30 Facts About John Swartzwelder

John Swartzwelder was later hired to work on comedy series Saturday Night Live in the mid-1980s as a writer.

John Swartzwelder later contributed to fellow writer George Meyer's short-lived Army Man magazine, which led him to join the original writing team of The Simpsons, beginning in 1989.

John Swartzwelder worked on The Simpsons as a writer and producer until 2003, and later contributed to The Simpsons Movie.

John Swartzwelder wrote the largest number of Simpsons episodes by a large margin.

John Swartzwelder has written more than a dozen novels, the most recent of which, Dead Detective Mountain, was published in 2023.

John Swartzwelder is known for his reclusiveness, and gave his first-ever interview in 2021, in The New Yorker.

In 1983, John Swartzwelder sent a joke submission to the writers of Late Night with David Letterman, in which he signed but left no address.

Writer Jim Downey traced John Swartzwelder based on the Chicago postmark on the card via phone books at the New York Public Library.

John Swartzwelder was not hired for Letterman, but Downey hired him for Saturday Night Live beginning in 1985.

At SNL, John Swartzwelder shared an office with Robert Smigel, and met George Meyer, who later proved instrumental in hiring him for The Simpsons.

John Swartzwelder was fired in mid-1986, which Smigel attributed to the network's pressure on show creator Lorne Michaels to make personnel changes.

Meyer quit SNL and created the magazine Army Man, recruiting John Swartzwelder to help write it.

When California passed an anti-smoking law, John Swartzwelder bought the booth and installed it in his house, allowing him to continue his process in peace.

In 1996, John Swartzwelder created and produced his own pilot presentation for Fox, Pistol Pete, a spoof of western films.

John Swartzwelder's last airing episode was a "holdover" written for the fourteenth season.

At 59 episodes, John Swartzwelder has written more episodes of the show than any other crew member by a significant margin.

John Swartzwelder returned to contribute to The Simpsons Movie, released in 2007.

Since leaving The Simpsons, John Swartzwelder has taken up writing absurdist novels, beginning in 2004 with the publication of science fiction detective story The Time Machine Did It starring private investigator Frank Burly.

In 2014, a children's book written in the late 1970s by John Swartzwelder and illustrated by David Schutten was published by Green House Books.

John Swartzwelder has been referred to as a libertarian and a "hardcore conservative".

John Swartzwelder is a gun rights advocate, and despite having written many of the environmentally themed Simpsons episodes, he has been described as an "anti-environmentalist".

Simpsons writer David Cohen related a story of John Swartzwelder going on an extended diatribe about how there is more rainforest on Earth now than there was 100 years ago.

At one point, fans of The Simpsons debated his existence online; some theorized that "John Swartzwelder" was actually a pseudonym for when writers did not want to take credit for an episode, or for episodes that were penned by several writers in concert.

John Swartzwelder declined several requests to participate in the audio commentaries on The Simpsons DVD sets.

Executive producer David Mirkin once invited John Swartzwelder to make a brief appearance in a prerecorded bit in which he would be asked if he wanted to take part, to which he would respond with "No" as an ironic punchline, but he refused.

In 2021, John Swartzwelder gave his only interview to date, with Mike Sacks in The New Yorker.

John Swartzwelder said he agreed to the interview out of his fondness for The New Yorker and the writers whose work it has published.

John Swartzwelder said he was humbled by the praise he has received from colleagues and Simpsons fans, and that he was proud that The Simpsons encouraged fans to keep track of the writers of their favorite television shows.

John Swartzwelder is the comedy writer whose words makes [sic] the best comedy writers in the world laugh out loud.

John Swartzwelder has been animated in the background of several episodes of The Simpsons.