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Crushing Crew

Most adults would rather not revisit the humiliations of high school. Larry Doyle revels in them.

Inside the jacket of his first novel, "I Love You, Beth Cooper," you won't find a stylish, dignified photo of Doyle, 48, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and a former writer for "The Simpsons." Instead, there's a 1976 photo of the shaggy-haired, 17-year-old Doyle from the Buffalo Grove High School yearbook.

And on his Web site, Doyle has posted a clip of his graduation speech, delivered in the sweltering gymnasium at the suburban Chicago school, which provides the setting for the opening scene of "I Love You, Beth Cooper."

In the book, Doyle imagines a braver, if far nerdier, version of himself: Denis Cooverman, social misfit and valedictorian of the Class of 2007, who veers from his carefully scripted graduation speech to utter the stunning sentence that provides the book's title. Beth Cooper is the head cheerleader at Buffalo Grove, and she's hardly ever spoken to Denis.

The geek's declaration of love kicks off a wild graduation night. Denis spends more time with the object of his crush than he ever thought possible — when he's not running from her very large, angry boy- friend.

The book celebrates and satirizes classics of teen cinema — each chapter begins with an epigraph, spoken by immortal characters like Lloyd Dobler of "Say Anything" and Cher Horowitz of "Clueless" — and Doyle enriches his seemingly clichéd characters with surprising depth.

Plus, as he proved even in his graduation speech, Doyle knows how to get a laugh. And he's versatile enough to tailor his comic sensibility to his audience — the erudite readers of The New Yorker, the teens who idolized "Beavis and Butt-head," the passionate and polyglot fans of "The Simpsons."

Then again, his stint on the venerable animated series, from 1998 to 2001, caused some carping. Many fans and critics singled out those years, under executive producer Mike Scully, as the period when the show began its irretrievable decline.

Doyle left "The Simpsons" after selling his first screenplay. Thus began his misadventures in Hollywood.

The author is candid about the two colossal flops — "Duplex" and "Looney Tunes: Back in Action," both released in 2003 — that carry the credit "Written by Larry Doyle."

"Duplex," starring Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore as the new owners of a Brooklyn apartment with a nutty old lady living upstairs, began as a personal project for Doyle about an apartment he bought with his wife. He developed the script with Stiller, Barrymore and director Greg Mottola.

"And then Greg had to leave, because of things that were never fully explained to me," Doyle said. "And he was replaced by Danny DeVito, who did not want me around. I had one conversation with him, a really nice conversation in his very nice house, and I've never talked to him again. He took the script, threw out most of it, changed it in ways that nobody seemed to want him to change it, and shot that."

The movie received mixed reviews and grossed less than $10 million domestically. "Looney Tunes: Back in Action," a big-budget animation-live action hybrid, was an even bigger disaster. That one, Doyle said, was doomed because it was fast-tracked into production before it was ready.

Given that Doyle left Los Angeles and wrote a novel, you might think he's given up on Hollywood. But he's working on a new screenplay, again holding out hope that it might emerge as a solid, funny movie.

And while he'd always wanted to write a novel, "I Love You, Beth Cooper" had its genesis as a movie treatment that wasn't going anywhere. A literary agent read it and suggested that Doyle turn it into a book.

He signed a contract with Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, that forced him to write the book fast — a good thing, Doyle said. "Unlike most first novels, it does not contain everything I know about everything," he said.

Plus, he wasn't burdened by the need to create a literary masterwork.

"The only reason why I didn't write a novel when I was 20 is because I determined that it had to be as good as Thomas Pynchon's 'V.,' " said Doyle, "and then, later, it had to be as good as (Don DeLillo's) 'White Noise,' and that will prevent you from writing much of anything."

Despite his more modest expectations, Doyle has gotten plenty of ecstatic reviews.

The book, released May 8, has fared respectably so far, although it hasn't cracked any best-seller lists.