LONDON, England (CNN) -- The most eagerly anticipated animated film this year hits big screens this weekend, as "The Simpsons Movie" opens worldwide. The Screening Room spoke to creator Matt Groening and writer Al Jean in London about everyone's favorite two-dimensional yellow family. Simpsons supremo Matt Groening with his creations at the film's premiere in Springfield, Vermont Matt Groening told the Screening Room that fans had driven the demand for the movie. "We've had fans clamoring for a movie for the past 18 years," he said. The film has taken four years to come to fruition, as writer Al Jean explained. "What really held us up for a long time was to have enough people to do the show and the movie," he said. "We talked for a while about doing the movie after the show is done, but the show is never done! So it really started in earnest in 2003, when we started working on this story that became the movie." Technology has also played its part. Jean continued, "The technology to do this film really wasn't even around five years ago. For example, there was this joke I once pitched and David Silverman, the director, started drawing and as I was pitching it, it went into the film and it was cut a day later. To go from pitch to cut in two days is pretty impressive." Its creators hope that "The Simpsons Movie" will both satisfy long-term fans and bring Homer and Marge's family to a new audience. Groening told the Screening Room, "This movie is designed to both honor the people who have loved the show all this time, so there's lots of little details for them in the movie, little characters and stuff who they know and love, but we also want people who don't know the family to not be completely confused. It is a complete movie experience, but again, we have a lot of little details that only the really, true die-hard fans are going to get." And fans can expect to be entertained by plenty of cartoon mishaps. Groening said, "When you see somebody fall off the roof in a live-action film, it's funny -- we all love it. But it's not as funny as when Homer falls off the roof.

How many years was the film held up from coming into fruition due to the need of having enough people for the film and show?

It's just this hard when I try to answer the question: Why do older Oklahomans need lawyers? The answers are important enough that they will be a discussion topic of this year's Senior Day at 9 a.m. March 25 in the House Chamber at the Capitol. The following is a preview of some of the answers for review: We can all agree that older Oklahomans need medical care. But even the best care is worthless if an older patient can't drive to the doctor for ongoing treatment because his or her car has been wrongfully seized in a debt dispute. Therefore, lawyers are part of the prescription for regular medical care for many of the 600,000 Oklahomans age 60 and older. Another example: if a doctor treats an elderly patient for a lung ailment, the doctor's treatment will be undone and he will see the patient again and again, if the patient is sent home to an unheated apartment. Lawyers know how to make landlords heat apartments so the medical treatment can stick. (By the way, a May 16, 2001, article in The New York Times reports on a program at Boston Medical Center providing a walk-in legal clinic in the hospital to help fight their patients' legal and administrative battles.) We also can agree that older Oklahomans - like all citizens - have rights to control their health care until they become incapacitated or these rights are transferred to another by legal document or process. "Old" is not a legal classification that results in automatic loss of these rights. Moreover, having an old parent does not automatically confer on children the right to make the parents' health care choices. It follows that an important role lawyers provide for aging Oklahomans is not only to create rights - transferring documents such as durable powers of attorney and guardianship orders, but also to monitor their use. In family situations, for example, lawyers must ensure that powers of attorney and guardianships are used to serve only the person transferring or losing rights. They are not to be used to help a family "manage" their mother or help a doctor or nursing home get permission for a pill or procedure they feel is in the best interest of a patient. Good news: Oklahoma now has a Public Guardianship Program, albeit unfunded, that will supply lawyers to perform this rights-monitoring process Oklahoma grandparents should be able to enjoy their grandchildren, not raise them. But owing to the social problems of divorce and drug use, grandparents are increasingly being called on to raise their grandchildren because of missing parents. Adding to the physical, emotional and financial burden they take on, grandparents face legal problems. All the decisions parents made without a second thought now require evidence of legal authority when made by grandparents.

What can lawyers do for old people?

The CIA's senior management saw problems with the armed Predator as well, problems that Clarke and even Black and Allen were inclined to minimize. One (which also applied to reconnaissance flights) was money. A Predator cost about $3 million. If the CIA flew Predators for its own reconnaissance or covert action purposes, it might be able to borrow them from the Air Force, but it was not clear that the Air Force would bear the cost if a vehicle went down. Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz took the position that the CIA should have to pay for it; the CIA disagreed. Second, Tenet in particular questioned whether he, as Director of Central Intelligence, should operate an armed Predator." This was new ground,"he told us. Tenet ticked off key questions: What is the chain of command? Who takes the shot? Are America's leaders comfortable with the CIA doing this, going outside of normal military command and control? Charlie Allen told us that when these questions were discussed at the CIA, he and the Agency's executive director, A. B." Buzzy" Krongard, had said that either one of them would be happy to pull the trigger, but Tenet was appalled, telling them that they had no authority to do it, nor did he. Third, the Hellfire warhead carried by the Predator needed work. It had been built to hit tanks, not people. It needed to be designed to explode in a different way, and even then had to be targeted with extreme precision. In the configuration planned by the Air Force through mid-2001, the Predator's missile would not be able to hit a moving vehicle. White House officials had seen the Predator video of the "man in white." On July 11, Hadley tried to hurry along preparation of the armed system. He directed McLaughlin, Wolfowitz, and Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Richard Myers to deploy Predators capable of being armed no later than September 1.
Why was Tenet appalled?