Deborah Caplan: Net Worth: $600 million: Birth Place: Portland, OR: Nationality: American: Education: Evergreen State College: Father: Homer Philip Groening: Mother: But the short clips were a hit with fans, and producers began exploring a standalone series as Tracey Ullman floundered in the ratings. Then, no sooner had they ordered 13 episodes than the doubts set in. The same year his direct-to-video film Futurama: Bender's Big Score earned him the Annie Award for Best Animated Home Entertainment. I may be going to hell, but I did embrace all the stuff -- the T-shirts, the Bart phone, the chess set, all of it.". Let us look in detail into Groenings family tree. Maratona Especial Os Simpsons (since 2017). He notes with a chuckle that he has just received the lastest shipment of Simpsoniana: Bart golf balls. In 1991, the newly wealthy Groening still seemed to struggle with the central paradox of his career. After graduation, Matt Groening moved to Los Angeles, in 1977, with the aim of becoming a writer. 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. 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 | All Rights Reserved. He is a cartoonist, writer, producer, and animator. 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. Hold out for as much money as you can get, but make the deal. 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. Groenings Norwegian American mother, Margaret Ruth (ne Wiggum; March 23, 1919 April 22, 2013), worked once as a teacher, and his Russian Mennonite father named Homer Philip Groening (December 30, 1919 March 15, 1996), served as a filmmaker, advertiser, writer, and cartoonist. In 2009, the show beat Gunsmoke to become the longest-running entertainment show on primetime TV. Again, to his surprise, he won. "What's happened is that mainstream culture has gotten so good at marketing pseudo-hipness that it overwhelms other choices that are out there.". They had 2 children, Homer (31) and Abe (29). 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. So the story goes, and it has, as they say, legs. Matt Groening sa constellation est Verseau et . After that, he married actress Augustina Picasso in 2011, after a four-year relationship. Matt Groening married Deborah Caplan in 1986. He still draws the ear as a 'G' when he draws pictures of Homer for fans. Its first ten episodes premiered on the streaming service in August 2018, with the remaining ten episodes of the initial order scheduled to air in September 2019. [78], On February 9, 2022, the series was revived at Hulu, set for a 2023 release. 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. By then, however, "Life in Hell" was running in several other alternative weeklies, and soon the L.A. Weekly brought him on board. It was thanks to Brooks' reputation that "The Simpsons" was granted a level of autonomy not normally given to television shows -- especially one as risky as "The Simpsons" seemed at the time. He ran for student body president on the "Teens for Decency" ("If You're Against Decency, What Are You For?") The couple has two sons, Homer and Abe. Born Matthew Abram Groening on 15th February, 1954 in Portland, Oregon, he is famous for Creator of The Simpsons, Futurama and Life In Hell. [96] In January 2022, Groening's tenth child Satori was born. Homer Groening (born 1991) And I always say, 'Whatever offends you the most.' And they said, 'Don't make it like "Blade Runner"!' When he was asked by producer James L. Brooks to create animated shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show, Groening came up with The Simpsons. Groening feared that he would have to give up his ownership rights, and that the show would fail and take down his comic strip with it. He also enjoyed a happy home life, with his dad, Homer, mom, Margaret, and four siblings, including younger sisters Lisa and Maggie. Creating 'The Simpsons:' How Matt Groening's Own Family Inspired the Characters, Matt Groening; Photo: Gary Moss/Corbis via Getty Images, Matt Groening with a cutout of Bart Simpson; Photo: Getty Images, James Cameron Keeps Smashing His Own Records, The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. Groening has won 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, 11 for The Simpsons and 2 for Futurama, and a British Comedy Award for "outstanding contribution to comedy" in 2004. The show, according to Groening, was "buried." Matt Groening - Growing up in Portland, Oregon, Matt Groening did not particularly like school, which is what originally turned him towards drawing. Deborah Caplan: Groening has been in a relationship with Deborah Caplan since 2006. Life in Hell caught the attention of American producer James L. Brooks. The team included what is now the Klasky Csupo animation house. ", 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 I thought I would have a little bit more leeway since I made Fox so much money with 'The Simpsons. The couple have two children together: a son, Homer, and a daughter, Maggie. Matt Groening (1954-) biography on Film Reference. During this time he was the editor of college paper The Cooper Point Journal. 8) Does this fill you with shame and guilt and cheese puffs? Futurama (1999-2013) Futurama: Benders Big Score (2007) Groening and Simon, however, did not get along[59] and were often in conflict over the show;[26] Groening once described their relationship as "very contentious. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. They said, 'It doesn't make any difference!'". (29 October 1987 - 1999) ( divorced) ( 2 children) [80] He described the fantasy-oriented series as originating in a sketchbook full of "fantastic creatures we couldn't do on The Simpsons". 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. Needless to say, it panned out. She was Groenings long-time girlfriend before she married him in 2011. Matt is stepfather to Agustinas daughter, Camille. [53] While designing Lisa, Groening "couldn't be bothered to even think about girls' hair styles". He first sold his comic to magazine Wet, in 1978. 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 rose to fame with the comic strip Life in Hell; and his animated television series The Simpsons. You know, "Meet George Jetson. The two married in 2011 after a four-year relationship. "Bart is like what would happen if Eddie Haskell got his own show," he said. 6, the list of recipients had grown from 20 to 500. But for a few brief moments in the early '90s, the idea that anything "alternative" could suddenly overtake the mainstream was still surprising. It was Mr. Groening's girlfriend, Deborah Caplan (now his wife), who in 1984 gave the comic strip its first lift by forming a small company to publish a collection of his cartoons, "Love Is Hell." The Simpsons Movie (2007) Claiming that it was a bit too obvious to name a character after himself, he chose the name "Bart," an anagram of brat. 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. [19][72] 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. They have a son, Nathaniel, and twin daughters, Luna and India. Deborah Caplan and Matt Groening are divorced after a marriage of 13 years. Matt Groening is an American cartoonist, writer, producer, and director. The artist saw his first non-self-published comic appear in a 1978 issue of Wet magazine. The weekly comic strip chronicles the miseries of Bongo, the one-eared rabbit, as well as those of Akbar and Jeff, the lovelorn look-alikes. 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). Many members of the Simpson family are named for members of his own family: Homer, Marge, Maggie, Lisa and Patty. 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. Sometime after midnight on the day of his arrival, his car stalled in the fast lane of the Hollywood Freeway in 100 degree heat. After their marriage, he became the stepfather of Augustina Picasso's daughter Camille. This comic book made its official debut as a comic strip in the Reader on April 25, 1980, and caught the attention of Hollywood writer-producer and Gracie Films founder James L. Brooks, who had been shown the strip by fellow producer Polly Platt. Despite his status as an ultimate insider, Groening's writing has always been that of an outsider. Some of the funniest jokes, he says, can only be caught on a still frame. 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." He married Agustina Picasso 2011 . Life in Hell comic strips were published in over 250 weekly papers and they were later collated in a series of books titled: School is Hell, Childhood is Hell, The Big Book of Hell, and The Huge Book of Hell. 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. The animated shorts that Groening created were The Simpsons (1989). Matts youngest child is named after writer Nathaniel West. In the mid-1980s, he moved to Los Angeles and started drawing a comic strip named Life in Hell, whi . "[19] He first became interested in cartoons after watching the Disney animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians,[20] and he has also cited Robert Crumb, Ernie Bushmiller, Ronald Searle,[21] Monty Python,[22] and Charles M. Schulz as inspirations. Surname is pronounced "gray-ning" (rhymes with "raining"); born February 15, 1954, in Portland, OR; son of Homer (a filmmaker) and Margaret Ruth (ateacher; maiden name, Wiggum) Groening; married Deborah Lee Caplan (Groening's manager and business partner), October 29, 1986; children: Homer, Abraham. 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. [89] In May 2010, he curated another edition of All Tomorrow's Parties in Minehead, England. It was Homer, a cartoonist and filmmaker, who showed his precocious son that a career of creative fulfillment was possible. Groening named the cartoon family named after his own siblings and parents, albeit with a "Bart" in lieu of a character named after himself. Where Does Matt Groening Live? In 2002, he won the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for his work on Life in Hell. [8][50] Bart's original design, which appeared in the first shorts, had spikier hair, and the spikes were of different lengths. Brooks contacted him in 1985 about adapting Life in Hell for animated sequences for the Fox variety shows The Tracey Ullman Show. "It turns out I was the latest in a long line of writer-chauffeurs," Mr. Groening said. "Do people who don't have cockroaches and can afford their rent, are they happier?" Matt Groening created a dysfunctional family and The Simpsons aired on the show for the first time in 1987. Deborah Caplan (29 October 1987 - 1999) . From his friends at the "alternative" newspapers like The Village Voice that run his comic strip, Mr. Groening gets a fair amount of flak, he says, about "selling out." In 2008, Matt Groening won the Annie Award in the Writing in a Feature Production for comedy film The Simpsons movie. [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. His other role model was cartoonist, Charles Monroe Schulz, who was known for his comic creation Peanuts. In 1997, Groening and former Simpsons writer David X. Cohen developed Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000, which premiered in 1999, running for four years on Fox, then picked up by Comedy Central for additional seasons. Published a month later, the book was an underground success, selling 22,000 copies in its first two printings. 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. Mr. Groening has several theories for the success of his unusually caustic brand of humor. The company published comics related to The Simpsons and Futurama. "The excuse was that the networks never let you get away with anything," he said. "The success of the show," he has said, "has gone beyond my wildest dreams and worst nightmares.". She is the author of "Do You Love Me or Am I Just Paranoid?" 5) Are you worried you might have accidentally minimized your potential? "I wanted to write something they couldn't teach in high school because it had too much foul language," he said. Following this success, came his next work, Work is Hell, also published by Deborah Caplan. Unlike most shows, which he finds sluggish, "The Simpsons" is written to move at a manic pace. As to his position on the "Simpsons" voice actors' recent contract negotiations, he told Mother Jones, "I have sympathy. After graduating in 1977, Groening headed to Los Angeles with the idea of pursuing a writing career. Groening found out the way everybody else did, by picking up the paper. Every week or so Mr. Groening gets a new offer to develop a movie or a cartoon or a situation comedy. 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. [63], The series quickly became a worldwide phenomenon, to the surprise of many. Lisa is a producer and is famous for her work on Christmas at Pee Wees Playhouse (1988), Arnold Escapes from Church (1988), and The Arnold Waltz (1990). 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. Groening was one of four children. That year, he also began working for the alternative-weekly newspaper the L.A. Tales of the Rat Fink (2006) as Finkster He currently serves at The Simpsons as an executive producer and creative consultant. platform, and regretted his victory immediately. 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). [35] In November 1984, Deborah Caplan, Groening's then-girlfriend and co-worker at the Reader, offered to publish "Love is Hell", a series of relationship-themed Life in Hell strips, in book form. In interview after interview, he has recalled his youthful vow never to forget what childhood was like -- a gauntlet of petty rules and restrictions that exist only to be broken. Deborah Caplan-Matt Groening: 68: Aquarius: Cartoonist: American: Children Name Gender Born Age Other Parent; Homer: Male: 1991: 31 years old: Matt Groening: Abe: Male: 1993: 29 years old: Matt Groening: Discussions Have your say Be the first to make a comment >> Recommended Recommended. These days Mr. Groening, who lives in Venice, Calif., tries to stay home one morning a week to write "Life in Hell." In 2016, Groening developed a new series for Netflix, Disenchantment, which premiered in August 2018. I said, 'It's not going to be like "Blade Runner."' He found some work along those lines, whipping up slogans for horror movies, but also took on a series of jobs that included chauffeur, dishwasher and record store clerk to make a living. 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. This one is a Cinderella story: humble beginings, the insidious discouragement of petty authority figures, the unexpected intervention by fairy godproducer James L. Brooks and the eventual (stormy) marriage to a wealthy potentate (Rupert Murdoch's Fox network). If you answered yes to one or more of the above questions, you are probably a fan of Matt Groening. The couple has two sons, Homer and Abe. Beginning 1987, he worked in the Traccy Ullman Show for two years as writer and animator. [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. He winds up working for an intergalactic delivery service, with a crew of misfits including Leela, the ship's one-eyed alien captain and Bender, a corrupt, vice-addled, disgruntled robot. Groening worked at the Reader for six years, as a typesetter, editor, paste-up artist and rock critic. Life in Hell caught the attention of American producer James L. Brooks. [34], Life in Hell became popular almost immediately. He made his first professional cartoon sale of Life in Hell to the avant-garde magazine Wet in 1978. [64], Like the main family members, several characters from the show have names that were inspired by people, locations or films. They had 2 children. Matt Groening is married to Deborah Caplan in 1986. They had 2 children, Homer (32) and Abe (30). [28][29], Groening described life in Los Angeles to his friends in the form of the self-published comic book Life in Hell, which was loosely inspired by the chapter "How to Go to Hell" in Walter Kaufmann's book Critique of Religion and Philosophy. In a strange coincidence, they discovered that their parents were friends and that they both attended neighboring high schools in Philadelphia. While working on his animated series Futurama, he took up multiple roles like voice actor, creator, writer and executive producer of the show. 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. (2006). [52] Lisa's physical features are generally not used in other characters; for example, in the later seasons, no character other than Maggie shares her hairline. She married Groening in 1987 and they got divorced in 1999, after 13 years of marriage. He casts himself as the avenging underdog tilting at windmills, but, in the end, he always returns the conquering hero. They said, 'Make it like "The Jetsons"! "[17] The Simpsons was co-developed by Groening, Brooks, and Sam Simon, a writer-producer with whom Brooks had worked on previous projects. [30] Groening distributed the comic book in the book corner of Licorice Pizza, a record store in which he worked. [108] In 2007, he was ranked fourth (and highest American by birth) in a list of the "top 100 living geniuses", published by British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. 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. This is likely influenced by the name of Groening's own parents. (2002). Ten years later, at the age of 46, Groening is responsible for a comic strip syndicated in 250 newspapers, more than 25 books, two prime-time animated series and untold containers full of valuable merchandise. However, Groening had expressed a desire to continue the Futurama franchise in some form, including as a theatrical film.
10. March 2023