PLAYBOY: Have you been surprised by the guest stars you've managed to wrangle for The Simpsons?

Groening: It's an astonishing list. I can barely believe the people we've had on the show -- Bob Hope, Kirk Douglas, Elizabeth Taylor, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, the Ramones. Hugh Hefner had the Bunnies working as research scientists in the basement of the Mansion. Elizabeth Taylor was on twice. Once she played herself; the other time she played the voice of Maggie saying "Daddy," her first word. We did 24 takes, but they were always too sexual. Finally Liz said, "Fuck you," and walked out.

PLAYBOY: Do you go to the recording sessions when celebrities are on the show?

Groening: When I can. I was there for Mick Jagger, but I missed Keith Richards. My favorite line from that episode was Mick, as the guy running a rock-and-roll fantasy summer camp, looking over the expenses late at night, saying, "We've got to find a cheaper oatmeal." I also showed up for my all-time-favorite guest star, the author Thomas Pynchon. I wanted to meet him so I could lord it over my snotty intellectual friends.

PLAYBOY: Conan O'Brien, who was a writer for The Simpsons before he got his own show, has been back.

Groening: Having him come back after escaping from the writers' room and getting his own TV show was a high-water mark.

PLAYBOY: Who has declined an invitation?

Groening: We were once told Prince wanted to do the show, so we wrote him a script. It didn't work out, because his chauffeur had written a script too, and Prince wanted to use that one. Also, we were told the investors in Planet Hollywood -- Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, whoever -- were willing to do the show if we mentioned the restaurant. We wrote a script for them, but it turned out that some publicist made the thing up. We got our vengeance: We slammed Planet Hollywood on the show.

PLAYBOY: Are there any sacred cows when it comes to subjects you wouldn't tackle on The Simpsons? You regularly make fun of religion.

Groening: One of my favorite jokes is Homer seeking refuge in a church from a mob and the Reverend Lovejoy saying, "Well, maybe you should go become a missionary in the South Pacific." Homer says, "I'm not religious. I never paid attention in church." The mob is chasing him, and Homer runs away, yelling, "Save me, Jebus!" He can't remember the guy's name. We also did a parody of a commercial about the new Catholic Church that was shot like a beer commercial. [in an announcer's voice] "The new Catholic Church. We've changed." Fox asked us to change it to Presbyterian because they would be less likely to come after us with pitchforks.

PLAYBOY: Has anyone ever come after you with pitchforks?

Groening: Often.

PLAYBOY: Homer has said, "A woman is like a beer." What else about women can we learn from him?

Groening: A lot of men have thanked me for a Chief Wiggum line. He gives Marge a ticket, and as she drives away he says wistfully, "Why are all the beautiful ones crazy?"

PLAYBOY: How would you characterize Homer and Marge's sex life?

Groening: We didn't do the standard sitcom device of the wife not wanting to sleep with the husband. Marge is attracted to Homer. They have a healthy, if goofy, sex life. They giggle a lot. In my experience there is not quite as much lascivious laughter in bed.

PLAYBOY: Has Homer ever cheated on her?

Groening: He and Ned Flanders went to Las Vegas and got drunk and woke up in a hot tub, married. I wanted Homer and Flanders to be naked in the hot tub, but we ended up being cautious. They woke up married to Vegas floozies and fled. There were no consequences whatsoever. We did later refer to Homer's "Vegas wife," and last season we had a funeral for her. Marge was mad, but she went.

PLAYBOY: Did Homer confess?

Groening: I can't remember. Here's the weird thing about having done 400 episodes: I have only a certain amount of space in my brain for Simpsons knowledge.

PLAYBOY: Does it astound you that other people know more about The Simpsons than you do?

Groening: Many fans do. There are a bunch of websites. One is Nohomers.net, which has the most vocal fans. They often act like spurned lovers if they don't like something. They notice everything. With The Simpsons, you are rewarded for paying attention. If you don't pay attention, fine, the show will roll by you. But if you do pay close attention, there are all sorts of secret little details.

PLAYBOY: Do you take credit for shows that followed: Family Guy, South Park and even SpongeBob?

Groening: After The Simpsons came a bunch of creator-driven animated projects that don't look like anything else on TV, though they have their own style and pacing and rules.

PLAYBOY: What's your favorite?

Groening: South Park at its best is some of the most astonishing TV ever made. I love the episode about Mel Gibson. The South Park kids go to see The Passion of the Christ and feel ripped off, so they journey to Malibu to meet Gibson to get their money back. It was almost anticipatory. Mel Gibson is depicted as this underpants-wearing lunatic doing cartwheels.

PLAYBOY: It has been reported that you and your colleagues at The Simpsons loathe Family Guy. Is it true?

Groening: There's a sense of healthy competition between the various staffs of the cartoon shows. But as far as I'm concerned, the more cartoons on TV the better. I'm glad to see them out there.

PLAYBOY: In an episode called "Cartoon Wars," South Park attacked Family Guy. One bit had the show's cultural references picked at random by a manatee.

Groening: I'm glad South Park went after someone other than us. They can be vicious.

PLAYBOY: When he was asked about it, South Park co-creator Matt Stone said, "It's not like we're Biggie and Tupac."

Groening: Yeah. Thank God cartoonists are wimps. If you make a cartoonist angry, you're going to wind up in a cartoon. There are usually no drive-by shootings.

PLAYBOY: Do you find it ironic that Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, known for his conservative politics, has broadcast one of the most liberal shows on TV for almost two decades?

Groening: When I met him, he said he liked the show. He seemed sincere. Yes, there were little dollar signs in his eyes, but he does seem to be a fan. He's been on. He introduced himself as "the evil billionaire tyrant Rupert Murdoch."

PLAYBOY: Is it unsettling or just ironic to be part of the same company as Fox News?

Groening: Fox News gives me a headache and not even so much for its political content but the spinning logos and American flags and music designed to scare you shitless. Who needs it? We make fun of Fox News on the show. The most fun we had was putting a news crawl like theirs across the bottom of the screen. It said things like "Rupert Murdoch: terrific dancer," "Brad Pitt plus Albert Einstein equals Dick Cheney," "Study: 92 percent of Democrats are gay," "The Bible says Jesus favored capital gains cut."

PLAYBOY: What was the reaction at the network?

Groening: We were forbidden ever to do it again. Fox said it would confuse viewers. I don't see how you would think it's real news on a cartoon show, but we'll see.

PLAYBOY: When you spread a liberal message by way of Fox, do you feel subversive?

Groening: It's fun anytime you can piss off a right-wing lunatic, but it's also fun to piss off a left-wing lunatic. In fact everybody on the show is concerned about not being preachy or heavy-handed. We try to mix it up. Sometimes we go for satire and take a point of view we don't agree with. In one of our classic shows Marge successfully gets the violent version of Itchy & Scratchy banned from television. As a result, children actually go out and play in the sunshine and have a good time. We're saying the direct result of heavy-handed censorship is this pleasant outcome, which is obviously something we were being completely sarcastic about.

PLAYBOY: The Simpsons seems to take special delight in skewering Republicans.

Groening: Ever since I was a kid the Republican politicians have seemed like villainous buffoons. Since Richard Nixon. He was such a cardboard villain. All these guys since seem to be more of the same. I have this obsession with Nixon. On The Simpsons, Milhouse is named after him. On Futurama, we made Nixon's head in the jar president of Earth. George W. Bush seems to me equally cartoony, and we've only barely begun to take him on. More to come. But the Simpsons staffers don't agree with one another politically. I'm at one end of the spectrum with a few other people on the left, but we've got some rabid Republicans, too. At this stage, though, there are no pro-war people on staff that I can think of. Anybody who was a supporter of Bush has abandoned him at this point. They're too embarrassed.

PLAYBOY: You mentioned Futurama. Why does your sexy leading female character have only one eye?

Groening: I didn't want to animate women who looked as if they were being drawn by horny animators. I wanted to go for something a little more subtle. The standard depiction of a sexy woman in science fiction is tank top, buxom, two eyes. So I thought, Okay, one eye. Can we make one eyeball sexy? I think we did, but some guys don't like it. They like two eyes on their women. Some of the Simpsons writers have said my biggest mistake was making Leela a cyclops. Apparently guys like more than one giant eye in the middle of the face. Who knew?

PLAYBOY: Horny animators? Are they?

Groening: Isn't it obvious? There has been an intent to arouse with cartoons and comics going back to Betty and Veronica in Archie. It's hard to beat Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? When it came time to design the women on Futurama I went on the Internet and looked up discussions of the sexiest women in cartoons. Surprisingly, a lot of people discuss this subject. There was no agreement on what was sexy, so I went my own way.

PLAYBOY: Who were considered some of the sexiest women in cartoons?

Groening: Betty Rubble.

PLAYBOY: Not Wilma?

Groening: No one likes Wilma. Everyone wants to sleep with Betty.

PLAYBOY: You have taken on sex in your book Love Is Hell. Is it?

Groening: Yes. No. I don't know. It was. Often. A revealing thing is all those comic strips were making fun of self-help books but were secretly designed to help me.

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