Al Jean

Alfred Ernest Jean III (born January 9, 1961) is an American screenwriter and producer.

Jean is well known for his work on The Simpsons.

Alfred Ernest Jean III was born in Detroit, Michigan on January 9, 1961.

He was raised in Farmington Hills, Michigan, graduated from Harrison High School, and is of Irish ancestry.

Jean began his writing career in the 1980s with fellow Harvard alum Mike Reiss.

Together, they worked as writers and producers on television shows such as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, ALF and It's Garry Shandling's Show.

During the 1980s, the duo began collaborating on various television material.

During this period, they worked as writers and producers on television shows such as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, ALF, Sledge Hammer! and It's Garry Shandling's Show.

He was raised near Detroit, Michigan, and graduated from Harvard University in 1981.

After working at his father's hardware store, Jean arrived at Harvard University when he was sixteen years old and graduated in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics.

Daryl Libow, one of Jean's freshman roommates, said he was a "math whiz" when he arrived at Harvard but "soon blossomed and found his comedic feet."

In Holworthy Hall at Harvard, Jean met fellow freshman Mike Reiss; they befriended one another and collaborated in their writing efforts for the humor publication Harvard Lampoon.

Jeff Martin, another writer for the Lampoon, said "they definitely loomed large around the magazine. They were very funny guys and unusually polished comedy writers for that age. We were never surprised that they went on to success."

Jean has also stated that the duo spent most of their time at the Lampoon, adding that "it was practically my second dorm room."

He eventually became vice-president of the publication.

The humor magazine National Lampoon hired Jean and Reiss after they graduated in 1981.

Jean was offered a job as a writer on the animated sitcom The Simpsons in 1989, alongside Reiss, and together they became the first members of the show's original writing staff.

In 1989, Jean was offered a job as a writer on the animated sitcom The Simpsons, a show created by Matt Groening, James L. Brooks and Sam Simon that continues to air today.

Many of Jean's friends were not interested in working on The Simpsons because it was a cartoon and they did not think it would last long.

Jean, however, was a fan of the work of Groening, Brooks and Simon, and therefore took the job together with Reiss.

The duo became the first members of the original Simpsons writing staff and worked on the thirteen episodes of the series' first season (1989–90).

While watching the first episode of the show, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", premiering on television in December 1989, Jean opined to himself that the series was the greatest project he had been involved with and desired to continue working on it for the rest of his professional career.

What he enjoyed most about The Simpsons at the time was something he recognized from Brooks' previous work: although the show was largely based on humor, it had depth and warmth.

Although Jean has been credited as the sole writer of several episodes, he considers the process to be mainly collaborative: "the principal writer [of an episode] has, at most, written 40% of the script. It's a real team effort."

The writer credited in the episode's opening credits is the person that came up with the idea for the episode and wrote the first draft, even if he or she only contributed to a small part of the final script.

Jean has stated that Lisa Simpson is one of his favorite characters to write for.

She is the character he relates to the most because of their similar childhoods and the fact that he has a daughter.

They served as showrunners during the show's third (1991–92) and fourth (1992–93) seasons, though they left The Simpsons after season four to create The Critic, an animated show about film critic Jay Sherman.

Jean became showrunner of The Simpsons at the start of the third season (1991–92) together with Reiss.

A showrunner has the ultimate responsibility of all the processes that an episode goes through before completion, including the writing, the animation, the voice acting and the music.

According to Jean, when he began his tenure as showrunner, the only thing he thought to himself every day was "Don't blow it and screw up this thing everyone loves."

The first episode Jean and Reiss ran was "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington" (aired September 26, 1991), and they felt pressured to make it good, so much so that they did six to seven rewrites of the script in order to improve its humor.

Jean said he "kept thinking 'It's not good enough. It's not good enough.'" Reiss added that "we were definitely scared. We had never run anything before, and they dumped us on this."

Jean and Reiss served as showrunners until the end of the fourth season in 1993.

It was first broadcast on ABC in January 1994 (then aired its second season on Fox in March 1995) and was well received by critics, but did not catch on with viewers and only lasted for two seasons.

In 1994, Jean and Reiss signed a three-year development deal with The Walt Disney Company to produce other television shows for ABC.

Among multiple pitches made by the duo, their sole project with ABC to come to fruition was the live-action sitcom Teen Angel, which was cancelled in its first season.

Jean returned full-time to The Simpsons during the tenth season (1998–99).

He became showrunner again with the start of the thirteenth season in 2001, without Reiss, and he stayed in that position until thirty-three.

Jean was also one of the writers and producers who worked on The Simpsons Movie, a feature-length film based on the series, released in 2007.