3. The Reason Behind The 'X' In David Cohen's Name
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
Matt Groening obviously deserves a lot of credit for developing Futurama, but equally, a lot of praise needs to go David X. Cohen's way.
Before Futurama, Cohen had written for both The Simpsons and Beavis and Butthead. When it came to developing the sci-fi series with Groening though, he had his work cut out for him. Cohen acted as a head writer on the show, as well as an executive producer and voice director. He was instrumental in its success, but did encounter a slight hiccup just before the series' pilot episode aired.
Fox's prime-time animated shows unionised around the time of Futurama's development, and the WGA (Writers' Guild of America) prohibited its members from from using the same name. Cohen was thus forced to change his original middle name - "Samuel" - and replace it with something else, eventually settling on "X" because, in his words, "it sounded sci-fi-ish".
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
