He married Agustina Picasso 2011 . The message? But in any case, Groening allowed the series to evolve under the tutelage of his writers, the undisputed champions of television comedy. Matt is stepfather to Agustinas daughter, Camille. [102], Groening has made a number of campaign contributions, all towards Democratic Party candidates and organizations. ``Matt didn't particularly have a reputation for discipline,'' says Randy Michael Signor, a former Reader editor who today works in . Groening and Deborah divorced in 1999. "The Simpsons" has earned Fox's parent company, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., well over a billion dollars, and its role in the network's growth has been incalculable. The two married in 2011 after a four-year relationship. He went through what he described as "a series of lousy jobs," including being an extra in the television movie When Every Day Was the Fourth of July,[25] busing tables,[26] washing dishes at a nursing home, clerking at the Hollywood Licorice Pizza record store, landscaping in a sewage treatment plant,[27] and chauffeuring and ghostwriting for a retired Western director. Groening and Deborah Caplan married in 1986 and had two sons, Homer (who goes by Will) and Abe. "What's happened is that mainstream culture has gotten so good at marketing pseudo-hipness that it overwhelms other choices that are out there.". He won the Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Animated Television Production for his animated series The Simpsons during three consecutive years i.e. The couple divorced in 1999. Work is Hell soon followed, also published by Caplan. . 6) Are you trapped in a loveless cubicle? The network resisted giving Groening the autonomy he needed and plied him with notes. (After 13 years of marriage, Caplan filed for divorce in March 1999, the same month as Groening's second show, "Futurama," premiered. What may never happen again is another show that comes along and had the overall importance to a particular company like 'The Simpsons' has had for News Corp.", Groening was outspoken about his criticisms of Fox's business practices and its inexplicably shabby treatment of him and his new show. Its shorts were spun off into their own series, The Simpsons, which has since aired 727 episodes. That year, he also began working for the alternative-weekly newspaper the L.A. [63], The series quickly became a worldwide phenomenon, to the surprise of many. He is a man of above-average stature. Again, to his surprise, he won. Acting out in school, he recalled having to write "I must be quiet in class" 500 times on at least one occasion and having his doodles torn up by teachers. This is likely influenced by the name of Groening's own parents. The goal of the company, she told Newsweek, was to "keep the machine of Matt going." "That your moral authorities don't always have your best interests in mind," he told Mother Jones magazine. After graduating to a job at a record store called Licorice Pizza, whose gimmick it was to give away licorice to its customers (but whose employees often found themselves providing free licorice meals to the indigent instead), Groening began drawing "Life in Hell," a self-published, xeroxed comic book starring Binky, a lonely, alienated rabbit living in low-income Hollywood hell. In 2016, Groening developed a new series for Netflix, Disenchantment, which premiered in August 2018. A thousand years in the future -- a wry, bleak version of a future where suicide booths and celebrity heads preserved in jars are part of the landscape -- work is still hell. The Longest Daycare (2012) The final episode aired on September 4, 2013. The Simpsons is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. Groening serves as the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell (19772012) and the television series The Simpsons (1989present), Futurama (19992003, 20082013, 2023, and Disenchantment (2018present). [11], Groening grew up in Portland,[12] and attended Ainsworth Elementary School[13] and Lincoln High School. After graduation, Matt Groening moved to Los Angeles, in 1977, with the aim of becoming a writer. Unlike most shows, which he finds sluggish, "The Simpsons" is written to move at a manic pace. In order to avoid insulting another family member by making him the namesake of a Simpsons character, he left Homer's father unnamed. Now I'm deliriously happy all the time.". He works as a cartoonist, writer, producer, and animator. They have a son, Nathaniel, and twin daughters, Luna and India. [41] The entire Simpson family was designed so that they would be recognizable in silhouette. After that, he married actress Augustina Picasso in 2011, after a four-year relationship. He finally added staff cartoonist to his resume when Life in Hell first appeared in the paper in the spring of 1980. [55] Groening storyboarded and scripted every short (now known as The Simpsons shorts), which were then animated by a team including David Silverman and Wes Archer, both of whom would later become directors on the series. [8][50] Bart's original design, which appeared in the first shorts, had spikier hair, and the spikes were of different lengths. From teachers who forced him to rip up his cartoons in front of the class, to the petty tyranny of bosses ("I was told that I would never get a job in the Pacific Northwest in journalism after my disgraceful stewardship of the Cooper Point Journal," Groening told the graduating class in a commencement address at his alma mater, Evergreen State College. Born in 1954 in Portland, Oregon, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening had, in many ways, an idyllic childhood. The animated shorts that Groening created were The Simpsons (1989). [41][44] However, he stresses that aside from some of the sibling rivalry, his family is nothing like the Simpsons. [57] Another family member, Grampa Simpson, was introduced in the later shorts. The same year his direct-to-video film Futurama: Bender's Big Score earned him the Annie Award for Best Animated Home Entertainment. The couple also welcomes daughters Luna Margaret and India Mia born in 2015. From 1972 through 1977, Groening studied at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, a liberal arts school that Groening described as a hippie college, with no grades or required classes, that drew every weirdo in the Northwest. In the spirit of youthful rebellion, he makes pointed digs at Fox in front of network officials. He made a name exploring his own alienation and a fortune exposing the absurdities and hypocrisies of our culture, and nowadays, Groening is as powerful an insider as they come. Realizing that he would lose the rights to his Life in Hell characters with the deal, Groening quickly created a new cartoon family named after his own siblings and parents, albeit with a "Bart" in lieu of a character named after himself. 1 program. Matt Groening married Deborah Caplan in 1986. His other role model was cartoonist, Charles Monroe Schulz, who was known for his comic creation Peanuts. They had 2 children, Homer (31) and Abe (29). Brooks contacted him in 1985 about adapting Life in Hell for animated sequences for the Fox variety shows The Tracey Ullman Show. Were it not for the clueless executives, the inane network decisions, the petty betrayals at the hands of people who benefit from his success, he might have stagnated by now. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Matt Groening has made appearances in films and documentaries, such as, Comic Book: The Movie (2004), The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005), The Seventh Python (2008) and I Know That Voice (2013). . ", "I had a real strong sense of drama as a kid," he said, "and I couldn't believe adults didn't remember what it was like to be a kid. Later, he got employed at an alternative newspaper Los Angeles Reader, and here with the support of his supervisor, Matt Groening was able to officially publish Life in Hell as his first comic strip, in 1980. . Carina Chocano writes about TV for Salon. A team of production companies adapted The Simpsons into a half-hour series for the Fox Broadcasting Company. [15] 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 received a reply. However, the column would rarely actually be about music, as he would often write about his "various enthusiasms, obsessions, pet peeves and problems" instead. Now, though, "The Simpsons" offices at Fox, housed in what looks like a cheap motel, run on a routine, and he has eased off a bit. [66] Despite common fan belief that Sideshow Bob Terwilliger was named after SW Terwilliger Boulevard in Portland, he was actually named after the character Dr. Terwilliker from the film The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.[67], Although Groening has pitched a number of spin-offs from The Simpsons, those attempts have been unsuccessful. Soon, he was driving an 88-year-old movie director around by day and ghost-writing his autobiography by night while living upstairs from a nocturnal rock lover (whose ceiling light he eventually dislodged with a plunging cinderblock). In 2008, Matt Groening won the Annie Award in the Writing in a Feature Production for comedy film The Simpsons movie. In the early days of "The Simpsons," Mr. Groening used to preside over all aspects of production, from scripts to story boards to voice-overs to animation. For a man who has become famous on the strength of his dark musings, starting with "Life in Hell," his weekly comic strip, Mr. Groening (it rhymes with complaining, his publicist says) comes off in person as surprisingly benign: big, bearish and still a bit astonished to find his jokes getting so out of hand. Eventually, he was finally asked to give up the "music" column. Hair High (2004) as Dill Groening was born on February 15, 1954, in Portland, Oregon, in the United States. Matt has a son with his wife, Argentinian artist Agustina Picasso, and two children with his former wife, Deborah Caplan. Needless to say, the life-affirming executives at Fox worried that the show was too dark and negative. And I said, 'I think it's Elroy.' Matt's paternal grandfather was Abram Arthur Groening (the son of Abraham Groening and Aganetha Klaassen). Over the years, "The Simpsons" and its irreverently unsentimental outlook have provoked a mountain of commentary about the decline of American culture. During this time he was the editor of college paper The Cooper Point Journal. The PJs (1999-2001) In 1997, he and retired Simpsons writer David X. Cohen developed Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000, which premiered in 1999, ran for four years on Fox, then picked up by Comedy Central for more seasons. [46] He requested his name be taken off the episode.[70]. Groening found out the way everybody else did, by picking up the paper. The paper offered him a cartoon strip in 1980, and, surprised, Groening accepted. He currently serves at The Simpsons as an executive producer and creative consultant. [12] Although Groening previously stated, "I'll never give up the comic strip. [71] He has had several cameo appearances in the show, with a speaking role in the episode "My Big Fat Geek Wedding". Choosing Los Angeles because it was the place where a writer was most likely to be overpaid, Groening answered a "writer/chauffeur wanted" ad in the L.A. Times. He also plays the drums in the all-author rock and roll band The Rock Bottom Remainders (although he is listed as the cowbell player), whose other members include Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow, Amy Tan, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount Jr., Stephen King, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Sam Barry and Greg Iles. There is not much information about Mark. [10], Matt's grandfather, Abraham 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. He used to write articles and draw cartoon illustrations for the journal. "The success of the show," he has said, "has gone beyond my wildest dreams and worst nightmares.". His office at Fox has the frantic clutter of a teen-ager's bedroom. They had 2 children. Deborah Caplan: Groening has been in a relationship with Deborah Caplan since 2006. She joked that "his godfather is SpongeBob's creator Stephen Hillenburg". Despite the unprecedented success of "The Simpsons," the process of getting "Futurama" on the air has been described by Groening as "the worst experience of my adult life." Reply. I Know That Voice (2013) He described life in Los Angeles to his friends in the form of the self-published comic book Life in Hell, which became loosely inspired by the chapter How to Go to Hell in Walter Kaufmanns book Critique of Religion and Philosophy. Deborah Caplan and Matt Groening are divorced after a marriage of 13 years. His first cousin, Laurie Monnes Anderson, was a member of the Oregon State Senate, representing eastern Multnomah County. In the mid-1980s, he moved to Los Angeles and started drawing a comic strip named "Life in Hell", which eventually became published in the newspaper where he worked. The Simpsons premiered in 1989 with him as creator, writer, voice actor and executive producer. As Flaubert might have said, "Binky, c'est tout le monde." Groening and Deborah Caplan married in 1986[27] and had two sons together, Homer (who goes by Will) and Abe,[44] both of whom Groening occasionally portrays as rabbits in Life in Hell. Reader hired sales rep Deborah Caplan, who observed that the Life in Hell strips were "a major selling point" of the paper. Matt Groening received the British Comedy Award for his Outstanding contribution to comedy. Groening's rough-and-tumble early days in Tinseltown provided endless fodder for a comic he titled Life in Hell, featuring the anthropomorphic rabbit Binky. "[46], Maggie Groening has co-written a few Simpsons books featuring her cartoon namesake. He is not. So the story goes, and it has, as they say, legs.