Matt Groening, the creator of TV mega successes like The Simpsons and Futurama, is an inspirational story of perseverance, struggle, and creativity. Starting from nothing and amassing one of the largest fortunes in Hollywood – and breaking down TV paradigms while doing it – Groening’s journey is full of inspirational wisdom for all of us.
What drives him to create – and keep creating even after all these years? How did he stay driven during the hard times? It’s all in today’s article, so strap in!
On the Danger of Mega-Successes Becoming Millstones
Most of us dream of achieving even a shadow of the success as The Simpsons, Futurama, or other Groening creations. Rising to this pinnacle, however, has left the cartoonist with new obstacles to navigate.
One of the biggest challenges is refusing to let one creation (regardless of how successful it is) define your entire career. With over 600 episodes, 29 seasons and counting, The Simpsons doesn’t receive the acclaim that it used to. Diehard fans and critics alike feel that the magic of those earlier seasons is slipping away.
Although Groening is quick to point out just how much the show has evolved over the years, he’s grappling with how to end the show gracefully.
The Simpsons represented a paradigm shift in the world of TV programming. Its animation for adults concept, once groundbreaking, is now just one of many shows. As tastes and aesthetics change, perhaps even the most successful creations have a natural lifespan.
The challenge for Groening became – and it’s arguably a great problem to have – continuing to challenge himself and innovate. The Simpsons massive success brought with it a guaranteed “yes” from any TV studio listening to a pitch. Because he knows that he could pitch basically any new show successfully, he feels extra pressured to do something challenging:
…Maybe I inherited that spartan disciplinarian work ethic from my father – someone who worked hard his whole life and didn’t have an enormous amount to show for it. Whenever things get too comfy, I get a little nervous… I don’t know what else to do with myself. That’s the truth.1
Creating art as culturally pervasive as The Simpsons introduces the risk of becoming defined by that very creation, by having it become a millstone that determines the rest of your career. But by pursuing his own projects (like Life in Hell) and innovating with shows like Futurama and now Disenchantment (with Netflix), Groening is navigating this challenge smoothly.
The Willingness to Take Promotion into Your Own Hands
After moving to Los Angeles at age 23 to pursue cartooning, Groening held down a series of odd jobs – chauffeur, record store employee, and clerk at a copy shop – to make ends meet.
For years he struggled to even do that. Living in what he calls “a couple of the sadder neighborhoods in Hollywood,” Groening was so broke he had to split hamburgers with his friends. Here he is reminiscing on their financial ambitions at the time:
My friends and I used to sit around when he had so little money that we had to split a burger at Astro Burger on Melrose Avenue and talk about what we would do if we ever had enough money to pay our rent on time.2
Even when Groening’s biggest ambition was to pay rent comfortably, he refused to let his circumstances end his cartooning dream.
He channeled a lot of his anxieties and struggles into a cartoon strip called Life in Hell, which ran from 1977 all the way until 2012. Unlike many other aspiring creatives, Groening didn’t let his work languish for years before finally working up the courage to show it to somebody.
Instead of contacting newspaper editors and patiently waiting for responses, Groening used the copier at work to self-publish his cartoons and distribute them at local punk section of the record store where he worked. After all, it was that DIY punk rock ethic that inspired him to take promotion into his own hands.
First came Life in Hell. I worked at a photocopy place. A perk was that when I wasn’t fighting with customers – an unavoidable part of the job – I was making copies of my comic. I copied them and took them around and sold them at a record store I worked at, which was another job.3
These efforts eventually paid off with the L.A. Reader giving Life in Hell a regular column. Other publications followed. And as Groening’s name got out, a Hollywood producer saw one of his columns and was impressed enough to get in touch. It was this same producer who asked Groening for help with short animated skits in the Tracy Ullman Show.
Success with those animated skits led to a meeting with producers at 21st Century Fox, who ultimately agreed to Groening’s pitch for The Simpsons. The rest is history. It all began with Groening’s stubborn persistence in his cartooning dream – and willingness to handle his own promotion.
One has to wonder if any of this would have ever happened if Groening had just sat by, sketching cartoons for himself and waiting for the perfect opportunity instead of creating one.
On Balancing Personal “Fun” Projects with More Commercial Hits
Like most creatives, Matt Groening’s artistic tastes range well beyond the mainstream. Yet he still enjoys mainstream art as well. Before he pitched The Simpsons, he was well aware of where the show fell on that spectrum would affect its potential for success:
I know I like stuff that very other people are going to enjoy. And then I like very mainstream stuff. As an experiment, I wanted to see how far I could sneak the stuff I really liked into mainstream culture. That was my goal. At the same time, I wanted the show to appeal to as many people as possible.4
This awareness – and the ultimate decision to pitch something mainstream enough for Fox’s tastes – led to The Simpsons‘ incredible success. It also gave Groening wiggle room to be subversive without alienating the large audience. By focusing on where his tastes and mainstream tastes overlapped, he was able to create an amazing living for himself and satisfying art without feeling like he “sold out.”
Even after mainstream projects like The Simpsons and Futurama rocketed into the stratosphere, Groening kept working on personal pet projects. Life in Hell ran all the way through 2012. This strip allowed him to focus on personal life issues and anxieties, served as a creative outlet, and even a type of personal therapy.
I love[d] doing ‘Life in Hell’ every week because it’s just me. Just me by myself and that’s fun – to sit down with a blank sheet of paper and see if I can write about another one of my anxieties.5
Creating a Healthy Scene of Friends, Rivals, and Contemporaries
Groening’s success can be attributed, at least in part, to the people he chose to surround himself with during his formative years.
The art of cartooning itself is an isolating one. But Groening was always intentional about associating with creative contemporaries who encouraged his efforts.
One of the first – and most important – connections came while he was a student at Evergreen State University. There, Groening met Lynda Barry, another cartoonist at Evergreen who was publishing in independent newspapers and magazines (“zines”).
It felt like I was going to be playing for the rest of my life, I was going to be goofing off. But when I met Lynda Barry, she, by work she was doing, showed me that you could do anything.6
Seeing how a young Barry, even as a college student, was successfully distributing her cartoons planted a seed that Groening carried with him to Los Angeles.
Although Barry and Groening have different tastes and lifestyles, they shared and a do-it-yourself work ethic. This friendship blossomed into a healthy rivalry, with the pair supporting each other between all the ribbing. A competitive spirit drove Groening to work even harder on his art.
After he graduated from Evergreen, Groening’s move to LA placed him at the heart of the burgeoning punk rock scene. Punk was an aggressive new style of music… but it was much more than that. It was an empowering, take-matters-into-your-own-hands approach to art and life.
It was in this punk scene where Groening met Gary Panter, the Texan illustrator who went on to become a lifelong friend. Groening made contact initially by writing a fan letter about a Panter comic he admired. Panter wrote back, and they struck up a friendship to which Groening attributes much of his success:
He brought that psychedelic crazed Gary Panter style to Saturday morning, and completely warped a generation of kids. Gary went first, and he was my role model.7
It Isn’t About the Money
Groening started his career in Los Angeles as a struggling cartoonist whose grandest dream was to make rent. Now, more than 40 years later, he has amassed an estimated wealth of $500 million. How’s that for a success story?
Sure, he drives a nicer car and lives in a mansion in Santa Monica. But what’s incredible is how little about Groening – his demeanor, humor, drive to create – has changed. He notes not needing to mentally calculate the cost of food he orders at restaurants as one of his greatest reliefs. This probably shouldn’t seem so surprising, because for Groening, money was never the main motivator anyway.
We wondered if we would live the way rich people were supposed to live or if we would live pretty much as we did then, except that we would have bigger piles of comic books and toys. Sadly, we’ve got bigger piles of comic books and toys.8
Groening argues that the best art often comes from struggle, so he’s always on guard not to let himself get too comfortable.
I don’t think there’s anything good for making art about being comfortable. It seems like the best art always comes from struggle.9
The war against comfort is real, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Just as we must push our bodies to discomfort to build muscle, we must stretch ourselves creatively to make our best art.
- Matt Groening Interview (The Telegraph)
- Matt Groening June 2007 Playboy Interview
- Matt Groening June 2007 Playboy Interview
- Matt Groening Interview (The Telegraph)
- 4 Life Lessons from the Creator of The Simpsons, Matt Groening
- 4 Life Lessons from the Creator of The Simpsons, Matt Groening
- Gary Panter, Matt Groening, and the Dual History of Punk and Comics
- Matt Groening June 2007 Playboy Interview
- Matt Groening Interview (The Telegraph)
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