Ian Maxtone-Graham

Infobox Writer
name = Ian Maxtone-Graham
pseudonym =

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birthdate = birth date and age|1959|7|3
birthplace = New York City, New York, United States
deathdate =
deathplace =
occupation = Television writer
nationality = American
period = 1983 - Present
genre =
subject =
movement =
influences = Mad Magazine, National Lampoon
influenced =


website =

Ian Maxtone-Graham (born on July 3, 1959 in New York City) is an American 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 Boston, but raised 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 Trinity School on New York's Upper West Side, where he was co-captain of the swim team. He went to Brown University (although most of the other writers of "The Simpsons" 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.

After graduating from Brown, he worked at Hydrolab, a research facility in the U.S. Virgin Islands, as a support diver to a subaquatic biosphere. He worked there for one month before moving to Southern California and writing for the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

"Saturday Night Live"

While at "Saturday Night Live", Maxtone-Graham co-wrote the first version of The Chanukah Song with Adam Sandler and according to Alec Baldwin in the DVD commentary of "SNL: The Best of Alec Baldwin", was one of the writers of the infamous sketch, "Canteen Boy Goes Camping" (where a scoutmaster [played by Alec Baldwin] seduces Canteen Boy). 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. "The Simpsons"' most recent Emmy Award-winning episode, "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story", was also written by Maxtone-Graham. In 2007 he also won an Annie for the episode. In 2008, he won an Annie for the episode "24 Minutes," which he co-wrote with "Simpsons" writer Billy Kimball. Altogether, Maxtone-Graham has won six Emmys, two Annies and a Writers Guild of America Award.

However, Maxtone-Graham has also become unpopular among some fans of "The Simpsons" 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 6'6".

"The Simpsons" episodes

Among the episodes he has written are:

eason Eight

*"Burns, Baby Burns"

eason Nine

*"The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson"
*"The Trouble with Trillions"
*"Trash of the Titans" "(200th episode)"

eason Ten

*"Lisa Gets an "A""

eason Eleven

*"E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)"
*"Alone Again, Natura-Diddily"

eason Twelve

*"Tennis the Menace"

eason Thirteen

*"The Blunder Years"

eason Fourteen

*"Large Marge"
*"Dude, Where's My Ranch?"

eason Fifteen

*"Catch 'Em If You Can"

eason Sixteen

*"The Heartbroke Kid"

eason Seventeen

*"The Seemingly Never-Ending Story"

eason Eighteen

*"24 Minutes" "(with Billy Kimball as co-writer)"

External links

*imdb name|id=0561631
* [http://www.snpp.com/guides/lisa-4.html The Simpsons Archive] explains Maxtone-Graham's unpopularity.
*Maxtone-Graham's [http://www.snpp.com/other/interviews/ian.html infamous interview] .
* [http://www.snpp.com/other/interviews/maxtone-graham99.html Another interview]
* [http://www.zip.com.au/~lnbdds/home/mgjohn.htm Maxtone-Graham family tree]
* [http://www.norm-macdonald.com/articles/jaymohr.html An excerpt from Jay Mohr's book "Gasping for Airtime"] describes the fight between Norm MacDonald and Maxtone-Graham.