Happy Birthday: Matt Groening

Matt Groening

Born: February 15, 1954 in Portland, Oregon, USA

On the television series [The Simpsons], a joke has to pass muster about 100 times before it gets on the air. On the movie, it’s probably 1,000 times. There are jokes that were funny the first 350 times, and then, the 351st time, we go, “Ah, I’m kinda tired of that”, so we change it. And what stays in are the most obvious, dumb, visceral, knee jerk, mayhem gags. Any time a character falls down, gets kicked in the face, hit in the head… anything involving head injuries. We work so hard on the wittiest dialog, involving sophisticated references to books and movies, and then what gets a laugh is Homer belching after drinking beer. It keeps you humble.

The history of television has traditionally been not to do anything that would scandalize Grandma or upset Junior. Our solution on The Simpsons is to do jokes that people who have an education, or some frame of reference, can get. And for the ones who don’t, it doesn’t matter, because we have Homer banging his head and saying, “D’oh!”.

SUBMIT your TV PILOT Screenplay or TV SPEC Script Voted #1 TV Contest in North America.

SUBMIT your Short Screenplay or FEATURE Script FULL FEEDBACK on all entries. Get your script performed

FIRST SCENE (first 10pgs) Screenplay CONTEST Submit the first stages of your film and get full feedback!