Mike Reiss

Mike Reiss started writing comedy for the "Harvard Lampoon" at his alma mater. It was there that he also met and roomed with his longtime writing partner and collaborator Al Jean. He graduated to writing for the "National Lampoon" in the late 1970s and found work as a TV scribe in the 1980s for such humor shows as the satirical "Not Necessarily the News," the legendary "The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson," the gently bizarre "Alf," and the pivotal "It's Garry Shandling's Show," where he also began working as a producer. He and Al Jean latched onto "The Simpsons" star in 1990, both producing and writing for the show and going aside in 1994 to create the animated cult spin-off, "The Critic," with Jon Lovitz. Reiss has continued producing animation comedy with "Queer Duck," the urban claymation "The PJs" with Eddie Murphy, and "The Oblongs," a grotesquely mutative farce featuring the voice of Will Ferrell. Reiss's involvement as one of the top-shelf series writers chosen pen the screenplay for the hugely successful, years-in-the-making "The Simpsons Movie" (2007) launched him into a theatrical movie career somewhat outside his usual milieu, scripting such features as the middle-age-takes-a-vacation comedy "My Life in Ruins" and the third and fourth installments of the "Ice Age" franchise.