All language subtitles for WhenWeWentMAD20251080pAMZNWEB-DLDDP51H26420SDH[_28491]

[upbeat surf rock music]

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.

[Bryan Cranston]
It was anarchistic.

I'd never seen
that kind of humor before,

that kind of irreverent comedy,

-and it really changed...
-[popping]

-...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.

[Cranston]
Most parents didn't approve.

They thought it was
corrupting their minds,

and in a way, it was.
In a good way.

[Cranston chuckles]

[Howie Mandel]
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.

[Joe Raiola] 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.

[Judd Apatow]
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.

[David Zucker]
MAD was a textbook for us,

how to make fun of things.

[Mandel] 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.
-[audience cheering]

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.

[Raiola] When you talk
about modern American satire,

-it starts with MAD.
-[glass shattering]

The rest is,
as they say, misery.

[laughs]

♪

[narrator]
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.

[melodic rock music]

Initially, Bill Gaines'
career that he ended up in

wasn't really
what he intended to be.

[Grant Geissman]
Bill Gaines grew up in Brooklyn.

His dad was M.C. Gaines,

and he was on
the very ground floor of

the comics industry.

[Bill Gaines] 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.

[narrator] Of all the
superheroes Gaines championed,

one in particular
would stand out above the rest.

[Geissman]
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.

[man] Look! Up in
the sky! It's a bird!

-[woman] It's a plane!
-[man] It's Superman!

[various people] Superman!

[dramatic film music]

-Oh, let go, let go, let go!
-[Superman chuckles]

[narrator] 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.

[Al Feldstein]
Educational comics.

Picture stories of the Bible.

Picture stories
from world history.

♪

[Geissman] They were boring,
and they were literally

designed for little kids.

[Feldstein] 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.

[narrator] An already difficult
time for the Gaines family

would quickly turn to tragedy.

[Geissman] Bill's father
was killed 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.

[Gaines] 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.

[Annie Gaines Ashton] 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."

[Geissman] 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.

[Geissman] 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?"

[Geissman] 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 naïve
and new to the business.

[Geissman] Al was a kind
of a brash, energetic guy.

And Bill needed that.

He needed someone to
come in and be gung-ho.

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.

[narrator] 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."

[horror music plays]

[narrator] 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.

♪

[Geissman] 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.

[narrator] 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.

[narrator] In true MAD fashion,
Kurtzman's first
assignment with

EC was a comic
book that stood out.

[Geissman] 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."

[Drew Friedman] 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.

[Frank Santopadre] 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 bomb,

it would reach Kurtzman.

[explosion]

[Geissman] 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 war comic,

showing the actual
real horrors of war.

He was a perfectionist,
and it took him really

a long time to do
these war 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?

[Kurtzman] 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.

[wondrous music]

[narrator] 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.

[Jack Davis]
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.

[narrator]
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.

[Kurtzman] 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.

[narrator] 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?"

[upbeat classical music]

[narrator] With the Great
Depression and World War 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.

[narrator] However, underneath
this picturesque surface,

a darker threat loomed.

It was an era of
tremendous repression.

[dramatic music]

The Red Threat,
the Hollywood blacklist.

[Nick Meglin] The McCarthyism,
and then people were

afraid of anything in print.

[announcer] Minus ten seconds.

[Tom Koch] The whole country was
in a very conformist mode.

Eight, seven...

The atom bomb.

What could be scarier than that?

Five, four...

[Feldstein] 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...
-[emergency alarm blaring]

...to question the adult world.

♪

[Jaffee]
In an atmosphere like this,

it was so easy
to ridicule things.

[narrator] With MAD on
the brink of bankruptcy,

MAD went all in on connecting
with the youth of America

by ridiculing
the perilous status quo.

[Geissman] 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.

-[technician] Two, one...
-[explosion]

[fast-paced music]

[Gaines] We ran a feature
called "Super Duper Man."

[man] That's hilarious.

[Gaines] It was then.
[laughing] You had to be there.

[Feldstein] And that was, like,

the turning point
in MAD magazine.

[Geissman] 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.

[chuckling]

[Zucker] There's always
something to spoof.

Anything that's taken seriously
is grist for the mill.

[Geissman] 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.

[dramatic intro music]

[narrator]
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.

[grunting]

And that was great.
That was a revelation.

You could make fun of movies.

-[neighing]
-Hi-yo, Silver!

[Feldstein] We did takeoffs
on The Lone Ranger...

[comic gunshots]

[yelling]

...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.

[man] 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.

[Quentin Tarantino] MAD magazine
did most of the great movies

of the '70s and took the piss
right out of them,

shoved a weed up their ass.

It didn't matter
what the movie was.

They were never respectful.

[Cranston] 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.

[intriguing surf rock music]

[Apatow] 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..."

[grunting, screaming]

"...just because she can
crap with an accent."

[Meglin] 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.

[Arnie Kogen] TV shows were
tougher because you had to

actually write a story and
compose a plot of some sort.

[Dick Debartolo] 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.

[soft comic music]

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.

[Angelo Torres]
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.

[Mort Drucker] 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."

[chuckling]

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.

[electricity crackling]

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.

[pop-punk music]

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.

[Drucker] A lot of teachers
and parents were caught

all of a sudden, you know,

how do you handle
this magazine for your kids?

[Cranston]
Most parents didn't approve.

They thought it was
corrupting their minds.

And in a way
it was, in a good way.

[Gottfried] 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.

[Mandel] 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..."

[Weird Al Yankovic]
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."

[Cranston] 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.

[DeBartolo] 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.

♪

[Stan Hart] 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.

[Tim Carvell] 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.

[narrator] 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.

[Davis] 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.

[narrator] As its fan base grew,

so did its
occasional detractors.

[melodic rumba music]

[Frank Jacobs] It was
an entity unto itself.

Kids glommed onto it right away.

[Jaffee] They were excited
about anything that was going up

against this
repressive atmosphere

that was growing so strong.

[TV clicking]

[narrator] 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.

[Cranston] 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.

[Geissman] 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 war 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.

[Feldstein] And that's how
the slick version

of MAD was born.
It was born on issue 24.

[TV host] 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."

[narrator] 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.

[suspenseful music]

[announcer] 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.

[Santopadre] People who were
going after comics as creating

delinquency and destroying
the youth of America.

[reporter] 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.

[narrator] On April 21st, 1954,
a Senate hearing was convened

to discuss the causes
of juvenile delinquency,

and a star witness
was brought in.

[Geissman]
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.

[Dr. Fredric Wertham
speaks words on screen]

[Feldstein] 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.

[Feldstein] 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.

[Feldstein]
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.

[Judge Murphy] No comics shall

explicitly present
scenes of brutal torture.

Scenes of excessive
violence shall be prohibited.

[Feldstein]
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.

[Meglin] 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.

[narrator] Facing bankruptcy
yet again, Gaines was forced

to let his entire staff go,
including Al Feldstein.

Despite the hopelessness,
there was still one
possibility.

[upbeat action film music]

[Meglin] 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.

[Torres] They said,
"To heck with everything else,

let's concentrate on MAD."

[Geissman] 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.

[Feldstein] 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."

[screaming]

[cracking]

[narrator] 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."

[Feldstein] 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."

[narrator] With issue 29,
Feldstein officially

took credit as editor.

[Geissman] 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.

[funky jazz music]

♪

[Feldstein] 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."

[surf rock music]

[Mandel] 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!"

[Santopadre] 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?

[Mandel] What, me worry?

Can't say that
without doing this.

What, me worry?

[Aragonés] I don't worry.
I'm going to be ahead.

I'm going to survive.
I'm going to do better.

[narrator] As forever
linked as Alfred is to MAD,

that dopey face
actually traces back to long

before MAD landed on the scene.

[surf rock music]

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.

[Feldstein] 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 Mingo 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.

[narrator] Between Mingo
and fellow idiot Kelly Freas,

the spirit of Alfred and MAD
was carved in wet paint.

[Harry North] Norman Mingo's
expresses everything.

Innocent,
feckless, stupid, lovable.

You know, the idiot
saying something very wise.

[squeaking]

[Apatow]
Because he never really spoke,

and there wasn't a cartoon

where we got to know him,
he was always a mystery.

[Meglin] He was a schmuck
that was on the cover.

[cheering]

[Torres] 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.

[Drew] I guess he represents
the MAD morality.

[Gaines]
He also represents an attitude.

And don't ask me
what that attitude is,

because I don't know.

[Raiola] 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.

[laughs]

[funky intriguing music]

♪

Read between the lines.

Don't believe everything
you see and read or hear from

politicians or your mother
and father or the press.

[Gaines]
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.

[Ficarra] We have no morals.

-We have no scruples.
-[Bill laughing]

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.

[Burns Parkhurst]
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

shooting 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.

[Apatow] 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.

[Meglin] 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.

-[pop-punk music]
-[Raiola] 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.

[boing]

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.

[Feldstein] 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.

[chuckles] 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.

[Apatow] 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.

[narrator] 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.

[comical whistling, explosion]

[mysterious, funky rock music]

Perhaps
the most political stance

taken by MAD
was regularly showing

the futility of war
in simple black and white.

[Cranston]
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.

♪

[Ficarra] Antonio Prohías,
a big teddy bear of a guy.

[Gaines Ashton] 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.

[Ficarra] 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.

♪

[Ficarra] The spies,
they are undoubtedly our most

popular feature in
the magazine to this day.

[pop-punk music]

[Apatow] I don't think
I really understood

who wrote MAD magazine.

There was this sense
of the usual gang 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.

[Feldstein] It was a challenge.

I had a completely
stripped staff and

a magazine to turn out.

♪

[narrator] 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.

[Meglin]
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.

[narrator] Meglin soon teamed

with Kurtzman's
former assistant,

Jerry DeFuccio,
to be associate editors.

[Gaines Ashton] Mr. Debonair,
Champagne Jerry, he was called.

Because he always had
little bottles of champagne

in his refrigerator for
when he brought women up.

[narrator] 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.

[Raiola] They had their own
brand of mental illness

that was different
than the mental illness

that was going on
in front of the office.

[Hart] 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."

[Jaffee] 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.

[Meglin] We had hundreds
of submissions a week.

[Jacobs] 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.

[Lou Silverstone] 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.

[upbeat organ music]

[Ficcara] 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.

[Cranston] Issue in and
issue out over the years.

I think my favorite
still is The Lighter Side.

[narrator] 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.

[Torres] Martin was nuts,
as far as I'm concerned.

[Hart] Don Martin was
a genius, you know?

I mean, a crazy genius,
but a genius.

[Drucker]
Don Martin created a style

that was instantly successful.

[Apatow] A lot of people
getting hurt.

A lot of people
getting hit in the balls.

He always had those
funny sound effects

that were like weak flum-bang.

Or icky locky doo.

♪

[Duck Edwing] He would request
gimme gags where the jaw

falls down and a tongue
rolls out like a carpet.

[Gottfried] The faces with
the nose over the chin

and the feet
that would curve upward.

[Edwing] 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.

[rock music playing]

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.

[Jaffee] 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.

[Cranston]
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 Aragonés'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.

[Charlie Kadau] My gosh,
it was such a great mix.

It was a great team.
It was an all-star team.

How do you beat that?

[Hart] It was a perfect
storm of zanies, you know?

[Geissman] 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 gang of idiots."

Call it a day.

[Aragonés] The gang 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.

[announcer] Now let's meet
the man with the MAD, MAD, MAD,

MAD, MAD magazine.

[cheery music]

[host] Number one,
what is your name, please?

My name is William M. Gaines.

Bill Gaines.

[Larry Siegel] Bill Gaines was

one of the greatest nuts
who ever lived.

He was absolutely
out of his mind.

[Meglin] Bill Gaines was
a walking, living contradiction.

[host] 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.

[Jack Davis]
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.

[Raiola] 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.

[Gottfried]
I remember him saying...

[gasping]

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!

[Meglin] 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.

[Siegel] He was not a funny man,
but he appreciated humor.

He even appreciated bad humor.

[Jaffee] Bill Gaines did set
the tone, and he had

a certain number
of prohibitions.

No sex, no vulgarities, no
gratuitous insulting of people.

[Jacobs] 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.

[Siegel] 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.

[door creaking]

[narrator]
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.

[Gaines]
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.

[Apatow] 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.

[man]
Could we do it the other way?

[laughter]

-That's a good guess.
-Did you ever think about that?

Think, Bill, think!

[narrator] And MAD skewering
the world of advertising

was a full realization
of its true spirit.

[Schild] 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.

[Schild] 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 shooting it.

It was creating it from scratch.

You cleaned the kitchen sink!

[Schild] There was
a commercial where this lady,

she's flying
throughout the house.

[announcer] Get out of
the kitchen fast. Get Ajax.

[Schild] 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.

[Meglin]
As funny as the image is,

it works better
if on first blush

it looks like the original.

[Arnie Kogen]
Breck, blecch, brilliant.

Hysterically funny.

[Meglin] You'd be surprised
how many people

took our ads seriously.

This was another reason
we couldn't get advertising

if we wanted to.

[coughing]

[Raiola] 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.

♪

[Gaines] I hope MAD,
among other things,

is responsible for a lot
of kids giving up smoking.

[Jaffee]
I would do things like how to

make cigarette
smoking healthier.

It was just to show you how
funny these things can be.

[Ficarra] We have just hammered
cigarette makers and boy,

MAD has proved to be right.

♪

[narrator]
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.

[Geissman] 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.

[narrator] MAD evolved along
with the '60s counterculture,

and managed to stay
both relevant and edgy,

even in this new era.

[Mandel]
It always felt like it was,

like, unsupervised journalism.

[rock music]

[Cranston] 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.

[Carvell] 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 war called Vietnam

and people were against it.

[Tom Koch] 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.

[Yankovic] 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.

[Apatow] 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.

[Hart] One of my
favorite pieces that I did

was called
"Broken Homes and Gardens,"

a magazine for kids
of divorced parents.

[Apatow] "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.

[North] 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.

[Siegel] 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.

[Richard Williams] 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.

[narrator] 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."

[Jacobs]
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 killed 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.

[Richmond] 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.

[Meglin]
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.

[narrator] In 1964,
MAD was slapped with

a potentially
catastrophic lawsuit.

[Meglin] 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.

[Feldstein] And so Irving Berlin
and nine composers sued us.

[Siegel] MAD was sued for
a violation of copyright.

[Jacobs] 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
killed the magazine.

[Meglin]
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.

[Jacobs] 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.

[Meglin] 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."

[Yankovic] Rightly,
the Supreme Court decided,

"Well, this is not
an infringement of copyright."

[Jacobs] 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.

[narrator]
In the years following

the Supreme Court's ruling,

MAD's readership
climbed to all-time highs.

[Brenner] 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.

[narrator] 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.

[Feldstein]
If we were influential at all,

I think we're influential
in the comedy industry.

[Apatow] You know, if I think of
Steve Carell in the opening

of The 40-Year-Old Virgin
peeing with a boner,

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.

[Siegel] Everybody
read MAD magazine.

Anybody growing up,
I mean, there it was.

[Silverstone] I said,
"Well, we must be doing

something right,
we're banned in Russia."

[Meglin] The people who have
said they read MAD shocked us.

We expected more
from them, frankly.

[Hart] It was very nice.
All of a sudden, I was somebody.

[narrator] 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.

[narrator]
MAD even landed on Broadway.

[Siegel] Mary Rogers,
the daughter of Richard Rogers,

decided that she'd like to do
a MAD variety show.

[Hart] 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.

[announcer] MAD magazine
presents Up the Academy.

[narrator]
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.

[Raiola] We used to joke,
Airplane,

instead of Up the Academy,
we wish MAD's name was on that.

[Tarantino] 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.

[Santopadre] 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.

[Ficarra] 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.

[Raiola] 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.

[Ficarra] And in that same day,
then take you to a meal

for four of us would be $700.

[Aragonés] 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!

[Brenner]
The amount of food we eat

could have fed
a third-world nation.

Called him the fat fuck.

[Jacobs]
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.

[reporter] 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.

[Siegel] 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.

[Raiola] There's something about
this man is truly, truly insane.

I like to think that I'm
the insanest one on this tab.

[Brenner] 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.

[DeBartolo] 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.

♪

[narrator] As cheap as he was,
Gaines always broke out

the checkbook for
an opportunity to
see the world.

[Ficarra] 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.

[Gaines Ashton] 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.

[Ficarra] 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.

[DeBartolo] He would just say,
"Bring your luggage

and be at the airport
at such and such a time."

And we would just go.

[Brenner] 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.

[Arnie Kogen]
We went to South America

and Puerto Rico and Mexico.

[Davis] Went to Russia.
We stayed right at Red Square.

[Silverstone] 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.

[North] 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.

[Kadau] 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 goddamn it, he was
gonna show us the Matterhorn.

[Aragonés] 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 gang.

Suddenly my American family

visiting my blood
family in Mexico.

So it was a great moment for me.

[Schild] We arrive at this boat
and you have Viva Maria

in flowers on top of this boat.

And here beautifully
done with flowers, colorful,

"Fuck you, Bill."

He just cracked.

Bill loved that sort of thing.

[DeBartolo] 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?"

[Arnie Kogen] 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...

[Meglin]
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.

[Meglin] 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.

[overlapping chatter]

And Bill Gaines took us to
a cruise up and down to Bermuda.

And of course,
he had his own stateroom.

-[chatter]
-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.

-[all] 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 Fuck 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.

[Ficarra]
Sometimes they were so funny

that they would wind up
in the magazine.

[Jaffee] When Bill Gaines
created The MAD Trips,

what he did was
turn the office staff

and the freelance staff
into a band of brothers.

[Schild] 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.

[Kadau] It was just a great way
to keep that MAD spirit alive.

[reporter] 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.

[Gaines] 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.

[man 1] You mean like Playboy?

[man 2] No, like
the congressional record.

[Aragonés]
MAD kind of stayed the same.

It was funny, but it wasn't edgy

like some of the other magazines
that were available.

[Kadau] 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.

[North]
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.

[narrator] 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.

[Geissman] 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.

[Ficarra] 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.

[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.

[Ficarra] 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.

[Gaines Ashton] 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?

♪

[Meglin] 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.

[Ficarra] 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.

-[man] 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.

[Kadau] 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?

[reporter] 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.

[Ficarra] 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.

[Raiola] We used to complain
that the magazine layout

was printed in Mexico in 1957.

[Sam Viviano] 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?"

[bloodcurdling screams]

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.

[Raiola] 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.

[narrator] 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.

[Viviano] You're always trying
to live up to that legacy

because we all grew up
with MAD, too.

[game beeping]

[Meglin] 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.

["White & Nerdy"
by Weird Al playing]

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.

[Jacobs]
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.

[Cranston] 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.

[Friedman]
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.

[Flanders] It's undeniable
that the original

gang 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.

[narrator] 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.

[Raiola] 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.

[reporter] The upcoming issue
will be the last one

available on newsstands.

After that,
MAD magazine will be reprinting

old material with new covers.

[Ficarra] 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.

[Cranston] 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.

[Geissman] MAD magazine wouldn't
have lasted 70 years

if it wasn't the best satire
available, the best writers.

It was great.

[Kadau] 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.

[farting]

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?

[Santopadre] MAD has
this particular place for

pointing its finger at
what's actually going on.

[Mandel] Parody, satire,
and irony don't change.

[Peter Kuper] 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.

[Jay Kogen] A little bit of
doubt is a good thing.

And look at the world around you

and don't take things
at face value.

[North] No matter how serious
life is and dreadful,

make fun of it. Enjoy it.

[Raiola]
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.

[Jaffee] 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.

[snoring]

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 killed 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--

[snoring]

♪