Matt Groening Quotes
-
Most TV shows don't reward you for paying attention.
-
I went through a phase where people would introduce me at parties as a cartoonist, and everybody felt sorry for me. 'Oh, Matt's a cartoonist.' Then people further feeling sorry for me would ask me to draw Garfield. Because I'm a cartoonist, draw Snoopy or Garfield or something.
-
'The Simpsons' is about alienation and the ambivalence of living with a family who you love but who drive you completely crazy.
-
There's always room out there for the hand-drawn image. I personally like the imperfection of hand drawing as opposed to the slick look of computer animation. But you can do good stuff either way. The Pixar movies are amazing in what they do, but there's plenty of independent animators who are doing really amazing things as well.
-
We did 'The Simpsons Movie,' which took almost four years; it was the same people that do the TV show, and it just killed us. So that's why there hasn't been a second movie. But I imagine if the show ever does go off the air, they'll start doing movies.
-
'The Simpsons' is an especially collaborative show.
-
The thing about a cartoon is, you can do whatever you want. The tightrope that we are walking on 'The Simpsons' and 'Futurama' is 'How do you continue to surprise the audience, but make them good surprises?' Not every surprise is good, but you want to continue jolting people.
-
Since I was there in the very beginning, I know the history of the characters. So, I make comments about the tone and sometimes remind the writers that we've done that before.
-
The nice thing about 'Futurama' for me personally was that it was a way to honor some of the traditional ideas in literary science fiction, not so much movie or television science fiction - although we have that too, obviously. Our situation, a workplace comedy, led to all sorts of stuff.
-
People go into cartooning because they're shy and they're angry. That's when you're sitting in the back of a classroom drawing the teacher.
-
Don't have a cow, man.
-
One of the great things about the Internet is that you can read what everybody has to say about everything. It is fascinating to me, the critiques about humor by people who have no sense of humor.
-
I love the idea that we put in jokes the kids don't get. And that later, when they grow up and read a few books and go to college and watch the show again, they can get it on a completely different level.
-
My standard comment is, 'If you don't want your kids to be like Bart Simpson, don't act like Homer Simpson.'
-
Basically, everything I try to do is to present an alternative to what somebody else is doing.
-
When The Simpsons came around, there really was nothing else like it on TV. It's hard to imagine, but when Fox first took the plunge with it, it was considered controversial to put animation on prime time.
-
I was always frightened by taverns. They just seemed like very unpleasant places to go.
-
The scary thing about the future... there will be tiny cameras everywhere, and they'll be flying around like mosquitoes and drones. That will be bad. Drones are scary. You can't reason with a drone.
-
Science fiction and comedy are generally a pretty bumpy mix.
-
Here's to alcohol: the cause of, and answer to, all of life's problems.
-
I've loved science fiction ever since I was a little kid, mainly from looking at the covers of science-fiction magazines and books, and I've read quite extensively as an adult.
-
'The Simpsons' from the very beginning was based on our memories of brash '60s sitcoms - you had a main title theme that was bombastic and grabbed your attention - and when you look at TV shows of the 1970s and '80s, things got very mild and toned down and... obsequious.
-
'The Simpsons' basically - and 'Futurama' - are really smart shows. They're kind of disguised as these goofy animated sitcoms, but the references within the shows, if you're paying attention, are pretty smart and pretty sophisticated.
-
Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun.