BEFORE: So I made it 20 films into the 50-film Doc Block before there was a linking snag, it's all going to be fine, but it's going to cost me two days time, so I'm limited to five films this week. In trying to bump up to fifty films this year, I added a bunch of films, and one of them was "Overnight", recommended by my BFF Andy. Let me state again for the record that I do NOT do requests or take suggestions, usually any suggestion over what to watch makes me NOT want to watch that film. But I will make an exception for Andy, nobody else. And it ticked a box, because it's a film about Troy Duffy, the director of "The Boondock Saints", who is from Connecticut, another state to cross off the list. Now, where to put it?
The only place I could put it was HERE, as Paul Reubens is listed in the cast for that film, according to the IMDB. However he is NOT in that film, as far as I can tell, and I scanned through it twice. Based on an article I read online, he auditioned for "The Boondock Saints", and I suspect that after that, Mr. Duffy had an adverse reaction to him, and that portrayed Duffy in a negative light. The section on "casting" was therefore re-edited, and now is just a montage of still photos from the casting session, which seems like a cover-up. Bottom line, Paul Reubens isn't there. OK, so it's the middle film in a three-film chain, I can drop it, no problem, and try to circle back next year, it happens. But that cost me a whole DAY. This doc on MAD! Magazine is still going to be where it always was, just the count is off.
But now, how to replace that film? Because I still want the count to be fifty - I do have back-ups waiting in the wings, but something state-specific would be great, and I need to know the linking is solid - I scanned the PBS line-up for the next week and found something great, however it requires a little tinkering before the linking will work - no problem, there's so much redundancy that all I have to do is flip the next 7 or 8 films around, and everything will link up again, just in a different way. Except the new addition airs Thursday night on PBS, so the earliest I can post is FRIDAY - well, that costs me another day. It's fine, there's plenty of extra space in August and September, I'm assuming, so I can only hit 29 films in July and not 31, again, not a big deal. This is all just par for the course, if I hit a dead end or something, just keep rotating little bits of the main chain until I find something where everything connects, it's just a giant puzzle after all.
So, after all THAT, Paul Reubens carries over from "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie". Now, what state to profile today? This cast of writers and editors for the magazine is almost 83% crazy New Yorkers born in Brooklyn, so that's out, we covered New York already. The MAD! offices moved to L.A. a few years ago, but we covered California already. It's too much work going through everybody's bio just to figure out who was born where, but MAD magazine was all about being crazy and random and most importantly, funny. So I feel like I should just pick the funniest state here, that would make the most (non-)sense. So probably nobody who worked on MAD was ever born in Idaho, which is perfect because it turns out that absolutely nobody was ever born in Idaho. So it all fits together beautifully. Here we go with IDAHO!
Date admitted to the U.S.: Some say July 3, 1890 but this is really a trick question, it was never officially admitted to the U.S. It would have been the 43rd state, however, it's just not.
Claim to fame: It's where everyone passed through on the way to Oregon or Washington. Also famous potatoes.
Nickname: The Gem State. It's just a trick to make you think there's something valuable there, really it's the Potato State.
State Motto: "Esto Perpetua", which is Latin for "Endless Potatoes"
State Flower: It's a potato.
State Fruit: Same, it's a potato.
State Vegetable: Take a wild guess.
State Bird: Mountain blueberry
State Insect: Monarch butterfly
State Tree: Western white pine
State Gem: Star garnet. For "The Gem State" that's actually pretty lame.
State Dance: Just kidding, nobody dances there. The whole state is like "Footloose".
State Dance: Just kidding, nobody dances there. The whole state is like "Footloose".
Notable Sports Teams: You must be joking. Nobody there has any time for sports, not with all those potatoes to harvest year-round.
Fun Facts: Nothing "Fun" about Idaho either, I'm betting. It's super Republican and abortion is restricted and they still have the firing squad for a death penalty. Their Wikipedia page is totally blank and yeah, that tracks. It is the only state that financially improved during the Great Depression, and that was because in the rest of the U.S. all that anyone could afford to eat was, of course, potatoes. During the pandemic shutdown, Idaho was the only place where nobody even noticed any difference. The state is also 73% National Park or Historic Sites or nature reserves, which works out great because nobody wants to live there. And no, I have not been there, either, so my record of visited states is now 17 out of 21.
THE PLOT: A tribute to the legacy and influence of MAD magazine, featuring interviews with MAD celebrity readers, along with MAD artists, writers and editors, affectionately known as the Usual Gang of Idiots.
AFTER: Finally, a documentary about something I know very much a lot about - like there are topics I know a bit too much about, like a documentary about beer or "Star Wars" might not hit the same to me, because I already know so much. I've been reading MAD magazine since I was a kid, my dad had a subscription and of course they did parodies of some movies I'd seen, like "Close Encounters" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and sometimes it was a movie I hadn't seen, like a horror movie, but then by reading the parody, I was able to figure out what I was missing by not being allowed to see an "R" rated film. Kids don't really care much about politics, but I learned a lot about Presidents Carter and Reagan by reading MAD. Clearly I wasn't the only one, because a whole generation of kids learned that government makes no sense and politicians are stupid or liars or both, in some cases. Hey, maybe this explains a lot about how we got where we are, if you know what I mean.
We also had those little paperback "reader" books that had reprinted material from old MAD magazines from the 1950's, and some were collections like "The Best of Don Martin" or "The Best of Spy vs. Spy" and really, it was a lot of violence and sex and subversiveness for one kid to handle, but I was hooked, I couldn't get enough. Maybe this explains also that once I found the Dr. Demento radio show, I glommed right on to that, because reading MAD had set me up to appreciate parody, satire, ridiculousness and whimsy. But you could also tell that somebody with a brain had put together the magazine, because there's stupid funny and there's smart funny, and MAD seesawed liberally between the two. You also sometimes have to be smart to make stupid funny, if you know what I mean.
There's still a lot I didn't know, like I knew who William Gaines, the publisher was, because they were always drawing him into the magazine. He was still alive when I went off to college in 1989, but I tried to still read MAD when I could. He passed away in 1992, in fact a lot of the original line-up of MAD editors, writers and artists have passed, this film doesn't really dwell on that, and it's hard to tell the difference between archive interviews done for, like old TV interviews and new interviews done JUST for this movie. This kind of creates the illusion that certain people who worked on the magazine are still alive, but no, a lot of them are deceased. They worked in that "fishtank" of funny people and at some point were floating belly-up, so new "fish" came in to replace them. That's just how it goes, sadly.
Later in life, I got my own subscription to MAD, and I think I was also getting a gift subscription for my father, who of course was getting older and was fairly out of touch with pop culture, but I figured if he still read MAD he could maybe get some knowledge about what music the kids are listening to or maybe they would do a parody of some CBS show that he watched, like "CSI" or "The Big Bang Theory". (My Dad didn't care for any of MY nerd stuff, but he watched the hell out of "The Big Bang Theory", I guess he thought he could maybe understand his son a little better by watching that show?). Anyway, two things happened in recent years that brought me in touch with the people who made MAD. Remember, I lived in NYC from 1986 until now, and I knew MAD had their office there, but I never really even thought about that until...
In 2016, animator friend of mine who lived in the L.A. area and co-wrote a feature film with my boss came to town, and he had a contact at the MAD magazine headquarters. So he wanted to bring my boss along, because everyone there knew him, or knew about him, and was eager to have him visit. Well, I wasn't going to let this happen without me, so I volunteered to come along as the newly-appointed staff photographer, I knew whatever I got would be pure gold on social media to help promote our stuff. So we met with editor John Ficarra and art director Sam Viviano. It was a successful visit, we got the pics we wanted and there was a lot of cool stuff at the office, statues of the white Spy and a big Alfred E. Neuman trophy, but it was also a very quiet place. The people who were there seemed to be having a good time, but you know, a lot of writers and artists worked in other cities and sent in their pitches and art by phone or e-mail.
The magic was kind of gone, and then two years after that we heard they were shutting down the NYC office and the whole operation would be moving to L.A., DC Comics was going to keep making the magazine, only each issue would be mostly reprint material with maybe one or two new articles a month. I think Entertainment Weekly kind of folded around the same time, there was a general feeling in the industry that print was nearly dead as a medium, at least MAD didn't just become an online newsletter or something, but yeah, the internet really did a number on it, the new generation wasn't going to buy a paper magazine when they could just go on YouTube if they wanted to see something funny.
I got a new gig working at the movie theater, and then like two and a half years into my time there, I heard that Al Jaffee had died, at the age of 102 - and he had been a cartoonist for MAD for probably half of his life, if not more. Well, guess where MAD alumni chose to gather, to celebrate the man's life? They rented out the theater where I worked, and I got to be a front of house manager for Al Jaffee's memorial. This was like a who's who of people who worked at MAD over the years, the old crowd and the new crowd. Sam Viviano came with boxes of leaflets and he remembered me from seven years before. I mean, not exactly, but he KNEW he knew me from somewhere, that's good enough for me. Al Jaffee, of course, created comics like "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" and also the MAD Fold-In, which was the inside rear cover of every issue, which was a drawing that could be folded (so that line "A" meets line "B") and that would create a humorous new image, the answer to the "riddle" posed by the original image. If you don't understand, you might be too young to know what a magazine cover is. Ask your parents maybe.
We have these poster light-boxes at the theater, and the MAD Art department had sent some of Al Jaffee's most famous "Fold-In" art at poster size, to be displayed in the light-boxes. However, the staff that was there at the memorial soon realized the problem, the posters were of the "before folding" image, and there was no way to see the punchline, which required folding of the poster, and this was going to be impossible. So they asked me if they could have some space to work, and cut up some of the posters in order to have some of them display a simulation of the "after folding" image. Ordinarily this would be a big "NO" at my job, or really this wouldn't come up at all - who would order poster-size art and then want to display it all cut up into pieces? But of course I knew what a MAD Fold-In was, and I also saw the problem, so I did say, "Hey, guys, I get it, and these are YOUR posters, so if you want to cut them and display them a certain way, I'm down for it." I get the feeling that Al would have wanted people to see the punchline, and also he probably would have laughed over the fact that whoever ordered these posters didn't see the display problem coming.
I felt more on top of things at my job than usual, I knew this crowd, I got their sense of humor, and man, 102 years old (and he had RETIRED at 95, but then got drawn back in) you have to think that maybe laughter is the best medicine after all, especially when Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke and George Burns lived so long, and now Mel Brooks has turned 100. I'm going to get to Mel Brooks in a couple days, and Dick Van Dyke not long after that. I mean, I'd better hurry, the clock is ticking. But it's a rare shift when I walk into work a few days later and thank my bosses for scheduling me for an event, I was proud to do my part to celebrate Al Jaffee, and vicariously all the MAD cartoonists from before - Don Martin, Dave Berg and so on. Some of them died before I was a fixture on the convention circuit, but those are the breaks.
I've got a few other connections to people in this doc, like once I met Sergio Aragones at a San Diego Comic-Con, and I thought that was a big deal, and through my boss I'd also met Peter Kuper at NY cons, he'd taken over the "Spy vs. Spy" comic from the original artist, Antonio Prohias. I've connected with Weird Al a few times over the years, of course he's a huge fan of MAD Magazine, and I saw Gilbert Gottfried once at a movie theater. Gilbert died in 2022, but he's interviewed here and I kind of get the feeling that was filmed while he was still alive, so yeah, it may have taken a few years to put this documentary together. Who knows, maybe they just used a Ouija board.
Anyways, it's all a little bit sad because MAD magazine couldn't live forever, they of course tried branching out into movies but they made "Up the Academy", which was a complete disaster. It's pointed out here that MAD Magazine probably inspired better movies like "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun", without direct involvement. Just like the Beatles inspired so many people to start bands, indirectly, and "SNL" inspired so many rising stars to come to NYC and do sketch comedy, and just like Cheech & Chong inspired so many people to smoke weed, MAD inspired so many people to realize how messed up the whole world is, and that we could all find some humor there while we're circling the drain. We're here for a good time, not for a long time, unless our name is Al Jaffee.
EDIT: I have to believe that the universe, or at least the chain, was trying to send me a message by messing with my links. I've got memories now of meeting Sergio Aragones at San Diego Comic Con in years past - and guys, I just found out a certain annual event is scheduled to start TOMORROW, any guesses what it is? Why yes, it's the Canyon County Fair taking place in Caldwell, Idaho. But also, it's the first day of San Diego Comic-Con, too bad I'm not part of that world any more, but if you are, please have a good time and cosplay responsibly...
Directed by Alan Bernstein
Also starring Judd Apatow (last seen in "Flipside"), Sergio Aragones, Annie Gaines Ashton, Leonard Brenner, Tim Carvell, Paul Coker Jr., Bryan Cranston (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Dave Croatto, Jack Davis, Dick Debartolo, Jerry DeFuccio, Desmond Devlin, Mort Drucker, Don Edwing, Al Feldstein, John Ficarra, Ryan Flanders, Drew Friedman, Grant Geissman, Gilbert Gottfried (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Stan Hart, Frank Jacobs, Al Jaffee, Charlie Kadau, Tom Koch, Arnie Kogen, Jay Kogen, Peter Kuper, Howie Mandel (last seen in "Being Eddie"), Nick Meglin, Hermann Mejia, Harry North, Teresa Burns Parkhurst, Joe Raiola, Tom Richmond, Frank Santopadre, Irving Schild, Larry Siegel, Lou Silverstone, Quentin Tarantino (last seen in "Sergio Leone: The Italian Who Invented America"), Angelo Torres, Sam Viviano, Richard Williams, Weird Al Yankovic (last seen in "The Naked Gun"), David Zucker
with archive footage of William Gaines, Don Adams, Fred Astaire (also last seen in "Being Eddie"), Max Baer Jr., Hugh Beaumont (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), John Belushi (last seen in "Lorne"), Candice Bergen (ditto), Dana Carvey (ditto), Phil Hartman (ditto), Bill Murray (ditto), Donald Trump (ditto), Dave Berg, Irving Berlin, George W. Bush (last seen in "Rather"), Bill Clinton (ditto), Steve Carell (last seen in "Mountainhead"), Charlie Chaplin (last seen in "Child Star"), Bob Clarke, Stephen Colbert (last heard in "Despicable Me 4"), Gary Cooper, Bob Crane, Bob Denver, Leonardo DiCaprio (last seen in "One Battle After Another"), Phyllis Diller (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Tony Dow, Roger Ebert (also carrying over from "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie"), Jimmy Kimmel (ditto), Jack Nicholson (ditto), Gene Siskel (ditto), Buddy Ebsen, Will Elder, Mia Farrow (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), M.C. Gaines, Dave Garroway, Ben Gazzara (last seen in "13"), Peter Graves (last seen in "The Night of the Hunter"), Julie Hagerty (last seen in "The Out-Laws"), Alan Hale Jr., Neil Patrick Harris (last seen in "Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium"), Mary Hart (also last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Robert Hays, Hugh Hefner (last seen in "Pamela: A Love Story"), Conan O'Brien (ditto), Howard Stern (ditto), Jon Stewart (ditto), Jimi Hendrix (also last seen in "Being Eddie"), Joe Piscopo (ditto), Jerry Seinfeld (ditto), J. Edgar Hoover (last seen in "The Alto Knights"), Peter Jennings (last seen in "Chris & Martina: The Final Set"), Russell Johnson, Harvey Kurtzman, Stan Lee (last seen in "Stan Lee"), Rob Leibman (last seen in "Norma Rae"), Tina Louise, Ali MacGraw (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Leslie Mann (last seen in "Blockers"), Don Martin, Chico Marx, Groucho Marx (also last seen in "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie"), Harpo Marx, Joseph McCarthy, Melissa McCarthy (last seen in "Life as We Know It"), Norman Mingo, Lin-Manuel Miranda (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Charles F. Murphy, Leslie Nielsen (last seen in "Creepshow"), Leonard Nimoy (last seen in "Boomerang"), William Shatner (ditto), Tom Nozkowski, Ryan O'Neal (last seen in "Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames"), Robert Pattinson (last seen in "Marty Supreme"), Amanda Plummer (last seen in "The Wolfpack"), Antonio Prohias, John Putnam, Dan Rather (last seen in "Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story"), Christopher Reeve (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Jack Rickard, Mary Rodgers, Tim Roth (last seen in "The Song of Names"), Paul Rudd (last seen in "Death of a Unicorn"), Irene Ryan, Fred Savage (last seen in "The Rules of Attraction"), John Severin, Steven Spielberg (also last seen in "Child Star"), Lyle Stewart, Harry S. Truman, Fredric Wertham, Wally Wood, George Woodbridge,
and narration by Patrick Warburton (last heard in "Zootopia 2")
RATING: 7 out of 10 editorial staff trips to exotic parts of the world
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