'Simpsons' actors have a cow, man

Hollywood's newspaper of record, Variety, once called The Simpsons America's "dysfunctional First Family". And clearly the dysfunction is contagious, because several leading cast members have refused to show up for work in the past few weeks over a salary dispute.

Dan Castellaneta, who plays Homer, has gone awol, and so too have Nancy Cartwright (Bart), Julie Kavner (Marge), Yeardley Smith (Lisa), and the multitalented, multiple-role players Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer.

Their bottom line is that they have been at this for 15 seasons - next year's would be the 16th - and they want a larger slice of The Simpsons' considerable financial pie to make it worth their while to continue.

They want a salary rise from US$125,000 to $360,000 ($187,500 to $540,000) an episode for the 22-episode season, Variety says. That, the actors say, is far from unreasonable, given that The Simpsons is a billion-dollar global cult phenomenon - broadcast in languages from Swahili to Albanian - and that their famously flexible voice talents are a large part of its success.

So far, they have failed to appear for two read-throughs of next season's scripts. That, in turn, has put production on hold, because the animators cannot get to work until they have a finished voice tape allowing them to synchronise the lip movements and other interactions of the characters.

With the clock ticking, the negotiations can only get more interesting from here. Twentieth Century Fox, the Rupert Murdoch-owned television company reaping the benefits of the world's most enduring animated sitcom, might not like what is going on, but it has been in a similar situation before, and ended up losing.

In 1998, when the principal players were being paid just US$30,000 an episode, they staged a similar walkout. Fox went as far as hiring casting directors in five cities to seek replacements for them, only to back down when it became obvious that they risked strangling the very baby they were trying to save.

Since then, salary negotiations have been largely amicable. The most recent deal covering seasons 13, 14 and 15 was hammered out with little acrimony.

Now everything is different. Agents and managers representing the actors have spent months trying to negotiate a new deal. Could this be the beginning of the end of the inept antics of Springfield's finest? And what will this do to the long-cherished project of turning The Simpsons into a full-length feature film?

Previous instances of high-profile salary disputes suggest it might be, if not immediately, then soon. Almost every long-running hit show, from Seinfeld to Frasier to the NBC audience favourite Everybody Loves Raymond, tends to follow a pattern whereby the actors' salaries shoot ever higher even as the ratings begin to plateau or fall.

Sooner or later, someone starts to ask if the ever-increasing outlays are really worth it, the new episodes stop making even a fraction of money earned from syndicated reruns, and some executive honcho pulls the plug.

Kelsey Grammer, who played Frasier Crane for 20 years, first on Cheers and then on Frasier, generated headlines a couple of years ago by becoming the first television star to earn US$1 million an episode. Not coincidentally, Frasier has just gone off the air in the United States.

Sitcom Seinfeld's nine-year run ended a year after comedian Jerry Seinfeld's co-stars managed to claw their way to $600,000 an episode.

- INDEPENDENT