Matt Groening

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Matthew Abram Groening (born February 15, 1954 in Portland, Oregon; his family name is pronounced /'greɪnɪŋ/, rhyming with complaining) is an American cartoonist and the creator of the animated television series The Simpsons [1] and Futurama. He currently serves as a creative consultant for The Simpsons.

1 Career
2 Trivia
3 Myths
4 Awards
5 References
6 External links

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Career

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Life in Hell and Los Angeles Reader

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 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<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>. 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.

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

Template:Main 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. Brooks wanted to use the Life in Hell characters, but Matt did not want to give up the rights to his characters, so he decided to give them something new. 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"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>.

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 the late 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”<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>. He was also concerned about implication that he had created or produced The Critic. He requested his name be taken off the episode.

He currently serves at The Simpsons as a creative consultant.

He made a cameo appearance in one of the episodes of The Simpsons at a comic book convention, at which Milhouse asks Groening to autograph his Bender (from Futurama) doll, pronouncing his name as "gro-ning" instead of the correct "gray-ning".

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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 Margery 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 therefore chose the name "Bart" (an anagram of brat). However, he stresses that aside from some of the sibling rivalry, his family is nothing like The Simpsons.

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.

The name “Wiggum” for the character of police chief Clancy Wiggum came from 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

Template:Main 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 show was a mild success but languished in the ratings. After four years on the air, the show was cancelled by 20th Century Fox. In a similar situation to Family Guy however, strong DVD sales and very stable ratings on Cartoon Network have brought Futurama back to life, which is slated for a direct-to-DVD movie.

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Other

In 1994, he formed Bongo Comics Group (named after the character Bongo from Life in Hell) 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”<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>. Matt also formed Zongo Comics in 1995, an imprint of Bongo that publishes comics for more mature readers, which included seven issues of friend Gary Panter's “Jimbo” comics and several issues of Mary Fleener's Fleener.

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Trivia

His father, a descendant of Russian Mennonites in Canada, spoke Plautdietsch as a child in Saskatchewan in the 1920s, but Matt never learned the language. <ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
He is also a descendant of the Krimmer Mennonite Brethern in Hillsboro, Kansas, where his great-grandfather's family settled when they immigrated.
The name Groening may be derived from Groningen (city) (or Grun'n in the local dialect) in the north of the Netherlands. Due to his German-Norwegian heritage, it has also been claimed that Groening is an anglicisation of the Scandinavian Grønning.
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 Kamen Goldmark, and Greg Iles.
Both Groening and his character Bart Simpson are left-handed. Other left-handed characters on The Simpsons include Ned Flanders, Mr. Burns, and Moe Szyslak, the bartender.
In college, Groening sometimes took notes in class in the form of comic strips.
The Simpsons characters were named after Groening's own family.
Groening has appeared in both Futurama & The Simpsons. He appeared in Futurama as a head in a jar. In The Simpsons he appeared as the creator of Futurama and as himself in Treehouse of Horror X segment: Desperately Xeeking Xena. He can also be seen in one episode in a courtroom drawing a courtroom picture and signing it.
His sister, Lisa, is married to Craig Bartlett, creator of Hey Arnold!.
Originally, Homer Simpson's inner ear was shaped like a "G", and the hair above in the shape of an "M", spelling Groening's initials. This was changed to normal when Matt realized that if word got out of this, everyone would mention it. When drawing autographed pictures of Homer, he puts in the "M G".
His favorite album is Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart. [2]
Several of his characters have the middle initial 'J' eg: Homer J Simpson, Bart 'J' Simpson and Phillip 'J' Fry. Groening has said that this is a reference to Bullwinkle J. Moose.

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Myths

A sea story in the U.S. Navy's nuclear program holds that Groening is a former Navy nuclear operator. The story goes on to claim that the character of Mr. Burns is based on Admiral Hyman Rickover, and that the Ned Flanders character was inspired by a former commander of a moored training ship prototype unit (MTSPU) located north of Charleston, South Carolina. All good sea stories ignore the truth in some fashion, and this story ignores the facts that Groening was never in the Navy, and that the MTSPU did not open to students until July 1989 when Groening was in his second year of creating The Simpsons for the Tracey Ullman Show.
It should be noted that the correct name of the command is Nuclear Power Training Unit (NPTU), and that Matt Groening merely chose not to have it known that he served in the Navy. The person Ned Flanders is based on is a civilian staff member named Mr. Peach, who works there to this day.
Many fans of The Simpsons believe Springfield, Oregon to be the Springfield of the show. Evidence cited included the time Groening spent in the area growing up, the presence of a popular park which bears a striking resemblance to the fictional Springfield's town square, and the blue collar nature of the two Springfields.
It was said that, while high-school student body president, Groening was stripped of his office because he tried to amend the constitution to make himself all-powerful president for life. But when asked about it at a party for his publishing company, Groening said he liked the myth better, but he did finish his term and was not stripped of his title.