HTML: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Matt-Groening-Reveals-the-Location-of-the-Real-Springfield.html?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=20120410&utm_content=retinamattgroeningthesimpsons Claudia de la Roca: So take us back to the Simpsons’ foundational moment. In 1987 you were waiting for a meeting with James Brooks and you started sketching. What were you thinking? Matt Groening: I had been drawing my weekly comic strip, “Life in Hell,” for about five years when I got a call from Jim Brooks, who was developing “The Tracey Ullman Show” for the brand-new Fox network. He wanted me to come in and pitch an idea for doing little cartoons on that show. I soon realized that whatever I pitched would not be owned by me, but would be owned by Fox, so I decided to keep my rabbits in “Life in Hell” and come up with something new. While I was waiting—I believe they kept me waiting for over an hour—I very quickly drew the Simpsons family. I basically drew my own family. My father’s name is Homer. My mother’s name is Margaret. I have a sister Lisa and another sister Maggie, so I drew all of them. I was going to name the main character Matt, but I didn’t think it would go over well in a pitch meeting, so I changed the name to Bart. Bart. Why? Back in high school I wrote a novel about a character named Bart Simpson. I thought it was a very unusual name for a kid at the time. I had this idea of an angry father yelling “Bart,” and Bart sounds kind of like bark—like a barking dog. I thought it would sound funny. In my novel, Bart was the son of Homer Simpson. I took that name from a minor character in the novel The Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West. Since Homer was my father’s name, and I thought Simpson was a funny name in that it had the word “simp” in it, which is short for “simpleton”—I just went with it. Did your father contribute anything besides his first name? My father was a really sharp cartoonist and filmmaker. He used to tape-record the family surreptitiously, either while we were driving around or at dinner, and in 1963 he and I made up a story about a brother and a sister, Lisa and Matt, having an adventure out in the woods with animals. I told it to my sister Lisa, and she in turn told it to my sister Maggie. My father recorded the telling of the story by Lisa to Maggie, and then he used it as the soundtrack to a movie. So the idea of dramatizing the family—Lisa, Maggie, Matt—I think was the inspiration for doing something kind of autobiographical with “The Simpsons.” There is an aspect of the psychodynamics of my family in which it makes sense that one of us grew up and made a cartoon out of the family and had it shown all over the world. Any other commonalities between your father and Homer Simpson? Only the love of ice cream. My dad didn’t even like doughnuts that much. The name Homer has been wall-to-wall around you—your father, your son, Homer Simpson. What does the name mean to you? My father was named after the poet Homer. My grandmother, his mother, was a voracious reader. She named one son Homer and another son Victor Hugo. It is this basic name, but I can’t separate the name Homer from The Iliad and The Odyssey and from Odysseus, even though Homer is the teller of the tale. I think of it as a very heroic name in that Homer, even though he is getting kicked in the butt by life, he is his own small hero. OK, why do the Simpsons live in a town called Springfield? Isn’t that a little generic? Springfield was named after Springfield, Oregon. The only reason is that when I was a kid, the TV show “Father Knows Best” took place in the town of Springfield, and I was thrilled because I imagined that it was the town next to Portland, my hometown. When I grew up, I realized it was just a fictitious name. I also figured out that Springfield was one of the most common names for a city in the U.S. In anticipation of the success of the show, I thought, “This will be cool; everyone will think it’s their Springfield.” And they do. You’ve never said it was named after Springfield, Oregon, before, have you? I don’t want to ruin it for people, you know? Whenever people say it’s Springfield, Ohio, or Springfield, Massachusetts, or Springfield, wherever, I always go, “Yup, that’s right.” Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-...on-of-the-Real-Springfield.html#ixzz1rhAxPdZn More at the link. So, it's Oregon. Suprised, disappointed?
Actually I'm still not sure. He said he based it off that town, but he didn't say that's where this show takes place, did he?
I knew it was western because they needed a day and a half drive to nyc, I knew it was north because they go to Canada to buy drugs, so Oregon makes sense
That's the name of the street that he grew up on. It's NW Evergreen Terrace in Portland. A lot of the characters on the show are named after Portland streets.
The thing is I remember an episode where Lisa mentions how they're state was bordered on all sides so that kind of doesn't make sense.
It's just named after the town, doesn't mean the show is set there. Maybe loosely based off the town.
named after... is different than takes place in... very big difference. There are so many springfields that this is really not that big of a deal.
It's named after Springfield in Oregon, but it's actually set in Mexico. I was there during the filming.
