马特·格勒宁

马修·艾布拉姆·格勒宁（英语：Matthew Abram Groening，1954年2月15日—）是一名美国漫画家、电视制片人及编剧。格勒宁以其创造的动画情景喜剧《辛普森一家》而闻名于世；另外，他还是动画片《飞出个未来》的创造者，以及每周连环漫画《地狱生活》的作者。1978年，格勒宁的第一部连环漫画《地狱生活》发表于先锋派杂志《湿》上。现今共有250余种周报仍在连载这部漫画。

1985年，《地狱生活》引起了詹姆斯·L·布鲁克斯的注意。布鲁克斯与格勒宁取得了联系，建议他为福克斯的《特蕾西·厄尔曼秀》引入一部动画作品。起初，布鲁克斯希望格勒宁能将《地狱生活》的人物引入该节目中，但当格勒宁了解到自己会失去那些人物的所有权后，他决定创作一批新的角色，并因此诞生了辛普森这一动画家庭。格勒宁用自己父母与妹妹的名字给这一家人命名——而代表自己的“Bart”（巴特）则源于颠倒字母后的“Brat”（小鬼）。《辛普森短剧》在后来被扩展为了一个独立系列《辛普森一家》，至今已播映了19季400余集。1997年，格勒宁与戴维·X·科恩一同发展了一部新的动画《飞出个未来》，这部关于公元3000年的动画系列始映于1999年。在制播4年后，福克斯取消了《飞出个未来》；不过，喜剧中心频道已计划制作该系列的16集新动画，并打算在2008年播放。

格勒宁赢得过10次黄金时段艾美奖，其中9次为《辛普森一家》，1次为《飞出个未来》；另外他在2004年还曾被英国喜剧奖授予“喜剧杰出贡献奖”。2002年，他以《地狱生活》被全美漫画家协会授予鲁班奖。

Matthew Abram Groening ( GRAY-ning; born February 15, 1954) is an American cartoonist. He is the creator of the television series The Simpsons (1989–present), Futurama (1999–2003, 2008–2013, 2023–present), and Disenchantment (2018–2023), as well as the comic strip Life in Hell (1977–2012).

Born in Portland, Oregon, Groening made his first professional cartoon sale of Life in Hell to the avant-garde magazine Wet in 1978. At its peak, it was carried in 250 weekly newspapers and caught the attention of the producer James L. Brooks, who contacted Groening in 1985 about adapting it for animated sequences for the Fox variety show The Tracey Ullman Show. Fearing the loss of ownership rights, Groening created a new set of characters, the Simpson family. The shorts were spun off into their own series, The Simpsons, which became the longest-running American primetime television series and the longest-running American animated series and sitcom.

In 1997, Groening and former Simpsons writer David X. Cohen began production on Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000, which premiered in 1999. It ran for four years on Fox, was picked up in 2008 by Comedy Central for another 5 years, and was picked up again by Hulu in 2023. In 2016, Groening developed a series for Netflix, Disenchantment, which premiered in August 2018.

Groening has won 14 Primetime Emmy Awards, 12 for The Simpsons and 2 for Futurama, and a British Comedy Award for "outstanding contribution to comedy" in 2004. In 2002, he won the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for his work on the Life in Hell comics syndicated in over 250 daily and weekly newspapers. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 14, 2012.

Early life and education

Matthew Abram Groening was born in Portland, Oregon, on February 15, 1954, the middle of five children (older sister Patty and brother Mark were born in 1943 and 1950, and younger sisters Lisa and Maggie in 1956 and 1958, respectively). His Norwegian American mother, Margaret Ruth (née Wiggum; March 23, 1919 – April 22, 2013), was once a teacher, and his Canadian Mennonite father, Homer Philip Groening (December 30, 1919 – March 15, 1996), was a filmmaker, advertiser, writer and cartoonist. Homer, born in Main Centre, Saskatchewan, Canada, grew up in a Plautdietsch-speaking family.

Groening's grandfather, Abram A. Groening, was a professor at Tabor College, a Mennonite Brethren liberal arts college in Hillsboro, Kansas, before moving to Albany College (now known as Lewis and Clark College) in Oregon in 1930.

Groening was raised in Portland and attended Ainsworth Elementary School and Lincoln High School. Following his high school graduation in 1972, Groening attended The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, a liberal arts school that he described as "a hippie college, with no grades or required classes, that drew every weirdo in the Northwest". He served as the editor of the campus newspaper, The Cooper Point Journal, for which he also wrote articles and drew cartoons. Groening almost graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism in 1977. He left before completing his degree. He befriended fellow cartoonist Lynda Barry after discovering that she had written a fan letter to Joseph Heller, one of Groening's favorite authors, and had received a reply. Groening has credited Barry with being "probably [his] biggest inspiration". He first became interested in cartoons after watching the Disney animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians as well as Monty Python.

Career

Early career

In 1977, at age 23, Groening moved to Los Angeles to become a writer. He went through several jobs, including being an extra in the television film When Every Day Was the Fourth of July, busing tables, washing dishes at a nursing home, clerking at the Hollywood Licorice Pizza record store, landscaping in a sewage treatment plant, and chauffeuring and ghostwriting for a retired director of Western films.