David X. Cohen Interviewed on New Futurama

eldavojohn writes "Toyfare has a short but exclusive interview with co-creator of Futurama David X. Cohen. There's a lot of information about how they plan to continue the series. He also reveals they're halfway through writing the new season and just starting animation. When asked about his favorite minor character of the show, Cohen responded 'Hypnotoad. By the way, we are looking into producing a full 22-minute episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad for the DVD release. I am serious.'"

hdtv?

[hjf]

Well, I'm writing this from a non-HD ready country, so I haven't checked for myself. I'd like to ask, nerdy enough slashdotters, how did they solve the issue of Amy's obscene tattoo, which wouldn't be visible on lo-def TVs, now that there's HDTV?

About the "X"...

[Bones3D_mac]

For those of you who never watchd the full set of commentaries on the Futurama DVDs, there's an interesting story behind the "X" in David X. Cohen's name.

Back in the late 90's, he attempted to register his real name, "David S. Cohen", with the writer's guild. However, they already had a David S. Cohen registered with them. Due to the rules of the writer's guild, all names registered with them must be unique to avoid confusion. So, David decided to change his name over to David X. Cohen for identification purposes.

So what's the meaning of the "X" in the name? Not a damned thing! It was chosen entirely because it was weird enough to be easily recognizable.

Re:Hypnotoad

[thewils]

I have this vague memory of reading Asimov's Oceans of Venus, where, as the story goes (iirc) amphibians - toads maybe? - were kept as pets, but as the story unwound, it was found that the blighters were exerting mind control over the human inhabitants.

This Hypnotoad thingy wouldn't happen to have been nicked from Asimov now, would it?

Re:Seymour the Dog!

[DaveM753]

Yeah, they pulled a fast one on many of us with that episode. I mean, here we are, watching one of the funniest TV shows ever, and they spring that tear-jerker, heart-warming ending on us. Gads! See...just thinking about it and I'm about to start bawling again. :'(

Re:Check slashdots' headers

[defile]

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 21:15:40 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a mod_perl/1.29
SLASH_LOG_DATA: shtml
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.005000138
X-Bender: Curse you, merciful Poseidon!
Cache-Control: private
Pragma: private
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

Wow, you weren't kidding.

Re:Seymour the Dog!

[defile]

Yeah, they pulled a fast one on many of us with that episode. I mean, here we are, watching one of the funniest TV shows ever, and they spring that tear-jerker, heart-warming ending on us. Gads! See...just thinking about it and I'm about to start bawling again. :'(

When I watch Futurama, it's usually on late at night and sometimes I pass out near the end. Every time I've watched the episode with Fry's dog, I've passed out right at the ending and woken up to a everyone else in the room crying. Happened three times now.

I don't think I ever want to see the ending.

Re:Who gives a fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

> there are more important things than some jagoff cartoon

Hmm, I could argue that 'jagoff' is a reference to South Park, another cartoon show. Very interesting. You think Futurama is total crap, yet you think a show with giant jewish aliens performing freaky alien sex on each other is worth referencing. You know, I think if you kill yourself now you can still catch the early bird special at the IHOP in hell. You should get right on that.

Re:Favorite episodes

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the best episode is when fry drinks 100 cups of coffee and "breaks through" the shakes....I never get tired of that one.

Re:Glagnar's Human Rinds

[spike1]

There're too many good characters to pick one favourite... But one of the best lesser charactrers has to be...

Lurr of omicron persei 8.

Woaaaaa... I think there was something funny in that hippy...

Re:new episodes of Futurama...

[zerocool^]

I completely agree. Futurama's humor is episode derived, whereas the Family Guy humor is completely independant of the episodic content. FG basically comes up with great scenes or one liners, and puts them into the episode randomly (as flashbacks or whatever).

The thing is, though, sometimes I like that part of family guy. Family Guy has been milk-out-the-nose funny on multiple ocasions. And even bad episodes of Family Guy are fairly funny. This is contrasted with Futurama, which in every way you think matters is "better", more sophisticated humor, better written, but A.) It's never made me laugh so hard my milk was in danger, and B.) Let's face it - there are some freaking great futurama episodes, but when it's bad, it's BAAAAAD (bend her, obsoletely fabulous, bender should not be allowed on TV, etc).

Which leads into the Bender Paradox: Bender is consistantly the funniest character on Futurama, as long as he is a side character. Bender CANNOT carry an episode. Every bender centric episode is horrible.

~Wx

David X Cohen is cool!

[AbRASiON]

I emailed him once after finding his address out there on the net.
He responded politely and promptly - was pretty cool too, I also found his commentary on the Futurama DVD's to be excellent.

Re:Seymour the Dog!

[jandrese]

Don't forget the one where (spoiler alert)Leela discovers who her parents are(end of spoiler). I ended up picking up the Pizzacato 5 CD based on that ending alone.