When We Went MAD! (2025)

[bunniefuu]

Uh, I'm not familiar with this.

What is MAD magazine?

It was revolutionary.

MAD magazine,

to me, represented

the epitome of humor magazines.

MAD magazine

was the first place

that really mocked people hard.

It was anarchistic.

I'd never seen

that kind of humor before,

that kind of irreverent comedy,

and it really changed...

-...something in my brain.

-I mean, MAD magazine

is the only magazine

that I ever read cover to cover.

I never did my homework,

but I read MAD magazine.

Most parents didn't approve.

They thought it was

corrupting their minds,

and in a way, it was.

In a good way.

I remember reading things

and just in my mind going,

"Oh, whoa!"

That's why most people

who had MAD magazines

at my age had to hide them.

MAD is not good.

Our readers are not smart.

MAD is cheap.

The quality is poor.

It's stupid. That's our brand.

In comedy, it took people

like MAD magazine

to establish that you are

allowed to criticize people.

They weren't afraid of anyone.

MAD went after everyone.

It inspired a lot of people

to want to make comedy.

No! Kelly Clarkson!

Surely you can't be serious.

I am serious,

and don't call me Shirley.

MAD was a textbook for us,

how to make fun of things.

MAD was a precursor

to The Daily Show

and Saturday Night Live.

You see the parody

of The Daily Show

in this month's MAD magazine?

You're on the cover

of MAD magazine.

This, uh, is a big deal.

That's, like,

a better version of me.

I'll tell you the

greatest thing

that I've ever

achieved in my career.

I was on the cover

of MAD magazine.

I adore MAD magazine.

When you talk

about modern American satire,

it starts with MAD.

The rest is,

as they say, misery.

During the summer of 1947,

in what would become a defining

moment in the world of satire,

President Truman signed into

law the National Security Act,

creating, among

other things, the CIA.

Also occurring at the time,

a young William Maxwell Gaines

would make a decision

that would lead to

covertly sabotaging

our nation for years to come.

Initially, Bill Gaines'

career that he ended up in

wasn't really

what he intended to be.

Bill Gaines grew up in Brooklyn.

His dad was M.C. Gaines,

and he was on

the very ground floor of

the comics industry.

He had been in

the advertising business,

and somewhere along the line,

he was packaging 8, 16,

maybe 32-page comic books

for advertisers.

One day,

he had the inspiration of

putting ten-cent labels

on these and sticking them

on a newsstand,

and they sold out very quickly.

Coming out with

the first comic book,

which was called

Famous Funnies.

Really,

Max Gaines was responsible

for jump-starting

the comic book industry.

He had a sister company

to DC Comics.

They were kind of

separate companies,

but tied together

in a business way.

He was responsible for

getting Wonder Woman created,

Green Lantern created.

They established

the Justice Society of America,

which way later in the '60s

became the Justice League.

Of all the

superheroes Gaines championed,

one in particular

would stand out above the rest.

He recommended to his buddies

at DC Comics

a character called Superman

and published it

as a standalone comic.

What he didn't realize

is Superman was just

gonna be ginormous.

Look! Up in

the sky! It's a bird!

- It's a plane!

- It's Superman!

Superman!

Oh, let go, let go, let go!

Max was

sitting on a gold mine.

The Superman franchise

alone would go on to generate

billions of dollars.

But Max threw it all away

by selling his stake

to focus on

what he believed would

be a more lucrative genre.

Educational comics.

Picture stories of the Bible.

Picture stories

from world history.

They were boring,

and they were literally

designed for little kids.

Nobody wanted

to read that stuff,

and so he was

starting to lose his shirt.

So Max Gaines's entertaining

and educational comics

basically did not move

on the newsstands.

Nobody bought them.

Nobody was interested.

The company was

about $100,000 in the red.

An already difficult

time for the Gaines family

would quickly turn to tragedy.

Bill's father

was k*lled in a tragic

boating accident in August 1947.

Bill's mother insisted

that he take over the company,

even though Bill

actually hated comics.

He didn't like anything about

the company his dad created.

He had a very strained

relationship with his father.

To him, I was a bum.

I couldn't do anything.

I couldn't fix fuses,

and I wasn't much good

at doing anything.

Stepping into

the comic business was

absolutely the last

thing he wanted to do.

Bill's

mother said, "Oh, please go

down to the business and try

and make something out of it."

He took a look at all

the comics his father

was publishing and thought,

"These are pretty lame."

In the beginning,

Bill only went into the office

to sign checks

and maybe do a little paperwork.

But little by little,

he started to kind of enjoy

being at the company.

He liked being

around creative people.

One of the major changes

came in 1948.

This guy called Al Feldstein

walked into the office.

I showed him what I was doing,

which at the time was those

Lana Turner sweater types.

Big boobs and,

like, you know, short skirts.

And Bill's like, "I like these

comics and I like this guy."

And he said, "Would you do

a teenage book for us?"

Feldstein originally

wanted to be a doctor,

but his father lost

his business in the Depression.

There was no money

for medical school.

He was about 15,

and he found out he could make,

you know, $10 a page

drawing comic books.

So he went where the money was,

and he did have talent.

So that's how

I started with Bill.

We became friends.

And he was very nave

and new to the business.

Al was a kind

of a brash, energetic guy.

And Bill needed that.

He needed someone to

come in and be gung-h*.

And Al was all of that.

The two of them

started working together,

making changes,

abandoning the kind of

kiddie comics

that Max Gaines was publishing.

Bill would veer

from the educational

and focus on the entertaining.

The break came

when Feldstein proposed

they try their hand at

a brand new comic book genre.

I said, "Let's scare the pants

off the kids in comic books."

Just as his father

had been an innovator,

Bill and his editor broke new

ground by introducing

their take

on horror and science fiction

comics with a brand new style.

Horror comics

became super popular very fast,

and the money started coming in.

Now EC was

finally making a profit,

and Bill was able

to disprove his dad.

He did make EC a success,

something

his father never could do.

A young illustrator

named Harvey Kurtzman

arrived at EC's doorstep

showcasing his unique talents.

I was known as

the funny cartoonist

in high school,

the guy who used to do cartoons

for everybody,

make everybody laugh.

In true MAD fashion,

Kurtzman's first

assignment with

EC was a comic

book that stood out.

They hired Kurtzman

to do this comic

called "Lucky Fights It

Through," which was

an anti-venereal disease

little giveaway pamphlet.

You know, "Don't

sleep with the floozy,

you're gonna get VD."

He was

very humble and quiet, shy.

He was like turtle-like.

He looked like a turtle.

Harvey was one of the greatest

visual talents ever.

It's amazing

who was hugely important at

one point and has done so much

and influenced so many things.

And if you wanted to

draw the line from MAD,

if you could draw it right

back like a fuse on a b*mb,

it would reach Kurtzman.

Although Kurtzman did

some work in the horror comics,

he hated horror comics.

He thought they were awful.

Harvey pitched that he would

do, like, an adventure comic on

his own, which morphed pretty

quickly into like a w*r comic,

showing the actual

real horrors of w*r.

He was a perfectionist,

and it took him really

a long time to do

these w*r comics.

He would go research

and talk to veterans.

And they were fantastic comics,

but they actually

never sold all that well.

He was putting

so much effort in.

He wasn't making any money.

Feldstein was cranking out

horror comics a story a day,

and Kurtzman was, you know,

slaving over this stuff.

So I was doing seven books

and Harvey was doing two.

And he was very much

annoyed that I was making

three and a half times as much

as he was, and he went to

Bill Gaines and he said,

"I want to make more money."

So we had a big

brainstorming session about

what Harvey would do

for the third comic book.

So I suggested that we go

to a-- a funny format.

Not a Daffy Duck or

a Woody Woodpecker or whatever.

Why don't we do

an adult humor magazine?

I was originally

inspired by a couple of college

yearbooks that I came across,

and this was a revelation.

The college yearbooks

had been doing the kind of

satire and parody

that I wanted to do for years.

MAD number one hit

the newsstands in August 1952.

It cost ten cents an issue.

Subscriptions were

75 cents for six issues.

Readers were met

with a greeting.

"You are now holding

our dream child in your hands.

We had a swell time

creating MAD,

and we hope that MAD will

have a long, successful life."

It featured four articles,

each essentially a spoof

of EC's other comic books.

Harvey wrote, penciled,

and inked much of MAD

himself, but he also selected

specific artists from

EC's stable of regulars.

But brilliant Wally Wood

was the best comic book

artist of his time.

John Severin brought

his detail-oriented artistry

to the world of satire.

The lightning-fast genius

of Jack Davis was amazing,

and he welcomed the transition

from horror to humor.

The horror bit came very easy,

and it was kind of humorous,

and I made it humorous.

And for me,

it just always flowed,

so it wasn't really a big shift.

And there was one artist

perfectly suited for MAD,

the zany Will Elder.

He started putting in

what they called chicken fat.

Like all these little extra gags

in the panel so you could

read the main story,

and then you could actually

go back and pick up

all these little things

that Elder would

stick in the background.

Essentially,

we did MAD for ourselves,

so it became

a very personalized effort.

I came upon

the MAD format because

it was something

that I did easily.

I'd been doing it all my life.

Harvey's focus

on mostly parodying EC's

other titles didn't do

much to attract new readers,

and MAD struggled

to find its audience.

We used to chat,

and I-- I would prod him.

I would say, "You know,

there's a lot else out there

besides just making

fun of what we're publishing.

Why don't you make fun

of Americana?"

With the Great

Depression and World w*r II

disappearing in

the rear view mirror,

Americans could move on

to more important things,

like fancy ovens, snazzy cars,

and an exciting new

place to live: the suburbs.

When MAD came on

the scene, Elvis Presley

hadn't even yet appeared,

so you really didn't even

have the kind of

rock and roll rebellion yet.

However, underneath

this picturesque surface,

a darker threat loomed.

It was an era of

tremendous repression.

The Red Threat,

the Hollywood blacklist.

The McCarthyism,

and then people were

afraid of anything in print.

Minus ten seconds.

The whole country was

in a very conformist mode.

Eight, seven...

The atom b*mb.

What could be scarier than that?

Five, four...

The kids were being

told to get under their seats

when the siren went off,

and that they would be okay,

and the kids were saying,

you know, "That's a lot of crap.

I'm gonna get turned into dust!"

So they were starting...

...to question the adult world.

In an atmosphere like this,

it was so easy

to ridicule things.

With MAD on

the brink of bankruptcy,

MAD went all in on connecting

with the youth of America

by ridiculing

the perilous status quo.

MAD took

a few issues to catch on,

did not fly off the newsstand,

but then on the fourth issue,

they hit on doing

a specific superhero.

We lampooned, uh, Superman.

Two, one...

We ran a feature

called "Super Duper Man."

That's hilarious.

It was then.

You had to be there.

And that was, like,

the turning point

in MAD magazine.

And that was

the first classic MAD story that

sort of paved the way for

all future MAD parodies,

which actually DC

was very angry about,

and they threatened to sue him.

That might've been

the first time I realized,

oh, there's Superman,

and then there's these people

who are gonna mock it

and make "Super Duper Man."

It was the beginning of learning

that, you know, there are people

who are gonna beat the piss

out of you in this world,

who are gonna mock you and

find the thing to make fun of.

MAD just pointed it out for us

and gave us permission

to laugh at stuff.

People need to laugh to

release pressure and anxiety.

Laughter is a direct hit.

We're looking at ourselves.

We're looking at

atrocious things in

our culture in a funny way,

in a way that makes you laugh,

like a funhouse mirror

makes you laugh.

It doesn't make you an--

it shouldn't make you angry.

There's always

something to spoof.

Anything that's taken seriously

is grist for the mill.

They did

a parody of Batman and Robin

called "Bat Boy and Rubin."

And in the splash panel,

they put a little notice

for the suits at DC.

"Hey, this is a lampoon.

We're making fun of this.

"If you want to sue us,

go right ahead."

And now do you just

parody comic strips?

No, what else can we parody?

Advertisements.

You can parody movies.

Harvey introduced what would

become a defining MAD feature.

The pull, the draw,

was the movie satires

and the TV satires.

Everything else

there was great and it was

terrific and

it could be wonderful.

But at the end of

the day, it was still filler.

It was the stuff

that fit in between

the movie parody

and the TV parody.

MAD was saying,

yeah, movies are stupid.

And that was great.

That was a revelation.

You could make fun of movies.

Hi-yo, Silver!

We did takeoffs

on The Lone Ranger...

...on Tarzan, and it worked.

People thought

the stuff was hilarious.

MAD just pointed it out for us.

We don't have to

take this seriously.

This woman has

to be gotten to a hospital.

A hospital? What is it?

It's a big

building with patients,

but that's not

important right now.

They figured out, how can

we take a MAD magazine spoof

and make it work from beginning

to end as a motion picture.

There's a scene with

Leslie Nielsen and Peter Graves.

Captain, how soon can you land?

-I can't tell.

-You can tell me. I'm a doctor.

That's right out of MAD.

I mean, not

that those guys wrote it,

but it could have been something

that they would have written.

MAD magazine

did most of the great movies

of the '70s and took the piss

right out of them,

shoved a weed up their a*s.

It didn't matter

what the movie was.

They were never respectful.

To take something

that was either revered,

admired, appreciated,

and just beat it to death

and then drag it

through the streets.

Like, oh, my God.

There are R-rated movies

I've still never seen that

my only point of reference for

them is the MAD magazine parody.

For the love of God, help me!

Movie satire is my favorite

thing to write because

you just see the movie once

and then you go from there.

If you made a movie,

you would think, "Oh,

what are they gonna notice

that we did wrong?"

But whether it's

a great movie, a bad movie,

you can do a satire

on it because you can

pick things out and

just make fun of them.

There are some of

those parodies that almost

exist as the last word

on the movie.

The famous one

for Rosemary's Baby,

that was actually great.

"I think there's a secret

going on in this.

Let's figure it out."

It spells out,

"This movie is boring."

They have Melissa McCarthy

and she says,

"I bet if Meryl Streep had

ferocious diarrhea in a sink,

they'd have

given her the Oscar..."

"...just because she can

crap with an accent."

I was literally

thrown out of the movie

Love Story before the ending,

because I couldn't stop

laughing when she was dying.

It was such a farce.

The movie was so stupid,

and the audience is crying,

and I'm laughing, and that's

the curse of being a satirist.

You laugh at the wrong places.

TV shows were

tougher because you had to

actually write a story and

compose a plot of some sort.

You have to

watch at least five or six

episodes to get the character

development and stuff like that.

I never thought I would

go into humorous illustration.

That wasn't my thing.

I said, "Well, give me a script

and I'll give it a shot."

The biggest

challenge in these jobs was

the likeness of the characters.

If you didn't

get the likenesses,

the story wouldn't work.

-I love you, honey bunny.

-And I love you, honey bunny.

Everybody be cool,

this is a robbery.

What are you doing?

I need you to look

at something in my butt.

For some reason, MAD did not get

invited to a lot of previews.

ABC had-- had a picture file.

They would go down there

and help themselves

to all the pictures they wanted.

Until one day

these people say, "Hey,

they're lampooning our work."

Cut them out, no more pictures.

When I met

Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines,

they were listening to a

Yankee-Dodger World Series game.

And, uh, Bill Gaines said

to me, after looking at my work,

he said, "The Dodgers win,

you got the job."

When I went to MAD, I didn't

do any caricatures of anybody.

That wasn't what I did.

But, uh, a job came up,

and they needed

someone who could do likenesses.

And from then on,

I was doing movies.

The weird thing for me

was I lived down the street

from Mort Drucker as a kid.

And then one day

we worked up the courage

to knock on the door.

And he's

the nicest man in the world.

This was comedy

that was speaking to

all the things

that I was aware of.

It's pop culture and

it took all the TV shows

I was watching and

turned them on their ear.

I started reading MAD

at a very early age,

which explains why right now

I read on a third-grade level.

I had one issue with this one,

which looked exactly like

a school notebook so

the junior could smuggle

it into class and

read the comics.

I tell you,

it was mad, mad, mad.

A lot of teachers

and parents were caught

all of a sudden, you know,

how do you handle

this magazine for your kids?

Most parents didn't approve.

They thought it was

corrupting their minds.

And in a way

it was, in a good way.

It was always fun

when you'd come across

some article or something

they'd say where you'd go,

"Ooh, am I reading

something bad here?"

It was wonderfully subversive.

I liked the fact that

my parents weren't reading it.

I remember reading things

and just in my mind going,

"Ooh, oh, whoa.

If they ever saw that..."

I remember a couple of times

when I came back from school,

my parents had already

read the issue

and they were kind of like,

"I don't know if we should

be giving you this."

I was not

allowed to have a subscription.

I had to save some money,

and when my mom wasn't looking,

I'd, you know, buy a MAD

magazine or go off on my own.

I had to stash it.

Satire doesn't respect.

That's why most people

who had MAD magazines

at my age had to hide them.

And anything you had to

stash when you were a kid,

it must be valuable.

The thing that MAD

did and why kids had to hide MAD

is that no one would

think of making fun

of what the government

was doing.

No one'd think of making

fun of giant corporations.

My readers

had no age limitation.

You can't write

14-year-old humor

and an 18-year-old

is gonna enjoy it.

But you can write

18-year-old humor

and a 14-year-old will enjoy it.

Here's where I give Al all

the credit in the world.

When anybody said,

"But the kids,

they don't even know that,"

he says, "It's okay, it's okay.

They'll get it."

There were parts of MAD magazine

that went over my head.

But things

that go over your head

make you wanna

lift your head up.

And that if you wanna

be the audience that this

is, you know, meant for, gotta

raise your game a little bit.

When you're that age, for some

reason, it really speaks to you.

I don't know if it's the way

that it deals with authority

figures or trying to figure out

your place in the world

or dealing with the fact

that everybody's lying to you.

There's a point

in your life where you

don't know people

might be lying to you.

And then you suddenly discover

something that says that to

you and it feels like you're

getting the secret knowledge.

And I feel like

that's what MAD was.

I do think the boys

who grew up buying copies of

MAD magazine on their own,

they're a certain breed.

It's like the generation

where me and a lot

of my peers

ultimately come from.

The Joe Dantes and

the Judd Apatows and

the Zucker Brothers

and Jim Abrahams.

And I think

there's a sense of humor,

there's a sensibility,

there's a smart aleck-ness.

You know, as a little kid,

you're angry.

You're angry that anyone's

telling you what to do.

You're angry that

the teachers want order.

So MAD magazine was

always so exciting because

it was the one place

where you felt like there's

other people out there

really annoyed like me.

Kurtzman's

shrewd silliness really

spoke to MAD's young audience.

He grew up in

a Yiddish-speaking home,

but he himself

didn't understand it.

He would pepper early MAD

with some of the more humorous

and absurd-sounding words

that he heard from his parents.

Uh, that's veeblefetzer.

Veeblefesser. Veeblefetzer?

Furshlugginer.

Jose,

do we have a furshlugginer?

Ah, furshlugginer.

And that took off.

And MAD really

took off as a comic book.

We'd go down to New Jersey and

watch it come off the press,

and that was exciting.

As its fan base grew,

so did its

occasional detractors.

It was

an entity unto itself.

Kids glommed onto it right away.

They were excited

about anything that was going up

against this

repressive atmosphere

that was growing so strong.

MAD's

subversive left-wing

perspective

could be traced to

the powerlessness

many Jewish Americans felt

so soon after the Holocaust.

Satire was the outlet

to take down those

who held all the power.

Humor cuts

the bullshit away, but also

the societal value of satire

is that it brings

everybody down

off their high perch.

It's always important

to have people

hold other people accountable.

It really is essential

to call it out.

As good as he was,

Harvey never

liked doing comic books.

Comic books

were cheaply produced.

You know,

they were color on the inside,

printed on newsprint paper.

And Harvey always thought he was

slumming in the world of comics,

and he longed to be in

the world of slick magazines,

like a proper

newsstand magazine.

Kurtzman was really

concerned about having

his work say something.

I mean, he did

the greatest w*r stories ever.

And then he created MAD,

which is something that's,

you know, thumbing

its nose at everything.

Fortunately for MAD

and fortunately for Harvey,

Pageant magazine

came to him and offered him

the editorship of

the humor section of Pageant.

And so he came to

Bill, and he said,

"Look, I never

liked doing comics,

and I've always wanted

to work for an adult magazine."

And Bill said, "You want

to work for an adult magazine?

Turn MAD into

an adult magazine."

So Bill allowed Kurtzman

to transition MAD from

a comic book into a magazine

to keep Harvey happy

and to keep him

from going elsewhere.

And that's how

the slick version

of MAD was born.

It was born on issue 24.

You ever

hear of MAD magazine?

Used to be a comic magazine.

Last spring, though,

they decided to, uh, become

a slick magazine,

as they say in the trade,

specializing in parody, satire.

And they've done a pretty

funny job, I think, now.

On the cover of this,

it says-- Can you read that?

"An extremely important

message from the editors.

Buy the magazine."

Harvey used Pageant

magazine's calling as

leverage to make MAD

into the slick publication

he'd always wanted to do.

MAD was an instant success,

joining the whole line

of wildly popular EC comics.

But success puts you

in the spotlight.

About the same time, the problem

with juvenile delinquency and

a lot of anti-comic book stuff

was going on.

We were suddenly under fire,

and the Kefauver Committee

was formed.

Horror and

crime comics upset kids.

You can see the tension develop

as the story gets

more gruesome.

And if it's a bad one,

the kid is a mass of

jangled nerves by

the time he's through it.

Men are getting

rich off the comic books

that teach kids

this kind of activity.

I don't know how you like it,

but it makes me kind of sick.

Every generation has sort of

a guy or a movement like that.

They're against rock music.

They're against,

you know, television.

They're against video games.

There have been anti-comics

people ever since comics began.

People who were

going after comics as creating

delinquency and destroying

the youth of America.

Good afternoon

from the federal courthouse

in Foley Square in

downtown Manhattan.

WNYC is about to bring

you the afternoon session of

the Senate Subcommittee

on Juvenile Delinquency,

investigating

the effect of comic books

on the increased rate

of juvenile crime.

On April 21st, 1954,

a Senate hearing was convened

to discuss the causes

of juvenile delinquency,

and a star witness

was brought in.

This kind of ambitious

psychologist named

Dr. Fredric Wertham,

who published

Seduction of the Innocent,

and it had to do with how comics

were subverting our children and

ruining their minds and

causing juvenile delinquency.

They decided

that Bill should insist upon

being heard at

this investigation.

And he very unwisely decided,

"I'm gonna go in there,

I'm gonna volunteer to talk,

and I'm gonna go in there

and defend my comic books

on First Amendment grounds."

The kids have rights too.

They have a right

to read this stuff.

My name is William Gaines.

I was the first publisher

in these United States

to publish horror comics.

I'm responsible.

I started them.

I don't think it does

them a bit of good, sir.

But I don't think it does

them a bit of harm either.

Because he voluntarily appeared,

he now painted

a big target on his back.

Like he's

the horror comics bad guy.

And they just skewered him.

...holding a woman's head up

and severed from her body.

I just couldn't

believe what was happening.

They crucified him.

They were

looking for a scapegoat.

And they all read comic books.

And that was what was wrong.

Gee, I guess back

then the Senate really

was looking for things to do.

And so, uh, they decided that

they would pacify the public.

And they formed

the Comic Book Code Authority.

And they appointed

a Judge Murphy as the enforcer.

No comics shall

explicitly present

scenes of brutal t*rture.

Scenes of excessive

violence shall be prohibited.

You couldn't use weird.

You couldn't use crime.

You couldn't use horror.

All of our titles!

I for one do not believe,

and never have believed,

that comics are the cause

of juvenile delinquency.

Gaines fought 'em

tooth and nail.

And he just said,

"No, you're wrong,

and we're gonna do what we do."

And when they censored him

and wouldn't let him do it,

then he ended it.

The bad publicity

just proved to be too much.

And so Gaines, again,

voluntarily decided

to throw in the towel on

his horror comics.

I've taken this action

based on a premise

which has never been proven.

However, I feel

that the public must be served.

And we were put out of business.

Facing bankruptcy

yet again, Gaines was forced

to let his entire staff go,

including Al Feldstein.

Despite the hopelessness,

there was still one

possibility.

Harvey comes

to Bill and says, "Look,

MAD is not run by the Code."

Because it now was a magazine,

they couldn't touch it,

couldn't censor it.

And that's why MAD became

his one and only magazine.

It was just so wonderfully

ironic that the thing that was

left standing from

all of the huge catalog

of comics that EC

was doing was MAD.

When they were so

concerned about stamping out

everything that was dangerous,

and then they let the most

subversive thing continue.

They said,

"To heck with everything else,

let's concentrate on MAD."

Harvey turned MAD

into a magazine,

and it went along okay for

four or five issues,

except Harvey was

an incredible perfectionist,

and he kept missing deadlines.

Like, he would have

artists redraw articles

that were perfectly fine.

Harvey wanted more money

to spend on the magazine.

Gaines didn't

have the money because

Harvey was

missing his deadlines.

So the Gaines-Kurtzman

relationship became

increasingly strained.

He comes to

Bill Gaines, and he says,

"I want 51% of the magazine..."

"And control."

And Bill says,

"What is this all about?"

And he said,

"That's what I want."

Bill calls up Lyle Stewart.

"Harvey Kurtzman is here, and

he wants 51% of the magazine."

Lyle says, "Is he near

a window? Throw him out."

Hugh Hefner's

new publication,

Playboy, was a major triumph,

and he wanted to

expand his empire.

Hefner comes to Harvey and

said, "I want you to do a sister

magazine to Playboy,

a real slick version of MAD."

And Harvey went off the wall

with that chance.

But he didn't have

the guts to come to Bill

and say, "I'm quitting."

So he had to get himself fired.

So Harvey left to

do Trump for Hefner,

and he took the entire staff,

except John Putnam, with him.

The magazine only lasted

two issues, and Hefner later

wrote in a letter,

he said, "We gave Kurtzman

an unlimited budget,

and he exceeded it."

Gaines was pretty

distraught because he thought,

how can there

be MAD without Harvey?

And his wife, Nancy,

said, "Well, you know,

Feldstein had Panic,

which was EC's imitation of MAD.

He did okay with that."

I'm coming home from

walking the streets

and doing, you know,

stuff for Stan Lee.

I was back freelancing again.

It was awful.

He's waiting for me on the

Long Island Railroad Station.

"I fired Harvey.

Come back to work for me.

Let's do something.

What do you want to do?"

I said, "What

do you want to do?"

I said, "You got MAD.

Give me MAD. Let me do MAD."

With issue 29,

Feldstein officially

took credit as editor.

The one thing

Feldstein had was he could

hit deadlines,

and he knew the nuts and bolts

about keeping

a magazine running.

And that's what he brought

to MAD more than anything else.

You know,

we're in a corporate age

of corporate image.

There was the Green Giant,

then the barking dog

into the megaphone.

Playboy had the rabbit.

I said, "We need a logo."

Alfred E. Neuman

was like a magnet to me.

Just his little ears.

And it was like, "Pick me up.

Pick me up!

You're gonna love this!"

A good Alfred cover

is just the best hook.

You know, it just

immediately gets you right

on the newsstand and lets

you know what the magazine is.

Ballantine came to Bill

and wanted to reprint

the comic books.

The editor up at Ballantine's

did this first

paperback book of MAD.

The thing was called

The MAD Reader.

And on the front cover,

he put this face,

this gritty idiot

kid with a gap tooth.

Harvey saw it and he started

to play with it a little.

He named him

Mel Coznowski or Mel Haney.

And when I took over,

this kid captured my heart

because he kind of personalized

and embodied the whole spirit of

the magazine that I wanted

to do, which was kids were smart

and they had

a certain kind of outlook.

Like, jeez, you know,

I'm facing this terrible world.

To hell with it. What, me worry?

What, me worry?

Can't say that

without doing this.

What, me worry?

I don't worry.

I'm going to be ahead.

I'm going to survive.

I'm going to do better.

As forever

linked as Alfred is to MAD,

that dopey face

actually traces back to long

before MAD landed on the scene.

While his true

origin is undecided,

his distant relatives

suggest a less cheerful tone

than that familiar,

"What, me worry?" attitude.

As the 20th century

rolled in, the kid was now

a spokesperson

for miracle cures,

stage productions,

and painless dentistry.

Want a definitive

portrait of this kid.

I put an ad in

the New York Times,

"National Magazine wants

portrait artists

for a special project."

Norman m1ngo walked

in the door and he said,

"What national

magazine is this?"

And I said, "MAD,"

and he said, "Goodbye."

I said, "No, wait.

Let me show you

what I have in mind."

I said, "I want you to

take this 'What, Me Worry?' kid,

and I want you to

plasticize him into a real boy

and have a little glint

of intelligence behind his eyes,

but the I-don't-care

kind of attitude."

And he did

the definitive portrait

of what became MAD's logo

with MAD number 30.

I, meantime, decided to call him

what I was using as

one of my nom de plumes,

"Alfred E. Neuman."

And that's how Alfred was born.

After that,

we used him on every issue.

Between m1ngo

and fellow idiot Kelly Freas,

the spirit of Alfred and MAD

was carved in wet paint.

Norman m1ngo's

expresses everything.

Innocent,

feckless, stupid, lovable.

You know, the idiot

saying something very wise.

Because he never really spoke,

and there wasn't a cartoon

where we got to know him,

he was always a mystery.

He was a schmuck

that was on the cover.

He was

a harmless little nerd

who became the image of MAD.

Who would have

expected that it would

have become an icon like that?

It wasn't designed to,

it wasn't planned to,

it just was adopted.

The way we adopted

him for the image,

the country

adopted him as a symbol.

I guess he represents

the MAD morality.

He also represents an attitude.

And don't ask me

what that attitude is,

because I don't know.

The fool is reckless.

The fool is a moron.

And yet, the fool

is divinely inspired.

There's a certain

wisdom to the fool.

Alfred is the modern day

incarnation of that.

Or... or he isn't.

Read between the lines.

Don't believe everything

you see and read or hear from

politicians or your mother

and father or the press.

We don't try to accomplish

anything other than entertain.

But while we're entertaining,

sometimes we'll slip in

the thought that they should

be a little skeptical.

We pride ourselves in the fact

that we have no philosophy.

We have no politics.

We don't take sides.

We have no morals.

We have no scruples.

We have no taste.

We have no intelligence.

My political leanings?

I think I'm lunatic fringe.

Politically, we didn't say many

things that changed anything.

But we were in print.

And you gotta realize in the

'60s, print had significance.

So politics

joined entertainment.

And entertainment,

as a result, joined politics.

You can look at a MAD article

from 30 and 40 years ago

about politics.

And the inherent truths in

that article about the hypocrisy

and phoniness of

politics is still true.

It's just a piggy time.

It's the opposite

of the Victorian era.

What's the political

policy at MAD?

It's whatever the individual

writer thinks he should be

sh**ting down or poking

fun at, as long as it was fun.

I think we were all smart

enough to know that you had to

hit all sides.

You hit Democrats,

you had to hit Republicans,

and vice versa.

Nobody was spared.

I think I was the only

conservative who wrote for MAD.

I mean, I would

tackle things that others

didn't want to criticize.

When you're little,

you don't really

understand politics.

So suddenly,

MAD magazine is filled with

material about Nixon and

Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

And that's how

I learned about politics.

They took a bunch of quotes

from the Watergate conspirators.

And then they took

a bunch of quotes from the book

Alice in Wonderland

and just paired them off.

That, to me,

that sort of blew my mind.

I don't think we hit

anybody over the head

with a hammer.

But I know we tickled them under

the arm a lot with a feather.

And we truly always went

after the man in the office.

Start with JFK.

And just flip

past every cover of

MAD that featured a president.

They're very revealing

about who we are as a culture

and who those

presidents were to us.

And then later on,

we adopted the slogan,

"Alfred E. Neuman

for President."

You could do a lot worse.

Like you always have.

Alfred E. Neuman

looked at her and said

something slightly derogatory.

As far as I was concerned,

there was no line.

You couldn't go too far.

You couldn't be too soon.

They weren't afraid of anyone.

MAD went after everyone.

We ask every citizen

to immediately report any

information regarding

espionage,

sabotage, or un-American

activities to the Federal

Bureau of Investigation.

J. Edgar Hoover,

at the time, he was the FBI.

They named

the building after him.

To secure his job, he found dirt

on every president for decades.

And there was no

term limits for J. Edgar Hoover.

From president to

president to president, he's in.

He kept files on

everybody that he thought

was an enemy of the country.

He was just

a very dangerous person.

So when MAD magazine

skewered him, he was pissed.

J. Edgar Hoover

had us on a list

as sabotaging American ideals.

We had done

a takeoff of the board games.

And so we did

something called Draft Dodger.

And when you pass Go,

you got a Draft Dodger card.

You sent your name and

address to J. Edgar Hoover.

Quite a few readers

thought it would be funny to

clip that little thing out and

mail it to J. Edgar Hoover.

And this

did not amuse Hoover at all.

And he sent a couple

agents to the MAD offices

wanting to know what

the hell was going on.

And so these two guys show up

and they-- they're very furious.

And they want us to promise

never to use

J. Edgar Hoover's name again.

For some goofy magazine

to just go right at him

was a really brave,

wild thing to do because

he had real

power to cause problem.

MAD miraculously

escaped its dangerous

tangling with J. Edgar Hoover.

Not even the cloak

and dagger antics of

the FBI could put

a stop to the magazine.

Perhaps

the most political stance

taken by MAD

was regularly showing

the futility of w*r

in simple black and white.

You never knew which spy

was going to win

at any given issue.

For some reason, I always

rooted for the black spy.

I-- I don't know why.

He seemed more sinister.

Antonio Prohas,

a big teddy bear of a guy.

He was

a political cartoonist in Cuba.

And when Castro came to power,

he beat it out of there

and almost immediately

found work at MAD.

When Antonio

came to this country,

I think he spoke

five words of English.

"Chavi, I, uh, I don't go.

"And I, and they're not me."

And when he died,

he spoke five words of English.

It was like a cleanser.

You know,

you get into the longer stories,

and then, eh, I think

I'll just finish it off with

a little Spy vs. Spy,

and then I gotta do my homework.

You know, and-- Oh! Okay, okay.

The spies,

they are undoubtedly our most

popular feature in

the magazine to this day.

I don't think

I really understood

who wrote MAD magazine.

There was this sense

of the usual g*ng of idiots.

And as a kid,

you wondered who they were.

So when Harvey left MAD,

he actually took with him

virtually all of MAD's artists.

So Feldstein came in and

he had to start from scratch.

It was a challenge.

I had a completely

stripped staff and

a magazine to turn out.

Feldstein would buy

unused scripts from popular

comedians of the day,

but he also added to the staff

a key to MAD's

style of humor, Nick Meglin.

I was just a funny kid

from Brooklyn, and we all were.

I just started working for MAD

and doing just what I was doing,

finding the flaw, going

for the gag and selling it.

And then I became

MAD's first idea man.

That was my title.

Meglin soon teamed

with Kurtzman's

former assistant,

Jerry DeFuccio,

to be associate editors.

Mr. Debonair,

Champagne Jerry, he was called.

Because he always had

little bottles of champagne

in his refrigerator for

when he brought women up.

The look and feel

of MAD could be attributed

to Feldstein and especially

his art director, John Putnam.

Lenny "The Beard" Brenner

was brought in

for the magazine's

physical production.

I read it for the first time

and fell in love with it.

Not expecting

that I'd end up working there.

They had their own

brand of mental illness

that was different

than the mental illness

that was going on

in front of the office.

I guess you're born

with a deformation,

a cranial deformation, where you

see things as being humorous.

Where other people

think they're tragic

or important

or have great weight.

I brought up some new material

and Nick read it out loud.

I had just started wearing

contact lenses and

suddenly I started to cry.

And Bill Gaines

walked into the office,

and he said,

"What's that man crying for?"

And Al said, "He's a writer."

Bill said, "Oh,"

and he walked out.

And Nick said that,

"I think you're in."

I said, "What,

he liked my material?"

And Nick said, "No,

I think the crying bit did it."

The only way you can

make a living is you have to

keep your eyes and

ears open all the time

for anything that offered,

uh, potential material for MAD.

We had hundreds

of submissions a week.

I picked up a copy of

MAD and looked at it and said,

"Yeah, I should

be doing this stuff."

After about the fifth issue,

I thought, I don't want to

read this. I want to write this.

I wasn't crazy about what

I saw, but I saw it was nutty.

And I knew that I could

probably do things for them.

I walked into MAD magazine and

they said, "Put it on the table.

If we like it, we'll call you."

I hardly was home

when the phone was ringing.

I'd go in for a script

conference, and in the room

would be Feldstein, Meglin,

and Jerry DeFuccio.

The pitch meeting was,

oh, very painful.

If Consumer Reports

put out a government issue,

like "Consumer Reports

Tests Aircraft Carriers,"

"Consumer Report te--" No!

"Tests Nuclear Missiles."

This leg fell asleep

a week ago Friday,

and this leg

went dancing all night.

Oh, God, that's funny.

That's a funny i--

that's a funny idea.

Think about it.

You don't have to buy it, Al.

Let me think about it.

Obviously, there are times where

they're gonna say,

"Well, we don't want this."

You know

that's been thought about.

You had to

bring your absolute best.

The comic books,

you could, you know,

just dash it off, but MAD--

I used to do two

or three versions

before I'd even bring it up.

You don't know

whether you sold it or not.

I said, "Here are the stories."

And the first check

I got from MAD was $75.

One of the biggest

thrills of my life.

Next to my honeymoon.

Actually, better

than my honeymoon.

Dave Berg, crazy as a

loon, but a nonstop workaholic,

would send in

between 60 and 90 gags

to get an installment of

"The Lighter Side Of."

My dad was a bit

distracted with his career.

My mother was

distracted buying shoes.

So Dave Berg, I gave

him credit for raising me.

Issue in and

issue out over the years.

I think my favorite

still is The Lighter Side.

The list of writers

and artists who contribute

to MAD throughout the years

is as vast as comedy itself.

The range of talent and style

is quite extraordinary.

There was Paul Coker Jr.,

showcasing

his wonderfully distinct style.

The tremendously

versatile Bob Clarke.

George Woodbridge with

his amazing sense of detail.

If you needed

the funniest Rembrandt ever,

then Jack Rickard

was the man for the job.

And then there was

the one artist who became

synonymous with

the very essence of MAD.

I was obsessed with Don Martin.

Martin was nuts,

as far as I'm concerned.

Don Martin was

a genius, you know?

I mean, a crazy genius,

but a genius.

Don Martin created a style

that was instantly successful.

A lot of people

getting hurt.

A lot of people

getting hit in the ba*ls.

He always had those

funny sound effects

that were like weak flum-bang.

Or icky locky doo.

He would request

gimme gags where the jaw

falls down and a tongue

rolls out like a carpet.

The faces with

the nose over the chin

and the feet

that would curve upward.

So where'd you come up

with the idea for the feet?

He said that I used to

watch Charlie Chaplin movies.

And always wore shoes

that were too big.

And when they lift them up,

they would flop down.

I was casting about for

an idea for to do an article.

I think it was a Life magazine,

and it had a spread,

which I called a fold out.

I said MAD could do

black and white cheap fold-in.

I still look at it and go,

I don't know how they do it.

Al Feldstein came back

almost immediately

and said to me,

Bill says it's

okay, let's go with it.

If the kids fold the page

and mutilate the magazine,

they'll buy a second one

to save in pristine condition.

The first thing I used to

do when I opened up

the MAD magazine was,

I would go right to the fold-in.

And even though my dad said,

"Don't fold it,

you'll ruin the value of it,"

I would fold it anyway.

Of course I'm gonna fold it.

Even on a collector's

item magazine,

I'm not gonna not know that.

I hate him.

You know why I hate him?

I hate him because

my photograph would be

the back cover and every

covers-- back cover

I've ever done had to be folded

because of his fold-ins.

They ruined my photograph.

And then I would comb

through the margins to see

Sergio Aragons's drawings.

Before they have

little sayings on the borders.

And I couldn't

understand what they were.

So I figured I will,

why not have cartoons there?

That everybody can understand.

So I physically drew

them the same size

and paste them up on

top of the sayings.

And they says,

well, we probably will

run this until

he runs out of ideas.

It's been 40 some years,

and I'm still doing them.

My gosh,

it was such a great mix.

It was a great team.

It was an all-star team.

How do you beat that?

It was a perfect

storm of zanies, you know?

On the early

mastheads of Mad magazine,

they would list

all of the writers

and all of the artists.

And I think they got

sick of doing that every issue.

And finally, they just said,

"Contributors,

the usual g*ng of idiots."

Call it a day.

The g*ng of idiots.

Teachers would say,

"Drew, what do you want to be

when you grow up?" And I said,

"I want to be an idiot."

And literally in

the middle of all this insanity,

this bizarro world, was Gaines.

He's a ringleader.

He's making it all possible.

Now let's meet

the man with the MAD, MAD, MAD,

MAD, MAD magazine.

Number one,

what is your name, please?

My name is William M. Gaines.

Bill Gaines.

Bill Gaines was

one of the greatest nuts

who ever lived.

He was absolutely

out of his mind.

Bill Gaines was

a walking, living contradiction.

I, William M. Gaines,

am a trash dealer.

I actually pay money to groups

of talented writers and artists

to turn out what I consider

top satire, but which

I refer to

in my magazine as

trash, rubbish, and garbage.

I started out

being terrified of Gaines.

I was always afraid of him.

He used to have a crew cut,

and he was big.

He grew this beard

and his long hair.

He's like a guru.

He looks like a guru.

He's got stringy hair

like a guru.

He's shaped

like a Bartlett pear.

I'm almost 70 and

I feel I still haven't

grown up.

I remember him saying...

And that always stuck with me.

I must say one thing.

When he gave me MAD,

he let me do what I wanted.

And he published

that magazine as a fan.

I used to give him the finished

book and he would read them,

and I could hear him cackling

and laughing in the office.

The only time

he saw the magazine

was right before

it was going to press.

And there was no greater

thrill for Nick and I

than to give him the issue

and then hear him laugh.

Out! Out! Outen sie

from the place there, out!

Bill had

an unerring eye for quality.

Whether it was art

that he couldn't draw

or writing that

he couldn't write,

he spotted it when he saw it.

He was not a funny man,

but he appreciated humor.

He even appreciated bad humor.

Bill Gaines did set

the tone, and he had

a certain number

of prohibitions.

No sex, no vulgarities, no

gratuitous insulting of people.

He knew instinctively

what just might appeal

to the reading public.

I think Bill just fell

in love with the business

and fell in love

with his people.

He does really great stuff.

Al was

very much responsible

for putting it together.

But Bill was the heart of it.

He was the heart of

the magazine.

He was the very essence

of MAD magazine.

As a comic book, MAD regularly

ran advertisements

to aid publishing costs.

But with the transition

to a slick magazine,

Gaines developed

a different attitude.

I've always been against ads.

It's a good thing to publish,

if you can,

without any outside help so

you're not beholden to anybody.

They fought

to not have advertising.

They knew that if they took

advertising, they couldn't

make fun of certain

corporations or certain people.

But these people just said,

"We don't care.

We're not gonna

take anyone's money.

We're not gonna allow

anybody to water this down."

That's just

basically saying no to money.

We long ago decided

that we can't make fun of

Pepsi-Cola and take money from

Coca-Cola, that kind of thing.

Could we do it the other way?

-That's a good guess.

-Did you ever think about that?

Think, Bill, think!

And MAD skewering

the world of advertising

was a full realization

of its true spirit.

At this time,

most of the photographs

were back pages, uh,

spoofs on advertising.

MAD magazine was the one place

where you realized that all

this behavior that you watch,

all this media you see,

all these commercials,

maybe deserves to be

looked at a second time.

They would come up with

some idea for a photograph

and then they would

give me a little sketch,

and they would ask me

to interpret this.

The shoots were

all problem solving,

not just getting a prop,

lighting it and sh**ting it.

It was creating it from scratch.

You cleaned the kitchen sink!

There was

a commercial where this lady,

she's flying

throughout the house.

Get out of

the kitchen fast. Get Ajax.

We did a shot,

this girl is flying

through the house,

but the door was closed

and she went through the door.

So here I had to create

a whole set and have a woman

coming through the door.

Not only this,

Al Feldstein wanted

the best possible quality,

because he had a slick magazine.

And because

models are very expensive,

we used all of MAD's staffs.

We used friends.

We used whatever we could get

in order to create that shot.

We took a tomato can,

then we took another can

on top of it and hit it.

And of course I got splattered.

As funny as the image is,

it works better

if on first blush

it looks like the original.

Breck, blecch, brilliant.

Hysterically funny.

You'd be surprised

how many people

took our ads seriously.

This was another reason

we couldn't get advertising

if we wanted to.

MAD legendarily

spoofed cigarette ads.

MAD has always

been anti-smoking.

We sort of knew

it was bad for you

before the Surgeon General did.

I hope MAD,

among other things,

is responsible for a lot

of kids giving up smoking.

I would do things like how to

make cigarette

smoking healthier.

It was just to show you how

funny these things can be.

We have just hammered

cigarette makers and boy,

MAD has proved to be right.

As MAD's readership erupted

in the early 1960s,

so did its profit.

Great for Gaines and

even better for the IRS.

Bill and his family

hastily decided to sell

their baby

to avoid a huge tax bill.

So Gaines said,

"Okay, I'll sell the magazine."

But the deal was,

the new corporate owners

couldn't even set foot in

the building without permission.

And Gaines was able

to run the magazine

totally as he saw fit.

It was stipulated in

the contract that there'd be

no corporate

interference of any kind.

MAD evolved along

with the '60s counterculture,

and managed to stay

both relevant and edgy,

even in this new era.

It always felt like it was,

like, unsupervised journalism.

Hippies

and flower children and--

and pots,

and rock and roll concerts.

This is all new in the '60s.

It just exploded.

All these things

that we take for granted now.

The pill, you know, it's like,

oh my God. So you can-- Yeah.

And you don't have to--

Right. And it's like, wow.

And MAD magazine

took that on, too.

They didn't

seem to have a filter.

MAD just picked a subject

and went right into it.

There would be jokes

in them about Vietnam,

which was not a topic

at age nine

that I really knew

a whole lot about.

From context, you could

sort of reverse engineer.

Oh, there was

a w*r called Vietnam

and people were against it.

I think it was easy

to make fun of hippies

in that whole generation

because they were funny.

We were all kind of maturing.

And so we were following what

was going on in the country and

making fun of the stupidities

and things that were going on.

Back then,

you have to realize,

my only conduit to comedy

was like, primetime television.

Sitcoms like Gilligan's Island,

and, uh, Beverly Hillbillies.

How soon will this mess

be ready, Granny?

What did you call my vittles?

It wasn't the kind of,

uh, comedy that

one would see from MAD magazine.

They were talking

about real world things,

you know, things that my parents

were talking about,

things that I saw in the news.

Nothing else comedically was

hooked, in my mind, in reality.

When you read

the magazine, you could feel

the values of the people

who were making it.

Underneath the surface of it

was a group of people

who wanted the world to be

a better, kinder place.

And through humor,

they would point out

the ridiculousness of

families and relationships.

One of my

favorite pieces that I did

was called

"Broken Homes and Gardens,"

a magazine for kids

of divorced parents.

"America the

Beautiful-- Revisited."

You know, the song

"America the Beautiful"

with images of poverty,

polluted skies.

You know, it's a challenge

to the whole idea of America,

that America is fair,

that America is clean,

that America

works for everybody.

I think when you're young,

it wakes

that part of your brain up

that says, oh, maybe I can't

completely trust the government.

Three panels,

Tarzan swinging on a vine.

The second panel,

he's passing a Black guy

swinging on a vine

going the other way.

And when he gets back

to his grass house,

he puts a "for sale" sign on it.

"Life from the Broadside,"

all the cases,

the female was the one getting

the short end of the stick.

That's something

that still goes on.

I don't think

as artists and writers,

we want to go over

the edge of certain things.

And even though you poke fun,

you satirize, you have to have

some standard underneath

it to which you adhere.

Otherwise, it's total anarchy,

isn't it, really?

We did expand

the boundaries of good taste,

but we didn't

violate them totally.

I took a takeoff on

Hogan's Heroes, which is,

you know, about the guys having

fun in a German prison camp.

It was so idiotic.

And then I did a page

about Hochman's Heroes.

It takes place in

a concentration camp.

And they're having fun

and they're laughing.

So we got all kinds of letters.

Ah, rabbis were

writing and saying,

oh, my God,

how could you do that?

And I would say,

that's not making fun of them.

That's making fun of the idiots

who make fun of stuff like that.

MAD,

I don't think worries that much,

you know, about,

"Will the public like this?"

I think they have a certain

attitude and almost like

a mission about what they want

to do and what they want to say.

MAD was forever

pushing boundaries.

It was the magazine's identity

and key to its success.

However, eventually,

all that boundary pushing

led to some true pushback.

If there'd been

bathroom humor on a cover,

that would have

caused a big problem.

If there had been, uh,

cursing on a cover,

using the F word, whatever,

that would have caused

a major problem.

But there wasn't.

But, um,

that one cover caused a problem.

I'm proud of

some of my cover ideas,

but that one was the result of

a very bad cover conference

where we were up against it.

MAD, number one magazine

of good taste.

And everybody broke up

and said, "That's the cover."

And I said, "No, it's not.

That's a joke. Don't do this."

That caused a major problem.

Distributors returned copies.

Not only did they go with it,

but they changed the line.

"The number one ecch magazine."

The line they went with

made absolutely no sense,

and k*lled the gag.

Our worst-selling issue

in those years.

They did have problems

pulling back a cover or two

at the last moment because

something terrible had happened.

There was a cover

that John Caldwell did years ago

that they canceled

and pulled back the issue

at great expense

and replaced it.

And that was right after 9/11.

We've almost never been sued.

We just get threats of suits.

I don't think people

realize how difficult it is

to establish precedent on what

you're allowed to do in comedy.

You need the company to go,

I don't care. Let 'em sue us.

We got letters from Bill

saying that, if any of you

are sued for anything

you write that I publish,

don't worry, you will

be defended by our lawyers.

We made an Alfred $3 bill.

Damn it if it wasn't so good.

There were some machines

in New York that accepted it.

So the FBI came

and we had to sign that

"We will never replicate U.S.

currency again."

Whatever, whatever.

Of course, we did anyway because

it was another idiotic

threat from the FBI.

In 1964,

MAD was slapped with

a potentially

catastrophic lawsuit.

We did a "Sing Along

With MAD" songbook,

which were takeoffs

of standards.

Irving Berlin

was particularly hurt

that anyone would take

his songs and make fun of them.

And so Irving Berlin

and nine composers sued us.

MAD was sued for

a violation of copyright.

They sued for

a dollar, a song, an issue.

And that would have

amounted to, I don't know,

something 25

or 30 million dollars.

It could have

k*lled the magazine.

It was crazy from the beginning.

You know, what

the hell is anybody stealing?

These are my words.

It says to the tune of,

well, maybe people

who sing it can't carry a tune.

There wasn't any

actual music included.

There wasn't sheet music.

There wasn't a soundbite.

It was just sort of like,

in your head.

Most people would just say,

"I don't want to pay

for a lawyer to deal with this.

Let's just change it."

It took a place like

MAD magazine to say,

"Yeah, we're gonna

go to court and fight

for the right

to make fun of you.

And the suit went

to a lower court, and MAD won.

To a higher court, MAD won.

To a third court, MAD won.

Finally reached

the Supreme Court.

And the judge said

something like, "Mr. Berlin,

if you were to win this suit,

then anyone who sang

'Easter Parade' in the shower

would have to send you

two cents royalty,

because you don't own

iambic pentameter."

Rightly,

the Supreme Court decided,

"Well, this is not

an infringement of copyright."

So MAD won,

and it was a landmark case.

It became that satire,

not with a malicious intent,

is an art form.

Which meant that was it.

Anything could be parodied.

Like a surgeon

I owe them a debt

of gratitude because,

I mean, that was sort of

the basis for my career.

As I walk through the valley

where I harvest my grain

I take a look at my wife

and realize she's very plain

It inspired a lot of people

to want to make comedy.

This is the Daily Show--

MAD was the precursor to

everything that we love about,

like, The Daily Show

and Saturday Night Live.

MAD magazine was

the blueprint to comedic satire.

In the years following

the Supreme Court's ruling,

MAD's readership

climbed to all-time highs.

It just started

selling and selling,

and we did two million copies.

And that made it

the glory years.

When we went from the 450,000

copies six times a year

to two million eight,

eight times a year

with the 11 foreign editions

and paperback books

and annuals and stuff like that.

We were a cash cow.

-Are you a rich man?

-Yeah, I'm a pretty rich man.

Was that important to you?

Uh, well, now that I'm rich,

it's not important. It was.

With MAD readers

far and wide, its skewering

of American culture made MAD

the influencer for teens.

They were mad about MAD.

Our best teacher's Mr. Wilson.

Once in English class,

he read us a whole big thing

out of MAD magazine.

As an illustration

of modern satire?

No, he just

thought it was funny.

If we were influential at all,

I think we're influential

in the comedy industry.

You know, if I think of

Steve Carell in the opening

of The 40-Year-Old Virgin

peeing with a b*ner,

leaning up against the wall so

that he can make the angle work.

To me, that's just like

a frame in a MAD magazine.

Everybody I ever met

when I came out here

and started working

for television,

didn't matter who it was,

the heads of studios.

I said, look,

I was on the Carol Burnett Show.

I won three Emmys.

I did an off-Broadway show.

And they all said

they found out I wrote for MAD.

They said, "Oh, my God,

MAD, MAD."

That's all they talk about.

Everybody

read MAD magazine.

Anybody growing up,

I mean, there it was.

I said,

"Well, we must be doing

something right,

we're banned in Russia."

The people who have

said they read MAD shocked us.

We expected more

from them, frankly.

It was very nice.

All of a sudden, I was somebody.

MAD was everywhere.

These people are doing

some real goofy things,

because they're playing MAD.

Good morning, everybody.

I'm Alfred E. Neuman.

Get me Kaputnik and Phonebone.

I want to see their drawings

for the New Kids on the Blech.

Wow. I will never

wash these eyes again.

MAD even landed on Broadway.

Mary Rogers,

the daughter of Richard Rogers,

decided that she'd like to do

a MAD variety show.

The whole show

had a flavor.

It was crazy but

controlled craziness.

MAD lends its popularity

and name to Hollywood.

The 1980 release of

Up the Academy.

MAD magazine

presents Up the Academy.

The film was a complete flop

in the eyes of critics

and audiences alike.

Yeah, no, Up the Academy

is not very good.

I mean, even though

I do really like

Ron Lieberman's performance,

because it's a very specific

performance of the film,

because he's parodying

Ben Gazzara's performance

in the movie The Strange One.

And if you've seen

The Strange One,

it's a very specific

parody of that performance.

So that aspect of it

is actually quite good.

Never got to see it,

and I'm told not to.

We used to joke,

Airplane,

instead of Up the Academy,

we wish MAD's name was on that.

They pissed away

the concept of

MAD magazine presents.

It should have been Airplane.

Paramount should

have made a deal with

MAD magazine for Airplane, and

everybody would have benefited.

Looking at

the statue of Alfred E. Neuman

from the ill-advised

MAD movie, Up the Academy,

William Gaines

scraped off the P,

and now it says MAD magazine

resents Up the Academy.

He was incredibly cheap

and incredibly generous.

He was such

an oxymoron of himself.

My first memory of Bill is when

he offered me and Charlie a job.

He said to us, "John and Nick

tell me that you guys

are very talented.

I don't believe them.

I propose to pay you, therefore,

as little as possible."

And he meant it.

I just have to

pick up my paycheck.

In case you didn't know,

we get paid scale.

I am the cheapest

publisher in the world.

When he looked at

his telephone bill,

if it didn't match,

he'll go berserk.

He would tie up

the entire department

of the magazine looking

to see who spent 67 cents

on a call to Congers, New York.

It was Nick, by the way.

He had these

things called Bill's Bills.

He'd walk around

every month with these

little pieces of paper in

hand about if you'd spent

15 cents to call

your chiropractor in Scarsdale,

he'd track you down

and make you pay for the call.

He was cheap.

And in that same day,

then take you to a meal

for four of us would be $700.

Bill Gaines was a man

that he would invite you

to a dinner and spend

the most insane amount

of money on wines and food

without any hesitation.

Walk into the restaurant

and shout, Buon gusto!

Another dish of calamari!

Oh, I want some pasta

with garlic and oil!

The amount of food we eat

could have fed

a third-world nation.

Called him the fat f*ck.

He hated exercise of any kind.

So if he had

a meeting in Manhattan,

if it was downhill,

he would walk.

And then he would

take a taxi back.

Now, I heard

a story that as a part of

the Warner

Communications empire,

you, as a senior executive,

have to take

a medical every year.

And the story that I heard

is that you send somebody else.

Well, you're really

blowing it, aren't you?

Lenny Brenner loves physicals

and he's in good health.

And it's much better

that he goes than I go.

Bill hated to write.

He had stamps.

He had stamps with

all messages that fit

whatever mood

he was in, you know?

I'll stamp this on the piece

of paper that they mail me,

and I'll mail it back to them

with a couple of remarks.

This saves me

a piece of stationery

and it saves me

having a secretary.

There's something about

this man is truly, truly insane.

I like to think that I'm

the insanest one on this tab.

Well, he set

an atmosphere that

I'm sure everybody who works

today would love to have.

It was, you know,

like Disneyland had opened

its gates and we could go

wherever we wanted, you know,

where Mickey puts on a suit or

Goofy takes a pee, I don't know.

You come in

late, you leave early,

you take three hour lunches.

I mean, that is just

what MAD is all about.

Being as nutty as we want,

being as crazy as we want.

As cheap as he was,

Gaines always broke out

the checkbook for

an opportunity to

see the world.

A lot of people

think that MAD offices

are just filled with all

the writers and artists

working together

when in fact it's not.

It's just the editorial staff,

and the writers

and artists live

all over the world.

You know,

Don Martin lived in Florida,

Paul Coker lived in Kansas,

Sergio's in California.

We knew the editors,

I knew a couple of the writers.

I never met the artists.

So Bill thought it

would be good to bring all

the guys together to sort of

bond them together as a family.

We have had many,

many MAD trips over the years

now where I take the staff

on treks all over the world.

He would just say,

"Bring your luggage

and be at the airport

at such and such a time."

And we would just go.

First MAD trip was

to Haiti on this premise

of delivering a subscription

to our only subscriber there.

We looked up in our

subscription

list that we had one subscriber

and we all went to his home

and asked him to resubscribe.

We went to South America

and Puerto Rico and Mexico.

Went to Russia.

We stayed right at Red Square.

Al Jaffee

and I went to Berchtesgaden,

and here we were,

two Jewish guys.

We had bacon and eggs

at Hitler's pad,

and it was really cool.

We just sort of walked

around after Bill and

went to these fabulous dinners

and were very rude in these

very expensive hotels,

which I'd never otherwise go in.

It was just a fabulous time.

At 6:00 a.m.,

we get a phone call,

and it's from Bill Gaines.

And he says,

"You can see the Matterhorn.

Look out your window now."

Because he took us there

so we could see the Matterhorn.

And g*dd*mn it, he was

gonna show us the Matterhorn.

The trips were

always a way to have

his family, who were

the MAD guys, all together.

When we went to Mexico,

that was amazing.

I had my mother cooking

a big paella for the whole g*ng.

Suddenly my American family

visiting my blood

family in Mexico.

So it was a great moment for me.

We arrive at this boat

and you have Viva Maria

in flowers on top of this boat.

And here beautifully

done with flowers, colorful,

"f*ck you, Bill."

He just cracked.

Bill loved that sort of thing.

One day

we were in Bora Bora,

watching this incredible

sunset in the ocean.

You can see 500 feet down.

And I turned to Bill and said,

"Why did you drag us

to this hellhole?"

You had to write

a certain amount of pages

to get on these trips.

You needed 20 pages

to go to Haiti.

I did not have enough pages.

I said, "Isn't Kogen coming?"

Gaines said, "No,

he only has 18 pages."

About three years later,

Bill Gaines' mother died,

there was a funeral.

And they said,

"Are you going to the funeral?"

I said,

"I don't have enough pages."

-Let us go in first.

-Oh, sure.

-Sure thing.

-Then four of you...

One of Bill's favorite movies

was A Night at the Opera.

I'm here to mop-up.

Just the woman I'm

looking for. Come right ahead.

And in it was

a stateroom scene where

Groucho and Harpo

and Chico Marx start off.

And then all these

people come in

and there's like 200 people in

a stateroom this big.

And Bill Gaines took us to

a cruise up and down to Bermuda.

And of course,

he had his own stateroom.

And we got people.

There was a woman with

a baby carriage and a baby,

and we got her to go in it.

And every time there was a knock

on the door, he'd belly laugh.

He would go crazy. And

who else was gonna come in?

And we had staff and all.

We had about

80 people in that room.

Just one of those

great little moments.

- Hey!

- Giving Bill Gaines a thank you

for his favorite scene

in the movie.

We brought it to life

on one of his MAD trips.

How about a rousing

rendition of f*ck You, Bill?

Great articles

came out of the trips.

A lot of the Don Martins

that you saw

were things that happened either

on the trip or as a byproduct

of the trip when we used to

give these books to Bill,

like these tribute books.

Sometimes they were so funny

that they would wind up

in the magazine.

When Bill Gaines

created The MAD Trips,

what he did was

turn the office staff

and the freelance staff

into a band of brothers.

And to watch them

and to listen to them,

their experiences and the work

they've done, the way they live,

uh, how they felt

about how the world is.

That was the greatest part.

It was just a great way

to keep that MAD spirit alive.

Alfred and

his talented creators

are facing one problem at

the ripe old age of 30.

They're losing

some of their audience.

If some found it

mildly subversive in the '50s,

today's parents

grew up reading MAD

and tend to take a kinder,

gentler view of the magazine.

There used to be

a lot of antagonism

towards MAD from parents.

And now that the average parent

is a grown up MAD reader

we've lost that antagonism.

Once the teachers

accepted it and they used to

discuss an article

or whatever it was in MAD,

then MAD made it,

you know, they were accepted.

I think it's the kiss of

death that we have

parental approval

at this point.

-We've never sought it.

-I would rather be...

something that kids read

with a flashlight

underneath the bed at night.

You mean like Playboy?

No, like

the congressional record.

MAD kind of stayed the same.

It was funny, but it wasn't edgy

like some of the other magazines

that were available.

Bill ran the magazine

like no other company

in the history of the world.

And he knew expanding

and doing more

would mean more work for him.

And he didn't

want to do more work.

Feldstein was interested in

a little more change, I think,

than Bill.

The editor has to be the brake.

You've got to be the accelerator

and you've got to

hopefully work together.

But you've got to keep pushing

it down and testing the bounds.

Otherwise,

you know, a magazine dies.

For 29 years, Al

Feldstein gave MAD its identity

during its meteoric rise in

both popularity and influence.

But sensing the world

passing MAD by,

Feldstein was ready

to step aside

and let some other idiots

run the show.

Bill probably had

some sleepless nights.

Who am I gonna replace Al with?

Luckily, John showed up

and Bill decided

to give it to both

John and Nick as co-editors.

Which actually worked

out great because it was

kind of a yin

and a yang in a way.

Ficarra was more

like, like Feldstein was

a nuts and bolts guy.

He could hit the deadlines.

You know, Ficarra even says,

I don't think Nick ever had

a schedule in his office

the whole time he was editor.

But he was funny.

I started

reading MAD immediately,

was just so captivated by it

that I tried to sell articles.

And I probably

got rejection letters.

And really, it was Nick Meglin

who I owe my career to,

who fished me out of

what we call the slush pile.

And first person hired

in 26 years.

It was tough because

I thought that the magazine

needed some sprucing up,

that it was still sort of

relying a little bit

on its laurels.

They wanted to honor

what was there,

but they also wanted to

create their own version of it.

But it was difficult

to make big changes then,

because there was

still an old guard.

Do you have

a permit to be in here?

You can't come in here, man.

Oh, please don't throw me out.

Charlie and I were

hired in January 1985.

I don't think of

that as an especially

great period for MAD.

I think that MAD was

getting a little stale.

Some of the change

started to force itself.

Don Martin left.

Some of the guys

started to age out or slow down.

So it also forced us to start

looking for new talent.

We do a lot more politics.

The language is coarser.

It was a convergence of

a lot of things happening.

Bill was pushing

off more and more of

his publishing responsibilities.

He was getting

sicker and sicker.

He couldn't sleep very well.

He kept waking up,

not being able to breathe.

And he'd completely

lost his appetite.

I would call him and

one day I called and I said,

"Bill, you know,

I'll pray for you,

and I'll send you energy,

and you can get well again."

He said, "I know you will

and I know I will."

And I said, "But Bill,

if you don't make it,

can I have that new TV

you just bought?"

And so my last thing

I ever heard from Bill

was Bill laughing loudly.

William Gaines,

the founder and publisher

of MAD magazine,

died in New York yesterday.

Mr. Gaines created MAD

as a comic book in 1952.

MAD became a magazine in 1955.

And Alfred E. Neuman

first appeared a year later.

Forever lampooning

life's sacred cows.

What? Me worry?

He was such a delight

and so much fun.

And, uh, a maverick in

every sense of the word.

And lot of guts to do

what he did,

to publish the magazine

and stand behind it

and everything he did

through the years.

Bill ran his company

like a family.

Bill was very shrewd

and he was also very lucky.

And that's

a pretty good combination.

I profited by MAD

in this respect.

I worked for one of the greatest

men that ever lived.

It's losing your captain,

the comedy captain.

And it could never be the same.

MAD really lost its biggest fan

and really its guardian.

Part of his deal was,

you know, the corporate

owners can't come in here

and do anything unless I say so.

And when he passed away,

all of that disappeared.

When he died, there was kind of

sort of a little fight

between Warner Publishing

and DC Comics as to who

was gonna take us over.

And then a couple of

years later, it was DC Comics.

MAD magazine is ready to move.

They'll be moving next week.

- Annie, how are you?

- I'm okay.

Hey, I'm here just

for memories.

They're here.

But, you know, I'm sorry.

All the covers

are off the walls now.

-Everything's down.

-Oh...

When DC Comics took us over,

I sat in that meeting

with tears rolling down my face.

You're being absorbed into

the corporate culture.

-A lot of uncertainty.

-Yeah.

A lot of fear and loathing.

The magazine is turning

into everything that

Bill hated.

Don't quote me on

that. In fact,

this is not really

me saying it.

-That's right.

-Someone else saying it.

Someone was gonna

come in to take Bill's place.

And it's true. Someone did.

They hired about 117 people.

We had new management.

And they wanted us

to reinvent MAD.

So they charged us

with reinventing MAD.

How can this be expanded,

developed, sequeled,

prequeled, spun off?

Profit maximized?

It was truly the end of an era.

Oh, nuts.

What is the big

deal about computers?

MAD magazine

is turning 40 this year.

And editors say

circulation has fallen off from

a peak of two and a half

million in the early '70s

to one and a half

million readers today.

Newspaper circulation is down.

Everyone's circulation is down.

We're now living in

the age of video games.

And they're bursting, you know,

with color and vibrancy.

And there's MAD,

looking like the same magazine

it did for 30 years.

We used to complain

that the magazine layout

was printed in Mexico in 1957.

Everyone thought

that it was some kind

of deceptive plot on

the part of our overlords

to turn MAD into

this huge cash cow.

But it was simply that

we want to be able to do

this magazine in color.

We realized that

it would cost a lot more.

John said, "Well, you know,

this is the 21st century.

Why don't we, uh--

Why don't we start taking ads?"

Suddenly,

everybody was complaining,

"Oh, Bill Gaines

is turning in his grave,"

which we all thought was funny

because Bill was cremated.

Now, of course, the big joke

in the long run is that

we still have almost

no advertising in MAD,

because advertisers are kind of

afraid of being in a magazine

where we're making fun of them.

There was pressure

to get to a month deal.

So we actually graduated

from eight to nine

up to 12 issues a year,

like all those respectable

publications,

churning out the comedy more.

Through the 2000s,

MAD continued to be

the megaphone for satire.

But declining readership

became an undeniable fact.

We went to this rise,

to this dramatic

cutback, cutback, cutback.

MAD was actually cut

to four times a year.

Because of how tenacious

that staff is,

how tenacious we all feel

about the worth

of what we're doing

and what MAD is,

we certainly weren't

gonna walk away from it.

We were gonna fight like hell

to keep that magazine alive.

We're being entrusted

with this thing that's

bigger than us for a little bit.

You know, you want to leave

it better than you found it.

And you want to set it up

so that 80 years from now,

there's other

80-year-olds writing,

talking about how

much they like MAD.

You're always trying

to live up to that legacy

because we all grew up

with MAD, too.

The other thing is,

and this is a sad comment,

we're going into a non-print,

non-reading society.

Harvey Kurtzman could put in

a very dense, copy-heavy article

over five pages and expect

the reader to read it all.

The kids are not buying

not because of

the quality of the magazine,

because when they discover it,

they laugh a lot.

It's because

they are not reading.

We're in a different world now.

Everything's accessible,

and I don't think

you can compete with that.

We're not a magazine world.

We're a video world.

Everyone in the country

has their own channel.

You know, their Instagrams

and their TikToks, and people

make their own version of satire

and MAD magazine themselves.

MAD magazine has

sort of the same problem

that I've always had.

In the past, I've

done albums every few years.

And it's hard to be as fresh

as the morning's headlines

when you're not

doing something every day.

You know I'm fat, I'm fat

Something that we'd put in

a magazine that wouldn't show

in print for three months

was on Saturday Night Live

that weekend.

When The Daily Show came in,

it was on that night.

Hey, did you see

the parody of The Daily Show

in this month's MAD magazine?

No, I didn't see that.

Tore you a new one, buddy.

There's so much comedy,

and there's so much satire,

that I think it can't help

but not have the same presence.

It really is

a tradition that has

been handed down,

that's been inherited.

And it's always

a tricky thing about MAD.

On one level,

you want to honor the tradition.

On the other level,

you want to annihilate it.

You don't want

to be stuck with it.

You want to be able

to reinvent it.

MAD has been accused

of becoming, you know,

more edgier and crass.

You take an issue from 1965,

compare it to an issue of 2010.

You see a big difference.

Obeying the rules of taste

has gone out the window.

It's gone out the window

because of necessity.

You look back on

it then, it was remarkable.

Now it seems tame.

Look at the world.

Look at culture. I mean...

people show

their underpants now,

so they had to change.

An example would be man boobs.

And sure enough, it's like,

well, you know, I like drawing

man boobs because I use

my neighbors to pose for me.

I could understand it in a way,

but we turned out,

you know, clean stuff.

And later on, it began to

get a little more suggestive.

That just wasn't my bag.

It's undeniable

that the original

g*ng of idiots

was insanely talented.

People definitely get caught up

in this nostalgia of it.

And I think sometimes

that sort of blinds

or blurs the quality of

the material now.

They asked me if

I wanted to try out for

Spy vs. Spy, and I almost

nearly promptly said no.

I really don't want to do this,

so, I know, I'll do it in

stencils and spray paint.

And they're sure

to say no very quickly.

And then I can go home.

That turned out

to be, like, the key.

You know, the philosophy here

has always been,

"I'm gonna ride the horse

until it drops."

Why would anybody

want to not be here?

It's relentlessly fun.

But I knew eventually

that something would happen.

In 2017,

MAD moved from

its New York City birthplace

to Los Angeles,

where it relaunched with

a new issue number one.

Shortly after

arriving in Los Angeles,

MAD was involved in

a true Hollywood tale.

So I'm doing this movie,

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

And it deals with a character

named Rick Dalton that was

a star on a late '50s, early

'60s western called Bounty Law.

So the idea of it is it was

MAD magazine did a takeoff,

called it Lousy Law,

and put him on the cover.

That would be

a thing on his walls.

It was simply a set design prop.

So we got in touch

with MAD magazine.

And they go, "Yeah, that would

be really, really cool."

We want it to look like

it was done by Jack Davis.

And I even did say

I wanted Alfred E. Neuman

to be picking his nose.

And it should be,

like, the finger

up to the knuckle,

like, that deep in this.

It looked great.

And then an issue came out,

and it had the Lousy Law parody.

And it had my cover,

the cover I designed.

And as, like you said,

as a person who comes up,

you know, as

a person who grew up with MAD.

-Uh-huh.

-As a person who grew up

with MAD,

I came up with the title.

Forget the Oscar.

That is the most--

this is-- this is my Oscar.

And then it turned out that

that was

the last original issue.

Alfred E. Neuman finally has

something to worry about.

MAD magazine will soon

disappear from newsstands.

MAD magazine will no longer be

a permanent fixture

on newsstands.

After more than six decades,

a cultural touchstone

is vanishing from newsstands.

This week,

we learned that MAD magazine

will cease publishing new

material after its

fall issue...

After 67 years of

ruthlessly mocking the world,

a bedrock of American comedy,

the cult satirical magazine MAD

is shutting up shop.

Wait a minute.

Does that mean...

I designed

the last official original issue

of MAD magazine

ever to be published?

Uh, yeah, I guess you did.

Take that, Judd Apatow.

I can take that.

Its cultural

influence was unmistakable.

It was visible

because of how unique it was.

And MAD, to a degree, became

a victim of its own success.

The upcoming issue

will be the last one

available on newsstands.

After that,

MAD magazine will be reprinting

old material with new covers.

I don't know what

the future holds for MAD,

but I will say that there is

something about MAD

that people like

to hold in their hands.

MAD just picked

a subject and went right

into it and cut right

into the heart of it.

And anything that does that

is foundationally honest.

MAD magazine wouldn't

have lasted 70 years

if it wasn't the best satire

available, the best writers.

It was great.

It really was a circus.

It wasn't like

any other magazine

being published

at the time or since.

It's like a family,

a big old effed up family.

MAD created an atmosphere

for a kind of

humor that did not exist before.

MAD is part of

that long tradition in the arts.

You can't just brush it off

as being nonsense.

I think it's

really important stuff.

It's an name brand.

It's the Kleenex,

if you will, of comedy.

MAD magazine was the template

for satire and comedy.

Millions of kids read MAD and

go, "Oh, I know what to do now.

I can be funny."

So many TV writers, comedians,

TV shows were influenced by MAD,

and those things wouldn't

have happened without MAD.

For a lot of us, MAD magazine

inspired us to do what we do.

When I made the cover

of MAD magazine,

it was like I was in Valhalla.

It was almost like,

you've made it!

A star on the Walk of Fame,

notoriety, a sold-out theater.

It was all nice.

But being depicted

in MAD magazine?

Are you kidding me?

I'll tell you the greatest

thing that I've ever

achieved in my career.

I was on the cover

of MAD magazine.

To me, that was it. And of

course, I'm saying hello--

-You know what's in my office?

-What?

MAD magazine, the cover.

I've got it blown up

to the size of this window,

and it's all that

matters to me.

It's the most important thing.

How crazy is it

that we both feel that way?

MAD has

this particular place for

pointing its finger at

what's actually going on.

Parody, satire,

and irony don't change.

We desperately

need that kind of viewpoint.

Raising people's expectations

and talking up to people

is just a better way to go.

I think it's extremely

valuable to society.

I really do. That kind of humor.

My wish for

the future is that MAD magazine,

in whatever form,

finds its way into the ether

and help usher the iconic voice

of MAD into this millennium.

A little bit of

doubt is a good thing.

And look at the world around you

and don't take things

at face value.

No matter how serious

life is and dreadful,

make fun of it. Enjoy it.

Rolling Stone called MAD

the best political satire

magazine in the country.

That's what MAD is.

You work on it and

you feel deeply embarrassed...

and fiercely proud.

People have been

doing satire one way or another

throughout the ages.

The only difference is,

uh, most of them wound up

in dungeons, and

we wind up on the newsstand.

By the way, I'm at a meter,

so make this quick.

I'm parked at a meter.

Okay. All right.

You're doing a documentary

on MAD, the importance of MAD.

And I for one, sorry,

but I don't think MAD

was terribly important.

That's a hell of a thing to say.

If you're presenting some sort

of a seemingly endless story

by John or Nick or Joe or Sam,

you can intercut this.

Every time there was a storm,

the antenna for my television

would get knocked over.

I'm terrified of heights.

And one time I'm up there

and I hear footsteps

coming up the ladder.

And it's my son's voice,

who says, "Where's Mom?"

And I said, "I've k*lled her

and I'm stuffing her

down the chimney."

It was a stupid question,

and I gave him a snappy answer.

"Wait a minute.

There is something here."

When I felt I wanted

to write for MAD

at some point in my life,

which shows my career has been

like a dead flatline ever since.

We've gone to Gargiulo's,

which is near Coney Island,

it's an Italian restaurant

and had a tremendous meal.

And when we're finished,

Bill says, "You know what?"

I said, "Yeah, we're going

to Nathan's for hot dogs."

I was driving,

so I had to go with him.

Besides, I like hot dogs.

Many times, I spent the whole

night at the MAD offices.

They would lock me in

because they had to go home

and they have to put the alarm.

So I would stay the whole night

at MAD just reading.

I would stay there.

They had a couch.

And I really didn't

have that much of a place

to stay in the beginning.

So I spent

the whole night reading

and then sleep half the day.

I was here at the time

and I became ill.

And that job was

almost exclusively done

in a hospital ward.

And I had all the doctors

and the nurses

and everybody was--

and the patients all coming in

and out to look at

this stuff I was doing.

It was really a bit unwelcome.

I don't-- You know,

I'm one of these artists

that like to draw quietly.

You know what? I don't like

thinking of MAD as a brand.

It's a voice. It's an attitude.

It's a way of seeing

the world and interact--