Matt Groening's Birthday

Matthew Abram Groening was born February 15th, 1954 in Portland, Oregon; his family name rhymes with with raining. He is an American cartoonist and the creator of the animated television series The Simpsons and Futurama. At the age of 23, Groening moved to Los Angeles in 1977 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. 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." 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". 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”. He was also concerned about implication that he had created or produced The Critic. He requested his name be taken off the episode. Groening named the main Simpson characters after members of his own family: his parents, Homer and Margaret (Marge), and his younger sisters, Lisa and 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, Kearny (the bully), and Terwilliger (Sideshow Bob's last name).

Trivia

The name Groening may be derived from Groningen (city) (or Grun'n in the local dialect) in the north of the Netherlands.

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.

Groening has appeared in both Futurama & The Simpsons. He appeared in Futurama as a head in a jar. In The Simpsons as the creator of Futurama and as himself in Treehouse of Horro X segment: Desperately Xeeking Xena.

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 realised that if word got out of this, everyone would mention it. When drawing autographed pictures of Homer, he puts in the "M G".

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.