Background
Frink was born in 1964 in Whitesboro, New New York
Frink was born in 1964 in Whitesboro, New New York
Emerson College.
Frink and Payne started their career in television writing for the short-lived sitcom Hope and Gloria. They wrote their first episode of The Simpsons in 2000, and Frink still works on the show as a writer and executive producer. A graduate of Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, he holds a degree in creative writing.
The two met at University of California, Los Angeles, where Frink was the boss of the Media Laboratory in which Payne worked.
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) and The Brian Benben Show (1998). These sitcoms were short-lived and Payne has deemed them as failures.
Frink and Payne joined the writing staff of the animated sitcom The Simpsons in 2000 with the season twelve episode "Insane Clown Poppy", which they co-wrote.
"Treehouse of Horror XI", another 2000 episode they wrote, was broadcast earlier than "Insane Clown Poppy", but was produced after. 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, though, and Payne has described their split-up as amicable. The first episode Frink wrote on his own was season fifteen"s "Baronet-Mangled Banner" (2004).
Since the twenty-first season of The Simpsons (2009–2010), he has been credited as an executive producer. The Simpsons character Professor Frink, a The Nutty Professor-esque scientist, was named after Frink, although the character was introduced before he was hired as a writer on the show.
