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Matthew Abram Groening (born February 15, 1954 in Portland, Oregon; his family name is pronounced , rhyming with gaining and raining.) is an Emmy-winning American cartoonist and the creator of the American animated television series The Simpsons * and Futurama, as well as the comic strip Life in Hell. He currently serves as a creative consultant for The Simpsons, a position he has held for over seventeen years since the show's inception in 1989.
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Early life
The middle child of five children, Groening grew up in Portland, Oregon. His mother, Margaret, was once a teacher. His late father, Homer, was a filmmaker, advertising man, writer and cartoonist - “the kinds of cartoons that had guys standing in bars making disparaging comments,” according to Groening in a 1993 online Q&A *.
Matt attended The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, a progressive school which he called "a hippie college, with no grades or required classes, that drew every creative weirdo in the Northwest" *. He became friends with Lynda Barry after discovering she had written a fan letter to Joseph Heller, one of Matt’s favorite authors, and had gotten a reply back •. For one semester, he was the editor of the school newspaper, working alongside Charles Burns.
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Career
In 1977, at the age of 23, Groening moved to Los Angeles to become a writer. However, on the way there, his car broke down in the fast lane of the Hollywood Freeway. He found work for a time as a chauffeur and "biographer" for an unsuccessful 88-year-old B-Western movie director. He described life in Los Angeles to his friends in the form of a comic book, and called it Life in Hell which was loosely inspired by a chapter entitled “How to Go to Hell” in Walter Kaufmann's book Critique of Religion and Philosophy.
Groening started the comic in 1977 by photocopying and distributing it in the book corner of Licorice Pizza, the record store he was working in. He made his first professional cartoon sale to the avant-garde Wet magazine in 1978 (the strip, entitled “Forbidden Words”, appeared in the September/October issue), and by 1980 the strip had become so popular in the underground that it was picked up by the Los Angeles Reader, where he also delivered papers as well as some editing and paste-up.
In 1982, the editor of the Reader gave Matt his own weekly rock ‘n’ roll column, "Sound Mix". However, the column would rarely be about rock ‘n’ roll, as he would instead write more about his life and childhood, his pet peeves, and even things he found in the street. “I think the people who ran the Reader felt so guilty about how little they were paying people that they let them write about whatever they wanted”, Matt later reflected•. In an effort to add more rock to the column, he would often simply make up stuff, writing reviews of fictional bands and non-existent records. The following week, he would confess to fabricating everything in the previous column, then swear that everything in the new column was true. Finally, he was asked to give up the "music" column and perhaps write a humor column under a different title.
Matt met his wife, Deborah Caplan, in 1980 at the Los Angeles Reader (they divorced in 1999). In late 1984, she published Groening’s first cartoon book, Love is Hell, which was a big underground success. Soon afterward, they left the Reader and put together the Life in Hell Co., which handled syndication and merchandise for Groening’s projects.
In the late 1980s, Groening drew several print advertisements for Apple Computer in the form of Life in Hell comic strips.
The strip is still carried in many weekly newspapers and has been anthologized in a series of books, including School is Hell, Childhood is Hell, Work is Hell, The Big Book of Hell and The Huge Book of Hell.
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The Simpsons
Life in Hell caught the attention of Hollywood writer-producer and Gracie Films founder James L. Brooks. In 1985, he contacted Groening with the proposition of working in animation on an undefined future project. That project would turn out to be developing a series of short animation skits, called “bumpers”, to be featured on the FOX variety show The Tracey Ullman Show. Originally, Brooks wanted Groening to adapt his Life in Hell characters for the show. But not wanting to endanger his comic strip job if the animation job didn't work out, Groening decided to give them something new. Reportedly, he designed the look of the Simpson family in only fifteen minutes.
Matt storyboarded and scripted every short, which were then animated by David Silverman and Wes Archer, both of whom would later become directors on the series.
Premiering on the Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987, the shorts became very popular, which led to a half-hour spin-off in 1989. The series quickly became a worldwide phenomenon, to the surprise of many. Said Groening: “Nobody thought The Simpsons was going to be a big hit. It snuck up on everybody"[. ]
Sometime in the 1990s, Matt tried to pitch a live-action spin-off about Krusty the Clown, but was unsuccessful. He has also pitched “Young Homer” and a spin-off about the non-Simpsons citizens of Springfield. Supposedly, there were also plans for a live-action movie based off of the character Troy McClure, to be played by Phil Hartman (who provided Troy’s voice), but this, too, was scrapped.
In 1995, Matt got in a major disagreement with Brooks and other Simpsons producers over “A Star is Burns”, a crossover episode with The Critic, an animated show also produced by Brooks and staffed with many former Simpsons crew members. Groening feared that viewers would “see it as nothing but a pathetic attempt to advertise The Critic at the expense of The Simpsons”
He has had several "cameos" in the show (an incomplete list can be found here), with a speaking role in the episode My Big Fat Geek Wedding.
He currently serves at The Simpsons as a creative consultant, as well as a writer and producer on the upcoming movie.
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Simpsons character names
Groening named the main Simpson characters after members of his own family: his parents, Homer and Margaret (Marge or Marjorie in full), and his younger sisters, Lisa and Margaret (Maggie). As for himself, he decided it was a bit too obvious to name a character after himself and chose the name "Bart" (an anagram of brat). The last name of the family, according to commentary on the Season 2 DVD, came from the fact that "Simpson" means "son of a simpleton". However, he stresses that, aside from some of the sibling rivalry, his family is nothing like the Simpsons. (Interestingly, in the novel and movie, "The Day of the Locust", the main character shares the name of Homer Simpson, but Groening also admits in the commentary that it is a coincidence.)
Groening also has an older brother and sister, Mark and Patty, but these siblings were left out of the main Simpson family. It is questionable whether Marge’s sister Patty’s name comes from Matt’s sister or if it is a coincidence. In a 1995 interview, he divulged that Mark “is the actual inspiration for Bart”.
Groening says he refused to name Homer's dad after his father's real dad, leaving it to other writers to name that character. They gave him the name of Abraham, which by coincidence turned out to be the name of Groening's grandfather. Homer and Abraham are also the names of Groening's two sons, born in 1989 and 1991, respectively.
The name “Wiggum” for police chief Clancy Wiggum was Groening's mother's maiden name.
Groening grew up in Portland, Oregon, and seems to have found names for some characters from major Portland street names such as Flanders, Lovejoy, Powell (as in Homer's half-brother Herb Powell), Quimby, Kearney (the bully), and Terwilliger (Sideshow Bob's last name).
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Futurama
After spending a few years researching science fiction, Matt got together with Simpsons staff writer David X. Cohen (who was still known as David S. Cohen at the time) and developed Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000.
The Emmy-winning show was a moderate success but languished in the ratings. After four years on the air, the show was cancelled by 20th Century Fox. However, in a similar situation to Family Guy, strong DVD sales and very stable ratings on Cartoon Network and Teletoon have brought Futurama back to life, which is slated for four direct-to-DVD movies, as confirmed by Groening in an interview with the Onion AV Club.
Comedy Central has also ordered 13 new episodes to be aired in 2008.
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Other
In 1994, he formed Bongo Comics Group (named after the character Bongo from Life in Hell) with Steve Vance, Cindy Vance and Bill Morrison, which publishes Simpsons and Futurama comics (including a two-part comic special entitled Futurama Simpsons Infinitely Secret Crossover Crisis, a crossover between the two), as well as a few original titles. The goal with Bongo is to “try to bring humor into the fairly grim comic book market”
Groening has released a large number of books with HarperCollins publishers.
He is a member of the rock and roll band The Rock Bottom Remainders, whose members include Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow, Amy Tan, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount Jr., Stephen King, Kathi Goldmark, and Greg Iles.
In 2003, he curated the U.S. All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in Los Angeles.
Groening has also provided voicework for several films, including Tales of the Rat Fink, a 2006 documentary about Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, and Hair High, a 2004 Bill Plympton film.
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Awards
He has received the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for 2003, and was nominated for the same award in 2000. *
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Personal life
Groening and Caplan married in 1986 and had two sons together, Homer (who goes by “Will”) and Abe, both of whom Groening occasionally portrays as rabbits in “Life in Hell”. The couple divorced in 1999 after thirteen years of marriage. Following this, he was in a six-year commitment with dating expert Lauren Frances *.
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Television writing credits
Matt Groening is credited with writing or co-writing the following episodes:
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Trivia
In college, Groening sometimes took notes in class in the form of comic strips.
In one of his music reviews for the Los Angeles Reader, Groening panned musician Danny Elfman badly enough that Elfman responded with an irate letter to the editor *. Elfman would later go on to do the theme for The Simpsons.
Several of his characters have the middle initial 'J', including Bartholomew J. Simpson, Homer J. Simpson, Abraham J. Simpson, Phillip J. Fry, and Hubert J. Farnsworth. Groening has said that this is a reference to Bullwinkle J. Moose.
In some of Matt's original drawings of Homer Simpson, Homer's ear was shaped like a "G", and the hair above in the shape of an "M", spelling Groening's initials. However, he did not include this in later drawings as he decided it would be too distracting for those who were aware of it. Groening includes the initials when drawing autographed pictures of Homer for fans. On the Season 7 DVD animatic for "The Day the Violence Died", Groening revealed he often mispells his autograph with "Greoning" for "annoying" fans.
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