50 Fun Facts About Matt Groening

In which city was Matt Groening born?

Portland, Oregon gave him a childhood he calls idyllic, though he says he was bored at school from the first day of first grade and kept getting into trouble for doodling.

Which college in Olympia, Washington did Matt Groening attend from 1972?

Evergreen State had no grades and no required classes, which suited him. He graduated in 1977 and still recommends it to 'self-disciplined creative weirdoes'.

In the 1980s Matt Groening drew Life in Hell advertisements for which computer company?

Apple hired him while he was still an underground cartoonist: the Life in Hell ads ran before The Simpsons became a series and made him famous.

Which fellow cartoonist, a college friend, has Matt Groening named as his biggest inspiration?

Lynda Barry owes him her start as well: as a student he printed her earliest comic strip in the campus paper without telling her.

Which Broad City star voices Princess Bean in Matt Groening's Netflix fantasy series?

Abbi Jacobson plays the hard-drinking princess. Groening says the show began as sketchbooks full of imps, gnomes and trolls he could never use on The Simpsons.

Matt Groening sold his first cartoon in 1978 to Wet, a Los Angeles magazine devoted to what?

Bathing: Wet styled itself 'the magazine of gourmet bathing'. Groening's strip for it, 'Forbidden Words', listed overused phrases he wanted banned.

At which Los Angeles record store did Matt Groening work and sell copies of his comic book?

Licorice Pizza kept a punk corner of fanzines beside the records. Groening added his photocopied Life in Hell booklets, and to his surprise they sold.

In which alternative newspaper did Life in Hell begin running weekly in 1980?

Los Angeles Reader first hired him to deliver the paper. He worked his way up through typesetting and editing before his cartoons were given a slot.

Which future Simpsons voice actor was a fan of Matt Groening's made-up music column?

Harry Shearer met Groening by chance at a Hollywood newsstand in the mid-1980s, and the two traded compliments: Groening was a fan of Shearer's radio show.

Who published the first Life in Hell book, Love Is Hell, in 1984?

Deborah Caplan sold advertising at the paper that ran the strip. Syndicating it across the country was her idea, and she later married him.

Which stressed, therapy-going rabbit is the star of Life in Hell?

Binky is a rabbit for a practical reason: nobody could tell what Groening's doodled creatures were supposed to be until he gave them long ears.

In Life in Hell, what physical feature distinguishes the young rabbit Bongo from his father?

One ear is a purely practical touch: readers kept mixing up father and son, so Groening took an ear off the boy to tell them apart.

Which identically drawn, fez-wearing duo ran businesses like the Tofu Hut in Life in Hell?

Akbar and Jeff look identical on purpose: with a couple nobody could tell apart, Groening could joke about relationships without seeming to take a side.

Two fez-wearing Life in Hell regulars began as Matt Groening's failed attempts to draw which newspaper-strip star?

Charlie Brown's striped shirt survived the botched copies. Groening, who calls Peanuts one of the great works of its century, kept the stripes and added fezzes.

Fellow cartoonists marked the end of Life in Hell with what?

A poster of tribute cartoons by 22 of them was presented to him in autumn 2012, 23 years after he vowed he would never give up the strip he called his foundation.

In the mid-2000s Matt Groening began heading his Life in Hell strips with which sunnier title?

Life Is Swell kept the rhyme and flipped the mood, but the good cheer did not last: by June 2012 he had ended the strip altogether.

Which producer contacted Matt Groening in 1985, leading to animated shorts for a Fox variety show?

James L. Brooks knew the strip from a thank-you present: his production designer had bought him an original Life in Hell page, 'The Los Angeles Way of Death'.

The first Simpsons shorts aired as bumpers on which Fox variety programme?

The Tracey Ullman Show was never a big hit, but the crude little cartoons shown between its sketches were, and in 1989 they were spun off into a series of their own.

Why did Matt Groening refuse to adapt his Life in Hell characters for television?

He feared losing ownership rights to the network, so he kept his rabbits for himself and came up with something new to pitch in their place.

Where was Matt Groening when he hurriedly drew the Simpson family for the first time?

In a producer's lobby, kept waiting for over an hour, he dropped the idea he had come to pitch and dashed off a brand-new cast before he was called in.

Which tame TV boy inspired Bart Simpson?

Dennis the Menace never lived up to his name on television, Groening felt. So he later drew a boy who truly was a menace, naming him with an anagram of 'brat'.

After whom did Matt Groening name Homer and Marge Simpson?

His parents were Homer and Margaret, but the likeness ends there: the real Homer Groening was a decorated wartime bomber pilot, filmmaker and cartoonist.

Whom did Matt Groening name in 1995 as the real inspiration for Bart Simpson?

His older brother Mark was the model, something Groening said he had never admitted before. He had first meant to give the boy his own name, Matt.

What did Matt Groening hide in Homer Simpson's hairline and ear in his original design?

His own initials: the zigzag hairline made an M and the ear a G. He rounded the ear off for the screen as too distracting, but kept the G in sketches drawn for fans.

Marge Simpson's towering beehive hairstyle was inspired partly by which film?

Bride of Frankenstein was one model; the other was the way Groening's own mother wore her hair in the 1960s, though hers, she said, was never blue.

As a boy, Matt Groening assumed that the Springfield of which 1950s sitcom was the town next door?

Father Knows Best was set in a Springfield, and Groening later gave the name to the Simpsons' town, betting that viewers everywhere would take it for their own.

Chief Wiggum's surname on The Simpsons was borrowed from which part of Matt Groening's own life?

His mother's maiden name was Wiggum. Groening has always stressed that the people whose names he borrowed are nothing like the characters who carry them.

Flanders, Lovejoy, Quimby and Kearney are all names of what in Matt Groening's home city?

Streets, mostly in the city's north-west, supplied the names. Groening has said he meant to name every character on the show that way, but dropped the idea because time was short.

Which honour did Matt Groening receive in 2012?

A Walk of Fame star came to him twelve years late, in a sense: his cartoon family had been given one of their own back in 2000.

When The Simpsons' writers named Homer's father 'Abraham', whose name did they match by pure coincidence?

Groening's own grandfather had that name. He had refused to use it for the character and left the choice to the writers, who picked it without knowing.

Which episode launched The Simpsons as a half-hour series in 1989?

Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire went out first by accident: the episode meant to open the series came back so badly animated that it had to be redone.

Which Simpsons writer-producer had a 'very contentious' relationship with Matt Groening?

Sam Simon was sure the show would flop, Groening recalled: his motto was '13 and out', after the 13 episodes first ordered. He left in 1993.

From which 1995 Simpsons crossover with The Critic did Matt Groening ask to have his name removed?

A Star Is Burns looked to him like a half-hour advert for another cartoon. He called it a matter of artistic integrity and had his name taken off the credits.

With which Simpsons writer did Matt Groening develop Futurama from 1997?

David X. Cohen came aboard after Groening had spent years filling hundreds of pages with science-fiction ideas. Cohen's love of science and maths set the show's direction.

Which animated sitcom premiered the same year as Futurama?

Family Guy arrived two months before Futurama, and the pair shared a fate: Fox cancelled both, and both were revived after strong DVD sales and rerun ratings.

What is Fry delivering when he gets frozen in Futurama?

Pizza, ordered as a prank to a cryogenics lab on New Year's Eve 1999. Fry tips into a freezer at midnight and wakes a thousand years later, in the pilot Groening co-wrote.

Which network picked Futurama up in 2008 after Fox cancelled it?

Comedy Central wanted the reruns and got new material too: four straight-to-DVD films were carved into sixteen episodes, and the revival ran until 2013.

What is the title of the fantasy series Matt Groening created for Netflix in 2018?

Disenchantment was his first series made for a streaming service. He says it was plotted as a drama first, with the jokes added afterwards.

In which fictional medieval kingdom is Matt Groening's Netflix fantasy series set?

Dreamland's princess, Bean, is no fairy-tale heroine: she drinks hard, dodges every royal duty, and roams the kingdom with an elf and her own personal demon.

Matt Groening co-founded Bongo Comics in 1993 saying he wanted to bring what to the comic-book market?

Humor was what he found missing from a 'fairly grim' market, especially anything smart and funny for children. Bongo filled the gap with Simpsons comics.

Matt Groening has named which Captain Beefheart record as his favourite album?

Trout Mask Replica struck him at fifteen as the worst thing he had ever heard. By the sixth or seventh play, he says, it had become the greatest album he knew.

Matt Groening illustrated the cover of a 1996 posthumous tribute album to which musician?

Frank Zappa had been his favourite musician since his teens, the artist who taught him that no kind of art was too highbrow or too lowbrow to love.

Matt Groening has played in the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band of authors whose rhythm guitarist was which horror novelist?

Stephen King strummed along in a band named after the trade term for unsold books. At one early show Bruce Springsteen walked on and borrowed a guitar.

Which National Cartoonists Society honour did Matt Groening receive in 2002?

Reuben Award voters honoured him not for his television empire but for Life in Hell, the weekly strip he wrote and drew entirely on his own.

Craig Bartlett, who married Matt Groening's sister Lisa, created which animated series?

Hey Arnold! has a family tie in print: before the series began, Arnold appeared in comic strips in Groening's magazine Simpsons Illustrated.

What provision did The Simpsons' producers negotiate into their original deal with Fox?

Fox could not interfere with content, so the writers get no notes from the network, a freedom Groening says makes the show 'a great playground for comedy writers'.

Which Simpsons episode was produced first but aired last in season one because of animation problems?

Some Enchanted Evening was meant to open the series in autumn 1989. Its first version looked so wrong that the planned premiere ended up as the season finale.

In which 2004 Simpsons episode did Matt Groening voice his own animated counterpart?

My Big Fat Geek Wedding puts him at a science-fiction convention, where autograph hunters mob him as the creator of Futurama, not of the show he is appearing in.

Matt Groening's failed 1994 pitch for a live-action Simpsons spin-off was built around which character?

Krusty the Clown would have been played in the flesh by his voice, Dan Castellaneta. Halfway through the pitch, Groening recalls, Fox asked: 'Can it be a cartoon?'

Which former president did Matt Groening enjoy ridiculing in both The Simpsons and Futurama?

Richard Nixon lives on in Futurama as a head in a jar who becomes President of Earth. Groening has relished, he said, 'kicking Nixon from beyond the grave'.