00:00James Albrook, stay in Hollywood!
00:07Thanks a lot.
00:11After enduring so many early days of fearing that I'd end up in the gutter,
00:18you can imagine how heavy it feels to have this solid hunk of sidewalk.
00:23There's no better job in the world than getting to work on a television series that's working,
00:29sitting in a writer's room where the only task is to make each other laugh.
00:35And there was a time, I swear it's true, when if you worked in television you could forget about being hired for a movie.
00:42Us TV folks were segregated to the less pretty side of the Paramount lot,
00:47where we made a living past our imaginations, doing work we loved,
00:52having the community which can only come when a TV series has found a large audience,
00:57and the frosting on the cake we were still looked at as underdogs.
01:02I need a number of heartfelt thank yous for the number of people who populate the
01:06couldn't have done it without you corner of my life.
01:09Grant Tinker, Dana Walden, Matt Groening who thought of the Simpsons while in the waiting room
01:15about to meet with me for the first time.
01:18And from there he and Sam Simon and I ran with it.
01:22Richard Sakai who went from being the world's worst BA to the world's best head of a TV company.
01:29Simpsons showrunner Matt Selman, Alan Bergman, Steve Aspel, David Greenbaum,
01:35and every former class clown, misfit, and great soul who has worked in the writers' room stretching back more than 50 years.
01:43And shout out of shout outs to those of us who knew not in the rear view mirror,
01:48but as we were doing it that the making of the Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi and the Simpsons was and is the time of our lives.
01:56I want to thank my family for all the love, everybody at Gracie Films who likes me,
02:03Al Jean, Jamie and Danny, Mary Lou Henner, Melissa Cates, Meredith Lipsky,
02:11and last and you better believe it not least, Bob Iger, and everyone at Disney, my home studio.
02:18Francine Maisler, the premier casting director we have, whose best casting was that she introduced me to the woman who,
02:27everybody who knows me knows saves my tail, Jennifer Brooks.
02:36And that's it, what a lucky dog I am to have you, honey.
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