William Donald Payne (May 5, 1964 – March 26, 2013) was an American writer and producer. He wrote several episodes of The Simpsons after 2000, many of these with John Frink, whom he met while studying at the University of California, Los Angeles. The duo began their careers writing for the short-lived sitcom Hope and Gloria. Payne later moved into writing feature films, including My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006), and co-wrote Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), Thor (2011) and its sequel Thor: The Dark World (2013). Payne died from heart failure caused by bone cancer in March 2013. Early life Payne was born William Donald Payne on May 5, 1964 in Wilmington, North Carolina. He attended New Hanover High School, graduating in 1982; he had been class president. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then transferred to and graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also received a Master of Fine Arts degree in screenwriting. Payne later taught the course. Career Early career He began his career as a writer for several sitcoms together with his writing partner at the time, John Frink. The two met at UCLA, where Frink was the boss of the Media Laboratory in which Payne worked. Payne has said to the website TheFutonCritic.com that "one day we were both trying to write individually so I said, 'why don't we pool our resources and write together and see what happens?'" In 2006, Payne told the Los Angeles Times that "I hooked up with a writing partner, John Frink, out of college. I wanted to do films. He wanted to do television." The pair reached the agreement that they would pursue a career in the medium that they first got a job offer in—whether it be film or television. They eventually ended up writing for television sitcoms such as Hope and Gloria (1995–1996), Men Behaving Badly (1997) and The Brian Benben Show (1998). These sitcoms were short-lived and Payne has deemed them as failures. Further work Payne and Frink joined the writing staff of the animated sitcom The Simpsons in 1998; their first script was the season twelve episode "Insane Clown Poppy", which aired in 2000. "Treehouse of Horror XI", another 2000 episode they wrote, was broadcast earlier than "Insane Clown Poppy", but was produced after. Payne said in an interview with TV Squad in 2006 that "My