Remember "Queer Duck"? Well, neither did a group of attendees when Mike Reiss mentioned the quack-quack character at a speaking gig at the University of Rhode Island. One person clapped.
"I told him, 'Gee, you just outed yourself,'" laughs Reiss, the creator of the feathered queer and a writer for "The Simpsons," who opens the interview by warning us of his possessed phone.
"Queer Duck" was an irresistible hoot, er, quack upon its online stint and a Showtime pick-up, but after the film, "Queer Duck: The Movie," hit DVD, it sank. Animation fans adored it; the press ignored it.
But the jester didn't let that ruffle his feathers. "I've spent the past eight or 10 months traveling the world, flogging 'Queer Duck' to anyone who's willing to look at it," Reiss quips. "I carry it in my car and sell it to people."
He wouldn't bother – touring leaves a hole in his pocket anyhow – if "Queer Duck" wasn't such a fan fave, especially in Europe, where a sequel is the bones of the Whales Film Festival. Here in the states, though, it made its splash, but – let's face it – it was no cannonball.
"The only way you know this movie came out is if you're in Blockbuster and you happen to go by the 'Q' section. Unleashing his sarcastic sneer, he laughs: "Oh gee, I'm always interested in new movies that start with a 'Q'."
Queer quacker, who?
Reiss is glowing. He was able to sleep in this morning and that rarely happens when he's fielding calls from East Coast publications, like us, who forget that everyone doesn't live on one side of the country.
Further, we – with no hesitation – dive into Queer Duck.
"That's what I like to talk about," he insists, the tickle in his voice mimics that of a kid in a candy store. "Even these guys who call saying we're gonna talk about 'Queer Duck,' they just talk about 'The Simpsons.'"
The beak-man – not based in any mystical world, Reiss notes – melds qualities of his gay friends, relatives and his wife, who he says is the equivalent of a queer man. "The highest compliment to the piece has been that everybody thinks I'm gay. Anyone who watched it, they think I'm gay. Even people – when they find out I'm not gay – they go, 'Well, you must really be gay.'"
Reiss wasn't fazed – not even concerned – by the assumptions people made. In fact, it became a game. "I've sort of kept my heterosexuality in the closet, and whenever reporters would come to my house, my wife would hide. I wouldn't pretend to be gay, but I wouldn't be aggressively straight either." He pauses and laughs, "I'm not the most macho man in the world."
A reporter from a gay publication didn't get the memo. Near the end of their three-hour chat, the journalist posed a question. One that – to a gay man – would be like reciting the alphabet. "He said, 'When did you come out?' I said, 'I'm not gay.' He goes, 'Oh, I'm so sorry! Oh, I'm sorry!' He's apologizing up and down and I said, 'No, no. This is the whole point of 'Queer Duck.' You don't apologize for being gay.'"
How does a straight quasi-cartoon looking humorist create a queer duck? Easy. Start with a black man. The budget-brimming Fox claymation series "The PJ's," which included a Reiss-written 60-year-old guy in a Detroit urban housing project, garnered him an Emmy nod. "I go, 'Gee, if I can write this guy, I can writing anything."
And, from "The Simpsons" to "Queer Duck," he has.
That 'yellow' family
The cartoon creator typically fields the same questions at speaking engagements (which means his quick-witted answers aren't because he's necessarily a fly quipster, but he has nine pages of ad-libs) – usually pertaining to the ultra-smash "The Simpsons". But one girl was destined to stump the television writer when she inquired about the reason for their yellow skin.
After posing the mind-bending question – but seriously fundamental one – to nearly 10 co-workers, Reiss finally established the answer: "Their skin blends right into their hair. There's no delineation so they needed to pick a color that was kind of halfway between hair and skin, and that's how they came out yellow."
Just as Reiss finishes giving the clincher, his voice fades in and out – and eventually cuts off completely. The call is returned, but the problem persists, as if the phone God is saying: This. Interview. Is. Over.
Finally, Reiss calls us, blaming Earthlink (he encourages us to publish the name) for a slew of phone and Internet uh-ohs. "I called that number (you gave me) and it says, 'Welcome to Partsource.' I go, 'What is this, some auto parts store?'" he laughs, before we inform him it's actually Pridesource.
Then, he hiccups a whopping laugh. "It was funny," he starts. "I was explaining why they're yellow and the phone went dead, as if it was the dullest topic in the world."
"The Simpsons" – dull? Um, hardly. That's why, after 18 seasons on television, the family will hit the silver screen. And Reiss is one of the highbrows helming the much-anticipated – but shhh-ed! – project.
"I'm not a guy who keeps secrets," he admits. "I'm not a blabber mouth, but I just don't see the point in them. It hasn't been fun, and it hasn't been easy. I'm still presuming a month before the movie comes out all the spoilers will be out there, and the trailer will give away the whole plot, and the online reviews will tell you everything that the movie's about."
Reiss, along with the other original writers of the hit Fox show, thought "The Simpsons" would be a launching pad to Victory Valley. But, much to their dismay, that didn't happen – and, though Reiss branched off with "The Critic," the short-lived mid-'90s animated series, and "Queer Duck" – nothing has made bigger waves than that yellow family. "We all thought we're gonna go off and make our own 'Simpsons' and we'll be big successes. What anyone who ever left 'The Simpsons' realized is that every other job is worse than this."
Mike Reiss
7 p.m. May 18
State Theatre, Kalamazoo
Tickets: $10
More: http://kafi.kvcc.edu
