The episode was written by Jon Vitti, who used the pseudonym "Penny Wise" in the closing credits because he did not want to be credited for writing a clip show. It was directed by David Silverman, who also did not want to be credited, and used the pseudonym "Pound Foolish" in the closing credits.
Matt Groening is drawn to look like Hollywood director John Ford. His reply to "Get outta my office!" tracks with an anecdote Steven Spielberg told about meeting him, which was dramatized in The Fabelmans.
This is the only episode of the series to be animated entirely in America. This is likely due to two factors: Not much new animation was required for a clip show, and much of the new animation created was very limited in movement and thus, easy to produce domestically.
One of the clips shown in the episode comes from the season four episode Marge Gets a Job (1992), in which Smithers has a dream that he is sleeping and Mr. Burns flies through a window into his room. The sequence shows Burns flying towards a happy-looking Smithers. The original clip went on for a few seconds longer, but had to be trimmed down in order to remove portions that showed "Mr. Burns land[ing] in a particular position on Smithers' anatomy". There were also issues with "the lump in his bed", which the animators said they had drawn as his knee, but the censors had mistakenly believed was an erection.
Despite having already left the show by the time this episode was made, a portrait of former producer Sam Simon was drawn by Simon himself after he did not like the original joke for him, which was a "No Photo Available" disclaimer.