 Work continued on the screenplay from 2003 onwards , taking place in the small bungalow where Groening first pitched The Simpsons in 1987 . The writers spent six months discussing a plot , and each of them offered sketchy ideas . Jean suggested the family rescue manatees , which became the 2005 episode " The Bonfire of the Manatees " , and there was also a notion similar to that of The Truman Show where the characters discovered their lives were a TV show . Groening rejected this , as he felt that the Simpsons should " never become aware of themselves as celebrities " . Groening read about a town that had to get rid of pig feces in their water supply , which inspired the plot of the film . The decision for Flanders to have an important role also came early on , as Jean wished to see Bart wonder what his life would be like if Flanders were his father . Having eventually decided on the basic outline of the plot for the film , the writers then separated it into seven sections . Jean , Scully , Reiss , Swartzwelder , Vitti , Mirkin , and Meyer wrote 25 pages each , and the group met one month later to merge the seven sections into one " very rough draft " . The film 's script was written in the same way as the television series : the writers sitting around a table , pitching ideas , and trying to make each other laugh . The script went through over 100 revisions , and at one point the film was a musical . However , the songs were continually being shortened and the idea was dropped . Groening described his desire to also make the film dramatically stronger than a TV episode , saying that he wanted to " give you something that you haven 't seen before " . 
