Ken Keeler
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Kenneth Keeler (Born 1961) is an American comic writer and producer. He has written for numerous TV series, most notably The Simpsons and Futurama.
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[edit] Biography
After graduating from St. John's School in Houston, Texas, he studied applied mathematics at Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude in 1983. He earned a Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 1990; his doctoral thesis was on Map Representations and Optimal Encoding for Image Segmentation.
After earning his doctorate, Keeler joined the Performance Analysis Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories. He soon left Bell Labs to write for David Letterman and subsequently for various sitcoms, including several episodes of Wings, News Radio, The Simpsons (where he caught harsh criticism from fans for writing the season nine episode "The Principal and the Pauper"), Futurama, and The Critic, as well as the short-lived FOX claymation show The PJs.
Keeler was instrumental in the creation of Futurama, and served as a co-executive producer in its first three years, and as an executive producer in its fourth year. He was one of the show's most prolific writers, with nine episodes to his name (including the original series finale, "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", and the Writers Guild Award-winning episode "Godfellas"). Keeler wrote many of the original songs on both The Simpsons and Futurama during his time with the shows. He also wrote the direct-to-DVD Futurama movie Bender's Big Score.
Keeler is also a fan of (but of no relation to) Harry Stephen Keeler and won the 2001 Fifth Annual Imitate Keeler Competition. His Futurama episode "Time Keeps on Slippin'" was partly inspired by the (Harry Stephen) Keeler story "Strange Romance" from the novel Y. Cheung, Business Detective.
Having cowritten a paper[1] with Jeff Westbrook, Keeler has an Erdős number of 4.
It is stated in a DVD commentary that Keeler owns the world's fourth-largest top hat collection[2]; however, the statement may well be facetious.
[edit] Theory of Underpants
Keeler postulates in multiple Futurama DVD commentaries that the word "underpants" is 20% funnier than "underwear"; again, this is likely facetious.
[edit] Writing Credits
[edit] The Simpsons episodes
- "A Star Is Burns"
- "Two Bad Neighbors"
- "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)"
- "Brother from Another Series"
- "The Principal and the Pauper"
- "Treehouse of Horror VII" ("The Thing and I")
- "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase" (story)
[edit] Futurama episodes
- "The Series Has Landed"
- "When Aliens Attack"
- "Put Your Head on My Shoulders"
- "Anthology of Interest I" (co-writer)
- "The Honking"
- "Time Keeps on Slippin'"
- "Godfellas"
- "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings"
