Polly Platt

Platt was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction for Brooks' film Terms of Endearment (1983). She also co-produced many of the films he worked on, which Gracie made, including Broadcast News (1987), The War of the Roses (1989) and Bottle Rocket (1996), as well as producing Say Anything (1989). Platt gave Brooks the nine-panel Life in Hell cartoon "The Los Angeles Way of Death" by cartoonist Matt Groening. She suggested that the two meet and that Brooks produce an animated TV version of Groening's characters; the meeting spawned a series of short cartoons about the Simpson family, which aired as part of The Tracey Ullman Show and later became The Simpsons. Read Less