‘The Simpsons,’ Matt Groening Honored as “Icon of Animation” at Annecy

The Annecy Film Festival’s tribute to the legendary Matt Groening and the creators of The Simpsons played like an episode of the iconic animated series: Funny, joyous and heartfelt, with lots of silliness and at least one unexpected fart joke.

Groening was named an “icon of animation,” and presented with an honorary Cristal award for his lifetime contribution to the form.

“40 years ago, Matt Groening dropped a bomb on animation,” said Annecy artistic director Michael Jean, referring to the launch of The Simpsons back in 1987 — first as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, later as the long-running primetime series on Fox. “And since then, he has continued to work at the cutting edge of animation.”‘

In tribute, Annecy screened a few Frenchified shorts of Groening’s work, including a Simpsons intro with an accordion-playing Lisa and a snail-slurping Homer and a Tin-Tin-inspired spin on Futurama. They also premiered a new French-dubbed episode from The Simpsons.

“Merci for the payoff!” Groening exclaimed, hoisting his Cristal trophy. He rattled off his list of thank yous, from artistic collaborators to studio executives to the French actors who voice Homer and Marge — both of whom were in the audience and rose to take a bow. But his warmest thanks went “to my real-life family” who provided the original inspiration, and the names, for the famous four-fingered Simpson clan.

“It’s a little-known fact that my parents’ real names were Itchy and Scratchy,” Groening joked, referring to the show’s ultra-violent cartoon-within-a-cartoon characters. “No, seriously, I have a real father called Homer, a real mother called Marge, real siblings called Lisa and Maggie and a real grandfather called Abe. So people always ask me: ‘Does that mean you’re Bart?’” Pausing for effect, he revealed his actual Simpsons alter-ego. “The truth is — je suis Milhouse.”

Groening was later joined by The Simpsons executive producer and showrunner Matt Selman and consulting producer-animator David Silverman for a Q&A session where they talked about the show’s origin and evolution and how, with the show currently in its 36th season on Fox, it continues to stay fresh and relevant.

Asked if he feels a responsibility to keep living up to the show’s high standard, Groening said he didn’t think anyone on the Simpsons team “ever thinks very much about being responsible. I think our main motivation is to surprise ourselves. And we figure if we can surprise ourselves, we’ll probably surprise the audience as well.”

“I don’t think that we feel a lot of responsibility, but we certainly feel like a lot of joy, and a lot of happiness,” added Selman. “So many of our fans now are young people, like really young people, like between the ages of, like, 8 and 12, watching it on Disney+, and it becomes their favorite show for like four years before they move on to harder and crazier stuff. They watch every episode, and it kind of informs their worldview … we get a chance to teach them our worldview, to show them how to look at the world with skepticism and curiosity and also empathy.”

But Selman immediately downplayed the show’s positive impact. “We can’t say we saved the world,” he admitted. “We sort of destroyed it, actually. Would there be a Fox News without The Simpsons?”

Selman also paid tribute to the “incredible animation team” for the show’s enduring success, noting that because The Simpsons is “writer-driven” it’s particularly hard to be an animator on the series. “Because as writers, we only notice the mistakes. We take the great things for granted” Finding an appropriate metaphor, he added: “You never get any credit for the farts you hold in. I think that’s as true in animation as it is in a marriage.”

In recent years, The Simpsons has become something of an animated Nostradamus, with its writers showing an uncanny knack for predicting the future, from the presidency of Donald Trump to the NSA spying scandal, to Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox.

Groening and his team indulged the audience’s demand for their view of the future in Annecy, picking predictions from a blue Marge Simpson wig. Among the forecasts: “The Simpsons predict the Statue of Liberty will be returned to France, when no one in America can remember what the word Liberty means.” “The Simpsons predict a new self-driving electric car will be invented, powered by an amazing new energy source: Hatred of Elon Musk.” And, in a tip to the show’s enduring appeal: “Amazingly, The Simpsons will still be on the air in the year 3000 [when Futurama is set]. Unfortunately, critics will say the show has really been going downhill the last 1,000 years.”