It may simply be, he speculates, "that people don't get it.". [81] The cast includes Abbi Jacobson, Eric Andre, and Nat Faxon. Matt Groening The Simpsons, Bio, Wiki, Age, Wife, Life In Hell, and Net They divorced in 1999 and Groening married Argentine artist Agustina Picasso in 2011. Matt Groening and Deborah Caplan - Dating, Gossip, News, Photos The following year he founded Zongo Comics to target mature comic readers. In 2016, he developed a new series for Netflix, Disenchantment, which began in August 2018. Many members of the Simpson family are named for members of his own family: Homer, Marge, Maggie, Lisa and Patty. Groening became stepfather to Agustinas daughter named Camila Costantini. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. [94] On June 16, 2018, he became the father of twins for a second time when his wife gave birth to Sol Matthew and Venus Ruth, announced via Instagram. Groening won a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 14, 2012. But he realized that Fox would own whatever characters went on the air. (2005). Groening found out the way everybody else did, by picking up the paper. Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs (2008) Matt Groening created a dysfunctional family and The Simpsons aired on the show for the first time in 1987. In 1984, certain relationship themed strips from his work were published by co- worker Deborah Caplan, as a book titled Love in Hell. Agustina is an Argentinian artist. There are Bart cake pans, Bart bicycles and Bart pinball machines, Bart note cards, Bart soda bottles and Bart game books. "I wake up every morning thinking how lucky I am. The same year his direct-to-video film Futurama: Bender's Big Score earned him the Annie Award for Best Animated Home Entertainment. [45] Groening also has an older brother and sister, Mark and Patty, and in a 1995 interview Groening divulged that Mark "is the actual inspiration for Bart. [34], Life in Hell became popular almost immediately. . Groening and Deborah Caplan married in 1986 and had two sons, Homer (who goes by Will) and Abe. Unlike most shows, which he finds sluggish, "The Simpsons" is written to move at a manic pace. In 2002, he won the Reuben Award by the National Cartoonists Society for his work, Life in Hell. However, the show's collection of memorable supporting characters and winking, multilayered nods to popular culture, arguably owes more to Simon and the original stable of writers than to Groening. Matt and Deborah separated in 1999. [27] He showed his cartoons to the editor, James Vowell, who was impressed and eventually gave him a spot in the paper. "I showed it to the editor of the Los Angeles Reader," he once told an interviewer, "and he hired me immediately -- to deliver newspapers." [8][9] Homer, born in Main Centre, Saskatchewan, Canada, grew up in a Plautdietsch-speaking family. 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). The shorts were spun off into their own series, The Simpsons, which has since aired 742 episodes. The comic strip Life in Hell was a huge success. 1 . [96] In January 2022, Groening's tenth child Satori was born. At its peak, the cartoon became carried in 250 weekly newspapers. [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. After marriage, he became step father to Augustina Picasso's daughter Camille. SALON is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon.com, LLC. The duo left the newspaper company and Matt Groening founded the Acme Features Syndicate that distributed Life in Hell. Tags: Geek (1), Animation (1), Cartoons (1 . 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. Playdate with Destiny (2020) He gleefully zinged their sensibilities after becoming editor of the school paper, at one point instigating a petition that condemned his satirization of communal life, while also training his ire on mainstream targets like the Washington state legislature. "The Simpsons" premiered in 1990, and eventually became the most popular, most widely broadcast and one of the longest-running shows in television history. When Comedy Central began negotiating for the rights to air Futurama reruns, Fox suggested that there was a possibility of also creating new episodes. 2002, 2003 and 2004. Groening made his first professional cartoon sale of Life in Hell to the avant-garde magazine Wet in 1978. Deborah is a publisher. Groening was married to Deborah Caplan from 1986 to 1999. [69], In 1995, Groening got into 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. 6) Are you trapped in a loveless cubicle? Matt Groening - Address & Phone Number | Whitepages Published a month later, the book was an underground success, selling 22,000 copies in its first two printings. Before, Groening was married to his first wife Deborah Caplan. The Good, the Bart, and the Loki (2021) He was also given the responsibility of handling the papers music column for a short period. The early iteration of The Simpsons was a crude, Neanderthal version of the family that would become ubiquitous in pop culture; both Bart and Lisa were troublemakers, and Homer was a barely controlled cauldron of rage. In the mid '80s, renowned producer James L. Brooks approached Groening about using the characters from "Life in Hell" on a new show he was developing for comedian Tracey Ullman. Bush family aside, who is not a fan of Matt Groening? After graduating in 1977, Groening headed to Los Angeles with the idea of pursuing a writing career. According to Groening, the goal with Bongo is to "[try] to bring humor into the fairly grim comic book market. The couple has two sons, Homer and Abe. [58], Although The Tracey Ullman Show was not a big hit,[59] the popularity of the shorts led to a half-hour spin-off in 1989. Though Groening has continued to churn out his comic strip every week, it's been about a decade since he wrote an episode of "The Simpsons." Groening worked at the Reader for six years, as a typesetter, editor, paste-up artist and rock critic. The /s signifies sarcasm. Tales of the Rat Fink (2006) as Finkster Matt Groening Biography (1954-) - Film Reference 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). As described in .css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, he grew up next to the old Portland Zoo, which, after reopening in a new location in 1959, became a wonderland for Groening and his friends with its abandoned animal enclosures. It was at the Reader that Groening also met Deborah Caplan, a sales represen- tative with a background in publishing and a head for business - all qualities notoriously absent in Groening's psychological framework. Matthew Abram Groening (/ren/ GRAY-ning; born February 15, 1954)[1] is an American cartoonist, writer, producer, and animator. His mission, Groening has said, was to create a sofa-centric sitcom about a typical American family and turn it upside down in retaliation for all the bad TV he watched as 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. '", Sharing one inane series of meetings, he told the magazine, "I said, 'Look, I told you "Futurama" is not going to be bland and boring like "The Jetsons." Mr. Groening planned to use the figures from "Life in Hell." I Know That Voice (2013) His sister Lisa does not play the saxophone. Contents 1 Children 2 Siblings 3 Residences 4 Footnotes (including sources) Children Siblings Residences ", The Simpsons are offspring of Bongo, Akbar and Jeff, only slightly less hapless. 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." he said in a Mother Jones interview. They had 2 children. . Its shorts were spun off into their own series, The Simpsons, which has since aired 727 episodes. The couple has two sons, Homer and Abe. 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. Homer and Abe were their two sons. She joked that "his godfather is SpongeBob's creator Stephen Hillenburg". Groening started sending the comic back home to friends in Portland in lieu of doleful letters about his miserable life. "Teachers, principals, clergymen, politicians -- for the Simpsons, they're all goofballs, and I think that's a great message for kids." Quote Of The Day | Top 100 Quotes, See the events in life of Matt Groening in Chronological Order, (Cartoonist, Writer and Producer Known for His TV Series The Simpsons, Futurama and Disenchantment), https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/matt-groening-netflix-in-talks-report/, http://www.technobuffalo.com/2016/01/17/simpsons-creator-matt-groening-in-talks-with-netflix-for-new-animated-series/, http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/matt-groening-netflix-comedy-talks/, http://www.shannonmcclean.com/new-pagemosaics/. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell (1977-2012) and the television series The Simpsons (1989-present), Futurama (1999-2003, 2008-2013, 2023-onwards [2] ), and Disenchantment (2018-2022). To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. [89] In May 2010, he curated another edition of All Tomorrow's Parties in Minehead, England. "If I could pay my rent, I was deliriously happy. 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. In the 10 years since the debut of "The Simpsons," however, Groening had gone from semifamous alternative cartoonist to iconic powerhouse. However, the couple divorced in 1999 after thirteen years of marriage. . George Bush once famously regaled the nation with the suggestion that American families should aspire to be "more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons," prompting Bart to retort, "But we're just like the Waltons -- we're both praying for an end to the depression."). Groening also collectively donated to the Democratic senatorial campaign committee and to the Senate campaigns of Barbara Boxer (California), Dianne Feinstein (California), Paul Simon (Illinois), Ted Kennedy (Massachusetts), Carl Levin (Michigan), Hillary Clinton (New York), Harvey Gantt (North Carolina), Howard Metzenbaum (Ohio), and Tom Bruggere (Oregon). The artist saw his first non-self-published comic appear in a 1978 issue of Wet magazine. But when pressed, he concedes that he is not sure what makes his critique of Middle America so appealing to Middle Americans. Matt Groening Net Worth | Celebrity Net Worth So, how much is Matt Groening worth at the age of 67 years old? The pilot episode of "Futurama" was scheduled to air in the coveted slot between "The Simpsons" and "The X-Files" on Sunday night, and was watched by 19 million viewers. Le 15-2-1954 , Matt Groening (surnom: Matthew Abram Groening, Bat Groening, Mad Groening) est n Portland, Oregon, United States. (2015) By installment No. Ever since his syndicated comic strip "Life in Hell" -- that series of nihilistic but cuddly dispatches from the epicenter of gloom -- first appeared in 1980, Groening has been raising the dampened spirits of the fashionably alienated by dunking Binky, his rabbity, buck-toothed proxy, into a weekly bog of self-pity, anxiety and existential despair. Though the Tracy Ullman Show was soon cancelled, The Simpsons had gained popularity and earned its exclusive half an hour spin-off series. He rose to fame with the comic strip Life in Hell; and his animated television series The Simpsons. "[19] The show premiered on March 28, 1999. Matt's paternal grandfather was Abram Arthur Groening (the son of Abraham Groening and Aganetha Klaassen). In the mid-1980s, he moved to Los Angeles and started drawing a comic strip named Life in Hell, whi . In 1985, Brooks contacted Groening about adapting Life in Hell for animated sequences for the Fox variety show The Tracey Ullman Show. He befriended fellow cartoonist Lynda Barry and, finding no real authority to rebel against, he turned to cartooning in earnest. Maratona Especial Os Simpsons (since 2017). Groening and his wife Agustina Picasso welcomed a baby in May 2013 named Nathaniel Philip Picasso Groening, named after writer Nathanael West. Deborah Caplan and Matt Groening are divorced after a marriage of 13 years. Twenty-four years ago, Groening was just another unrecognized genius driving to Los Angeles in a crummy car with a coat hanger for a radio antenna. Ian Maxtone-Graham, another writer on the show, has said in an interview, "I would rather make George Meyer laugh than get an Emmy." Writer/director Deborah Kaplan met partner, writer/director Harry Elfont, at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' prestigious film school. He donned the role of an executive producer for animated films Futurama: Bender's Game (2007), Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs (2008), Futurama: Bender's Game (2008), and Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder (2009). Every week or so Mr. Groening gets a new offer to develop a movie or a cartoon or a situation comedy. James L. Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with the Fox network that prevented Fox from interfering with the show's content. It was Homer, a cartoonist and filmmaker, who showed his precocious son that a career of creative fulfillment was possible. Mr. Groening describes "The Simpsons" as a decidedly perverse take on some of the most popular shows of his childhood, like "Leave It to Beaver." Deborah Kaplan is currently available. He was born in Portland, Oregon, the middle of five children (older brother Mark and sister Patty were born in 1950 and 1952, while the younger sisters Lisa and Maggie in 1956 and 1958, respectively). Or rather, he is the struggling, penurious pre-"Simpsons" Matt Groening. He studied at Evergreen State College and edited the campus newspaper. A fan of science fiction, he had been thinking about creating a show about the future for some time. All rights reserved. A few years earlier they had set up their own syndicate, ACME Features, to distribute the strip. [41][44] However, he stresses that aside from some of the sibling rivalry, his family is nothing like the Simpsons. He also made appearances in episodes of television series The Pitts, Portlandia and Space Ghost Coast to Coast. After their marriage, he became the stepfather of Augustina Picasso's daughter Camille. As to the autonomy he'd enjoyed with "The Simpsons," Groening was told, "We don't do business like that anymore. Matt Groening's income source is mostly from being a successful Cartoonist. "Simpsons" executive producer Mike Scully, who took over as show runner, or head writer, in 1996, has said that in order to write for "The Simpsons," a writer must have "a healthy disrespect for everything Americans hold dear." The pair married in 1986 and had two sons together namely, Homer (who goes by Will) and Abe, both of whom he occasionally portrays as rabbits in Life in Hell. Indeed, "The Simpsons" has something to offend almost everyone: the cops sit around eating doughnuts, the teachers are lost without their answer books, the parents are losers and even God is a malcontent. Originally, Brooks wanted Groening to adapt his Life in Hell characters for the show. The couple also welcomes daughters Luna Margaret and India Mia born in 2015. The company published comics related to The Simpsons and Futurama. ", Not that Fox isn't grateful: "If you go back 10 years ago, we didn't have a lot of successful shows on the air," 20th Century Fox Television co-president Gary Newman told Daily Variety in January 2000, about nine months after the debut of "Futurama." But the conformity of a suburban existence soon proved dull, even to a young Groening. But the short clips were a hit with fans, and producers began exploring a standalone series as Tracey Ullman floundered in the ratings. In 1984, Groening and his wife Deborah Caplan published his first "Life in Hell" book, called Love in Hell, and eventually set up a distribution company, Life in Hell Co., which handled the syndication and merchandise for all of Groening's projects. "If there's a message that runs through the show," he told The New York Times in 2001, well after he had become wealthy and influential beyond his wildest dreams, "it's that maybe the authorities don't have your best interests at heart. 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. "[46] He also formed Zongo Comics in 1995, an imprint of Bongo that published comics for more mature readers,[46] which included three issues of Mary Fleener's Fleener[84] and seven issues of his close friend Gary Panter's Jimbo comics. (Villard). (29 October 1987 - 1999) ( divorced) ( 2 children) The final strip of the comic strip "Life in Hell" was published on June 16, 2012. 8) Does this fill you with shame and guilt and cheese puffs? His father, Homer Philip Groening, was a writer, filmmaker and advertiser and his mother, Margaret Ruth, was a teacher. [72] Groening described trying to get the show on the air as "by far the worst experience of [his] grown-up life. His first cousin, Laurie Monnes Anderson, was a member of the Oregon State Senate, representing eastern Multnomah County. In fact, to prove that he didn't mean anything by naming a fat, incompetent slob like Homer Simpson after his father, he named his first son Homer, too. And the idea of creating a show on his own appealed to him. Fearing the loss of ownership rights, he created a new set of characters, the Simpson family. "When I was a kid, my friends and I used to put on puppet shows, make comic books, and I decided that's what I wanted to do, to play in every medium," he said.