The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas (also known as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas) is a 1993 American stop-motion animated musical dark fantasy Halloween-Christmas film directed by Henry Selick, and produced and conceived by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, the King of "Halloween Town" who stumbles through a portal to "Christmas Town" and decides to celebrate the holiday. Danny Elfman wrote the songs and score, and provided the singing voice of Jack. The principal voice cast also includes Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara, William Hickey, Ken Page, Paul Reubens, Glenn Shadix, and Ed Ivory.
Skinner's Sense of Snow
In order to make a faithful rendition of the circus, director Kramer asked the animators to watch a showing of Cirque du Soleil in Santa Monica, but they declined the offer. Regardless, executive producer and former showrunner Mike Scully found that the animators did an "amazing" job animating the setpiece. Because the episode takes place in winter, the animators faced some challenges that they would not have with any other episode. "It just adds another element", Kramer said about episodes taking place in winter, "People's clothes have to get tugged in the wind if it's windy. And you have to make sure the snow is consistent because [...] It's like a character. If it's a big snowflake in one scene and then tiny ones where it's snowing too hard in the next scene... It's not gonna work." The scratches and bad quality of "The Christmas That Almost Wasn't, But Then Was" were added in by the Post-Production Department, led by Alex Duke. "Our Post-Production Department never gets enough credit," Scully said, "But they'll take a film like ['The Christmas That Almost Wasn't, But Then Was'] and make it all scratchy and make it look really old. They always do a great job." The woman in "The Christmas That Almost Wasn't, But Then Was" was portrayed by Tress MacNeille, while the clown in the Cirque du Purée was voiced by Hank Azaria. The song that plays when Homer and Ned are driving to the school is "Feel Like Makin' Love" by English rock band Bad Company. Originally, the series' staff wanted to use "Rock and Roll All Nite" by American rock band Kiss, but they failed to obtain the rights to use it.