His father Homer, born in Main Centre, Saskatchewan, Canada, grew up in a Mennonite, Plautdietsch-speaking family. MATT GROENING would like to tell you a few things about his family: His father, Homer, is not bald. But that's not my point of view.". His mother, Margaret, though, used to have "huge hair.". This show won many Emmy Awards. [71] He has had several cameo appearances in the show, with a speaking role in the episode "My Big Fat Geek Wedding". After marriage, he became step father to Augustina Picassos daughter Camille. Unlike most shows, which he finds sluggish, "The Simpsons" is written to move at a manic pace. 7) Do you question authority when authority is out of earshot? [85], Groening is known for his eclectic taste in music. He simply shrugs and buys more computer games, like the electronic ant farm that once caught his fancy. View Matt Groening results including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. [51] At the time Groening was primarily drawing in black and "not thinking that [Bart] would eventually be drawn in color" gave him spikes that appear to be an extension of his head. According to Groening, the goal with Bongo is to "[try] to bring humor into the fairly grim comic book market. Groening named the cartoon family named after his own siblings and parents, albeit with a "Bart" in lieu of a character named after himself. Groening stands at a height of 5 ft 8 in (approx:1.7 m). Some of the funniest jokes, he says, can only be caught on a still frame. Groening and his wife Agustina Picasso welcomed a baby in May 2013 named Nathaniel Philip Picasso Groening, named after writer Nathanael West. [41][42][43] Groening famously named the main Simpson characters after members of his own family: his parents, Homer and Marge (Margaret or Marjorie in full), and his younger sisters, Lisa and Margaret (Maggie). He is from OR. [105], Groening has been nominated for 41 Emmy Awards and has won thirteen, eleven for The Simpsons and two for Futurama in the "Outstanding Animated Program (for programming one hour or less)" category. A critic of most of what is on television, Mr. Groening sees the popularity of "The Simpsons" as a challenge to the writers and producers who have been inundating America with successive waves of innocuous situation comedies. [57] Another family member, Grampa Simpson, was introduced in the later shorts. Groening also became a father of twins On June 16, 2018, when his wife Agustina gave birth to Sol Matthew and Venus Ruth, as reported via Instagram. 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 couple have two children together: a son, Homer, and a daughter, Maggie. 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. 1 program. Fearing the loss of ownership rights, he created a new set of characters, the Simpson family. 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. Matt Groening was born on 15 February 1954, at Portland, in Oregon, USA. However, the column would rarely actually be about music, as he would often write about his "various enthusiasms, obsessions, pet peeves and problems" instead. His father, Homer Philip Groening, was a writer, filmmaker and advertiser and his mother, Margaret Ruth, was a teacher. [93] In 2015, Groening's daughters Luna Margaret and India Mia were born. "But I thought I would have a little bit more leeway since I made Fox so much money with 'The Simpsons. Tales of the Rat Fink (2006) as Finkster In 2008, Matt Groening won the Annie Award in the Writing in a Feature Production for comedy film The Simpsons movie. [41][44] However, he stresses that aside from some of the sibling rivalry, his family is nothing like the Simpsons. Upon seeing his work in the comic strip, producer and writer, James L Brooks, expressed his interest to involve Matt Groening in the creation of an animated series to run on comedy series The Tracy Ullman Show. Deborah is a publisher. ", "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. Life in Hell caught the attention of American producer James L. Brooks. When he and former "Simpsons" show runner David X. Cohen (now the show runner on "Futurama") first approached Fox with the new idea, the network went into instant paroxysms of ecstasy. With a developing cast of characters that included Binky's girlfriend Sheba, his one-eared son Bongo and the gay entrepreneurs Akbar and Jeff, and recurring components like "The 16 Types of Sisters" and "The 9 Secret Love Techniques That Could Possibly Turn Men Into Putty in Your Hands," the minimally drawn but meticulously written Life in Hell found its niche between the underground comics and mainstream fare. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Groenings estimated net worth is $600 million. Deborah Caplan and Matt Groening are divorced after a marriage of 13 years. Still, it's clear that Groening's satire feeds on frustration and the stupidity of others. After graduating in 1977, Groening headed to Los Angeles with the idea of pursuing a writing career. Matt Groening - Growing up in Portland, Oregon, Matt Groening did not particularly like school, which is what originally turned him towards drawing. At its peak, the cartoon was carried in 250 weekly newspapers. But mainly, he is Matt Groening. Leslie Jordan. He is a man of above-average stature. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. The following year he founded Zongo Comics to target mature comic readers. In order to avoid insulting another family member by making him the namesake of a Simpsons character, he left Homer's father unnamed. [39], Life in Hell caught the attention of Hollywood writer-director-producer and Gracie Films founder James L. Brooks, who had been shown the strip by fellow producer Polly Platt. [92] In May 2013, Picasso gave birth to Nathaniel Philip Picasso Groening, named after writer Nathanael West. Mr. Groening has several theories for the success of his unusually caustic brand of humor. He is 68 years old. Post years of research in science fiction, in 1997, Matt Groening along with producer, David X Cohen, created an animated series project titled Futurama, about life in the year 3000. 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). Matt Groening (1954-) biography on Film Reference. The Good, the Bart, and the Loki (2021) And it's not going to be dark and drippy like "Blade Runner." Or rather, he is the struggling, penurious pre-"Simpsons" Matt Groening. [90] In July 2013, Groening co-authored Hard Listening (2013) with the rest of the Rock Bottom Remainders (published by Coliloquy, LLC).[91]. "He was a deviant.". In 1987, Groening married fellow Weekly staffer Deborah Caplan. And for a guy whose career has been dedicated to skewering television, crass commercialism, "evil billionaire tyrants" (how boss Rupert Murdoch described himself in a cameo on "The Simpsons") and brainless consumers, Groening sure does love his merchandise. He is a cartoonist, writer, producer, and animator. He made his first professional cartoon sale to the avant-garde Wet magazine in 1978. The /s signifies sarcasm. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. In 2002, he won the Reuben Award by the National Cartoonists Society for his work, Life in Hell. The shorts were spun off into their own series, The Simpsons, which has since aired 742 episodes. 2002, 2003 and 2004. Anyone can read what you share. "I wanted to write something they couldn't teach in high school because it had too much foul language," he said. When he was asked by producer James L. Brooks to create animated shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show, Groening came up with The Simpsons. Over the years, "The Simpsons" and its irreverently unsentimental outlook have provoked a mountain of commentary about the decline of American culture. Needless to say, the life-affirming executives at Fox worried that the show was too dark and negative. Matt Groening's income source is mostly from being a successful Cartoonist. In fact, when "Simpsons" writers wax elegaic, they tend to do so about George Meyer, a writer who first became involved with the show late in 1989, a few months before its Fox premiere. It sneaked up on everybody. 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. A fan of science fiction, he had been thinking about creating a show about the future for some time. [109], He was awarded the Inkpot Award in 1988. They had two sons together, Homer and Abe. "[19] The show premiered on March 28, 1999. And yet he speaks like the kid who just made it big, who still can't believe his luck. 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. Images of "The Simpsons" have been licensed to sell everything from T-shirts to toys to potato chips to cheese, suggesting that mainstream culture has gotten pretty good at marketing genuine hipness as well. [34], Life in Hell became popular almost immediately. [8][50] Bart's original design, which appeared in the first shorts, had spikier hair, and the spikes were of different lengths. creator, Craig Bartlett, who was married to Groening's sister, Lisa, until they divorced in 2015. In 1988, James L. Brooks, looking for a filler in the television show, The Tracey Ullman Show (1987), turned towards a framed "Life in Hell" strip on his wall and contacted Groening. [27] He showed his cartoons to the editor, James Vowell, who was impressed and eventually gave him a spot in the paper. As Groening told Spin magazine. [74] 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". So, how much is Matt Groening worth at the age of 67 years old? [86] He guest-edited Da Capo Press's Best Music Writing 2003[87] and curated a US All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in 2003. "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. In 2016, he developed a new series for Netflix, Disenchantment, which began in August 2018. 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. Spouse/Ex-: Agustina Picasso, Deborah Caplan, siblings: Lisa Groening, Maggie Groening, Mark Groening, Patty Groening, children: Abe Groening, Homer Groening, Nathaniel Philip Picasso Groening, Ancestry: Norwegian American, Canadian American, Notable Alumni: The Evergreen State College, Founder/Co-Founder: Bongo Comics Group, Zongo Comics, The Curiosity Company, Quotes By Matt Groening | [98] Bartlett used to appear in Simpsons Illustrated. 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. Years later, during the early seasons of The Simpsons, when it came time to give Grampa a first name, Groening says he refused to name him after his own grandfather, Abraham Groening, leaving it to other writers to choose a name. "I don't consider anything beneath me. Groening has said that due to his limited drawing ability, it's unlikely he could get a job as an animator on "The Simpsons" today. "The Simpsons" premiered in 1990, and eventually became the most popular, most widely broadcast and one of the longest-running shows in television history. The animated shorts that Groening created were The Simpsons (1989). Of Akbar and Jeff, he said: "'People always ask, 'Are they lovers or brothers or both?' He used to write articles and draw cartoon illustrations for the journal. 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. Perhaps, were he to walk in off the street, he could get a job as a writer on the show. In 1984, certain relationship themed strips from his work were published by co- worker Deborah Caplan, as a book titled Love in Hell. Its shorts were spun off into their own series, The Simpsons, which has since aired 727 episodes. His animated series The Simpsons have won the Primetime Emmy Awards in the Outstanding Animated Program for the years 1990, 1991, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000,2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2008 and 2011. [110], He received the 2,459th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 14, 2012. In 2011, he married artist Augustina Picasso, with whom he had been in a relationship for four years. [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. The two married in 2011 after a four-year relationship. Groening's success owes as much to his own work as it does to the work of a slew of others, including co-creators James Brooks and Sam Simon, and "The Simpsons'" writing staff. Le 15-2-1954 , Matt Groening (surnom: Matthew Abram Groening, Bat Groening, Mad Groening) est n Portland, Oregon, United States. [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. But for a few brief moments in the early '90s, the idea that anything "alternative" could suddenly overtake the mainstream was still surprising. [38] After Groening ended the strip, the Center for Cartoon Studies commissioned a poster that was presented to Groening in honor of his work. Has two sons with Deborah Caplan: Homer Groening (born 1991) and Abe Groening (born 1993). 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. Let us look in detail into Groenings family tree. Matt and Deborah married in 1986, and had 2 sons Homer (who goes by Will) and Abe, both who Matt portrays as rabbits in Life in Hell. [64], Like the main family members, several characters from the show have names that were inspired by people, locations or films. Groening made his first professional cartoon sale of Life in Hell to the avant-garde magazine Wet in 1978. Beginning 1987, he worked in the Traccy Ullman Show for two years as writer and animator. . He has donated money to the unsuccessful presidential campaigns of Democratic candidates Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, as well as previously donating to Kerry's Massachusetts senator campaign. By then, however, "Life in Hell" was running in several other alternative weeklies, and soon the L.A. Weekly brought him on board. Olive, the Other Reindeer (1999) If you answered yes to one or more of the above questions, you are probably a fan of Matt Groening. He hates having to choose among them, he says, because doing one means not doing the others. The show continued in to 2013,[76][77] before Comedy Central announced in April 2013 that they would not be renewing it beyond its seventh season. Matthew Abraham Groening was born 15 February 1954 in Portland, Oregon, United States to Homer Philip Groening (1919-1996) and Margaret Ruth Wiggum (1919-2013) . He ran for student body president on the "Teens for Decency" ("If You're Against Decency, What Are You For?") "Who knew if this TV thing would pan out?" (Statements like these, of course, set off fits of right-wing apoplexy, much to the amusement and delight of everyone else. He is also a father to five more children. However, Groening had expressed a desire to continue the Futurama franchise in some form, including as a theatrical film. They have a son, Nathaniel, and twin daughters, Luna and India. 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. Matt Groening. "I never saw anything as crude as my stuff getting published," he has said. "I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, because this is how everyone is treated [in Hollywood]," he told Mother Jones. [89] In May 2010, he curated another edition of All Tomorrow's Parties in Minehead, England. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. "I wake up every morning thinking how lucky I am. As to his position on the "Simpsons" voice actors' recent contract negotiations, he told Mother Jones, "I have sympathy. Yet Groening's DNA is all over the show, from the characters named after the streets of his hometown (Flanders, Lovejoy, etc. 2) Disappointed? I Know That Voice (2013) Groening grew up in Portland, Ore., with a father named Homer, a mother named Marge and sisters named Maggie and Lisa. . Eventually, he was finally asked to give up the "music" column. "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. [26][32] Vowell also gave Groening his own weekly music column, "Sound Mix," in 1982. Illustrated commentary for ", Groening, Matt. [107] He received a British Comedy Award for "outstanding contribution to comedy" in 2004. In 1987, producers of the soon-to-be-launched sketch comedy program The Tracey Ullman Show, headed by the legendary James L. Brooks, contacted Groening about developing short animated cartoons to air between skits. He was fired from the L.A. 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. Deborah Kaplan has been divorced from Matt Groening since 1999. Even to this date, it continues to appear in many other alternative newspapers. Groening is credited with writing or co-writing the episodes "Some Enchanted Evening", "The Telltale Head", "Colonel Homer" and "22 Short Films About Springfield".