BEVERLY HILLS, California - Matt Groening has become legendary as the creator of "The Simpsons," the animated comedy that is now the longest-running primetime scripted series in U.S. TV history.
But, significant as his achievements - including "Life in Hell" comic strips and the animated sci-fi satire "Futurama" - are, Groening is Portland's hometown guy, the Lincoln High School grad who named The Simpsons after his own family and peppered the series with Oregon references.
Groening was recently at the Television Critics Association 2018 summer tour in Los Angeles to talk about his new Netflix animated series, "Disenchantment." In an interview before the panel, Groening sounded nostalgic for the Portland of his youth.
"I miss it," says Groening, who lives in Los Angeles, but still has family and owns a home in Portland.
"Portland's the best," says Groening, who has memories of sneaking into the movie theaters that used to line Southwest Broadway in downtown.
Groening, 64, grew up on the west side of Portland. "I lived near what we call the 'old zoo,' " the Washington Park location that later became the site of the Portland Japanese Garden, Groening recalls.
"I grew up going to the old zoo, and then they closed it down when I was about 5, and built the new zoo," Groening says.
"My friends and I would climb the fence of the old zoo, and play around in the bear cages, because we were small enough to slip through the bars. It was one of those old-fashioned zoos, that looked like it was out of a Curious George book."
Groening pauses, as if wondering whether to confess to literally taking a dip into murky waters.
"This is the part I'm kind of chagrined to recall," he says. "But we actually swam in the bear pools. And they were green."
Being in high school from 1968 to 1972 was "truly the most interesting time," Groening says. "On Friday night, we used to go to the movies, and see sophisticated foreign cinema, and we'd go to Portland State, and participate in antiwar protests."
"Oregon," Groening says, "is such a crazy state. It's such a wonderful state of independent oddness."
Fans of "The Simpsons" have gotten a kick out of the fact that the Simpsons live in Springfield (the name comes from Springfield, Oregon, as Groening told Smithsonian.com), characters were named after Portland streets (Ned Flanders, "Sideshow Bob" Terwilliger) and that Krusty the Clown was inspired by Portland's celebrity clown, Rusty Nails.
Initially, at least, any Oregon references aren't apparent in "Disenchantment," which is set in a fantasy kingdom called Dreamland. This isn't a Disney-style fairy tale for the kiddies. Abbi Jacobson ("Broad City") provides the voice of Bean, the Dreamland princess who drinks too much, and rebels against her father, King Zog (voiced by John DiMaggio), who wants to marry his daughter off to a stranger for the sake of a political alliance.
Bean gets into all sorts of trouble thanks in part to the influence of Luci (voiced by Eric Andre), a demon who keeps urging Bean to make all sorts of bad choices. Rounding out the main trio is Elfo (voiced by Nat Faxon), an elf as sweet as Luci is demonic, and who's smitten with Bean.
But don't write off Oregon references just yet, despite the "Disenchantment" fantasy realm setting.
"There is a Beaverton in 'Disenchantment,'" Groening says. "It's on a map. Come on, if you grew up near Beaverton, Oregon, you've got to put it in a show."
There's also an Oregon connection represented by Bill Oakley, a writer and producer who worked on "The Simpsons," "Portlandia" and more. Oakley is a co-executive producer on "Disenchantment."
"We FaceTime," Groening says of Oakley. "He's the disembodied head up on the screen. But he comes down (to L.A.), and I have a house in Portland, and I go back all the time."
Groening says the idea of doing a new show for Netflix was appealing.
"I heard great things about Netflix," he says. "Any time I was at a party where there was somebody who had been working with Netflix, they all had great things to say about it. They all talked about how great it was, both as a business experience, and also creatively."
Working within the streaming, binge-friendly climate of Netflix "required a great adjustment in my storytelling thinking," Groening says. "Because I'm used to one episode at a time."
The castles, demons, ogres, fairies, elves, and seafarers who make up the world of Dreamland and its environs set "Disenchantment" in a storybook location, albeit one that's a bit off-kilter.
"To me," Groening says, "the setting is almost incidental. Everybody loves fantasy these days, and I think from working on 'Futurama,' we learned how to kid the conventions of science fiction without being obvious about it. So, I thought, let's try doing fantasy."
A scene from "Disenchantment."
Groening and his fellow executive producer, Josh Weinstein, who developed the show with Groening, "agreed at the beginning that we were going to plot the show as if it were drama, and then add jokes."
You don't have to look hard at "Disenchantment" to see elements that reflect pop culture ancestors.
"We did a 'Game of Thrones' reference, 'Fractured Fairy Tales,' definitely 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail,'" says Groening, who says other inspirations came from "The Wizard of Oz," and moments in movies by Buster Keaton and W.C. Fields.
"As James L. Brooks, executive producer on 'The Simpsons,' once said, if you steal from a black and white movie, it's an homage," Groening says, with a laugh.
Certainly, the sumptuous look of "Disenchantment" recalls the handsome fairy tale worlds from such Hollywood classics as "The Adventures of Robin Hood."
"Rough Draft Studios, who did the animation for 'Futurama,' have been fantastic," Groening says. "They stepped it up even more on this show. What I've noticed about television animation in general is, it almost always takes place in a flat world, with flat streets, and there's a sort of invisible proscenium onstage, where the characters move around."
For "Disenchantment," Groening says, "We put the castle on a bluff, and the streets are steep and hilly, sort of like where I grew up, in West Portland."
Groening has a long-held theory that, as he says, "the best cartoon characters are the ones that you can identify in silhouette, and that goes back to Mickey Mouse and Bart Simpson, and so forth. The castle in 'Disenchantment' will be identifiable in silhouette, once people get to know the show. The castle feels like an extra character."
"Disenchantment" breaks from some old-fashioned fantasy tales in that its lead character is Bean, the princess who Groening says is 18 or 19, and who is voiced by Jacobson.
Originally, Groening says, Elfo the elf was going to be the lead, but "then we realized there were more consequences to Bean's life, and it was more fun to write. It didn't seem to me that radical a choice. In an era of princess movies, she's sort of an anti-princess."
Bean doesn't look like a typical princess heroine, Groening says. "It was really funny to make her tough, and give her buck teeth, which she's very self-conscious about, and to have her make bad choices."
Jacobson, Groening says, "brings a feminist sensibility to the role, from her work on 'Broad City.' We try to write feminist dialogue, and she kicks it up a notch."
Groening says Jacobson and her fellow voice actors have made key contributions in developing the characters.
"One of the reasons why I love animation is that it's a collaborative effort," says Groening. "It's so much fun to be surrounded by the best writers, the best animators, the best actors and the best musicians, for that matter. You try to entertain each other. This particular show is very open to wherever an idea comes from, and the actors, Abbi Jacobson, Eric Andre and Nat Faxon, are great improvisers, in part because they're also writers and directors themselves."
"Disenchantment" streams its first 10 episodes beginning Aug. 17 on Netflix.
-- Kristi Turnquist
kturnquist@oregonian.com
503-221-8227
@Kristiturnquist