Azaria became famous for his voice work in the ongoing animated television series "The Simpsons". He joined the show having previously performed only one voice-over—as the titular animated dog in the failed Fox pilot "Hollywood Dog", a show he described as "sort of Roger Rabbit-esque, where the dog was animated, but everybody else was real." The first voice he performed on "The Simpsons" was that of town bartender Moe Szyslak, replacing Christopher Collins who had initially recorded the character's voice. Having known him from "Hollywood Dog", casting director Bonita Pietila called Azaria and asked him to audition for the voice of Moe. At the time he was performing the role of a drug dealer in a play, utilizing a voice based on Al Pacino's performance in the film "Dog Day Afternoon". He used the voice in his audition for "The Simpsons" and, at the request of the show's executive producers Matt Groening and Sam Simon, made the voice more "gravelly". Groening and Simon thought the resultant voice was ideal for Moe and took Azaria over to the Fox recording studio. Before he had even seen a script, he recorded several lines of dialogue as Moe for the episode "Some Enchanted Evening", dubbing Collins' voice.