Glenn Eichler
Glenn Eichler is a comedy writer and producer. He is known as the chief writer and producer of Daria, writing or cowriting fourteen episodes, writing both Daria TV movies and serving as story editor.
Before Daria
Glenn Eichler served as the managing editor of the American humor magazine National Lampoon. It is not known how long he served in this capacity, but he was editor as least as early as 1983. A notice in the weddings section of The New York Times mentions his upcoming marriage to Michele Tomasik on September 24, 1983.
In addition to his work with National Lampoon, Eichler was a freelance writer for Esquire, The Village Voice and the New York Times.
Eichler and MTV
Glenn Eichler mentions how he got started with MTV in an interview:
- Well, I guess Beavis was my big break. I was an editor at National Lampoon, during MTV's youth, and came over to MTV as a promo writer, and Beavis happened to come out of the promos department, because a very creative producer there, named John Payson, found Beavis, at I believe the Spike and Mike's Twisted Film Festival. To make a long story short, the little short that Mike Judge produced got a big reaction immediately from MTV viewers, and they wanted to rush into production and start making cartoons, but they didn't have a staff, so they used the promo writers as the writers, and that's how I became a cartoon writer, I guess.
While working under Mike Judge as a Beavis and Butt-head writer, Eichler is credited with three of the episodes. Furthermore, he was credited as creating the character of Daria to serve as a comedic foil for Beavis and Butt-head. When MTV decided to create a Beavis and Butt-head spinoff, they sought out Glenn Eichler for assistance and were able to use Daria, a character which had not been created by Mike Judge.
Furthermore, Eichler met many of the future writers of Daria who were then working as writers for Beavis and Butt-head, such as Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil. Tracy Grandstaff was a voice artist on Beavis and Butt-head, voicing Daria, Cassandra, and other Mike Judge characters. Grandstaff would eventually voice Daria during the run of Daria's own series.
Other writers with whom Glenn Eichler worked on Daria, such as Peter Gaffney, were known through Eicher's days as a National Lampoon editor.
During his time working at Beavis and Butt-head, Eichler would edit Beavis and Butt-head: This Book Sucks and The Beavis and Butt-head Ensucklopedia. He also wrote Bill and Hillary's 12-step Guide to Political Recovery in 1995 with the British comedy group Spitting Image and wrote Dr. Katz's Me at a Glance in 1996.
He would also write one episode of Married With Children before beginning work on Daria.
After Daria
After Daria finished, Eichler stated that he was "just keeping busy". He worked on MTV pilots based on "Mystik Spiral" (which have never been aired) and Hey Joel (which was briefly a cartoon series). He also worked as a Creative Consultant on the animated television program W.I.T.C.H., currently in weekend reruns on the Disney-run 'JETIX' network at 2:00 am.
Eichler is currently a writer/producer on The Colbert Report, a show mocking right-wing American news with Stephen Colbert taking on a fictional persona as a conservative blowhard. It is on the Comedy Central network in the United States.
He will be writing a graphic novel with Nick Bertozzi called Stuffed, due to be finished in 2009.