Mike Scully

Michael C. Scully (born October 2, 1956) is an American television writer and producer.

Scully was born October 2, 1956, at Springfield Hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts, and grew up in the Merrick section of West Springfield.

He graduated from West Springfield High School in 1974, having been voted "Most Likely Not to Live Up to Potential" by his classmates, and dropped out of Holyoke Community College after one day, undecided about what he wanted to do with his life.

He took up work in the clothing department at Steiger's department store, as a janitor at the Baystate Medical Center and also as a driving instructor.

He commented: "I think if I had actually succeeded at college and gotten a degree in accounting or something, I might have given up too quickly on writing. Having no marketable job skills was a tremendous incentive to keep trying to succeed as a writer."

He realized "there probably wasn't going to be a career in riding around with my friends listening to Foghat," so Scully decided he "definitely wanted to break into comedy" even though he "really had no reason to believe [he] could succeed."

Regardless, he moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1982.

In California, Scully worked in a tuxedo store.

He also got a job writing jokes for comedian Yakov Smirnoff and developed his joke writing skills by performing himself at amateur stand-up comedy nights.

He purchased scripts from a variety of half-hour comedy shows, including Taxi, to train himself to write them and had numerous speculative scripts rejected.

He started "bouncing around Hollywood working on some of the lousiest sitcoms in history."

He served on the writing staff of The Royal Family, Out of This World, Top of the Heap and What a Country!, where he did audience warm-up, a role he also performed on Grand.

His father, Richard, was a salesman and owned a dry cleaning business, his mother Geraldine (d. 1985) worked for the Baystate Medical Center once Scully and his brothers were old enough to be left at home alone.

Scully is of Irish ancestry.

As a child Scully "hoped to be a musician or a hockey player."

At Main Street Elementary School, with the encouragement of his teacher James Doyle, he developed an interest in writing, serving as editor for his school newspaper.

Eventually, in 1986, he moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a stand-up comic and wrote for Yakov Smirnoff.

Scully went on to write for several television sitcoms before 1993, when he was hired to write for The Simpsons.

There, he wrote twelve episodes, including "Lisa on Ice" and "Team Homer", and served as showrunner from seasons 9 to 12.

Scully won three Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on the series, with many publications praising his episodes, but others criticizing his tenure as a period of decline in the show's quality.

In 1993, David Mirkin hired Scully to write for The Simpsons, as a replacement for the departing Conan O'Brien, after reading some of his sample scripts.

He began as a writer and producer for the show during its fifth season and wrote the episodes "Lisa's Rival", "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds" and "Lisa on Ice" which aired in season six.

"Lisa's Rival" was his first episode; he wrote the script, but the original concept had been conceived by O'Brien.

Similarly, he wrote the script for "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds", which was based on an idea by Al Jean and Mike Reiss.

"Lisa on Ice" was inspired by Scully's love of ice hockey and featured many experiences from his childhood, as was "Marge Be Not Proud" (which he wrote for season seven) which was based "one of the most traumatic moments" of his life, when he was caught shoplifting at age 12.

He jokingly told Variety that "It's great to be paid for reliving the horrors of your life."

He also wrote "Team Homer" and "Lisa's Date with Density".

Scully noted: "I wrote a lot of Lisa's shows. I have five daughters, so I like Lisa a lot. I like Homer, too. Homer comes very naturally to me: I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. A lot of my favorite episodes are the ones when Homer and Lisa are in conflict with each other ... They're very human, I think that's their appeal."

He is known for his work as executive producer and showrunner of the animated sitcom The Simpsons from 1997 to 2001.

Scully grew up in West Springfield, Massachusetts, and long had an interest in writing.

He was an underachiever at school and dropped out of college, going on to work in a series of jobs.

Scully became showrunner of The Simpsons in 1997, during its ninth season.

As showrunner and executive producer, Scully said his aim was to "not wreck the show", and he headed up the writing staff and oversaw all aspects of the show's production.

During his time as showrunner he was credited with writing or co-writing five episodes: "Treehouse of Horror VIII" ("The HΩmega Man" segment), "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday", "Beyond Blunderdome", "Behind the Laughter" and "The Parent Rap".

Scully was popular with the staff members, many of whom praised his organization and management skills.

Writer Tom Martin said he was "quite possibly the best boss I've ever worked for" and "a great manager of people," while Don Payne commented that for Scully "it was really important that we kept decent hours".

Scully served as showrunner until 2001, during season 12, making him the first person to run the show for more than two seasons.

Scully still works on the show and also co-wrote and co-produced 2007's The Simpsons Movie.

More recently, Scully co-created The Pitts, The Boy Who Lost His Schoolbag and Complete Savages as well as working on Everybody Loves Raymond and Parks and Recreation.

He co-developed the short-lived animated television version of Napoleon Dynamite, as well as co-creating Duncanville with his wife, Julie Thacker, and comedian Amy Poehler.