Difference between revisions of "Matt Groening"

Revision as of 06:56, September 7, 2022

Template:Featured article

This article is about the crew member. For the character, see Matt Groening (character).

Matt Groening

Crew Information Gender: Male ♂ Job: Creator, developer, executive producer, writer, character designer, creative consultant Birth date: February 15, 1954 (1954-02-15) (age 70) Status: Active Number of episodes: 773 Number of comic stories: 235 Seasons active: Shorts season 1 - Present First short: "Good Night" Most recent short: When Billie Met Lisa First episode: "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" Most recent episode: "Treehouse of Horror XXXV" First comic: It's in the Cards Most recent comic: Margemary's Baby Song: "Do the Bartman" First album: The Simpsons Sing the Blues Latest album: The Simpsons: Testify

Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening (born February 15, 1954) is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, producer, animator, author, musician, comedian, and voice actor. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell and television series' The Simpsons, Futurama and Disenchantment. Groening made his first professional cartoon sale of Life in Hell to the avant-garde Wet magazine in 1978. The cartoon is still carried in 250 weekly newspapers. He was also interviewed in The Simpsons: Celebrity Friends, The Simpsons: Mischief & Mayhem, The Simpsons: Access All Areas, The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special – In 3-D! On Ice!, The Simpsons: America's First Family, and The Simpsons: A Culture Show. He will also appear in The Simpsons Take the Bowl.^[1]

History

Life in Hell caught the attention of James L. Brooks. In 1985, Brooks contacted Groening with the proposition of working in animation for the FOX variety show The Tracey Ullman Show. Originally, Brooks wanted Groening to adapt his Life in Hell characters for the show. Fearing the loss of ownership rights, Groening decided to create something new and came up with a cartoon family, the Simpsons, and named the members after his own parents and sisters — while Bart was an anagram of the word brat. The shorts would be spun off into their own series: The Simpsons, which has since aired more than 720 episodes in 33 seasons. In 1997, Groening got together with David X. Cohen and developed Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000, which premiered in 1999. After four years on the air, the show was canceled by Fox in 2003, but Comedy Central commissioned 16 new episodes from four direct-to-DVD movies. In June 2009, Comedy Central ordered 26 new episodes of Futurama, to be aired over two seasons. His advice to beginning cartoonists is to not care about what other people think and just try to make yourself laugh. He said that if he did not think up the Simpsons, he would probably be in a tire shop, drawing doodles of his boss on the break room wall.

Groening has won 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, 12 for The Simpsons and one for Futurama as well as a British Comedy Award for "outstanding contribution to comedy" in 2004. In 2002, he won the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for his work on Life in Hell. In some Simpsons Comics, he gives himself a fake title, such as "Big Daddy" (Taming Your Wild Child), "Cartoonist Gone Wild" (Bart's Beard), and "Former Heartthrob" (Faking the Band).

Groening has voiced himself on a few occasions, "My Big Fat Geek Wedding", The Simpsons Game and "Homer the Whopper". He also voiced a soccer announcer in "Holidays of Future Passed".^[2]

Biography

Early life

Groening was born on February 15, 1954 in Portland, Oregon. He grew up in Portland, and attended Ainsworth Elementary School, and Lincoln High School. He was the middle child of five children. His Norwegian mother, Margaret Wiggum, was once a teacher, and his German father, Homer Philip Groening, was a filmmaker, advertiser, writer and cartoonist. Homer, born in Main Centre, Saskatchewan, Canada, grew up in a Mennonite, Plautdietsch-speaking family. Matt's grandfather Abram Groening was a professor at Tabor College, a Mennonite Brethren liberal arts college in Hillsboro, Kansas before moving to Albany College (now known as Lewis and Clark College) in Oregon in 1930.

From 1972 to 1977, Groening attended The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, a liberal school which he described as "a hippie college, with no grades or required classes, that drew every weirdo in the Northwest." He served as the editor of the campus newspaper, The Cooper Point Journal, for which he also wrote articles and drew cartoons. He befriended fellow cartoonist Lynda Barry after discovering that she had written a fan letter to Joseph Heller, one of Groening's favorite authors, and had gotten a reply back. Groening has credited Barry with being "probably [his] biggest inspiration." He has also cited the Disney animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians as what got him interested in cartoons.

Futurama

Main article: Futurama

After spending a few years researching science fiction, Groening got together with Simpsons writer/producer David X. Cohen (still known as David S. Cohen at the time) in 1997 and developed Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000. By the time they pitched the series to Fox in April 1998, Groening and Cohen had composed many characters and storylines; Groening claimed they had gone "overboard" in their discussions. Groening described trying to get the show on the air as "by far the worst experience of [his] grown-up life." The show premiered on March 28, 1999. Groening's sole writing credit for the show was the premiere episode, "Space Pilot 3000", co-written with Cohen.

After four years on the air, the show was cancelled by Fox. In a similar situation as Family Guy, however, strong DVD sales and very stable ratings on Cartoon Network brought Futurama back to life. When Comedy Central began negotiating for the rights to air Futurama reruns, Fox suggested that there was a possibility of also creating new episodes. When Comedy Central committed to sixteen new episodes, it was decided that four straight-to-DVD films—Bender's Big Score (2007), The Beast with a Billion Backs (2008), Bender's Game (2008) and Into the Wild Green Yonder (2009)—would be produced. Since no new Futurama projects were in production, the movie Into the Wild Green Yonder was designed to stand as the Futurama series finale. However, Groening had expressed a desire to continue the Futurama franchise in some form, including as a theatrical film. In an interview with CNN, Groening said that "we have a great relationship with Comedy Central and we would love to do more episodes for them, but I don't know...We're having discussions and there is some enthusiasm but I can't tell if it's just me."

Awards

Groening has been nominated for 25 Emmy awards and has won eleven: ten for The Simpsons and one for Futurama in the "Outstanding Animated Program (for programming one hour or less)" category.

Groening received the 2002 National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award, and had been nominated for the same award in 2000. He received a British Comedy Award for "outstanding contribution to comedy" in 2004.

Credits

Created by / Developed by / Executive producer / Character designer / Creative consultant

Created by

• Book – Simpsons World the Ultimate Episode Guide: Seasons 1-20

Written by

• Simpsons short – "Good Night"

• Simpsons short – "The Pacifier"

• Simpsons short – "Eating Dinner"

• Simpsons short – "The Closet"

• Simpsons short – "Bart's Little Fantasy"

• Episode – "The Telltale Head" (with Al Jean, Mike Reiss and Sam Simon)
• Episode – "Some Enchanted Evening"
• Episode – "Colonel Homer"
• Episode – "22 Short Films About Springfield" (with Richard Appel, David S. Cohen, Jennifer Crittenden, Jonathan Collier, Greg Daniels, Brent Forrester, Rachel Pulido, Steve Tompkins and Josh Weinstein)
• Special – The Longest Daycare
• Special – Playdate with Destiny
• Album – The Simpsons Sing the Blues ("Deep, Deep Trouble")
• Album – The Yellow Album ("The Ten Commandments of Bart")

Produced by

• Special – Playdate with Destiny
• Special – The Force Awakens from Its Nap
• Special – The Good, the Bart, and the Loki
• Special – Plusaversary
• Special – When Billie Met Lisa

Executive producer

• Special – Do the Bartman
• Special – Deep, Deep Trouble

Producer

• Special – The Simpsons Ride

Characters created by

• Video game – The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants
• Video game – The Simpsons: Bart's House of Weirdness
• Video game – The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man
• Video game – Itchy & Scratchy in Miniature Golf Madness

Creative consultant

• Video game – The Simpsons Cartoon Studio
• Video game – The Simpsons: Virtual Springfield
• Video game – The Simpsons Bowling
• Video game – The Simpsons: Night of the Living Treehouse of Horror
• Video game – The Simpsons Road Rage
• Video game – The Simpsons Skateboarding
• Video game – The Simpsons: Hit & Run

Very special thanks to

• Video game – The Simpsons Cartoon Studio

Comics

Note: Each Simpsons Comics story features a credit for Matt Groening, in the vain of "created by", usually a humorous pun on the comic story.

Contributing writer

• Comic story – Clip Clip Hooray!

Contributing artist

• Comic story – Clip Clip Hooray!

Writer

• Comic story – Krusty's House of Novelties

Publisher

• Book – Simpsons Comics Extravaganza
• Book – Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror: Heebie-Jeebie Hullabaloo
• Book – The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Fun-Filled Frightfest

For The Simpsons

• Album – Songs in the Key of Springfield
• Album – Go Simpsonic with The Simpsons
• Album – The Simpsons: Testify

Parody lyrics by

• Album – The Simpsons Movie: The Music ("Spider Pig")

Hans Zimmer would like to thank

• Album – The Simpsons Movie: The Music

Thanks to

• Album – The Simpsons: Testify

Creator

• Book – Bart Simpson's Manual of Mischief

Acknowledgement

• Book – The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Ominous Omnibus Vol. 1: Scary Tales & Scarier Tentacles

Interviewee

• Special – The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special – In 3-D! On Ice!

Commentary

See also

• Matt Groening's 10 favorite episodes

External links

• Matt Groening at the Internet Movie Database
• Matt Groening at Wikipedia
• Matt Groening at MobyGames

References