Gábor Csupó ( , ; born September 29, 1952) is a Hungarian animator, writer, director, producer and graphic designer. He is co-founder of the animation studio Klasky Csupo, which produced the first three years of The Simpsons, as well as episodes of Rugrats, The Wild Thornberrys, Duckman, Stressed Eric, Rocket Power, As Told by Ginger, and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.
Early life
Csupó was born on September 29, 1952, to Jewish parents in Budapest, Hungary.
Career
After four years at the Pannónia Filmstúdió animation studios, Csupó defected to the West in 1975, traveling along with several others, including musician Leslie Mándoki, through a railway tunnel connecting Yugoslavia and Austria. While working in Stockholm, Sweden he met Arlene Klasky, an American-born animator. Klasky Csupo animator and colorist Gyorgyi Peluce conceived the idea of the Simpsons characters having yellow skin, and Marge Simpson having blue hair, opting for something which "didn't look like anything that had come before." Csupó liked the idea, although many of the show's producers at production company Gracie Films disapproved. The character design of The Simpsons character Dr. Nick Riviera is based somewhat on Csupó. The show's animators mistakenly believed the character's voice actor, Hank Azaria, was impersonating Csupó, but Azaria said the voice was actually a "bad" imitation of Ricky Ricardo from I Love Lucy.
In 1992, Gracie Films switched domestic production of The Simpsons to Film Roman. Csupó was "asked [by Gracie Films] if they could bring in their own producer [to oversee the animation production]," but declined, stating "they wanted to tell me how to run my business." His company Klasky Csupo also produced several television films and four feature animated films for Paramount Pictures: The Rugrats Movie (1998), Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (2000), Rugrats Go Wild (2003), and The Wild Thornberrys Movie (2002). The Rugrats Movie became the first non-Disney animated film in the world to earn more than $100M at the domestic box office.
His record label, Tone Casualties, founded in 1994,
Csupó is a big fan of American musician, composer, and bandleader Frank Zappa, and credits Zappa with helping him learn the English language. His collection of Zappa albums were the only items he took with him when he emigrated from his native Hungary in the 1970s (at the time a one-party communist state under the Soviet sphere of influence).