overshadow his deeper contributions to the concept. He was later brought on to co-write the screenplay for Batteries Not Included (1987), a comic sci-fi film that stemmed from an Amazing Stories outline. The film opened in fourth place domestically, and was overall a box office hit, generating $65.1 million on its $25 million budget. Bird also helped with Captain EO, 3-D short film starring Michael Jackson viewed at Disney theme parks. These successes brought Bird more opportunity, but he continued to spend many years in development hell with studios. He grew irritated with notes from middle management: executives he felt "would analyze your work and dictate everything you'd need to do to make it 'more pleasing to an audience'—and in the process would only make stories smaller and more like everything else," he complained. In his personal life, he wed Elizabeth Canney, an editor on *batteries not included. In 1989, Bird's sister Susan, with whom he was very close, was killed by her estranged husband in a murder-suicide. The event was traumatic for Bird; he felt emotionally "kind of gone in that period. I don't really have a lot of memories from it." He had enough funds to support himself for a time, so he simply rested: "I just kind of didn't do anything," he confessed. Career moves Work on The Simpsons (1989–1996) Bird's cinematic sense of visual storytelling with Family Dog was uncommon in television animation to that point, mainly due to budgetary restrictions. Most television productions retained a rudimentary style, with frequent abuse of standard close-ups, medium angles, and establishing shots to move the story along. In contrast, Bird favored using more filmic techniques, utilizing extreme angles, long panning shots, quick camera cuts, pushed perspective, and so on. Bird's work on Family Dog caught the eye of producers James L. Brooks and Sam Simon, who with Matt Groening were developing The Simpsons, the first prime time animated sitcom in decades for Fox. In 1989, he was invited to join Klasky Csupo (and later Film Roman), where he served as executive consultant for the show. The role required Bird oversee the script-to-animation pipeline 2–3 days per week. Bird worked on the show for its first eight seasons, and directed the episodes "Krusty Gets Busted" (1990) and "Like Father, Like Clown" (1992). He also designed the character Sideshow Bob. In his role, he pushed the show's artists to visualize episodes