Matt Groening

Matt Groening
Profession	Creator Executive producer Writer Guest voice actor
Born	15 February, 1954
IMDB profile	nm0004981
Wikipedia has information unrelated to Futurama
Category of commentaries in which Matt Groening participated
Category of episodes written by Matt Groening

This article is about the real person. For the Futurama character, see Matt Groening's head.

Matt Groening (pronounced "Grey-ning") is a cartoonist, screenwriter and producer most famous for being the creator of The Simpsons and Futurama (the latter together with David X. Cohen).

Biography

Early career (1977 - 1985)

Groening got his start writing a comic strip called Life in Hell in 1977. In 1980, the strip was picked up by The Los Angeles Reader, where Matt worked delivering papers and doing minor editing. In 1982, the editor gave Matt his own column, supposedly rock and roll themed, but rarely actually about rock and roll. In an attempt to add more music news to the column, Matt often wrote reviews of bands he made up, only to apologize the next week, admitting the lie. Although each time, he swore he'd never do it again, he usually did. Finally, he was asked to write a humour column instead.

The Simpsons

Main article: The Simpsons

In 1985, James L. Brooks contacted Matt about adapting Life in Hell for television, creating "bumpers" for The Tracey Ullman Show. Matt has stated that while he was waiting in Brooks' office, he realized that he didn't want to sign over the rights to his characters, and thus created a family called the Simpsons in mere fifteen minutes.

The Simpsons premiered on Tracey Ullman in 1987, and became popular enough to create its own spin-off series in 1989. The Simpsons has survived much longer than Tracey Ullman and has become the longest running prime-time entertainment series ever in the United States. He now serves as the Creative Consultant on the show.

Futurama

Main article: Futurama

After researching science-fiction for a few years, Matt got together with Simpsons writer David S. Cohen to develop Futurama, a sci-fi sitcom set in the 31st century. The show was a mild success, but ratings were poor. This is usually attributed to Fox's poor scheduling of the program when it was shown on the channel. While Futurama was never officially cancelled, Fox decided not to buy the fifth season and the program fell apart soon after.

Because of strong DVD sales, and consistent ratings for reruns on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, Comedy Central announced on 22 June, 2006 that they would order four new direct-to-DVD Futurama films, to air on Comedy Central in sixteen 22-minute episodes at the beginning of 2008 as Season 5. After the success of viewership and DVD sales, Comedy Central announced that Futurama was to return with a second run in 2010.

Additional Info

Trivia

• He is also in a rock band, called the Rock Bottom Remainders. 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.
• Matt is left-handed, as are many of the characters he designs.
• He and David X. Cohen were show runners for the entire series.
• Matt is on almost every DVD episode commentary. In the commentary for "A Leela of Her Own", he gets a phone call in the intro and doesn't return.
• In the Futurama universe, he appears as his own head in a jar multiple times. He has a speaking role in "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences" as the creator of Futurella.
• He is a self-proclaimed fan of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. He uses the middle initial J. for many of his characters, as a tribute to Rocky and Bullwinkle producer Jay Ward.

Episodes written

• "Space Pilot 3000" (1ACV01)
  
• "Rebirth" (6ACV01)
  
  (story credit)
• "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" (6ACV02)
  
  (story credit)

Characters voiced

• himself
• Maggie Simpson