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Jon Vitti is an American writer best known for his work on the television series The Simpsons. He has also written for King of the Hill, The Critic and The Office, and has served as a screenwriter or consultant for several animated and live-action movies, including Ice Age (2002), Robots (2005), and Horton Hears a Who! (2008). He is one of the eleven writers of The Simpsons Movie and also wrote the screenplays for the film adaptations Alvin and the Chipmunks, its "squeakquel" and The Angry Birds Movie.
Vitti is a graduate of Harvard University, where he was president of the Harvard Lampoon along with Mike Reiss. He was also very close with Conan O'Brien while at Harvard. Prior to joining The Simpsons, he had a brief stint at Saturday Night Live, describing his experience on a DVD commentary as "a very unhappy year." After leaving the Simpsons writing staff in its fourth season, Vitti wrote for the HBO series The Larry Sanders Show. Beginning in its seventh season, he was also a writer for The Office.
He is the fifth most prolific writer for The Simpsons. His 25 episodes place him after John Swartzwelder, who wrote 59 episodes, John Frink who has written 33, Tim Long who has written 30, and Matt Selman who has written 29.
Vitti has also used the pseudonym Penny Wise. Vitti used the pseudonym for episodes "Another Simpsons Clip Show" and "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular" because he did not want to be credited for writing a clip show as expressed on Simpsons DVD commentaries (though his name was credited for writing the first Simpsons clip show "So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show").
On the season four Simpsons episode "The Front," Jon Vitti is caricatured as a Harvard graduate who gets fired from I&S Studios for penning mediocre episodes and gets hit on the head with a name plate by his boss, Roger Meyers.
His wife, Ann, is the sister of fellow Simpsons writer George Meyer[1] (who was also a Saturday Night Live writer-turned-Simpsons writer who did not like working on SNL). He is a distant cousin of Los Angeles Lakers trainer Gary Vitti, award-winning author Jim Vitti, and actor Michael Dante (the stage name of Ralph Vitti).
He is credited with writing the following episodes:
Vitti was nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series for "Hank's Sex Tape" and "Everybody Loves Larry". He was also credited as co-executive producer for 30 of the 89 episodes.
