George Meyer

George Meyer (born 1956) is an American producer and writer.

Meyer is best known for his work on The Simpsons, where he served as a scriptwriter and gag writer (for which he is credited as a producer) and led the show's communal rewriting process for much of its earlier run.

He has been publicly credited with "thoroughly shap[ing] ... the comedic sensibility" of the show.

Raised in Tucson, Meyer attended Harvard University.

Born in Pennsylvania, United States in 1956, Meyer grew up in Tucson, Arizona.

He is the eldest of eight children in a Roman Catholic family of German ancestry.

His parents both worked in the real estate business.

Meyer has made jokes about his somewhat unhappy childhood, stating that one common argument in his household was "which family member ruined a holiday", while his sister noted Meyer was frequently blamed for the family's problems.

Due to its size, family activities were limited so Meyer watched lots of television and read Mad magazine.

He is an Eagle Scout and an altar boy and wrote for the student newspaper.

He grew up hoping to one day become either a priest or ballplayer.

He was uninterested in television, only finding humor in Get Smart and Batman, where he appreciated its "loopy, irreverent humor."

Meyer attended Harvard University, where he served as president of the Harvard Lampoon.

The fact that people took humor "very seriously" at the Lampoon "changed [Meyer's] life".

In 1977, he and several other Lampoon staffers wrote The Harvard Lampoon Big Book of College Life (ISBN 0385134460), a volume commissioned by Doubleday.

Aside from the Lampoon, his grades at Harvard were average and he suffered several bouts of depression.

There, after becoming president of the Harvard Lampoon, he graduated in 1978 with a degree in biochemistry.

Abandoning plans to attend medical school, Meyer attempted to make money through dog racing but failed after two months.

He graduated in 1978 with a degree in biochemistry and was accepted into medical school, but decided not to enroll.

After a series of short-term jobs he was hired in 1981 by David Letterman, on the advice of two of Meyer's Harvard Lampoon cowriters, to join the writing team of his show Late Night with David Letterman.

Meyer left after two seasons and went on to write for The New Show, Not Necessarily the News and Saturday Night Live.

Tired of life in New York, Meyer moved to Boulder, Colorado where he wrote a screenplay for a film for Letterman to star in.

The project fell through and Meyer then founded the humor zine Army Man which garnered a strong following, although Meyer ended it after three issues.

Meyer left to write for The New Show in late 1983, a short-lived variety series from Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels.

He shared an office with writer Jack Handey, whom he credited with giving him comedy advice.

Following this, he joined the writing teams at Not Necessarily the News, and Saturday Night Live beginning in 1985.

He later called working on SNL an "exhilarating, frustrating, stressful, and indelible experience."

The producer Sam Simon was a fan and he hired Meyer to write for the animated sitcom The Simpsons in 1989.

He has held a number of positions on the show and also cowrote The Simpsons Movie.

Meyer is in a relationship with the writer Maria Semple and the two have a daughter.

Meyer commented on his Roman Catholic upbringing in a 2000 New Yorker profile:

"People talk about how horrible it is to be brought up Catholic, and it's all true. The main thing was that there was no sense of proportion. I would chew a piece of gum at school, and the nun would say, 'Jesus is very angry with you about that,' and on the wall behind her would be a dying, bleeding guy on a cross. That's a horrifying image to throw at a little kid. You really could almost think that your talking in line, say, was on a par with killing Jesus."

After college, Meyer moved to Denver, Colorado, planning to "scientifically" win a fortune through dog racing.

However, he ran out of money after two weeks.

He then worked in a variety of jobs including substitute teacher and salesman in a clothing store, and also won $2,000 on the game show Jeopardy!.

At one point he worked in a research lab as an assistant, studying glycoproteins "in the hope that they would prove the key to cell-cell recognition."

Meanwhile, fellow Lampoon writers Tom Gammill and Max Pross suggested Meyer to comedian David Letterman who, along with head writer Merrill Markoe, hired him as a member of the writing staff on Letterman's new late night show.

Letterman noted: "Everything in his submission, down to the last little detail, was so beautifully honed."

Meyer wrote several recurring gags for the show, including "Crushing Things With A Steamroller".

His ambitions for the show were grandiose; "I wanted to challenge the audience every night, stagger them with brilliance, blast them into a higher plane of existence," he later explained.