part given her recent Academy Award win for Mighty Aphrodite, but it "turn[ed] out that she'd had a horrible time in high school, so the story appealed to her". The film received critical praise, as did Mirkin's direction. James Berardinelli wrote that Mirkin "brings a lot of energy to the production, always keeping things moving", while Jack Matthews of the Los Angeles Times says Mirkin "knew exactly what he had here and composed it like frames in a comic strip, ordering cheerful snow-cone colors for everything from the girls' childlike outfits to the decor of a Laundromat".

In 1999, several of the Fox executives who had disliked Get a Life came to Mirkin and apologized for the way they had treated the show, stating that they now found it funny. They commissioned Mirkin to write, produce and direct a similarly-themed show of his choice. Mirkin produced a pilot for Jeff of the Universe, a "sarcastic" parody of the science fiction genre. The executives who had disproved of Get a Life had since moved from the Fox Network to Fox Studios, and they liked this new show. However, the new executives at Fox did not, and chose not to air the show. Mirkin often plays clips from the show at the talks he does at colleges; they receive a positive response.

Heartbreakers, Mirkin's second film as a feature director, was released in 2001. Mirkin rejected the project three times because he disliked the script. While he liked the idea of a mother and daughter con-woman team, he found the writing "really broad", and "it had no emotion in it." Eventually, Mirkin was allowed to rewrite the script himself, which he did in a year's time. He filmed the project in Florida and Los Angeles and had a cameo appearance in the film as Jack's lawyer. Reactions to both the film and Mirkin's direction of it were more varied compared to Romy and Michele's High School Reunion. Roger Ebert said the film was not "as sly and has no ambition to be [as] charming" as Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, "but in a season of dreary failed comedies it does what a comedy must: It makes us laugh". Chris Hewitt of Empire wrote that "Mirkin's direction is a little flat, but he's clearly having tremendous fun," but Susan Wloszczyna of USA Today opined that Mirkin "never gets the timing right and allows the story to drag with little internal logic".

Mirkin was attached to direct Sports Widow in 2004, a comedy starring Reese Witherspoon as a disregarded housewife who seeks to become an expert in American football in order to regain her husband's attention; the project has never been completed. Mirkin is a fan of the musician James Taylor; Taylor guest starred in "Deep Space Homer" and Mirkin directed the music videos for his songs "Enough to Be on Your Way" and "Sea Cruise". , Mirkin will write, direct and co-produce a biopic of businessman Richard Branson, based on his memoir Losing My Virginity.

Personal life
Mirkin is a vegetarian. In the early 1990s, Mirkin was in a relationship with actress Julie Brown, with whom he had worked on The Julie Show and The Edge.

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Carus

Marcus Aurelius Carus (c. 222 – July or August 283) was Roman emperor from 282 to 283. During his short reign, Carus fought the Germanic tribes and Sarmatians along the Danube frontier with success.

He died while campaigning against the Sassanid Empire and is believed to have died of unnatural causes. It was reported that he had been struck by lightning. He was succeeded by his sons Carinus and Numerian, creating a dynasty which, though short-lived, provided further stability to the resurgent empire.

Biography
Carus, whose name before the accession may have been Marcus Numerius Carus, was born, according to differing accounts, either in Gaul, Illyricum or Africa. Modern scholarship inclines to the former view, placing his birth at Narbo (modern Narbonne) in Gallia Narbonensis, though he was educated in Rome. Little can be said with certainty of his life and rule. Due to the decline of literature, the arts, and the want of any good historians of that age, what is known is almost invariably involved in contradiction and doubt. He was apparently a senator and filled various posts, both civil and military, before being appointed praetorian prefect by the emperor Probus in 282.

Two traditions surround his accession to the throne in August or September of 282. According to some mostly Latin sources, he was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers after the murder of Probus by a mutiny at Sirmium. Greek sources however claim that he rose against Probus in Raetia in a usurpation and had him killed. Allegedly, he initially refused the offer at first out of loyalty, but soon accepted. The often unreliable Historia Augusta is aware of both traditions, although it prefers the former. He does not seem to have returned to Rome after his accession, contenting himself with an announcement to the Senate. This was a marked departure from the constitutionalism of his immediate predecessors, Tacitus and Probus, who at least outwardly respected the authority of the senate, and was the precursor to the even more despotic military autocracy of Diocletian. Despite this, he still sought to deify the emperor Probus.

Campaign against the Sassanids and death
Carus bestowed the title of Caesar upon his sons Carinus and Numerian, then, in the beginning of 283, he elevated Carinus to the rank of Augustus, leaving him in charge of the western portion of the empire to look after some disturbances in Gaul and took Numerian with him on an expedition against the Persians, which had been contemplated by Probus. During his first campaign as emperor, he inflicted a severe defeat on the Quadi and Sarmatians on the Danube, for which he was given the title Germanicus Maximus. Reportedly, 16,000 Quadi were killed, with 20,000 being taken prisoner. Carus then proceeded through Thrace and Asia Minor, annexed Mesopotamia, pressed on to Seleucia and Ctesiphon, and marched his soldiers beyond the Tigris.

The Sassanid King Bahram II, limited by internal opposition and his troops occupied with a campaign in modern-day Afghanistan, could not effectively defend his territory. The Sasanians, faced with severe internal problems, could not mount an effective coordinated defense at the time; Carus and his army may have captured the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon. The victories of Carus avenged all the previous defeats suffered by the Romans against the Sassanids, and he received the title of Persicus Maximus. Rome's hopes of further conquest, however, were cut short by his death; Carus died in Sasanian territory, probably of unnatural causes, as he was reportedly struck by lightning. Alternate theories suggest that he died of illness, or that a rival for power poisoned him. Another theory hints at the future emperor Diocletian being involved in the killing. However, Leadbetter considered it unlikely for Carus to be assassinated, as his army had just won a victory.

Legacy
Like the conquests of Trajan, 160 years before, Carus' gains were immediately relinquished by his successor. His son Numerian, naturally of an unwarlike disposition, was forced by the army to retreat back over the Tigris. The report of the lightning strike was evidently widely accepted in the camp, and the superstitious awe of the troops inclined them to ascribe Carus' death to the wrath of the Gods. Rumors had been spread of dark oracles, affixing the limits of the Empire on the Tigris, and threatening destruction against the Roman who should presume beyond the river in arms. Persia was abandoned to her rightful possessors, and not till Diocletian, a decade later, was the Persian contest decided in Rome's favor, by that emperor's decisive victory.

In the sphere of civil affairs, Carus is remembered principally for the final suppression of the authority of the senate, which had been partially restored under Tacitus and Probus. He declined to accept their ratification of his election, informing them of the fact by a haughty and distant dispatch. He was the last emperor to have united a civil with a military education, in that age when the two were increasingly detached; Diocletian (Imp. 284–305), who succeeded Carus after the brief reign of the latter's sons, was to confirm and formalize the separation of professions, and the autocratic foundation of the imperial rule.

Though Carus was known throughout his life for his austere and virtuous manners, the suspicion of his complicity in Probus' death, along with his haughty conduct towards the senate, tarnished his reputation before his death, and Julian, as Gibbon observes, conspicuously places him among the tyrants of Rome, in his catalogue of The Caesars.

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America Eats Its Young

America Eats Its Young is the fourth studio album and the first double album by Funkadelic, released in May 1972. This was the first album to include the whole of the House Guests, including Bootsy Collins, Catfish Collins, Chicken Gunnels, Rob McCollough and Kash Waddy. It also features the Plainfield-based band U.S. (United Soul), which consisted of guitarist Garry Shider and bassist Cordell Mosson, on most of the tracks. Unlike previous Funkadelic albums, America Eats Its Young was recorded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and in the UK. The original vinyl version contained a poster illustrated by Cathy Abel. The bottom of the poster features the first widespread appearance of the Funkadelic logo, which would appear on the cover of their next album Cosmic Slop.

Composition
According to Dave Rosen of Ink Blot, America Eats Its Young was radical in that it "devours" African-American music whole "and regurgitates it back as a virtual catalog of styles and sounds. Containing no hit singles and precious few catchy tunes, America Eats Its Young is primarily an experimental record that doubles as a lesson in the history of black music." Dave Swanson of Ultimate Classic Rock said that Funkadelic stripped away the "sounds of rock, funk, soul and psychedelia" that had defined their previous albums, instead delivering a "hard funk offering" Biographer Kris Needs described the album as Clinton's "grand statement" on the Vietnam War and "other elements that were afflicting his country", and further added that it featured Clinton's "most ambitiously epic production yet to befit the socially-conscious themes bristling among the love ditties and reworks."

Critical reception
Vernon Gibbs of Soul Sounds wrote in 1973 that most fans of Funkadelic were "universal in their condemnation of certain parts of America Eats Its Young," while conceding it himself to have a "dearth of top notch material" for a double album, and said that the consensus highlights "could not offset the badly thought out stuff". Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide (1981) that the album was marred by its double length, "programmatic lyrics" and usage of strings as well as Funkadelic's continued use of sleeve notes by the Process Church of the Final Judgment, further singling out "Biological Speculation" and "Loose Booty" as the album's only good songs.

Among retrospective reviews, Andrew Perry of Select panned the album as an unappealing, "cluttered jazz-rock fusion" that was alone in the Parliament-Funkadelic discography and which "seldom [earned] the accolade of true funkadelia." He also felt Clinton was largely uninvolved with the album, which instead profiles "vague polemic" that provides "neither the entertainment nor the hedonistic alternative of the moon-age anti-manifesto that was Clinton's trademark". Christgau revisited the album for Blender, where he reiterated his dislike of the liner notes and described it as "Funkadelic's worst album", whose domination by Bernie Worrell scorched "the widespread and plausible muso theory that his keyboards were what made P-Funk P-Funk. Strewing chaos and screwing his friends, George Clinton was what made P-Funk P-Funk." He later called it Clinton's "most Zappaesque" album.

More positive was Ned Raggett of AllMusic, who described America Eats Its Young as a double album that was "worth every minute of it" and a departure from the "endless slabs of double-album dreck that came around the same time" as Funkadelic brought "life, soul and much more to the party". The Rolling Stone Album Guide says that although America Eats Its Young is not Funkadelic's best album, it "introduces key elements that will lead Clinton to Parliament", such as vocal harmonies and Worrell's playful, catchphrase-heavy humour, and favoured the "party tunes" over the album's "political anger". Dominique Leone of Pitchfork called it a "disparate, schizophrenic record" where Clinton's attempts to make it more crossover-friendly were thwarted by its length, adding "there's simply too much material, and too many conflicting directions to really make this seem anything other than a Frankenstein production." He nonetheless compared it to the Beatles' White Album (1968) due to it "containing too much great stuff to dismiss, but by almost anyone's standards, containing more than it needs." Mojo named it an "expansive work by a huge funk collective".

Everybody Is Going to Make It This Time
The song was recorded in London, with the assistance of English drummer Ginger Baker, who was one of Clinton's favorite drummers.

Personnel:
 * Vocals: Calvin Simon, George Clinton, Bernie Worrell, Garry Shider, Dr. Music (Diane Brooks, Steve Kennedy)
 * Guitar: Garry Shider
 * Bass: Prakash John
 * Keyboards: Bernie Worrell
 * Drums: Tyrone Lampkin
 * David Van De Pitte – arranged steel and string guitar

A Joyful Process
This song starts off borrowing the music from the children's Christian song, "Jesus Loves Me".

 * String and horn arrangements by Bernie Worrell
 * Drums: Zachary Frazier

We Hurt Too

 * String and Steel guitar by David Van De Pitte
 * Vocals: George Clinton, Ray Davis, Calvin Simon, Garry Shider

Loose Booty

 * Vocals: George Clinton
 * Vocal Ad libs: Eddie Hazel
 * Guitar: Harold Beane
 * Bass guitar: Cordell Mosson
 * Keyboard: Bernie Worrell
 * Drums: Tiki Fulwood

Philmore
This song represents the first major songwriting effort of Bootsy Collins as a member of Parliament-Funkadelic, and is widely considered the introduction to his musical persona.

 * Lead Vocals: Bootsy Collins
 * Bass: Bootsy Collins
 * Guitar: Catfish Collins

I Call My Baby Pussycat
George Clinton sang lead vocals, with Frank Waddy on drums.

The song is a remake of a faster version, titled "I Call My Baby Pussycat", recorded by Parliament on their 1970 album Osmium. Two versions of the song (fast and slow), based on the original Parliament version, appear on the 1996 live Funkadelic release Live: Meadowbrook, Rochester, Michigan – 12th September 1971.

This later version of the song was originally retitled "Pussy," and that title appears on the cover of some vinyl versions of the album, and on some modern CD reissues. Under record company pressure, the titled was restored to "I Call My Baby Pussycat," on future Parliament-Funkadelic releases featuring the song, and some future CD pressings of America Eats Its Young. Both titles can be found on modern CD pressings of the album.

 * Lead guitar and backup vocals: Eddie Hazel

America Eats Its Young

 * steel and string guitar arrangements by David Van De Pitte

Biological Speculation

 * Steel and string guitar arrangements by David Van De Pitte
 * Lead Vocals: George Clinton, Calvin Simon
 * Guitar: Garry Shider

That Was My Girl
The song is a remake of a 1965 version by The Parliaments.

 * Lead Vocals: George Clinton

Balance

 * Lead Vocals: Bootsy Collins

Miss Lucifer's Love
"Miss Lucifer's Love" features vocals by Fuzzy Haskins and string and horn arrangements by Bernie Worrell. Its songwriters are George Clinton and Fuzzy Haskins.

 * Lead vocal: Fuzzy Haskins
 * Lead guitar: Eddie Hazel

Wake Up

 * String and horn arrangements by Bernie Worrell

Personnel

 * Keyboards & Melodica: Bernie Worrell
 * Percussion: Zachary Frazier, Tiki Fulwood, Ty Lampkin, Kash Waddy
 * Guitar: Harold Beane, Catfish Collins, Ed Hazel, Garry Shider
 * Bass guitar: Bootsy Collins, Prakash John, Boogie Mosson
 * Trumpet: Bruce Cassidy, Arnie Chycoski, Ronnie Greenway, Chicken Gunnels, Al Stanwyck
 * Alto saxophone: Randy Wallace
 * Tenor saxophone: Robert McCullough
 * Steel guitar: Ollie Strong
 * Juice harp: James Wesley Jackson
 * Violin: Victoria Polley, Albert Pratz, Bill Richards, Joe Sera
 * Viola: Walter Babiuk, Stanley Solomon
 * Cello: Ronald Laurie, Peter Schenkman
 * Vocals: Harold Beane, Diane Brooks, Bootsy Collins, Catfish Collins, George Clinton, Ray Davis, Ronnie Greenway, Clayton Gunnels, Fuzzy Haskins, Ed Hazel, Prakash John, Steve Kennedy, Garry Shider, Calvin Simon, Grady Thomas, Frank Waddy, Randy Wallace, Bernie Worrell

Charts
Album - Billboard (United States)

Singles - Billboard (United States)

title: America Eats Its Young


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International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA ) is a LGBTQ+ rights organization.

It participates in a multitude of agendas within the United Nations, such as creating visibility for LGBTQ+ issues by conducting advocacy and outreach at the Human Rights Council, working with members to help their government improve LGBTI rights, ensuring LGBTI members are not forgotten in international law, and advocating for LBTI women's issues at the Commission on the Status of Women.

History
The International Lesbian and Gay Association was founded in 1978 by activists from United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Australia, the United States, and elsewhere. Finding it difficult to repeal the criminalization of homosexuality based on the common law tradition, the activists adopted a human rights based framing and focused on international courts, especially the European Court of Human Rights as it was easier to access. ILGA was involved in the Dudgeon v. United Kingdom (1981) and Norris v. Ireland (1988) cases that led to the repeal of laws criminalizing homosexuality in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. At the same time, it worked on cases related to unequal ages of consent, military service, transgender rights, asylum and housing rights, but these did not lead to a successful outcome.

ILGA was formerly known as International Lesbian and Gay Association, it adopted its current title in 2008. ILGA has grown to include 1,600 organizations from over 150 countries to fight for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people.

The Coventry conference also called upon Amnesty International (AI) to take up the issue of persecution of lesbians and gays. After a 13-year campaign AI made the human rights of lesbians and gays part of its mandate in 1991 and, following the Brazilian Resolution, now advocates for LGBT rights on the international level.

ILGA obtained consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in mid-1993. Statements were made in the name of ILGA in the 1993 and 1994 sessions of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities and in the 1994 session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. ILGA's NGO status was suspended in September 1994 due to the group's perceived ties with pro-pedophilia organizations such as the North American Man/Boy Love Association. In 1994, these groups were expelled from the organization, and in June 2011, the ECOSOC granted consultative status to ILGA after a 29 to 14 vote, despite the strong opposition from African and Islamic countries. Consultative status gives the ILGA the ability to attend and speak at UN meetings and participate in Human Rights Council proceedings.

ILGA was involved in getting the World Health Organization to drop homosexuality from its list of illnesses.

Conferences
According to its constitution, ILGA has a world conference in which all of its member organisations can attend. The world conference normally sets the time and place for the next conference. However, the Executive Board has used its power under the constitution to set an alternative venue, in the event the venue originally set becomes unviable, as was the case in 2008, when the originally chosen venue of Quebec had to be abandoned due to difficulties encountered by the local organizing committee in raising the necessary funds and the conference had to be held in Vienna instead. The 2010 ILGA world conference took place in São Paulo, Brazil, the 2012 Conference took place in Stockholm, and the 2014 Conference took place in Mexico City.

Protests often made the conferences that the organization held more dramatic and having more negative attention then would've been wanted. A problem encountered was financial in nature which recently came to a head when an ILGA conference actually had to be postponed because of lack of funding. In 2022, ILGA held its first world conference since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Long Beach, California.

International Intersex Forum

With a move to include intersex people in its remit, ILGA and ILGA-Europe have sponsored the only international gathering of intersex activists and organisations. The International Intersex Forum has taken place annually since 2011.

The third forum was held in Malta with 34 people representing 30 organisations "from all continents". The closing statement affirmed the existence of intersex people, reaffirmed "the principles of the First and Second International Intersex Fora and extend the demands aiming to end discrimination against intersex people and to ensure the right of bodily integrity, physical autonomy and self-determination". For the first time, participants made a statement on birth registrations, in addition to other human rights issues.

Funding
ILGA's main source of income are donations from governments, organizations, private foundations, amongst the contribution of individuals. In 2020, the total income of ILGA amounted to 2,213,268 CHF.

State-Sponsored Homophobia
In 2011, ILGA released its State-Sponsored Homophobia Report and map that brings to light 75 countries that still criminalize same-sex relationships between two consenting adults. These countries are mainly in Africa and in Asia.

In 2016, ILGA released an updated version of the State-Sponsored Homophobia Report. The report found that "same-sex sexual acts" are illegal in 72 countries. These countries are 37% of the States in the United Nations. Of these 72 countries, 33 are in Africa, 23 are in Asia, 11 are in the Americas, and six are in Oceania.

Historian Samuel Clowes Huneke criticized ILGA maps for showing most Western and non-Western countries in different colors, stating that while "This division probably make sense to the casual observer... queer scholars and activists have noted that it also has colonial overtones".

Curbing Deception
In February 2020, ILGA launched Curbing Deception - A Comprehensive Global Survey on Legal Restrictions of 'Conversion Therapies'. This research report examines laws at both national and subnational levels that prohibit efforts to change sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. Additionally, the report delves into a wide range of techniques historically and currently employed in an attempt to modify the sexual orientation of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals, impede transgender youth from transitioning, induce detransitioning in transgender individuals, or enforce adherence to societal stereotypes of masculinity and femininity regarding gender expression and roles.

Our Identities under Arrest
Our Identities under Arrest is the first publication specifically focusing on the enforcement of laws that criminalize consensual same-sex sexual acts and diverse gender expressions at a global level. It goes beyond the black letter law to track how these provisions are effectively enforced. The first edition was published in December 2021 and it reviewed over 900 instances in which law enforcement authorities have subjected LGBTQ+ and gender-diverse individuals to fines, arbitrary arrests, prosecutions, corporal punishments, imprisonments, and potentially even the death penalty.

The report provides evidence revealing the significant underreporting of arrests and prosecutions across different countries. It highlights the notable gap between official records on enforcement published by certain governments (such as Morocco, Uzbekistan, Cameroon, and Sri Lanka) and the number of instances documented through alternative sources collected by ILGA World for this report. The report also found that judicial prosecution is a poor indicator to assess levels of enforcement, as arrests and detentions without formal judicial proceedings are the predominant methods of enforcing criminalizing provisions. In many countries, individuals can be detained for extended periods, ranging from several days to weeks or even months, without any form of judicial or administrative review.

The report also highlights the fluctuating nature of the enforcement of criminalizing provisions, which can vary in frequency and intensity over time, with periods characterized by a significant increase in documented instances, followed by periods with no recorded or documented cases of enforcement. The report found that in many criminalizing countries, authorities and law enforcement officials sporadically enforce these provisions in ways that are often unpredictable. Even countries that are considered "safe" or where little information on enforcement is available can experience sudden and unexpected shifts in their approach to these provisions.

Global Attitudes Survey
In 2016, ILGA published its 2016 Global Attitudes Survey on LGBTI People. The principal subject surveyed was attitudes about "sexual orientation."


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Julie Kavner

Julie Deborah Kavner (born September 7, 1950) is an American actress. Before becoming well-known for her voice role as Marge Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, Kavner attracted notice for her role as Brenda Morgenstern, the younger sister of Valerie Harper's title character in the sitcom Rhoda, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She also voices other characters for The Simpsons, including Marge's mother, Jacqueline Bouvier, sisters Patty and Selma Bouvier, and half-step-great-aunt Eunice Bouvier.

Known for her improvisation and distinctive "honeyed gravel voice", Kavner was cast in her first professional acting role as Brenda Morgenstern in Rhoda in 1974. Starting in 1987, Kavner appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show. The Tracey Ullman Show included a series of animated shorts about a dysfunctional family. Voices were needed for the shorts, and the producers asked Kavner to voice Marge. The shorts were spun off into The Simpsons.

Kavner has been described as "nearly reclusive"; part of her contract says that she will never have to promote The Simpsons on video. For her work as Marge, Kavner received another Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance in 1992 and an Annie Award nomination for her performance as the character in The Simpsons Movie (2007).

Typically cast as a "woman who is supportive, sympathetic or self-effacingly funny", Kavner grew to dislike playing such roles. In 1992, she starred in This Is My Life, her first leading role in a feature film. Kavner has also appeared in live-action roles in six films written by Woody Allen and in the Adam Sandler comedy Click.

Early life
Kavner was born in Los Angeles, California, on September 7, 1950, the second daughter of Rose, a family counselor, and David Kavner, a furniture manufacturer, and grew up in Southern California. She decided to pursue a career in acting because "There was nothing else I wanted to do, ever". She attended Beverly Hills High School (which she later admitted she hated), where she was "something of a loner", and unsuccessfully tried out for several plays. John Ingle, formerly the chairman of the Beverly Hills High School art department, later commented that Kavner was "excellent at improvisation, but she wasn't an ingenue [sic] and not that castable at that age".

After graduating from high school, Kavner attended San Diego State University and majored in drama, being cast in several productions including a role as Charlotte Corday in Marat/Sade, becoming known for her improvisation and ability to do both comedy and drama. After graduating in 1971, she got a day job as a typist at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture.

Early career
In 1973, Kavner auditioned for a role as one of Rhoda Morgenstern's sisters in The Mary Tyler Moore Show. David Davis, producer of the show, had convinced her to audition for the part, but decided to cast another actress instead. A year later, Rhoda Morgenstern became the leading character in a spin-off called Rhoda. Kavner was cast in her first professional acting role as Brenda Morgenstern, sister of the eponymous character. Rhoda ran on CBS from September 9, 1974, to December 1978. She received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Continuing Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for playing Brenda, winning in 1978. She also received four Golden Globe Award nominations. In 1975, she received Daytime Emmy Award nomination for her starring role in the daytime special The Girl Who Couldn't Lose.

Following Rhoda, Kavner had a guest appearance on Taxi and appeared in the 1985 comedy Bad Medicine as well as the 1987 film Surrender, both of which were box office failures (and also starred Steve Guttenberg). She appeared in the television movies Revenge of the Stepford Wives, No Other Love and A Fine Romance, and shot a television pilot. She also starred in several stage plays, including a play called It Had to Be You at a dinner theater in Canada, Particular Friendships in New York City in 1981, and Two for the Seesaw, directed by Burt Reynolds. Woody Allen first saw Kavner one night while he was watching Rhoda in the 1970s. He thought that she was remarkable and later offered her a role in his 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters. Kavner agreed, and credits Allen and the film with rejuvenating her career.

Kavner was then cast as a sidekick to Tracey Ullman in The Tracey Ullman Show, which debuted on Fox in 1987. Kavner described the show as, "like being back in school, a chance to play a wide variety of characters, some really vicious people, to not rest on laurels, to not play it safe". Kavner commented, "What I do is not mimicry or an impersonation, but more of an assimilation. [On The Tracey Ullman Show] we did a lot of looking at people to find out who to base our characters on. We did our homework on our lunch hour." She received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Best Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program.

The Simpsons
Kavner became known for her role as Marge Simpson on the animated television show The Simpsons, a show that continues to the present day. The Tracey Ullman Show included a series of animated shorts about the dysfunctional Simpson family. Voices were needed for the shorts, so the producers decided to ask Kavner and fellow cast member Dan Castellaneta to voice Marge and Homer rather than hire more actors. Kavner has what Hilary de Vries of The New York Times described as a "honeyed gravel voice". Kavner says her voice is due to "a bump on [her] vocal cords". Marge's voice has aged considerably throughout the series as Kavner has gotten older, and the higher register of Marge's voice in the earliest seasons had to be adjusted as it began to strain Kavner's voice.

Although Marge is her highest profile character on the show, Kavner's favorite characters to voice are Marge's sisters Patty and Selma Bouvier because "they're really funny and sad at the same time". Series creator Matt Groening instructed Kavner to voice the duo as characters who "suck the life out of everything". Both have similar raspy voices, but Patty's voice is more masculine and has a lower register, while Selma's voice is a little sweeter. Kavner also provides the voices of every other female member of the Bouvier family, including Marge's mother Jacqueline, Great-Aunt Gladys (a dead relative who was introduced on season four's "Selma's Choice"), and an unnamed grandmother seen on the season six episode "Fear of Flying".

Whilst cast members and crew have referenced Kavner as a deep fan of the series and the characters she voices, part of Kavner's contract says that she will never have to promote The Simpsons on video nor has she performed Marge's voice in public because she believes the publicity "destroys the illusion. People feel these are real people." Kavner takes recording sessions seriously, and feels that voice acting is "a little more limiting than live acting. And I have nothing to do with my character's movement." Nancy Cartwright, who voices Bart Simpson, said in her book My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy (2000) that Kavner is a warm person who is "a workhorse of an actor" with "extraordinary professionalism and quiet work ethic", and notes that she is rarely late for recording sessions. Kavner has only one recorded interview in regard to her work on the show from 1992, describing Marge as "a wonderful person" with "a great sex life".

Until 1998, Kavner 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 to cast new voices. However, the dispute was soon resolved and she received $125,000 per episode until 2004 when the voice actors demanded that they be paid $360,000 an episode. The issue was resolved a month later, and Kavner earned $250,000 per episode. After salary re-negotiations in 2008, the voice actors received approximately $400,000 per episode. Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, Kavner and the other cast members accepted a 30 percent pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode.

At the 44th Primetime Emmy Awards, Kavner received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for voicing Marge in the season three episode "I Married Marge". In 2004, Kavner and Dan Castellaneta won a Young Artist Award for Most Popular Mom & Dad in a TV Series. For her performance in The Simpsons Movie, Kavner was nominated for Best Voice Acting in an Animated Feature at the 2007 Annie Awards, but Ian Holm from Ratatouille received the award. Kavner's emotional performance in the movie got positive reviews, and one critic said she "gave what must be the most heartfelt performance ever to find its way into a movie based on an irreverent cartoon". Some scenes in the movie, such as Marge's emotional video message to Homer, were recorded over 100 times, leaving Kavner exhausted.

Further career
Many of Kavner's roles have been described by New York Times writer Hilary de Vries as a "woman who is supportive, sympathetic, or self-effacingly funny". Kavner grew to despise playing such roles, saying "If it smacks of Brenda Morgenstern, I won't take the job." She had a supporting role as Eleanor Costello, a nurse who befriends Robin Williams' character in the Academy Award nominated film Awakenings (1990). Kavner interviewed several nurses in preparation for the role, and Penny Marshall, the director of the film, described Kavner as "a low-maintenance actor [...] You never have to worry about giving [her] back-story for her characters." In 1992, Kavner starred in This Is My Life, her first leading role in a feature film. Kavner played Dottie Ingels, an aspiring stand-up comedian who starts neglecting her family when her career begins to take off. Kavner described Dottie as "really selfish" but admitted, "I liked the role for that very reason." Kavner had been asked to play a character with a smaller role in the film, but Joe Roth, at the time the chairman of 20th Century Fox, suggested that they cast a lesser known actress in the lead role. Nora Ephron, the writer of This Is My Life, said Kavner "has so little vanity that it is almost shocking. Not only does she have no demands as an actress – 'How big is my trailer, what's in my refrigerator?' – but she will do anything for the character if it makes sense to her."

Kavner has frequently appeared in Woody Allen films, having roles in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Radio Days (1987), New York Stories (1989), Alice (1990), Shadows and Fog (1991), the television movie Don't Drink the Water (1994) and Deconstructing Harry (1997). Allen described her as "a naturally funny person. When she does a scene, you listen to her and look at her, and the prism through which it's all filtered is funny." Kavner believes he is "a true filmmaker, one that has something to say, continually experimenting on different themes within his own film-making", adding that "anything [Allen] ever does, I always want to do, [...] I don't even have to read it."

She has done voice-over work in films such as The Lion King 1½ (2004), Dr. Dolittle (1998) and an uncredited role as an announcer in A Walk on the Moon (1999). She worked with Tracey Ullman in the HBO sketch comedy series Tracey Takes On... She was cast as the mother of Adam Sandler's character in Click, released in 2006. She has not appeared in a non-Simpsons role since her appearance in Click.

Personal life
Kavner is Jewish. She has lived in New York City's Manhattan borough since around 1992. She leads an intensely private life, described by The New York Times as "nearly reclusive" and "discreet and guarded beyond the usual reticent star routine". She rarely makes public appearances and refuses to be photographed while working. She was in a relationship with producer David Davis from 1976 until his death in 2022. Neither of them confirmed being married, though reports referred to her as his wife at the time of his death.

In 1983, Current Biography referred to Kavner as an avid athlete and pescetarian. In a 1992 interview with The New York Times, she said she was considering retiring "except for doing three days a year for Woody [Allen]", but had a feeling that she would receive a script she wanted "to do more than life itself" upon retiring.

title: Julie Kavner


text:
Nancy Cartwright

Nancy Jean Cartwright (born October 25, 1957) is an American actress. She is the long-time voice of Bart Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, for which she has received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance and an Annie Award for Best Voice Acting in the Field of Animation. Cartwright also voices other characters for the show, including Ralph Wiggum, Todd Flanders, Nelson Muntz, and Maggie Simpson. She is also the voice of Chuckie Finster in the Nickelodeon series Rugrats and its spin-off All Grown Up!, succeeding Christine Cavanaugh.

Cartwright was born in Dayton, Ohio. She moved to Hollywood in 1978 and trained under voice actor Daws Butler. Her first professional role was voicing Gloria in the animated series Richie Rich, which she followed with a starring role in the television movie Marian Rose White (1982) and her first feature film, Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). In 1987, Cartwright auditioned for a role in a series of animated shorts about a dysfunctional family that was to appear on The Tracey Ullman Show. Cartwright intended to audition for the role of Lisa Simpson, the middle child; when she arrived at the audition, she found the role of Bart—Lisa's brother—to be more interesting. Matt Groening, the series' creator, allowed her to audition for Bart and offered her the role on the spot. She voiced Bart for three seasons on The Tracey Ullman Show, and in 1989, the shorts were spun off into a half-hour show called The Simpsons.

Besides The Simpsons, Cartwright has also voiced numerous other animated characters, including Daffney Gillfin in Snorks, Mellissa Screetch in Toonsylvania, Rufus in Kim Possible, Mindy in Animaniacs, Pistol in Goof Troop, the Robots in Crashbox, Margo Sherman in The Critic and Todd Daring in The Replacements. In 2000, she published her autobiography, My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy, and four years later, adapted it into a one-woman play. In 2017, she wrote and produced the film In Search of Fellini.

Early life
Nancy Jean Cartwright was born on October 25, 1957, in Dayton, Ohio, Frank and Miriam Cartwright's fourth of six children. She grew up in Kettering, Ohio, and discovered her talent for voices at an early age. While in the fourth grade at the school of St. Charles Borromeo, she won a school-wide speech competition with her performance of Rudyard Kipling's How the Camel Got His Hump. Cartwright attended Fairmont West High School, and participated in the school's theater and marching band. She regularly entered public speaking competitions, placing first in the "Humorous Interpretation" category at the National District Tournament two years running. The judges often suggested to her that she should perform cartoon voices. Cartwright graduated from high school in 1976 and accepted a scholarship from Ohio University. She continued to compete in public speaking competitions; during her sophomore year, she placed fifth in the National Speech Tournament's exposition category with her speech "The Art of Animation".

In 1976, Cartwright landed a part-time job doing voice-overs for commercials on WING radio in Dayton. A representative from Warner Bros. Records visited WING and later sent Cartwright a list of contacts in the animation industry. One of these was Daws Butler, known for voicing characters such as Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss, Elroy Jetson, Spike the Bulldog, and Yogi Bear. Cartwright called him and left a message in a Cockney accent on his answering machine. Butler immediately called her back and agreed to be her mentor. He mailed her a script and instructed her to send him a tape recording of herself reading it. Once he received the tape, Butler critiqued it and sent her notes. For the next year, they continued in this way, completing a new script every few weeks. Cartwright described Butler as "absolutely amazing, always encouraging, always polite".

Cartwright returned to Ohio University for her sophomore year, but transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) so she could be closer to Hollywood and Butler. Her mother, Miriam, died late in the summer of 1978. Cartwright nearly changed her relocation plans but, on September 17, 1978, "joylessly" left for Westwood, Los Angeles.

Early career
While attending UCLA, which did not have a public speaking team, Cartwright continued training as a voice actress with Butler. She recalled, "every Sunday I'd take a 20-minute bus ride to his house in Beverly Hills for a one-hour lesson and be there for four hours ... They had four sons, they didn't have a daughter and I kind of fitted in as the baby of the family." Butler introduced her to many of the voice actors and directors at Hanna-Barbera. After she met the director Gordon Hunt, he asked her to audition for a recurring role as Gloria in Richie Rich. She received the part, and later worked with Hunt on several other projects. At the end of 1980, Cartwright signed with a talent agency and landed a lead role in a pilot for a sitcom called In Trouble. Cartwright described the show as "forgettable, but it jump-started my on-camera career". She graduated from UCLA in 1981 with a degree in theater. During the summer, Cartwright worked with Jonathan Winters as part of an improvisation troupe at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

Returning to Los Angeles, Cartwright won the lead role in the television movie Marian Rose White. Janet Maslin, a critic for The New York Times, described Cartwright as "a chubby, lumbering, slightly cross-eyed actress whose naturalness adds greatly to the film's impact". Cartwright replied by sending Maslin a letter insisting she was not cross-eyed, and included a photograph. Later, Cartwright auditioned for the role of Ethel, a girl who becomes trapped in a cartoon world in the third segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie. She met with director Joe Dante and later described him as "a total cartoon buff, and once he took a look at my resume and noticed Daws Butler's name on it, we were off and running, sharing anecdotes about Daws and animation. After about twenty minutes, he said, 'considering your background, I don't see how I could cast anyone but you in this part! It was her first role in a feature film. The segment was based on The Twilight Zone television series episode "It's a Good Life", which was later parodied in The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror II" (1991).

Cartwright continued to do voice work for projects including Pound Puppies, Popeye and Son, Snorks, My Little Pony and Saturday Supercade. She joined a "loop group", and recorded vocals for characters in the background of films, although in most cases the sound was turned down so that very little of her voice was heard. She did minor voice-over work for several films, including The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), Silverado (1985), Sixteen Candles (1984), Back to the Future Part II, and The Color Purple (1985). Cartwright also voiced a shoe that was "dipped" in acid in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), describing it as her first "off-screen death scene", and worked to correctly convey the emotion involved.

In 1985, she auditioned for a guest spot as Cynthia in Cheers. The audition called for her to say her line and walk off the set. Cartwright decided to take a chance on being different and continued walking, leaving the building and returning home. The production crew was confused, but she received the part. In search of more training as an actress, Cartwright joined a class taught by Hollywood coach Milton Katselas. He recommended that Cartwright study La Strada, a 1956 Italian film starring Giulietta Masina and directed by Federico Fellini. She began performing "every imaginable scene" from La Strada in her class and spent several months trying to secure the rights to produce a stage adaptation. She visited Italy with the intention of meeting Fellini and requesting his permission in person. Although they never met, Cartwright kept a journal of the trip and later wrote a one-woman play called In Search of Fellini, partially based on her voyage. The play was co-written by Peter Kjenaas, and Cartwright won a Drama-Logue Award after performing it in Los Angeles in 1995. In a 1998 interview, she stated her intention to make it into a feature film, which she succeeded in doing in 2017.

The Simpsons

Cartwright voices the character Bart Simpson on the long-running animated television show The Simpsons. On March 13, 1987, she auditioned for a series of animated shorts about a dysfunctional family that was to appear on The Tracey Ullman Show, a sketch comedy program. Cartwright had intended to audition for the role of Lisa Simpson, the elder daughter. 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, described as "devious, underachieving, school-hating, irreverent, [and] clever". Creator Matt Groening let her try out for Bart and gave her the job on the spot. Bart's voice came naturally to Cartwright, as she had previously used elements of it in My Little Pony, Snorks, and Pound Puppies. Cartwright describes Bart's voice as easy to perform compared with other characters. The recording of the shorts was often primitive; the dialog was recorded on a portable tape deck in a makeshift studio above the bleachers on the set of The Tracey Ullman Show. Cartwright, the only cast member to have been professionally trained in voice acting, described the sessions as "great fun". However, she wanted to appear in the live-action sketches and occasionally showed up for recording sessions early, hoping to be noticed by a producer.

In 1989, the shorts were spun off into a half-hour show on the Fox network called The Simpsons. Bart quickly became the show's breakout personality and one of the most celebrated characters on television—his popularity in 1990 and 1991 was known as "Bartmania". Bart was described as "television's brightest new star" by Mike Boone of The Gazette and was named 1990's "entertainer of the year" by Entertainment Weekly. Despite Bart's fame, however, Cartwright remained relatively unknown. During the first season of The Simpsons, Fox ordered Cartwright not to give interviews, because they did not want to publicize the fact that Bart was voiced by a woman. Cartwright's normal speaking voice is said to have "no obvious traces of Bart", and she believes her role is "the best acting job in the world" since she is rarely recognized in public. When she is recognized and asked to perform Bart's voice in front of children, Cartwright refuses because it "freaks [them] out". Bart's catchphrase "Eat My Shorts" was an ad-lib by Cartwright in one of the original table readings, referring to an incident from her high school days. Once while performing, members of the Fairmont West High School marching band switched their chant from the usual "Fairmont West! Fairmont West!" to the irreverent "Eat my shorts!" Cartwright felt it appropriate for Bart, and improvised the line; it became a popular catchphrase on the show. Cartwright voices several other characters on the show, including Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum, Todd Flanders, Kearney, and Database. She first voiced Nelson in the episode "Bart the General" (season one, 1990). The character was to be voiced by Dana Hill, but Hill missed the recording session and Cartwright was given the role. She developed Nelson's voice on the spot and describes him as "a throat-ripper". Ralph Wiggum had originally been voiced by Jo Ann Harris, but Cartwright was assigned to voice the character in "Bart the Murderer" (season three, 1991). Todd Flanders, the only voice for which Cartwright used another source, is based on Sherman (voiced by Walter Tetley), the boy from Peabody's Improbable History, a series of shorts aired on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

Cartwright received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance in 1992 for her performance as Bart in the episode "Separate Vocations" and an Annie Award in 1995 for Best Voice Acting in the Field of Animation. Bart was named one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century by Time, and in 2000, Bart and the rest of the Simpson family were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard.

Until 1998, Cartwright was paid $30,000 per episode. During a pay dispute in 1998, Fox threatened to replace the six main voice actors and made preparations for casting new actors. The dispute was resolved, however, and Cartwright received $125,000 per episode until 2004, when the voice actors demanded $360,000 an episode. A compromise was reached after a month, and Cartwright's pay rose to $250,000 per episode. Salaries were re-negotiated in 2008 with the voice actors receiving approximately $400,000 per episode. Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, Cartwright and the other cast members accepted a 25 percent pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode.

Further career
In addition to her work on The Simpsons, Cartwright has voiced many other characters on several animated series, including Chuckie Finster in Rugrats and All Grown Up!, Margo Sherman in The Critic, Mindy in Animaniacs, and Rufus the naked mole-rat in Kim Possible. For the role of Rufus, Cartwright researched mole-rats extensively, and became "a font of useless trivia". She was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program in 2004 for her work on the show. In 2001, Cartwright took over the Rugrats role of Chuckie Finster when Christine Cavanaugh retired. Cartwright describes Rufus and Chuckie as her two most difficult voices: "Rufus because my diaphragm gets a workout while trying to utilize the 18 vocal sounds a mole makes. Chuckie because ... he's an asthmatic with five personalities rolled into one—plus I have to do the voice the way [Cavanaugh] did it for 10 years." Other television shows that have used her voice work include Galaxy High, God, the Devil and Bob, Goof Troop, Mike, Lu & Og, The Replacements, Pinky and the Brain and Timberwolf. Cartwright has appeared on camera in numerous television shows and films, including Fame, Empty Nest, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Flesh and Blood, Godzilla, and 24.

In 2000, Cartwright published her autobiography, My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy. The book details her career (particularly her experiences as the voice of Bart) and contains stories about life behind the scenes of The Simpsons. Laura A. Bischoff of the Dayton Daily News commented that the book was the "ultimate insider's guide to The Simpsons". Critics complained that the book lacked interesting stories and was aimed mostly at fans of The Simpsons rather than a general audience.

Cartwright adapted My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy into a one-woman play in 2004. Cartwright has performed it at a variety of venues, including the August 2004 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. The play received modest reviews, including criticism for a lack of inside stories about The Simpsons, and its "overweeningly upbeat" tone. David Chatterton of The British Theatre Guide described the show as "interesting and entertaining, but not really a 'must see' even for Simpsons fans".

Cartwright has shown an interest in stock car racing and as of 2007 was seeking a NASCAR license. In 2001, she founded a production company called SportsBlast and created an online animated series called The Kellys. The series is focused on racing; Cartwright voices a seven-year-old named Chip Kelly.

In 2016, Cartwright launched Spotted Cow Entertainment, her own film and television production company, with Peter Kjenaas, Monica Gil and Kevin Burke. With a focus on international audiences, Spotted Cow is seeking "to finance, produce and acquire live action and animated films, television series, as well as entertainment for digital platforms with budgets up to $15M." With Spotted Cow, Cartwright made her first film as a screenwriter and producer, In Search of Fellini, which was released on September 15, 2017. Based on her own journey to Italy in 1985 in a bid to meet the famed director Federico Fellini, the film fulfilled Cartwright's longtime vision of turning her 1995 one-woman play In Search of Fellini into a movie.

Personal life
Cartwright met Warren Murphy, 24 years her senior, on her birthday in 1988 and married him two months later. In her book, she describes Murphy as her "personal laugh track". The couple had two children, Lucy and Jack, before divorcing in 2002.

Cartwright was raised a Roman Catholic but joined the Church of Scientology in 1991. She was awarded Scientology's Patron Laureate Award after donating $10,000,000, almost twice her annual salary, to the Church in 2007.

Cartwright is a contributor to ASIFA-Hollywood's Animation Archive Project. In September 2007, Cartwright received the Make-A-Wish Foundation's Wish Icon Award "for her tremendous dedication to the Foundation's fundraising and wish-fulfillment efforts." In 2005, Cartwright created a scholarship at Fairmont High School "designed to aid Fairmont [graduates] who dream of following in her footsteps and studying speech, debate, drama or music" at Ohio University. In 2005, Cartwright was given the title of Honorary Mayor of Northridge, California (a neighborhood of Los Angeles) by the Northridge Chamber of Commerce.

In 2007, Cartwright was in a romantic relationship with contractor Stephen Brackett, a fellow member of Scientology. In early 2008, the couple had made plans to marry, but Brackett died in May 2009, after he "apparently leaped" off the Bixby Creek Bridge in Big Sur, California.

In 2012, Cartwright received an honorary doctorate degree in communication from Ohio University, where she was a student from 1976 to 1977 before transferring to UCLA.

Cartwright is also a painter, sculptor and philanthropist. She co-founded the Know More About Drugs alliance.

title: Nancy Cartwright