partner and I were actually working on one of a long string of failed sitcoms (and most sitcoms are failed sitcoms!) On the day a show is officially cancelled, it's kind of a tradition for the writing staff to go out to a restaurant, eat a nice meal, and drown their sorrows. On the way there, a writer named Jace Richdale (who had also worked on The Simpsons) told my partner and me that The Simpsons was looking for some writers. He wanted to know if we'd be interested in it, because he would recommend us. My jaw literally dropped. So he contacted the show-runner, a guy named Mike Scully, who read our spec script and met with us, then hired us on." After a few years of working on The Simpsons together, Frink and Payne's writing partnership ended. They both continued to work on the show individually and Payne has described their split-up as amicable. Payne shared (with the show's other producers) four Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Animated Program for his work on The Simpsons and won the Paul Selvin Award from the Writers Guild of America for writing the 2005 episode "Fraudcast News". He and Frink had been nominated for a WGA Award for Animation in 2003, for the episode "The Bart Wants What It Wants". Payne wrote or co-wrote 16 episodes of the show and worked as a producer on over 100; he wrote two final episodes, "White Christmas Blues" and "Labor Pains", which aired posthumously. Payne later moved into writing feature films, as he had earlier desired, though continued to work on The Simpsons twice a week as a consulting producer. He wrote My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006), and co-wrote Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), Thor (2011) and Thor: The Dark World (2013). He was also attached to write Maximum Ride in 2013. My Super Ex-Girlfriend was released in 2006 and was his first feature film. He said in an interview with the website Cinematical that "I've always wanted to write features. That's why I moved to Los Angeles in the first place. I started writing with John Frink when I was in college at UCLA. He wanted to do TV, and that's where we got our first break. But my goal was always to write movies. And I've been a comic book geek from way back. So this romantic comedy with a