1 00:00:16,177 --> 00:00:17,908 This is one of the sequences in Portrait 2 00:00:17,933 --> 00:00:19,828 of the Artist, which was memories 3 00:00:19,852 --> 00:00:23,331 related to me becoming a comics artist and what kind I became. 4 00:00:23,355 --> 00:00:25,417 It's a sequence called Packing... 5 00:00:25,441 --> 00:00:28,590 Rego Park, New York City, circa 1959. 6 00:00:29,806 --> 00:00:32,625 'Come Artie, help me to pack for our vacation.' 7 00:00:33,393 --> 00:00:34,912 'Aww, I'm learning how to draw Tubby. 8 00:00:34,937 --> 00:00:36,339 I'll help later!' 9 00:00:37,345 --> 00:00:38,860 'Don't be always so lazy! 10 00:00:38,885 --> 00:00:40,485 Better you learn something useful!' 11 00:00:40,923 --> 00:00:41,938 Groan. 12 00:00:42,461 --> 00:00:44,083 I hated helping him. 13 00:00:44,108 --> 00:00:46,257 It mainly consisted of him explaining 14 00:00:46,281 --> 00:00:48,207 that I did everything wrong. 15 00:00:49,159 --> 00:00:51,884 'First we choose what absolutely we need and fold, 16 00:00:51,909 --> 00:00:54,262 so the big pieces don't take extra room.' 17 00:00:54,300 --> 00:00:55,310 'Uh-huh.' 18 00:00:56,370 --> 00:00:58,488 'The shoes you put into the corners with small things 19 00:00:58,513 --> 00:01:00,408 in the shoes and... acch! 20 00:01:00,900 --> 00:01:02,521 It's important to know to pack. 21 00:01:02,546 --> 00:01:05,300 Many times I had to run with only what I can carry! 22 00:01:05,592 --> 00:01:08,112 You have to use what little space you have to pack 23 00:01:08,136 --> 00:01:10,072 inside everything what you can! 24 00:01:10,249 --> 00:01:13,507 "This was the best advice I've ever gotten as a cartoonist!" 25 00:01:15,517 --> 00:01:16,652 It still holds then? 26 00:01:16,677 --> 00:01:17,779 Yes, it still holds. 27 00:01:17,804 --> 00:01:19,156 And it was one of the few times I 28 00:01:19,180 --> 00:01:23,077 was able to find some kind of rapport with my father 29 00:01:23,101 --> 00:01:25,372 where I wasn't at war with him. 30 00:01:26,319 --> 00:01:29,263 HIGH SCHOOL OF ART and DESIGN NEW YORK CITY, 2019 31 00:01:30,525 --> 00:01:31,764 - Hi, Art Spiegelman. - Hi. 32 00:01:31,789 --> 00:01:32,795 I'm Barbara. 33 00:01:32,819 --> 00:01:33,253 Hi, Barbara. 34 00:01:33,277 --> 00:01:33,879 Nice to meet you. 35 00:01:33,905 --> 00:01:34,631 - Awsome. - Thank you. 36 00:01:34,655 --> 00:01:35,714 And go on in. 37 00:01:38,533 --> 00:01:39,343 Wow. 38 00:01:39,367 --> 00:01:40,469 Thank you so much. 39 00:01:40,494 --> 00:01:42,429 Something I've read so many times over the years. 40 00:01:42,453 --> 00:01:43,263 I can't thank you enough. 41 00:01:43,288 --> 00:01:44,181 - Thanks. - All right. 42 00:01:44,205 --> 00:01:44,932 Enjoy the day. 43 00:01:44,956 --> 00:01:45,725 Thank you. 44 00:01:45,749 --> 00:01:47,102 Hey, you're drawing a mouse. 45 00:01:51,337 --> 00:01:55,317 Art Spiegelman is the guy that reinvented comics as a medium 46 00:01:55,342 --> 00:01:56,777 that people took seriously. 47 00:01:56,801 --> 00:02:01,532 He showed that comics could express the darkest, 48 00:02:01,556 --> 00:02:04,660 most tragic, most complicated, most true things about history, 49 00:02:04,684 --> 00:02:07,621 about our relationships, about family. 50 00:02:07,645 --> 00:02:09,998 Because it is comics, 51 00:02:10,022 --> 00:02:14,128 and it is drawn right from... as if you took a pen 52 00:02:14,152 --> 00:02:17,297 and put it in the heart, and the heart drew this. 53 00:02:17,321 --> 00:02:20,158 You can read this difficult stuff. 54 00:02:22,243 --> 00:02:24,471 Art Spiegelman is one of the most important 55 00:02:24,495 --> 00:02:28,350 cartoonists in the world working today. 56 00:02:28,374 --> 00:02:32,521 He tackled a subject that was enormous, 57 00:02:32,545 --> 00:02:37,842 and he established the medium as a serious literary form. 58 00:02:44,362 --> 00:02:46,902 Piles isn't the same thing as archiving. 59 00:02:47,569 --> 00:02:49,189 I've now discovered. 60 00:02:49,398 --> 00:02:51,585 I grew up with just shards of information. 61 00:02:52,542 --> 00:02:55,488 There's such a thing as Hitler, and there's such a thing as World War II. 62 00:02:55,693 --> 00:02:57,087 And they were concentration camps, 63 00:02:57,111 --> 00:02:58,922 and somehow my parents were in them. 64 00:02:58,946 --> 00:03:00,799 And they had these numbers on their arms, 65 00:03:00,823 --> 00:03:03,344 and my father would wake up screaming often. 66 00:03:03,454 --> 00:03:05,598 Yet, I didn't have a context for all this. 67 00:03:06,455 --> 00:03:07,634 Little picture. 68 00:03:08,743 --> 00:03:10,392 Washington Heights, New York City. 69 00:03:10,417 --> 00:03:14,647 A Hired Car Ride Home, circa 1954. 70 00:03:14,671 --> 00:03:18,358 Those little V's translated text was 71 00:03:18,388 --> 00:03:20,755 showing that the characters were speaking Polish. 72 00:03:21,632 --> 00:03:23,146 'What a fancy affair. 73 00:03:23,171 --> 00:03:25,282 Everybody was invited, even Janek!' 74 00:03:25,576 --> 00:03:28,368 'Yes, but nobody would sit near him!' 75 00:03:28,640 --> 00:03:31,140 My parents always spoke Polish to each other. 76 00:03:31,834 --> 00:03:33,516 Brr... poor guy!' 77 00:03:33,648 --> 00:03:37,167 'Who's Janek?' 'So, the picture with the big ear is listening!' 78 00:03:37,307 --> 00:03:39,047 'Why don't people sit with him?' 79 00:03:39,490 --> 00:03:41,458 'In Auschwitz, he was a Sonderkommando. 80 00:03:41,483 --> 00:03:42,989 He threw Jews into the oven.' 81 00:03:43,151 --> 00:03:46,796 'Why!?' 'If not, the Germans will throw him in the oven!' 82 00:03:46,820 --> 00:03:48,798 'So it wasn't his fault, right?' 83 00:03:48,822 --> 00:03:52,053 Yeah, but it's rumors he put to the ovens his wife and his son, 84 00:03:52,077 --> 00:03:53,819 so nobody wants to sit!' 85 00:03:54,565 --> 00:03:55,638 Take a nap again, Cookie! 86 00:03:55,662 --> 00:03:58,468 "It's still a long drive, and we're just having grown-up talk!" 87 00:04:12,039 --> 00:04:13,693 BBC JEWISH BOOK WEEK PODCAST, 2022 88 00:04:13,718 --> 00:04:19,522 I think it's not an exaggeration to say that of the several truly great works of art 89 00:04:19,589 --> 00:04:22,457 that are related to the Shoah, 90 00:04:22,481 --> 00:04:26,378 I think there are three that people continue to come back to. 91 00:04:26,402 --> 00:04:30,883 One of them is Primo Levi's novel If This Is A Man. 92 00:04:30,907 --> 00:04:33,937 Another is Claude Lanzmann's documentary Shoah, 93 00:04:33,962 --> 00:04:37,305 and Maus by Art Spiegelman. 94 00:04:37,584 --> 00:04:42,197 It is a work that has not lost any relevance in the nearly 40 years 95 00:04:42,222 --> 00:04:44,651 since it was first read. 96 00:04:45,112 --> 00:04:46,982 What I would have known of comics before this 97 00:04:47,006 --> 00:04:50,361 was Marvel and DC, Superman and Batman, that kind of thing. 98 00:04:50,385 --> 00:04:53,030 But you and Maus was coming out of something very different. 99 00:04:53,253 --> 00:04:55,157 The younger Art Spiegelman addresses that point. 100 00:04:55,181 --> 00:04:56,594 Let's watch this first clip. 101 00:04:58,226 --> 00:05:00,829 Instead of a ritualized story told over and over again, 102 00:05:00,853 --> 00:05:03,416 there's such a thing as finding new stories and finding indeed 103 00:05:03,440 --> 00:05:04,749 what makes a story. 104 00:05:05,016 --> 00:05:08,295 I don't have ongoing characters that have repeat from strip to strip, 105 00:05:08,320 --> 00:05:10,631 except maybe myself, and it seems like a tradition 106 00:05:10,655 --> 00:05:14,677 that's well-rooted in 20th century art, The Artist is Hero. 107 00:05:15,210 --> 00:05:16,510 There's actually something pernicious 108 00:05:16,534 --> 00:05:20,891 about this idea of the hero being foisted off on kids. 109 00:05:21,252 --> 00:05:23,059 There's these good guys, and there's these bad guys, 110 00:05:23,083 --> 00:05:24,269 and they bash each other out. 111 00:05:24,293 --> 00:05:25,951 And the good guys are sure to win. 112 00:05:26,323 --> 00:05:28,674 And, well, things just ain't that way. 113 00:05:28,699 --> 00:05:30,093 It's a fairly simple thing to say, 114 00:05:30,117 --> 00:05:31,410 but things just ain't that way. 115 00:05:37,898 --> 00:05:40,592 Prisoner On the Hell Planet A Case History. 116 00:05:40,617 --> 00:05:43,245 Trojan Lake, New York, 1968. 117 00:05:43,980 --> 00:05:46,208 'In 1968, my mother killed herself. 118 00:05:46,298 --> 00:05:47,781 She left no note!' 119 00:05:49,319 --> 00:05:51,172 'My father found her in the bathtub 120 00:05:51,196 --> 00:05:52,776 when he got home from work, 121 00:05:52,801 --> 00:05:55,674 her wrists slashed and an empty bottle of pills nearby. 122 00:05:55,699 --> 00:05:56,857 Oy, Gott!' 123 00:05:58,143 --> 00:06:00,264 'I was living with my parents for the most part' as I agreed 124 00:06:00,288 --> 00:06:04,366 to do on my release from the state mental hospital several months before. 125 00:06:04,584 --> 00:06:06,853 I had just spent the week-end with my girlfriend.' 126 00:06:06,877 --> 00:06:08,314 My parents didn't like her. 127 00:06:08,517 --> 00:06:10,125 I was late getting home. 128 00:06:12,151 --> 00:06:14,068 'I suppose that if I'd gotten home when expected, 129 00:06:14,092 --> 00:06:15,747 I would have found her body. 130 00:06:16,471 --> 00:06:18,839 When I saw the crowd, I had a pang of fear. 131 00:06:19,307 --> 00:06:22,482 I suspected the worst, but I didn't let myself know!' 132 00:06:26,539 --> 00:06:29,941 I now understand that to be one of the central traumas of my life. 133 00:06:29,973 --> 00:06:31,587 But at the time, I was just coming home late 134 00:06:31,611 --> 00:06:34,173 and a cousin of mine corralled me to take me 135 00:06:34,197 --> 00:06:36,677 to our family doctor, who was the person who 136 00:06:36,702 --> 00:06:40,104 had to explain to me that my mother had just killed herself. 137 00:06:45,083 --> 00:06:48,018 There's ghosts hanging over the household. 138 00:06:49,962 --> 00:06:52,275 She came from a large, closely knit family, 139 00:06:52,300 --> 00:06:53,817 and none of it was around. 140 00:06:54,400 --> 00:06:56,383 There was just so much loss. 141 00:06:56,408 --> 00:06:58,861 I think that it finally caught up with her. 142 00:07:05,311 --> 00:07:07,480 Robert sold in his own shop. 143 00:07:10,233 --> 00:07:11,477 Come on in. 144 00:07:12,777 --> 00:07:13,918 Excuse me. 145 00:07:14,445 --> 00:07:15,298 Pardon me. 146 00:07:15,322 --> 00:07:19,979 Sorry, the whole thing's set up in the most cramped part of. 147 00:07:20,004 --> 00:07:21,302 Where should I put my coat? 148 00:07:21,327 --> 00:07:23,889 I - think on the other side. 149 00:07:23,913 --> 00:07:25,432 Can I help you do something here? 150 00:07:25,457 --> 00:07:28,183 No, just put your stuff on the other side. 151 00:07:28,334 --> 00:07:29,334 All right. 152 00:07:41,286 --> 00:07:44,947 My mother really partially survived because she shared her food. 153 00:07:44,972 --> 00:07:46,245 She didn't care if she lived or died, 154 00:07:46,269 --> 00:07:48,080 so she would share it with the other people. 155 00:07:48,104 --> 00:07:50,772 But as a result, the other people there took care of her. 156 00:07:50,797 --> 00:07:53,427 They made sure that she would get through these things. 157 00:07:53,452 --> 00:07:55,949 She would explain how when she had to take a piss... 158 00:07:56,482 --> 00:07:58,257 you're only allowed to piss at certain moments. 159 00:07:58,281 --> 00:08:00,467 And if somebody finds you in the fields pissing, 160 00:08:00,859 --> 00:08:02,129 that was a death sentence. 161 00:08:02,153 --> 00:08:02,921 Jeez. 162 00:08:02,945 --> 00:08:03,839 And so what would 163 00:08:03,863 --> 00:08:06,217 happen is the other women would stand in a circle around her 164 00:08:06,241 --> 00:08:08,344 and be working there so she could squat down and do 165 00:08:08,368 --> 00:08:09,387 what she had to do. 166 00:08:09,411 --> 00:08:12,098 I find this out when I'm a really little kid walking down 167 00:08:12,122 --> 00:08:15,643 63rd drive to the supermarket, and she's pulling me along. 168 00:08:15,667 --> 00:08:17,979 And she says, I'm going to have to pee. 169 00:08:18,003 --> 00:08:19,605 I can either make it to the supermarket 170 00:08:19,629 --> 00:08:20,648 or we should turn around. 171 00:08:20,672 --> 00:08:22,232 And she tells me that anecdote. 172 00:08:22,257 --> 00:08:24,318 I had no context whatsoever. 173 00:08:24,342 --> 00:08:25,778 Oh, my God. 174 00:08:25,802 --> 00:08:26,737 - Yikes. - Wow. 175 00:08:26,762 --> 00:08:28,238 That's why you had to tell that story. 176 00:08:28,262 --> 00:08:30,162 Yeah, that's right. 177 00:08:31,904 --> 00:08:35,367 MAUS VOL. 1: MY FATHER BLEEDS HISTORY PUBLISHED 1986 178 00:08:36,755 --> 00:08:39,000 Maus is a twin story. 179 00:08:39,024 --> 00:08:43,879 So it's about Art Spiegelman's father, Vladek's experience 180 00:08:43,903 --> 00:08:45,608 in the Holocaust. 181 00:08:46,530 --> 00:08:50,052 Another thread of the book is the story 182 00:08:50,076 --> 00:08:53,899 of an adult cartoonist who is struggling 183 00:08:53,924 --> 00:08:57,789 to visualize the Holocaust in comics form, 184 00:08:58,710 --> 00:09:01,194 and is also profoundly 185 00:09:01,219 --> 00:09:04,114 struggling with his relationship with his father. 186 00:09:09,601 --> 00:09:13,634 On the indicia page, there's a quotation. 187 00:09:14,684 --> 00:09:17,788 'The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.' 188 00:09:17,812 --> 00:09:19,243 Adolf Hitler. 189 00:09:20,732 --> 00:09:24,295 Rego Park, New York, circa 1958. 190 00:09:24,319 --> 00:09:25,379 It was summer. 191 00:09:25,403 --> 00:09:27,354 I remember I was 10 or 11. 192 00:09:27,707 --> 00:09:30,349 'Last one to the schoolyard, is a rotten egg!' 193 00:09:31,201 --> 00:09:33,637 I was roller skating with Howie and Steve 194 00:09:33,661 --> 00:09:35,239 till my skate came loose. 195 00:09:35,264 --> 00:09:36,264 'Ow!' 196 00:09:36,365 --> 00:09:37,808 'Hey!' Wait up fellas!' 197 00:09:37,832 --> 00:09:38,769 Rotten Egg! 198 00:09:38,793 --> 00:09:41,426 Ha ha!' 'W-wait up!' 199 00:09:42,048 --> 00:09:44,110 'Snf, snf.' 200 00:09:44,313 --> 00:09:47,029 My father was in front, fixing something. 201 00:09:47,842 --> 00:09:50,571 Artie, come to hold this a minute while I saw. 202 00:09:50,595 --> 00:09:51,822 Snrk? 203 00:09:52,135 --> 00:09:53,199 Why do you cry, Artie? 204 00:09:53,223 --> 00:09:54,575 Hold better on the wood. 205 00:09:54,599 --> 00:09:58,638 I... I fell, and my friends skated away w... without me. 206 00:09:58,895 --> 00:10:00,247 He stopped sawing. 207 00:10:00,495 --> 00:10:01,495 Friends? 208 00:10:01,666 --> 00:10:02,989 Your friends? 209 00:10:03,441 --> 00:10:07,088 If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week, 210 00:10:07,112 --> 00:10:09,960 "then you could see what it is, friends." 211 00:10:11,031 --> 00:10:13,545 So that sequence was there 212 00:10:13,570 --> 00:10:16,842 to frame what happens in the rest of the book, which is 213 00:10:16,867 --> 00:10:20,184 a difficult relationship with my father and one in which 214 00:10:20,208 --> 00:10:23,979 nightmare visions drop out of nowhere into my kid life. 215 00:10:24,003 --> 00:10:25,606 I vest you with the hood. 216 00:10:25,630 --> 00:10:27,234 I will slip it over your head from behind. 217 00:10:27,258 --> 00:10:28,235 OK, sure. 218 00:10:28,259 --> 00:10:30,945 Could turn into a murder mystery if you just tighten it properly. 219 00:10:30,969 --> 00:10:32,655 I have done this a few times. 220 00:10:32,679 --> 00:10:33,364 Let's hope I can make it... 221 00:10:33,388 --> 00:10:34,183 So I don't have to worry 222 00:10:34,208 --> 00:10:37,201 about moving a tassel from side to side because it's permanently attached. 223 00:10:37,532 --> 00:10:38,873 I hereby confer upon you 224 00:10:38,898 --> 00:10:41,247 the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa. 225 00:10:41,271 --> 00:10:43,124 Dean Breslin will invest you with a hood 226 00:10:43,148 --> 00:10:44,919 that symbolizes your degree. 227 00:10:47,502 --> 00:10:51,465 And it is my pleasure to present you with this diploma. 228 00:10:52,034 --> 00:10:53,292 Cool. Thank you. 229 00:10:55,201 --> 00:10:57,531 I need to get into my civilian... 230 00:11:03,551 --> 00:11:06,984 You think I'd know how to operate a mouse now that I'm... 231 00:11:08,015 --> 00:11:09,521 a doctor of letters. 232 00:11:10,039 --> 00:11:13,716 I thank you for this honor. 233 00:11:15,141 --> 00:11:19,329 And I was a scholar of comics since I was a little kid. 234 00:11:19,955 --> 00:11:21,948 And basically, everything I know, 235 00:11:21,973 --> 00:11:23,308 I learned from comic books. 236 00:11:24,246 --> 00:11:26,292 I learned how to read from looking at Batman 237 00:11:26,316 --> 00:11:29,303 and trying to figure out whether he was a good guy or a bad guy. 238 00:11:29,944 --> 00:11:31,755 Then I went on to learn about sex, 239 00:11:31,779 --> 00:11:33,679 contemplating Betty and Veronica, 240 00:11:34,307 --> 00:11:39,543 feminism from Little Lulu, economics from Donald Duck. 241 00:11:40,184 --> 00:11:42,650 Philosophy, that I got from Peanuts. 242 00:11:42,675 --> 00:11:46,937 Politics, I learned from Pogo, and basically, ethics, 243 00:11:46,961 --> 00:11:50,029 aesthetics, and everything else from MAD magazine. 244 00:11:53,177 --> 00:11:58,824 The comic book company is called EC Comics, these first MAD comic books. 245 00:11:58,848 --> 00:12:01,189 They also produced these horror comics, 246 00:12:01,214 --> 00:12:04,499 like Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear. 247 00:12:04,524 --> 00:12:08,953 And people who had an investment in raising children 248 00:12:08,986 --> 00:12:11,045 the right way thought this was bad for them. 249 00:12:11,571 --> 00:12:14,284 I, of course, looked at this and saw it as an early secular 250 00:12:14,322 --> 00:12:18,009 Jewish response to Auschwitz, of the dead coming back to life, 251 00:12:18,034 --> 00:12:21,151 of atrocities taking place in the midst of daily life. 252 00:12:23,420 --> 00:12:25,268 My mother took me with her on her chores. 253 00:12:25,292 --> 00:12:27,312 We went into a drugstore. 254 00:12:27,336 --> 00:12:31,191 I was looking at a spinner rack of paperbacks. 255 00:12:31,215 --> 00:12:33,484 There was a tiny little image on this book that 256 00:12:33,508 --> 00:12:37,364 was just in a rack, and I couldn't get my eyes off it. 257 00:12:37,388 --> 00:12:38,864 It was only that high. 258 00:12:39,312 --> 00:12:43,027 And I was like, wow, that's an amazing thing. 259 00:12:43,508 --> 00:12:46,037 Then my mother was getting ready to cart us out, and I said, 260 00:12:46,062 --> 00:12:47,377 I've got to have this. 261 00:12:47,403 --> 00:12:49,938 And absolutely not because she was 262 00:12:49,963 --> 00:12:52,962 on a very tight leash with spare change and money 263 00:12:52,986 --> 00:12:54,987 in my father's household. 264 00:12:55,863 --> 00:13:00,219 And I just wouldn't go without it, and so she let me have it. 265 00:13:00,243 --> 00:13:02,179 And it's the picture that changed my life 266 00:13:02,203 --> 00:13:03,973 because then as I looked through the insides 267 00:13:03,997 --> 00:13:07,001 and found things like a parody of Mickey Mouse 268 00:13:07,026 --> 00:13:08,413 called Mickey Rodent. 269 00:13:08,954 --> 00:13:13,150 It's like I had never seen anything like that in all my five years. 270 00:13:13,831 --> 00:13:16,936 And it just became a touchstone for me. 271 00:13:16,961 --> 00:13:19,655 And I decided that whatever these... 272 00:13:19,679 --> 00:13:20,997 there are people that do this. 273 00:13:21,022 --> 00:13:23,359 I want to be one of the people that makes this kind of thing. 274 00:13:23,383 --> 00:13:26,609 That cover was the cover that launched a thousand 275 00:13:26,634 --> 00:13:28,970 misbegotten thoughts and brains. 276 00:13:33,376 --> 00:13:37,760 Both of us were warped by a very specific cover of MAD. 277 00:13:37,785 --> 00:13:39,114 - Which one? - Number eleven. 278 00:13:39,139 --> 00:13:41,174 They had that covered by Basil Wolverton. 279 00:13:41,199 --> 00:13:42,308 It was the one where 280 00:13:42,333 --> 00:13:44,701 there's a drawing of Lena Hyena kind of character 281 00:13:44,726 --> 00:13:46,476 against the photograph of a building. 282 00:13:46,501 --> 00:13:48,648 It's made to look like a Life magazine with... 283 00:13:48,673 --> 00:13:51,871 The mad logo with this red rectangle, just like Life. 284 00:13:51,896 --> 00:13:53,293 And I thought, oh, my god, 285 00:13:53,318 --> 00:13:56,858 they're making fun of Life magazine in this most wacky, goofy way. 286 00:13:56,883 --> 00:13:58,501 It was just completely... 287 00:13:58,526 --> 00:13:59,544 Shocking. 288 00:13:59,569 --> 00:14:01,487 It put a big crack in my world. 289 00:14:01,646 --> 00:14:02,745 Me, too. 290 00:14:04,913 --> 00:14:06,265 This, of course, 291 00:14:06,290 --> 00:14:09,662 was the very first issue of MAD magazine. 292 00:14:09,950 --> 00:14:15,681 Started off as a comic book, which a lot of the readers don't realize. 293 00:14:16,133 --> 00:14:18,373 Harvey Kurtzman was a cartoonist, 294 00:14:18,398 --> 00:14:21,661 a comics writer, and an editor and invented something 295 00:14:21,686 --> 00:14:23,772 profound and important in the world, 296 00:14:23,797 --> 00:14:26,239 the style and humor of MAD. 297 00:14:27,923 --> 00:14:31,508 A MAD RECORD IT'S A GAS! 298 00:14:31,857 --> 00:14:33,502 It's a gas. 299 00:14:34,980 --> 00:14:38,236 GOOD HOUSEBREAKING 300 00:14:39,257 --> 00:14:42,084 WHEN THEY SAY... THE LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA WOULD BE A NATIONAL CALAMITY! 301 00:14:42,108 --> 00:14:45,620 IT REALLY MEANS... I OWN A LIQUOR STORE! 302 00:14:46,623 --> 00:14:48,821 BITTER HOMES AND GARDENS 303 00:14:48,845 --> 00:14:51,520 SEE THE NEW 1958 UNDERGROUND HOME 304 00:14:54,154 --> 00:14:55,649 "LOOK, MOM! NO MORE CAVITIES!" 305 00:14:55,674 --> 00:14:58,912 YOUR SON IS RUNNING AROUND WITH A TEEN-AGE GANG... ONE OF THESE DAYS, HE'LL GET HIS TEETH KNOCKED OUT! 306 00:14:58,936 --> 00:15:00,786 Basically, the message embedded in it 307 00:15:00,811 --> 00:15:03,919 was, the whole adult world is lying to you. 308 00:15:04,725 --> 00:15:08,130 And we admit, we're adults, so good luck, kid. 309 00:15:08,290 --> 00:15:11,439 So it basically was asking you to deeply question things. 310 00:15:11,464 --> 00:15:13,950 And I believe it was an important aspect 311 00:15:13,975 --> 00:15:17,522 of what led to the generation that protested the Vietnam War. 312 00:15:21,956 --> 00:15:24,520 By the time we moved to Queens, 313 00:15:25,268 --> 00:15:27,381 I was about nine years old. 314 00:15:28,907 --> 00:15:31,501 In my parents' bedroom, there was a large blow-up 315 00:15:31,526 --> 00:15:34,205 of a very small photo they had of my brother, Richieu, 316 00:15:34,230 --> 00:15:36,270 and it was there all the time. 317 00:15:36,983 --> 00:15:41,186 So I knew I had a brother who didn't survive the war. 318 00:15:41,951 --> 00:15:46,293 Richieu was about four years old in a ghetto 319 00:15:46,777 --> 00:15:49,964 with my mother's sister, his aunt. 320 00:15:50,091 --> 00:15:51,649 And when the ghetto was being cleared out 321 00:15:51,673 --> 00:15:53,830 and the people were being sent to Auschwitz, 322 00:15:53,929 --> 00:15:56,512 Tosha, my mother's sister, poisoned her own children, 323 00:15:56,537 --> 00:15:59,614 Richieu, and herself, rather than let them go to the gas. 324 00:16:02,583 --> 00:16:07,066 My parents spent a lot of time after the war looking for him 325 00:16:07,091 --> 00:16:10,237 because they couldn't believe he had been poisoned. 326 00:16:12,539 --> 00:16:15,238 I knew he was a good-looking kid, 327 00:16:15,410 --> 00:16:16,924 but I didn't know much about him. 328 00:16:16,949 --> 00:16:18,509 And the implication... I don't remember 329 00:16:18,533 --> 00:16:22,508 it being said in so many words... was, oi, we had a kid. 330 00:16:22,533 --> 00:16:23,307 He was fine. 331 00:16:23,554 --> 00:16:24,961 What do you need this one for? 332 00:16:25,538 --> 00:16:28,641 When I was growing up in the '50s, 333 00:16:29,048 --> 00:16:32,288 the term Holocaust did not really exist. 334 00:16:33,468 --> 00:16:35,445 That was never mentioned in school. 335 00:16:35,470 --> 00:16:39,392 I knew a lot of that stuff from my mother, 336 00:16:39,417 --> 00:16:45,106 who had had relatives who were able to get out of Vienna. 337 00:16:45,131 --> 00:16:46,772 But this was not really something 338 00:16:46,894 --> 00:16:48,581 that people talked about. 339 00:16:48,605 --> 00:16:51,011 And I think that for a lot of people, 340 00:16:51,036 --> 00:16:54,164 this is why the Eichmann trial was so important. 341 00:16:55,328 --> 00:16:58,296 The Germans went from one house to the other 342 00:16:58,323 --> 00:17:01,004 and took the Jewish men from their homes. 343 00:17:01,137 --> 00:17:03,075 They didn't care how old they were. 344 00:17:03,172 --> 00:17:04,357 My father, too. 345 00:17:04,382 --> 00:17:07,112 They loaded them onto a truck and drove them away. 346 00:17:07,137 --> 00:17:09,347 I ran after them into the woods. 347 00:17:09,638 --> 00:17:13,142 All the Jews who had been taken were already dead. 348 00:17:15,250 --> 00:17:19,709 My father was also dead, shot many places. 349 00:17:21,850 --> 00:17:22,899 And that was the first time 350 00:17:22,923 --> 00:17:28,236 I was getting a sense of some more textured detail about what 351 00:17:28,269 --> 00:17:29,748 my parents had gone through. 352 00:17:29,773 --> 00:17:35,585 And it's when I'd hear my father talking 353 00:17:35,610 --> 00:17:39,910 about passing through Mengele for the selections. 354 00:17:40,680 --> 00:17:42,545 So they were to that. 355 00:17:42,570 --> 00:17:44,381 Sometimes we'd watch it at our house, 356 00:17:44,406 --> 00:17:46,581 sometimes with other survivor families. 357 00:17:46,910 --> 00:17:49,972 He was 13 in 1961. 358 00:17:50,124 --> 00:17:54,396 And this was a global televised event. 359 00:17:54,420 --> 00:17:56,982 After he watched the Eichmann trial, 360 00:17:57,006 --> 00:18:00,652 he went looking in his parents' bedroom 361 00:18:00,676 --> 00:18:02,696 on their forbidden bookshelf. 362 00:18:02,866 --> 00:18:04,964 And that forbidden bookshelf, of course, 363 00:18:04,989 --> 00:18:06,883 was catnip for me. 364 00:18:06,974 --> 00:18:10,120 And so it included things like Lady Chatterley's Lover 365 00:18:10,144 --> 00:18:12,873 and a book called The Black Book, 366 00:18:12,897 --> 00:18:16,375 which had some photographs in it that were incredibly disturbing. 367 00:18:16,399 --> 00:18:18,712 There were small booklets that came out after the war, 368 00:18:18,736 --> 00:18:22,674 giving aspects of the Jewish disaster in various towns 369 00:18:22,698 --> 00:18:27,556 and cities, books with little drawings by survivors. 370 00:18:29,933 --> 00:18:31,534 That was very, very vivid for me. 371 00:18:40,662 --> 00:18:43,528 I started making comics, first, copying others, 372 00:18:43,552 --> 00:18:45,947 then using joke books to get jokes that I would illustrate 373 00:18:45,971 --> 00:18:47,324 in comics form. 374 00:18:48,474 --> 00:18:51,703 When I was about 11 or 12, I was getting published 375 00:18:51,727 --> 00:18:53,079 in children's magazines. 376 00:18:53,104 --> 00:18:54,665 There was a local paper in Queens 377 00:18:54,689 --> 00:18:56,375 that published a little column that says, 378 00:18:56,399 --> 00:18:59,706 budding artist wants attention. 379 00:19:00,069 --> 00:19:02,464 Maybe two years later, I went back and got a job 380 00:19:02,488 --> 00:19:04,265 at the Long Island Post. 381 00:19:04,290 --> 00:19:07,259 And soon, I was doing stuff for my junior high school paper, 382 00:19:07,283 --> 00:19:09,738 then editor of my high school paper. 383 00:19:11,232 --> 00:19:14,822 - AND WHAT (PRAY TELL) ARE YOU? - I, TO BE SURE, AM A PHILOSOPHER... 384 00:19:14,899 --> 00:19:19,827 A ROVING SOUL, OBSERVING EXISTENCE THROUGH THE BAY WINDOW OF MORTALITY... 385 00:19:24,530 --> 00:19:26,602 MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR! 386 00:19:26,763 --> 00:19:30,966 I'd been doing some drawings for Paul Krassner's Realist magazine. 387 00:19:33,020 --> 00:19:36,831 I started working for fanzines like Wild! And Smudge 388 00:19:36,855 --> 00:19:40,000 with my friend, Jay Lynch, who was a seasoned veteran two 389 00:19:40,024 --> 00:19:41,585 years older than me. 390 00:19:41,609 --> 00:19:43,803 We were being published in purple ink on these very 391 00:19:43,828 --> 00:19:45,936 inexpensive copying methods and finally 392 00:19:45,960 --> 00:19:48,232 started my own called Blasé. 393 00:19:49,088 --> 00:19:52,526 And at the time, I was fixated on artists that are still 394 00:19:52,550 --> 00:19:54,486 important to me to one degree or another, which 395 00:19:54,510 --> 00:19:58,317 is the core of the EC MAD gang, which was Jack Davis, Wally Wood, 396 00:19:58,342 --> 00:19:59,942 and Bill Elder. 397 00:20:01,259 --> 00:20:02,828 At some point, I'm looking at a baseball card 398 00:20:02,852 --> 00:20:04,890 and realizing that the tiny drawing 399 00:20:04,915 --> 00:20:07,958 on the back with the stats, it was clearly Jack Davis. 400 00:20:07,982 --> 00:20:10,585 And I went, gee, I'd love to have something by Jack Davis 401 00:20:10,609 --> 00:20:12,593 to look at an original of. 402 00:20:13,614 --> 00:20:16,341 And so I call up, and they put me 403 00:20:16,365 --> 00:20:17,759 through to this guy, Woody Gelman, 404 00:20:17,783 --> 00:20:20,269 who's the head of the Creative Development Department. 405 00:20:20,661 --> 00:20:24,362 I mentioned that I'm doing this amateur magazine called Blasé, 406 00:20:24,387 --> 00:20:25,892 and I'm going to the High School of Art and Design, 407 00:20:25,916 --> 00:20:27,185 and I want to be a cartoonist. 408 00:20:27,209 --> 00:20:29,521 And he says, well, why don't you come 409 00:20:29,545 --> 00:20:31,440 down, bring me a copy of your magazine, 410 00:20:31,464 --> 00:20:34,252 and I'll give you a couple of those baseball card drawings? 411 00:20:34,928 --> 00:20:37,780 So I cut school, and I went there as soon as I could. 412 00:20:37,804 --> 00:20:40,907 He took me to lunch in a little lunch commissary of Topps, 413 00:20:40,931 --> 00:20:42,242 and we started talking. 414 00:20:42,266 --> 00:20:43,452 I gave him my magazine. 415 00:20:43,476 --> 00:20:44,661 We had a very long lunch. 416 00:20:44,685 --> 00:20:48,916 And that was pretty much the end of it until I turned 18. 417 00:20:48,940 --> 00:20:50,792 And at that point, a letter comes 418 00:20:50,816 --> 00:20:52,461 in the mail from Woody Gelman, asking me 419 00:20:52,485 --> 00:20:55,415 if I would like to get a job working for Topps Gum. 420 00:20:55,696 --> 00:20:59,093 It turns out that Woody had kept the Blasé 421 00:20:59,117 --> 00:21:01,887 and had clipped a piece of paper to it, saying, call this kid 422 00:21:01,911 --> 00:21:03,096 when he turns 18. 423 00:21:03,121 --> 00:21:04,598 He asked if I wanted to work there. 424 00:21:04,622 --> 00:21:07,310 And I really wanted to do that, but I had to tell him, 425 00:21:07,334 --> 00:21:08,477 I have to go to college. 426 00:21:08,501 --> 00:21:10,937 Otherwise, I'm going to get drafted. 427 00:21:10,961 --> 00:21:11,564 He said, fine. 428 00:21:11,588 --> 00:21:13,065 Just work for us for the summer. 429 00:21:13,089 --> 00:21:14,132 And so I did. 430 00:21:14,157 --> 00:21:15,484 I saw that they were doing another series 431 00:21:15,508 --> 00:21:19,447 of funny Valentine cards, things like, your teeth are like stars. 432 00:21:19,471 --> 00:21:21,281 You flip it over, they come out at night. 433 00:21:21,305 --> 00:21:22,866 I said, can I try some of those? 434 00:21:22,890 --> 00:21:24,826 I had the thrill of seeing the finishes done 435 00:21:24,850 --> 00:21:27,329 by Wally Wood, who was another one of the MAD artists. 436 00:21:27,353 --> 00:21:30,492 This was really exciting for an 18-year-old me. 437 00:21:30,586 --> 00:21:35,024 And Woody just became my surrogate father. 438 00:21:36,508 --> 00:21:39,299 All through my trying to figure out what kind of cartoonist 439 00:21:39,323 --> 00:21:42,625 I could be, Topps Bubble Gum was my Medici. 440 00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:48,705 I worked at Topps from 1965 as a summer job to 1986. 441 00:21:48,730 --> 00:21:50,853 And so it gave me a gig whenever I wanted it. 442 00:21:51,906 --> 00:21:55,241 HARPUR COLLEGE, SUNY BINGHAMTON, 1965 443 00:21:55,631 --> 00:21:59,319 I do have a strong memory of Art's dorm room 444 00:21:59,343 --> 00:22:02,280 at Harpur College, later the State University 445 00:22:02,304 --> 00:22:04,283 of New York at Binghamton. 446 00:22:04,307 --> 00:22:07,161 And he had his comic books there. 447 00:22:07,442 --> 00:22:12,930 And so I remember going there and smoking pot and reading Doctor Strange. 448 00:22:16,274 --> 00:22:20,508 I had written a paper for my Art 101 History class. 449 00:22:20,543 --> 00:22:22,966 I analyzed the story called the Master Race 450 00:22:22,992 --> 00:22:25,068 by Bernard Krigstein. 451 00:22:25,693 --> 00:22:26,835 It was singular. 452 00:22:26,860 --> 00:22:30,891 The Holocaust, on any level, was just not a serious subject in comics. 453 00:22:30,916 --> 00:22:33,688 And all of a sudden, there was a story taking it very seriously, 454 00:22:33,712 --> 00:22:35,565 presented in a comics language 455 00:22:35,590 --> 00:22:38,269 that wasn't like any other comics language I knew. 456 00:22:39,601 --> 00:22:40,987 When he was trying to show something, 457 00:22:41,011 --> 00:22:44,712 whisking by and moving, he wasn't using speedlines. 458 00:22:44,736 --> 00:22:46,256 YOU OUGHT TO SEE ME WHEN I REALLY TRY! 459 00:22:46,488 --> 00:22:47,856 YOU CAN HIT! 460 00:22:48,350 --> 00:22:50,787 He was using Nude Descending a Staircase 461 00:22:50,812 --> 00:22:53,124 as a model of how to show movement. 462 00:22:53,148 --> 00:22:55,375 So he was just inventing, wholesale, 463 00:22:55,399 --> 00:22:57,335 a new set of vocabularies that could be applied 464 00:22:57,359 --> 00:22:59,311 to comics, mind-blowingly. 465 00:22:59,678 --> 00:23:03,644 I'd done a long paper explaining how significant this was. 466 00:23:04,509 --> 00:23:06,786 An underground filmmaker, Ken Jacobs, 467 00:23:06,811 --> 00:23:10,308 who was teaching at Harpur College, saw this piece 468 00:23:10,332 --> 00:23:11,855 and sought me out. 469 00:23:12,209 --> 00:23:14,033 Of course, Ken loved 470 00:23:14,058 --> 00:23:15,765 the idea of underground comics. 471 00:23:15,790 --> 00:23:18,504 And so they hit it off right away. 472 00:23:19,006 --> 00:23:22,403 He was smart as can be and profound, 473 00:23:22,626 --> 00:23:25,963 somebody who felt things very deeply. 474 00:23:28,457 --> 00:23:30,703 "Avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs." 475 00:23:30,985 --> 00:23:33,661 The high school dropout who became a distinguished professor 476 00:23:33,686 --> 00:23:36,709 at SUNY Binghamton, my mentor, and irascible best friend 477 00:23:36,733 --> 00:23:38,335 for over 30 years. 478 00:23:38,789 --> 00:23:42,255 He taught me how to look at art and to see myself as some sort 479 00:23:42,285 --> 00:23:43,471 "of an artist." 480 00:23:43,687 --> 00:23:45,079 He was basically 481 00:23:45,104 --> 00:23:49,763 getting me past my slob-snob self of being willing to concede 482 00:23:49,788 --> 00:23:52,724 that art might exist in museums, as well as on newsprint. 483 00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:55,316 "Stop being such a slob-snob, Art. 484 00:23:55,341 --> 00:23:58,022 Just think of the paintings as the giant comic panels. 485 00:23:58,085 --> 00:23:59,085 Ohh." 486 00:24:00,049 --> 00:24:01,385 As I was open to it, 487 00:24:01,410 --> 00:24:05,600 certain painters struck me as having a family resemblance to cartoonists. 488 00:24:06,103 --> 00:24:07,690 Max Beckmann and George Grosz seemed 489 00:24:07,715 --> 00:24:11,953 like they were no different than Jack Davis and Bill Elder in some ways. 490 00:24:18,697 --> 00:24:24,150 I feel like I'm at last finishing off one of the world's longest-standing incompletes. 491 00:24:25,444 --> 00:24:28,166 I never even finished my undergraduate studies. 492 00:24:28,191 --> 00:24:31,516 And therefore, I never got to sit anywhere near where you're sitting now. 493 00:24:31,782 --> 00:24:34,056 While I was still a freshman, I inherited the editorship 494 00:24:34,081 --> 00:24:36,208 of Harpur's Humor magazine. 495 00:24:36,233 --> 00:24:37,770 When it was delivered to the printers, 496 00:24:38,060 --> 00:24:40,288 they confiscated the boards because they 497 00:24:40,312 --> 00:24:43,340 considered some of the cartoons I had drawn blasphemous. 498 00:24:44,316 --> 00:24:46,003 I had been on the dean's list. 499 00:24:46,027 --> 00:24:48,756 I had also been on every psychedelic substance that found 500 00:24:48,780 --> 00:24:52,701 its way into the tri-state area in those wonder years called the '60s. 501 00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:56,847 And I left not in a blaze of glory, 502 00:24:56,871 --> 00:25:00,171 but in a blaze of ambulance sirens and flashing lights. 503 00:25:02,210 --> 00:25:04,230 I was convinced I was god. 504 00:25:04,254 --> 00:25:06,232 And Harpur's school psychiatrist thought 505 00:25:06,256 --> 00:25:08,401 I should do some advanced theological studies 506 00:25:08,425 --> 00:25:10,474 at Binghamton State Mental Hospital. 507 00:25:12,345 --> 00:25:14,656 What happened to me the winter I flipped out 508 00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:16,741 was that I had gotten the bends. 509 00:25:16,765 --> 00:25:19,579 I had surfaced too quickly from the overheated bunker 510 00:25:19,603 --> 00:25:22,872 of my traumatized family into the heady atmosphere of freedom 511 00:25:22,896 --> 00:25:25,875 and possibility offered by this amazing place 512 00:25:25,900 --> 00:25:28,002 at that amazing time. 513 00:25:29,988 --> 00:25:32,035 SIGN PETITIONS TO END THE WAR NOW! 514 00:25:44,168 --> 00:25:47,397 It was 1968, Lower East Side, 515 00:25:47,421 --> 00:25:50,192 and we were taking a photo shoot. 516 00:25:50,216 --> 00:25:52,611 What I thought of at the time as a little, 517 00:25:52,636 --> 00:25:57,449 old Jewish man in a long woolen coat came over to watch us. 518 00:25:57,473 --> 00:25:58,993 And it turned out, of course, that he 519 00:25:59,017 --> 00:26:00,870 was a little, young Jewish man. 520 00:26:00,894 --> 00:26:03,538 He was Art Spiegelman, and he was 21. 521 00:26:03,562 --> 00:26:07,293 He gave us a photocopy of his comic. 522 00:26:07,317 --> 00:26:10,629 And I said, I do comics, too. 523 00:26:10,653 --> 00:26:13,090 We became real friends at that point. 524 00:26:13,114 --> 00:26:16,662 And it launched me into being one of the underground comics set. 525 00:26:27,667 --> 00:26:31,359 I had done Maus originally as a three-page comic strip 526 00:26:31,383 --> 00:26:35,571 for an underground comic called Funny Aminals in 1971. 527 00:26:35,595 --> 00:26:39,784 The only requirement was that it used anthropomorphic characters. 528 00:26:40,131 --> 00:26:41,661 At the time I was trying to figure this out, 529 00:26:41,685 --> 00:26:45,246 I went to sit in on some classes of Ken Jacobs showing 530 00:26:45,270 --> 00:26:50,460 some old animated cartoons with cats and mice romping around. 531 00:26:50,660 --> 00:26:53,397 And then he was showing some racist cartoons from the same period. 532 00:26:53,422 --> 00:26:56,960 And it became clear that there was a connection between the two. 533 00:26:59,915 --> 00:27:01,099 At that point, I said, I have it. 534 00:27:01,123 --> 00:27:04,634 I'll do a comic book story about the Ku Klux cats and 535 00:27:04,659 --> 00:27:08,521 lynching of some mice and deal with racism in America 536 00:27:08,545 --> 00:27:10,647 using cats and mice as the vehicle. 537 00:27:11,082 --> 00:27:13,234 And that lasted about 10 minutes before I realized 538 00:27:13,258 --> 00:27:15,403 I just didn't have enough background knowledge 539 00:27:15,427 --> 00:27:17,289 to make this thing happen well. 540 00:27:17,679 --> 00:27:21,098 And instantly thereafter, the synapses connected, 541 00:27:21,123 --> 00:27:22,826 and I realized that I had a metaphor of oppression 542 00:27:22,850 --> 00:27:24,853 much closer to my own past. 543 00:27:24,878 --> 00:27:28,290 The entire Nazi project, the Final Solution, 544 00:27:28,314 --> 00:27:31,755 ended up dividing humanity into various species. 545 00:27:32,647 --> 00:27:35,005 What was involved was the extermination of the Jews, 546 00:27:35,029 --> 00:27:38,050 and extermination is a word reserved for vermin. 547 00:27:38,074 --> 00:27:39,385 It's not what happens to people. 548 00:27:39,409 --> 00:27:41,491 What happens to people is they get murdered. 549 00:27:42,787 --> 00:27:45,182 This is an underground comic that came out 550 00:27:45,207 --> 00:27:48,351 in 1972, Funny Aminals. 551 00:27:48,751 --> 00:27:49,726 I was in it. 552 00:27:49,751 --> 00:27:51,438 And it was very important to me because the cover was 553 00:27:51,462 --> 00:27:54,734 by Robert Crumb, and he was the god king of underground comics, 554 00:27:54,758 --> 00:27:58,445 setting that whole medium and idiom in motion. 555 00:27:58,469 --> 00:28:01,323 But it had other great cartoonists in it as well, 556 00:28:01,347 --> 00:28:03,868 so it was a gathering of a tribe. 557 00:28:04,230 --> 00:28:08,330 It starts, incidentally, with a drawing based on a photo 558 00:28:08,354 --> 00:28:10,499 by Margaret Bourke-White that was 559 00:28:10,523 --> 00:28:14,897 the prisoners at Buchenwald being released in Life magazine. 560 00:28:14,922 --> 00:28:18,382 And that photo is quoted here with the mice. 561 00:28:18,747 --> 00:28:20,134 And there's a little arrow toward one 562 00:28:20,158 --> 00:28:22,710 of the mice in the second row that says Papa, 563 00:28:22,735 --> 00:28:25,431 and it's all framed as being in a photo album. 564 00:28:25,627 --> 00:28:27,280 So I'll read it to you. 565 00:28:27,916 --> 00:28:28,852 "Maus." 566 00:28:28,877 --> 00:28:31,450 When I was a young mouse in Rego Park, New York, 567 00:28:31,475 --> 00:28:33,774 my papa used to tell me bedtime stories 568 00:28:33,798 --> 00:28:36,602 about life in the old country during the war. 569 00:28:37,119 --> 00:28:39,571 And so Mickey Die Katzen made all the mice 570 00:28:39,595 --> 00:28:41,740 to move into one part from the town. 571 00:28:41,764 --> 00:28:43,662 It was very crowded in the ghetto. 572 00:28:43,891 --> 00:28:44,891 Golly! 573 00:28:45,739 --> 00:28:47,704 It was fences put up all around. 574 00:28:47,728 --> 00:28:49,539 No mouse could go out from the ghetto. 575 00:28:49,563 --> 00:28:51,958 No food and no medicines could go in. 576 00:28:51,982 --> 00:28:54,795 They treated us like we were insects, worse. 577 00:28:54,819 --> 00:28:56,436 I can't even describe. 578 00:28:56,574 --> 00:28:59,087 "Psst, you vant a potato to buy?" 579 00:29:00,092 --> 00:29:03,844 I was really proud to be in this comic when it came out. 580 00:29:03,869 --> 00:29:07,390 And I realized I'd crossed the rubicon into a different area 581 00:29:07,414 --> 00:29:08,517 of comics making. 582 00:29:08,541 --> 00:29:11,436 I would say, this is the end of my juvenilia 583 00:29:11,460 --> 00:29:13,872 and the beginning of whatever comes after. 584 00:29:21,007 --> 00:29:24,117 I found myself moving out to San Francisco. 585 00:29:27,268 --> 00:29:29,162 The San Francisco underground comics scene 586 00:29:29,193 --> 00:29:32,146 was something really new fermenting and exploding. 587 00:29:32,449 --> 00:29:35,138 PROXIMITY SUSTAINS A MOVEMENT: 588 00:29:35,174 --> 00:29:40,395 UNDERGROUND COMIX ARTISTS and COMPANIES IN THE MISSION DISTRICT, 1972-1973 589 00:29:49,748 --> 00:29:52,477 About a year before, I got to Topps Bubble Gum. 590 00:29:52,501 --> 00:29:55,981 And I was going to the same offices in Brooklyn. 591 00:29:56,005 --> 00:29:58,400 Woody found out I was going to San Francisco, and he said, 592 00:29:58,424 --> 00:29:59,776 you might want to look up Robert. 593 00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:01,069 Look, he's a good guy. 594 00:30:01,093 --> 00:30:04,114 So I took his address and went to see him. 595 00:30:04,138 --> 00:30:06,867 This was shortly after Crumb's LSD trip 596 00:30:06,891 --> 00:30:09,662 that changed his approach to comics and his life. 597 00:30:09,686 --> 00:30:12,372 We started talking about Woody, about comics, and stuff. 598 00:30:12,396 --> 00:30:15,000 And then he said, do you want to see the stuff I've been doing? 599 00:30:15,024 --> 00:30:16,960 And he showed me the pages of Zap 600 00:30:16,984 --> 00:30:20,864 that hadn't been published yet, and they totally blew me away. 601 00:30:22,364 --> 00:30:26,219 Seeing Crumb's work was a kind of revelation. 602 00:30:26,243 --> 00:30:29,306 Crumb brought that blue collar, crosshatched, 603 00:30:29,330 --> 00:30:32,517 gritty style back that hearkened back to the comics 604 00:30:32,541 --> 00:30:35,604 of the '20s and '30s, but also, much more importantly, 605 00:30:35,628 --> 00:30:38,899 began to discover and show that comics didn't have to have punch 606 00:30:38,923 --> 00:30:41,032 lines, and they could be about anything. 607 00:30:44,386 --> 00:30:46,031 Robert, in effect, took 608 00:30:46,055 --> 00:30:49,451 comic books from the industrial place where they were, 609 00:30:49,475 --> 00:30:51,995 which was aimed mostly at children, 610 00:30:52,019 --> 00:30:54,331 and brought it into the world of grown-ups 611 00:30:54,356 --> 00:30:58,544 and into the world of the cartoonists as artists. 612 00:30:58,568 --> 00:31:02,214 So we were trying to make comics that were the work of artists, 613 00:31:02,238 --> 00:31:05,800 the work of people wanting to express themselves, 614 00:31:05,824 --> 00:31:07,844 and do it completely uncensored. 615 00:31:07,868 --> 00:31:09,930 For me, it's always the printed book 616 00:31:09,954 --> 00:31:10,931 is the finished thing. 617 00:31:10,955 --> 00:31:13,850 I don't care that much about the original art. 618 00:31:13,874 --> 00:31:15,853 It's different from fine art, where 619 00:31:15,877 --> 00:31:18,647 you see a thing on the wall and the original art. 620 00:31:18,671 --> 00:31:21,274 But to me, this is the finished art. 621 00:31:21,298 --> 00:31:24,611 And there's was always a big thrill to see the printed book. 622 00:31:24,635 --> 00:31:28,323 There's this great moment when the book's arrived, 623 00:31:28,347 --> 00:31:31,910 and you got to see how it actually turned out in print. 624 00:31:31,935 --> 00:31:34,746 Sometimes it's like, oh, no, the colors aren't right. 625 00:31:34,770 --> 00:31:35,998 No, the registrations aren't... 626 00:31:36,022 --> 00:31:38,375 I was happy if the page was right. 627 00:31:38,399 --> 00:31:40,877 Ron Turner used to get the page order wrong a lot of times. 628 00:31:40,901 --> 00:31:42,213 I couldn't believe it. 629 00:31:42,237 --> 00:31:43,884 It was terrible. 630 00:31:45,406 --> 00:31:49,345 I met Art at the San Francisco Comic Book Store 631 00:31:49,369 --> 00:31:52,055 on 23rd Street in the Mission District, 632 00:31:52,079 --> 00:31:55,642 which was where I met pretty much everybody. 633 00:31:55,666 --> 00:32:00,897 We went to a little lunch place a few blocks away. 634 00:32:00,921 --> 00:32:05,611 That eventually became the cover of Short Order Comix Number 1. 635 00:32:05,635 --> 00:32:09,155 So, I don't know, within an hour of meeting, 636 00:32:09,179 --> 00:32:12,266 we were already plotting to put out comics together. 637 00:32:13,685 --> 00:32:17,915 Art and I are the characters in this six-panel comic. 638 00:32:17,939 --> 00:32:19,416 And Art says, "I tell ya, Griffy, 639 00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:21,251 comics are this year's hula hoop. 640 00:32:21,275 --> 00:32:24,170 If we play our cards right, our mag will be in every 641 00:32:24,194 --> 00:32:26,007 dentist's office in the country." 642 00:32:26,031 --> 00:32:27,842 And I say, "Yeah, right." 643 00:32:27,866 --> 00:32:31,143 But what do you say, let's blast a few ducks, huh? 644 00:32:31,571 --> 00:32:32,650 Sigh. 645 00:32:32,675 --> 00:32:34,472 Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines! 646 00:32:34,496 --> 00:32:36,558 An editor's lot is not an easy one. 647 00:32:36,582 --> 00:32:38,144 You're all wound up, Art. 648 00:32:38,239 --> 00:32:39,142 Relax. 649 00:32:39,167 --> 00:32:40,547 Frisco's got everything. 650 00:32:40,572 --> 00:32:43,009 "After this, we go for a cable car ride." 651 00:32:44,128 --> 00:32:47,278 Art and my personality are pretty clearly illustrated here, 652 00:32:47,302 --> 00:32:48,118 I have to say. 653 00:32:48,143 --> 00:32:51,365 Yeah, we ended up creating an underground comix manifesto. 654 00:32:51,390 --> 00:32:52,866 "It is the artist's responsibility 655 00:32:52,890 --> 00:32:55,339 to hate, loathe, and despise formica. 656 00:32:55,364 --> 00:32:56,995 Comics must be personal! 657 00:32:57,363 --> 00:32:58,663 It is the reader's responsibility 658 00:32:58,687 --> 00:32:59,914 to understand the artist. 659 00:32:59,938 --> 00:33:01,537 Gibber-gabber-blort! 660 00:33:01,562 --> 00:33:03,209 It is also the artist's responsibility 661 00:33:03,233 --> 00:33:04,919 to understand the artist. 662 00:33:05,348 --> 00:33:07,047 Mental instability is a tool, and it 663 00:33:07,071 --> 00:33:08,805 must be kept well shortened. 664 00:33:09,212 --> 00:33:10,718 Comic books are their own lesson. 665 00:33:10,742 --> 00:33:12,010 We serve no master. 666 00:33:12,034 --> 00:33:15,347 Efficient and callous capitalist exploitation must be condemned 667 00:33:15,371 --> 00:33:18,183 and deplored at every turn and replaced by inefficient 668 00:33:18,207 --> 00:33:20,710 "and humane capitalist exploitation." 669 00:33:20,782 --> 00:33:22,381 THE OLD ORDER - READ! 670 00:33:25,119 --> 00:33:27,611 THE NEW ORDER 671 00:33:27,923 --> 00:33:29,960 SHOT ORDER 672 00:33:33,716 --> 00:33:38,038 We were all worried about making a living out of doing our kind of comics, 673 00:33:38,157 --> 00:33:40,663 but Art always seemed to be OK with money. 674 00:33:40,687 --> 00:33:42,892 So one day he asked me, 675 00:33:42,995 --> 00:33:47,050 how would you like to work on Wacky Packages with me? 676 00:33:47,588 --> 00:33:50,037 So Art had created Wacky Packages, 677 00:33:50,062 --> 00:33:53,344 which were parodies of consumer items. 678 00:33:53,503 --> 00:33:55,329 They were little stickers that came 679 00:33:55,354 --> 00:33:58,474 with a square of bubble gum sold by Topps, 680 00:33:58,858 --> 00:34:01,352 and they were a huge hit with kids. 681 00:34:01,752 --> 00:34:03,145 I said, OK. 682 00:34:03,170 --> 00:34:04,457 Well, what do I do? 683 00:34:04,963 --> 00:34:08,402 We take a product, put it in front of us on a table, 684 00:34:08,426 --> 00:34:10,361 and try to think of how to make fun of it 685 00:34:10,385 --> 00:34:13,156 from the perspective of a seven-year-old boy. 686 00:34:13,180 --> 00:34:15,631 This was a very low form of humor. 687 00:34:16,433 --> 00:34:19,970 Art told me the way to think about working for Topps Bubble Gum 688 00:34:19,995 --> 00:34:22,333 was that you have to realize that children at an early age 689 00:34:22,357 --> 00:34:26,880 go through three stages that you have to commercialize. 690 00:34:26,904 --> 00:34:29,590 The first stage, when they're very little, 691 00:34:29,614 --> 00:34:32,147 you can describe by the word hello. 692 00:34:32,482 --> 00:34:36,807 They just, hello, I'm here, benign. 693 00:34:37,205 --> 00:34:39,724 The second stage has to get a little bit older, is, 694 00:34:39,749 --> 00:34:42,438 I'm great, when they develop an ego. 695 00:34:43,045 --> 00:34:46,857 That's really prime Wacky Package age. 696 00:34:46,881 --> 00:34:50,028 And the final stage, which comes a little bit after that, 697 00:34:50,052 --> 00:34:51,334 is fuck you. 698 00:34:51,969 --> 00:34:57,284 So hello, I'm great, fuck you describes the market 699 00:34:57,309 --> 00:34:59,289 for Topps Bubble Gum products. 700 00:34:59,379 --> 00:35:02,162 GARBAGE PAIL KIDS, 1985 CREATED BY ART SPIEGELMAN 701 00:35:02,216 --> 00:35:04,423 ADAM BOMB ASHLEY CAN 702 00:35:04,490 --> 00:35:07,069 MICK DAGGER POTTY SCOTTY 703 00:35:07,615 --> 00:35:09,660 JUST A PIECE O' SHIT! 704 00:35:09,720 --> 00:35:11,267 GRUNT! UNNF! 705 00:35:11,407 --> 00:35:13,718 I was working on a really terrible comic 706 00:35:13,742 --> 00:35:17,054 for Short Order called Just a Piece o' Shit about a talking 707 00:35:17,078 --> 00:35:21,475 turd, trying to be one of the real underground cartoon boys. 708 00:35:21,500 --> 00:35:22,352 And it was awful. 709 00:35:22,376 --> 00:35:24,228 I was living with Michelle, I think. 710 00:35:24,253 --> 00:35:25,355 Oh, yeah. 711 00:35:25,379 --> 00:35:26,898 So she said something 712 00:35:26,922 --> 00:35:28,775 that triggered me to start screaming at her 713 00:35:28,799 --> 00:35:31,610 and slam the door to my studio room. 714 00:35:31,634 --> 00:35:34,155 And then I realized that was pretty stupid. 715 00:35:34,179 --> 00:35:35,447 She didn't do anything. 716 00:35:35,471 --> 00:35:37,993 So I went out to apologize, and I said, obviously, I'm angry. 717 00:35:38,017 --> 00:35:40,328 I have no idea what I'm... oh, yeah, I'm angry about my mother. 718 00:35:40,352 --> 00:35:43,039 And then all of that stuff that had happened about four years 719 00:35:43,063 --> 00:35:45,917 before came flooding back because if somebody asked, 720 00:35:45,941 --> 00:35:47,460 I'd say, my mother killed herself, 721 00:35:47,484 --> 00:35:49,546 but I didn't remember any of the events around it. 722 00:35:49,570 --> 00:35:50,921 They'd been cauterized. 723 00:35:50,945 --> 00:35:53,924 And so at that point, I just started 724 00:35:53,948 --> 00:35:55,427 writing it all down and then figured 725 00:35:55,451 --> 00:35:57,785 in order to understand it, I'm going to have to draw it. 726 00:35:58,995 --> 00:36:02,143 And that led to Prisoner on the Hell Planet. 727 00:36:04,301 --> 00:36:07,459 I'd been looking at a lot of woodcuts, very anguished 728 00:36:07,484 --> 00:36:09,447 and expressionistic style. 729 00:36:10,089 --> 00:36:12,611 And they had literal gravitas. 730 00:36:12,635 --> 00:36:14,404 They were engraved images. 731 00:36:14,428 --> 00:36:18,533 And so scratchboard allowed me to do something like a woodcut 732 00:36:18,557 --> 00:36:20,409 but without getting my hands bloody. 733 00:36:20,434 --> 00:36:23,580 I found it was a good vocabulary to work in 734 00:36:23,604 --> 00:36:25,254 for that particular piece. 735 00:36:26,397 --> 00:36:29,252 In 1976, I met Art 736 00:36:29,276 --> 00:36:33,757 because I got Prisoner on Hell Planet. 737 00:36:34,013 --> 00:36:36,009 And that blew my mind. 738 00:36:36,033 --> 00:36:44,309 I just was so moved by it and curious about it. 739 00:36:44,333 --> 00:36:49,697 I didn't understand how someone could be so intimate on paper. 740 00:36:51,465 --> 00:36:55,819 It was mind-blowing in a way that really opened up 741 00:36:55,924 --> 00:36:58,396 so much new territory for me. 742 00:36:59,515 --> 00:37:03,703 When you read something that's meaningful for you, 743 00:37:03,727 --> 00:37:09,166 it does bring you into the psyche of the person who 744 00:37:09,191 --> 00:37:11,043 has written it. 745 00:37:11,067 --> 00:37:16,549 I had never experienced this to that extent, 746 00:37:16,573 --> 00:37:19,636 and certainly never in a comic. 747 00:37:19,660 --> 00:37:22,639 I did something which I never did at the time 748 00:37:22,663 --> 00:37:26,643 because my language was very poor. 749 00:37:26,667 --> 00:37:29,980 And I don't like the phone, but I called him up. 750 00:37:30,004 --> 00:37:32,565 When she read The Prisoner on the Hell Planet, 751 00:37:32,589 --> 00:37:35,360 she was deeply and genuinely shocked by it. 752 00:37:35,384 --> 00:37:38,363 She didn't understand how somebody could make something 753 00:37:38,387 --> 00:37:42,159 like that and even express anger at a mother who had suicided. 754 00:37:43,787 --> 00:37:45,012 I asked him, 755 00:37:45,037 --> 00:37:49,541 how could he talk about things that were so private? 756 00:37:49,565 --> 00:37:53,586 I do remember that it was relentless. 757 00:37:53,610 --> 00:37:55,463 It was like, how could you say such a thing 758 00:37:55,487 --> 00:37:57,007 about somebody who died? 759 00:37:57,031 --> 00:38:00,968 I said, well, I don't know, I was angry, and I was in turmoil. 760 00:38:00,993 --> 00:38:04,055 And I explained how I first recovered that as a memory. 761 00:38:04,079 --> 00:38:08,643 You're showing your father and the despair 762 00:38:08,667 --> 00:38:11,312 and your father climbing on the coffin, 763 00:38:11,336 --> 00:38:16,067 and other people accusing you of having 764 00:38:16,091 --> 00:38:18,778 a part in his mother's suicide. 765 00:38:18,802 --> 00:38:21,795 He's supposed to feel guilty. 766 00:38:23,069 --> 00:38:28,872 And the fact that he turns the table on his mother, 767 00:38:28,896 --> 00:38:31,332 where he says, "Well, Mom, if you're listening", 768 00:38:31,471 --> 00:38:32,574 congratulations. 769 00:38:32,599 --> 00:38:35,502 You've committed the perfect crime. 770 00:38:35,527 --> 00:38:41,176 You put me here, shorted all my circuits, cut my nerve endings, 771 00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:43,511 and crossed my wires. 772 00:38:43,733 --> 00:38:48,099 "You murdered me, Mommy, and you left me here to take the rap." 773 00:38:51,123 --> 00:38:52,270 You're in jail. 774 00:38:52,294 --> 00:38:54,022 You're in a mental jail. 775 00:38:54,046 --> 00:38:56,066 And then he adds, "Pipe down, Mac. 776 00:38:56,090 --> 00:38:57,609 Some of us are trying to sleep." 777 00:38:57,633 --> 00:39:00,236 So he actually ends on a joke. 778 00:39:00,260 --> 00:39:04,032 I mean, it was so layered and so intense, 779 00:39:04,056 --> 00:39:06,076 and the conversation lasted hours. 780 00:39:06,100 --> 00:39:09,037 And that's one of the things 781 00:39:09,062 --> 00:39:14,358 that got us to actually spend time together. 782 00:39:19,239 --> 00:39:23,982 Autobiography had been entered directly as a possible 783 00:39:24,007 --> 00:39:25,845 genre very late in the game. 784 00:39:25,870 --> 00:39:27,937 It was part of the underground comics world. 785 00:39:27,962 --> 00:39:30,725 Really, confessional, problematic memoir 786 00:39:30,749 --> 00:39:34,938 and autobiography came from Justin Green, a comics artist 787 00:39:34,962 --> 00:39:37,565 who was a good friend, who more and more was 788 00:39:37,589 --> 00:39:41,236 using things that can't be said clearly about himself. 789 00:39:41,260 --> 00:39:44,405 And it culminated in a masterpiece called Binky Brown. 790 00:39:44,429 --> 00:39:46,032 Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. 791 00:39:46,349 --> 00:39:49,245 It was like 36 or 40 pages. 792 00:39:49,269 --> 00:39:51,414 And it was turning each of these little panels 793 00:39:51,438 --> 00:39:54,542 into confession booths, dealing with the psychosexual guilt 794 00:39:54,566 --> 00:39:56,335 and the obsessive compulsiveness that came 795 00:39:56,359 --> 00:39:58,929 with his brand of Catholicism. 796 00:40:00,989 --> 00:40:02,466 Justin's work 797 00:40:02,490 --> 00:40:05,261 showed me how something really personal and truthful 798 00:40:05,285 --> 00:40:06,972 could be so powerful. 799 00:40:06,996 --> 00:40:11,270 It showed me a way that I could write a story. 800 00:40:11,624 --> 00:40:13,185 The thread that ties 801 00:40:13,209 --> 00:40:16,730 most underground comics together is transgression, 802 00:40:16,754 --> 00:40:20,818 and transgression is a liberating force. 803 00:40:20,842 --> 00:40:25,197 So by showing, in your comics, stuff 804 00:40:25,221 --> 00:40:27,241 you're not supposed to show, stuff you're not 805 00:40:27,266 --> 00:40:28,742 supposed to deal with... 806 00:40:28,766 --> 00:40:31,203 the culture outside is telling you, 807 00:40:31,227 --> 00:40:36,576 don't go there... by doing it, you're robbing it of its power. 808 00:40:37,859 --> 00:40:43,507 OK, here is a folder called Art Spiegelman. 809 00:40:43,532 --> 00:40:49,207 This is just many, many pages of tiny, little scribble from Art. 810 00:40:49,871 --> 00:40:53,810 He would tell me of his progress on whatever he was doing. 811 00:40:53,834 --> 00:40:56,687 So while he was doing it, he would tell me 812 00:40:56,711 --> 00:41:01,108 how many times he had redone the third panel on page 3. 813 00:41:01,132 --> 00:41:03,152 And he would just go into great detail. 814 00:41:03,176 --> 00:41:05,154 "I wish it was going faster. 815 00:41:05,178 --> 00:41:08,699 I'm suffering hot and cold running anxiety attacks 816 00:41:08,723 --> 00:41:12,786 in my championship game of beat the clock." 817 00:41:12,810 --> 00:41:15,873 It's all he cared about, was his comics. 818 00:41:15,897 --> 00:41:19,750 It was hard to sit at the drawing table. 819 00:41:19,775 --> 00:41:22,839 It's like pulling teeth for Art. It's torture. 820 00:41:25,199 --> 00:41:27,676 Look at the cover of Breakdowns, with him drinking 821 00:41:27,700 --> 00:41:29,083 a bottle of Indian ink. 822 00:41:30,043 --> 00:41:31,145 That's not a joke. 823 00:41:31,170 --> 00:41:35,426 That's a statement about anxiety and suicide. 824 00:41:36,109 --> 00:41:40,696 SPIEGELMAN MOVES TO N.Y. "FEELS DEPRESSED!" 825 00:41:45,218 --> 00:41:46,987 I was just back in New York 826 00:41:47,011 --> 00:41:48,864 from my San Francisco days. 827 00:41:48,888 --> 00:41:50,491 And I didn't want to let my father know 828 00:41:50,515 --> 00:41:52,576 I'd moved back because I'd have to go over there. 829 00:41:52,601 --> 00:41:56,163 And I was, as a result, staying in touch with him, 830 00:41:56,187 --> 00:41:58,457 using a trick I'd learned from Dick Tracy's. 831 00:41:58,481 --> 00:41:59,960 Crimestoppers' Textbook. 832 00:41:59,984 --> 00:42:03,170 And I learned that if you put a towel over the receiver, 833 00:42:03,194 --> 00:42:04,965 it would sound like a long-distance call. 834 00:42:04,989 --> 00:42:06,382 Then for Thanksgiving, I certainly 835 00:42:06,406 --> 00:42:09,052 wasn't going to go out to Rego Park if I didn't have to. 836 00:42:09,076 --> 00:42:11,679 So I called Francoise and asked what 837 00:42:11,703 --> 00:42:13,014 she's doing for Thanksgiving. 838 00:42:13,038 --> 00:42:14,390 And she said, Thanksgiving? 839 00:42:14,414 --> 00:42:15,933 What is that? 840 00:42:15,957 --> 00:42:17,768 So I said, well, it's a custom in America 841 00:42:17,792 --> 00:42:19,812 where you go to Chinatown with somebody you like. 842 00:42:19,836 --> 00:42:21,021 Would you be interested? 843 00:42:21,046 --> 00:42:23,131 So that's when we became an item. 844 00:42:24,716 --> 00:42:27,362 He was incredibly charismatic, 845 00:42:27,386 --> 00:42:29,239 and he was passionate. 846 00:42:29,263 --> 00:42:30,698 When she came over, 847 00:42:30,722 --> 00:42:32,700 I began pulling things out to show her. 848 00:42:32,724 --> 00:42:35,744 He was showing me Little Nemo 849 00:42:35,768 --> 00:42:40,082 and then not just reading me all of the balloons, 850 00:42:40,106 --> 00:42:45,045 but explaining the architecture of the page and the choices made 851 00:42:45,069 --> 00:42:46,964 by the artist. 852 00:42:46,988 --> 00:42:53,359 I had the impression that he had discovered a new land. 853 00:43:01,065 --> 00:43:06,611 It was like, my god, everybody should see this and know this. 854 00:43:17,241 --> 00:43:18,445 It was around that time 855 00:43:18,470 --> 00:43:20,748 that I was planning on giving a talk at the Collective 856 00:43:20,772 --> 00:43:22,708 for Living Cinema, which was my history 857 00:43:22,732 --> 00:43:24,678 and aesthetics of comics. 858 00:43:25,735 --> 00:43:28,340 It's too grandiose to call it the theory of comics, 859 00:43:28,364 --> 00:43:30,216 like the quantum theory of the world, 860 00:43:30,240 --> 00:43:32,760 although I did take comics very, very seriously. 861 00:43:33,031 --> 00:43:36,138 And I thought they were time turned into space, 862 00:43:36,162 --> 00:43:41,899 a perfect container for memory, and an incredibly maligned art form. 863 00:43:41,924 --> 00:43:43,979 And without being pretentious about it, 864 00:43:44,003 --> 00:43:46,293 I thought that this was as valid as anything 865 00:43:46,318 --> 00:43:49,739 that happened in literature, or in painting, or in cinema. 866 00:43:51,852 --> 00:43:53,740 But I was interested in the fact that comics 867 00:43:53,764 --> 00:43:56,450 tended to be simplified drawings, icons. 868 00:43:56,474 --> 00:43:58,662 It all comes from a dictionary definition of comics, 869 00:43:58,686 --> 00:44:02,791 or a narrative series of cartoons used to tell a story. 870 00:44:02,815 --> 00:44:05,668 The dictionary definition had a picture of Nancy in the side. 871 00:44:05,693 --> 00:44:07,045 The fact that they used Nancy had 872 00:44:07,076 --> 00:44:10,390 something to do with the iconic nature of comics drawing. 873 00:44:11,050 --> 00:44:12,965 From there, I began thinking more 874 00:44:12,990 --> 00:44:16,054 about what a comics page was in a more articulated way, things 875 00:44:16,078 --> 00:44:19,556 I'd learned from looking at my masters, like Harvey Kurtzman, 876 00:44:19,580 --> 00:44:21,226 at that time, Will Eisner. 877 00:44:21,670 --> 00:44:23,681 And it led to the work and breakdowns, 878 00:44:23,706 --> 00:44:27,437 where I was deconstructing the language of comics consciously. 879 00:44:31,206 --> 00:44:35,813 ZIP A TUNES AND MOIRÉ MELODIES FEATURING SKEETER GRANT'S SKINLESS PERKINS 880 00:44:36,231 --> 00:44:38,454 A "SOMERSAULT" FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT! 881 00:44:49,783 --> 00:44:52,229 D-D-DOT'S ALL, FOLKS! 882 00:44:52,406 --> 00:44:56,403 I - stumbled upon an anthology 883 00:44:56,428 --> 00:44:58,753 of his early work called Breakdowns, 884 00:44:58,778 --> 00:45:00,557 which really blew my mind. 885 00:45:00,827 --> 00:45:03,889 The story The Malpractice Suite took panels 886 00:45:03,913 --> 00:45:08,769 from the very square daily comic Rex Morgan, M.D. 887 00:45:08,793 --> 00:45:12,106 and cut them up and expanded the drawings outside 888 00:45:12,130 --> 00:45:14,149 of the parameters of the original panels. 889 00:45:14,173 --> 00:45:18,195 And somehow, Art had taken the thing that MAD might do, 890 00:45:18,219 --> 00:45:20,489 where it would make fun of an existing comic, 891 00:45:20,513 --> 00:45:23,033 but instead of redrawing it, he took the original panels 892 00:45:23,057 --> 00:45:26,229 and expanded them out and blew out the story. 893 00:45:27,943 --> 00:45:30,256 Art was such a student of the medium 894 00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:37,019 that he's able to build on pre-existing work, 895 00:45:37,044 --> 00:45:41,470 but to comment on it at the same time, 896 00:45:42,106 --> 00:45:45,711 similar, in a way, to somebody like Jean-Luc Godard, 897 00:45:45,735 --> 00:45:48,255 who understood film history as a text 898 00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:52,718 that he could revise, he could elaborate on, he could derange, 899 00:45:52,742 --> 00:45:54,177 he could criticize. 900 00:45:54,491 --> 00:45:56,973 That's true with Art and comics. 901 00:45:59,373 --> 00:46:02,888 He was working on this book, 902 00:46:02,913 --> 00:46:07,246 and he was conceiving of this thing of color separations. 903 00:46:08,534 --> 00:46:11,052 And he explained to me the basis. 904 00:46:11,274 --> 00:46:16,153 And then I discovered a whole new level 905 00:46:16,178 --> 00:46:18,976 of this, which had to do with the production 906 00:46:19,001 --> 00:46:21,663 because color separations were done by hand, 907 00:46:21,687 --> 00:46:23,266 by cutting Zipatone. 908 00:46:23,291 --> 00:46:26,877 It actually isn't in color until it's printed, 909 00:46:26,902 --> 00:46:29,755 so you have to conceive of it in black and white. 910 00:46:29,779 --> 00:46:32,008 I loved that. 911 00:46:32,032 --> 00:46:35,470 I loved how abstract it was. 912 00:46:35,494 --> 00:46:37,681 And I loved this work. 913 00:46:37,705 --> 00:46:40,225 I just saw it like, OK, here is the image. 914 00:46:40,249 --> 00:46:43,018 And then here is putting together 915 00:46:43,042 --> 00:46:45,563 the blue and the yellow plates, the cyan 916 00:46:45,587 --> 00:46:49,066 and the magenta plates, the magenta and the yellow plates. 917 00:46:49,090 --> 00:46:50,777 And then he starts playing. 918 00:46:50,801 --> 00:46:56,908 And there's so, so many jokes and so much information, 919 00:46:56,932 --> 00:47:01,520 I found a connection that really worked for me. 920 00:47:02,771 --> 00:47:04,290 When I met Francoise, 921 00:47:04,314 --> 00:47:07,043 she was playing hooky from the Beaux-Arts 922 00:47:07,067 --> 00:47:09,546 in Paris, where she was studying architecture. 923 00:47:09,570 --> 00:47:12,173 And she was supporting herself in New York, 924 00:47:12,197 --> 00:47:14,591 working all kinds of odd jobs, ranging from electrician 925 00:47:14,615 --> 00:47:17,636 and plumber, to cigarette girl in Grand Central, 926 00:47:17,660 --> 00:47:19,596 to acting in a Richard Foreman play. 927 00:47:19,620 --> 00:47:21,640 Eventually, she said she was interested in books. 928 00:47:21,664 --> 00:47:23,184 And I said, well, why not publish? 929 00:47:23,208 --> 00:47:24,894 So she went out and learned how to print, 930 00:47:24,918 --> 00:47:27,314 and we soon had a printing press in our loft. 931 00:47:30,382 --> 00:47:32,235 This is some of the things 932 00:47:32,259 --> 00:47:36,052 that I could print on my press. 933 00:47:46,613 --> 00:47:50,791 I set up as a small business, little books and graphics. 934 00:47:53,149 --> 00:47:59,054 We ended up having to get married because of immigration. 935 00:47:59,078 --> 00:48:00,831 They were going to deport me. 936 00:48:00,856 --> 00:48:02,057 I - was really against it 937 00:48:02,081 --> 00:48:03,683 because we were getting along great, 938 00:48:03,707 --> 00:48:05,560 and I just thought that this would completely 939 00:48:05,584 --> 00:48:08,146 destroy our relationship because I thought that 940 00:48:08,170 --> 00:48:11,191 the moment that we were married, I'd have Dagwood Bumstead 941 00:48:11,215 --> 00:48:13,525 tufts of hair implanted on each side 942 00:48:13,550 --> 00:48:15,904 that she would be given as a wedding gift, a rolling 943 00:48:15,928 --> 00:48:18,156 pin like Maggie's, in order to whack me over the head. 944 00:48:18,180 --> 00:48:21,534 The idea of being married seemed irreconcilable 945 00:48:21,558 --> 00:48:23,620 with having a lover. 946 00:48:23,644 --> 00:48:29,000 We went down to City Hall and had a shotgun wedding of sorts. 947 00:48:29,024 --> 00:48:31,044 Marriage number two took place when. 948 00:48:31,068 --> 00:48:34,839 Vladek was informed that we were married, 949 00:48:34,863 --> 00:48:36,800 but it wasn't a marriage he could accept 950 00:48:36,824 --> 00:48:38,615 because she wasn't Jewish. 951 00:48:39,159 --> 00:48:41,304 Francoise had no problem deciding 952 00:48:41,328 --> 00:48:44,015 to convert because it was meaningless to her, 953 00:48:44,039 --> 00:48:46,101 but she knew it would be meaningful to Vladek. 954 00:48:46,125 --> 00:48:47,852 She's a much better person than I am. 955 00:48:47,876 --> 00:48:49,813 I was just going, he has to get over it. 956 00:48:49,837 --> 00:48:52,816 I mean, religion just isn't important to me or to you. 957 00:48:52,966 --> 00:48:54,469 She said, no, no, we can do this. 958 00:48:59,054 --> 00:49:02,492 I actually got along relatively well 959 00:49:02,516 --> 00:49:03,868 with Vladek. 960 00:49:03,892 --> 00:49:10,375 And I understood that it was unbearable for Art. 961 00:49:10,399 --> 00:49:13,336 He wanted to do an expansion of what he had done 962 00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:16,673 as a three-page strip, Maus. 963 00:49:16,697 --> 00:49:20,684 And at that point, he needed to talk to his dad. 964 00:49:21,535 --> 00:49:23,888 There was a generation canyon between us. 965 00:49:23,912 --> 00:49:26,516 He grew up in a milieu that was more like 18th or 19th century 966 00:49:26,540 --> 00:49:29,060 shtetl life and then went through the central maelstrom 967 00:49:29,084 --> 00:49:30,395 of the 20th century. 968 00:49:30,419 --> 00:49:34,983 And me, I was listening to rock and roll and reading MAD comics. 969 00:49:35,007 --> 00:49:38,027 As an adult, I just had no relationship 970 00:49:38,051 --> 00:49:40,155 to speak of with him and wanted one, 971 00:49:40,179 --> 00:49:41,781 wanted a way to come to terms with him. 972 00:49:41,805 --> 00:49:44,409 And this book afforded that by giving me 973 00:49:44,433 --> 00:49:46,536 the relationship of interviewer and interviewee 974 00:49:46,560 --> 00:49:48,664 to replace son and father. 975 00:49:50,557 --> 00:49:52,126 We knew that we were going to Auschwitz. 976 00:49:52,150 --> 00:49:53,585 You knew that Auschwitz was a definite? 977 00:49:53,609 --> 00:49:56,045 Yes, but we knew that we would go there, 978 00:49:56,069 --> 00:49:57,422 and we'll not come out anymore. 979 00:49:57,446 --> 00:49:59,799 We knew that they will curse us and burn us. 980 00:49:59,824 --> 00:50:00,925 Did you know about the shower? 981 00:50:00,949 --> 00:50:02,135 Yes, sure. 982 00:50:02,159 --> 00:50:03,262 We knew everything. 983 00:50:03,286 --> 00:50:05,221 The war started in 1939. 984 00:50:05,245 --> 00:50:07,599 And this was 1943 already. 985 00:50:07,623 --> 00:50:10,168 And we knew everything what was going on. 986 00:50:14,301 --> 00:50:15,902 A - lot of the early part 987 00:50:15,926 --> 00:50:18,780 of Vladek's story, as I got it on tape, 988 00:50:18,804 --> 00:50:21,617 was told to the accompaniment of him on an exercycle. 989 00:50:21,641 --> 00:50:23,160 And that image really stayed with me, 990 00:50:23,184 --> 00:50:25,996 of him pedaling madly to nowhere in order to survive. 991 00:50:26,020 --> 00:50:29,458 So I found a wonderful way to start the story 992 00:50:29,482 --> 00:50:31,753 in the wheel of the exercycle. 993 00:50:31,777 --> 00:50:34,171 And although it's subliminal, I think in a way, 994 00:50:34,195 --> 00:50:37,716 you get to see an analog to a cinematic effect of a whirling 995 00:50:37,740 --> 00:50:41,762 wheel, where Vladek begins to spin his yarn. 996 00:50:41,786 --> 00:50:44,097 And you enter into the past for the first time 997 00:50:44,121 --> 00:50:45,122 through that wheel. 998 00:50:48,209 --> 00:50:52,689 This page is showing the scene of testimony. 999 00:50:52,713 --> 00:50:59,268 And it's showing Vladek's entire body across panels, 1000 00:50:59,807 --> 00:51:03,527 and yet disarticulated by these panels. 1001 00:51:03,808 --> 00:51:06,036 This ability that comics have to show us 1002 00:51:06,060 --> 00:51:10,207 a large image but to fracture it gets at that sense 1003 00:51:10,231 --> 00:51:13,654 that Vladek is a fractured person. 1004 00:51:14,402 --> 00:51:17,854 He's a survivor, but parts of him haven't survived. 1005 00:51:19,031 --> 00:51:23,178 In this panel, we see Vladek's arms on his exercycle. 1006 00:51:23,202 --> 00:51:26,724 And he's framing his son, who looks very small, 1007 00:51:26,748 --> 00:51:28,225 within his arms. 1008 00:51:28,249 --> 00:51:31,144 So there's something about that posture and that drawing 1009 00:51:31,168 --> 00:51:33,898 that's evocative of their relationship. 1010 00:51:33,922 --> 00:51:38,965 And I think that's evocative of how Vladek makes art feel small, 1011 00:51:39,176 --> 00:51:42,613 not only in his difficult personal manner, 1012 00:51:42,638 --> 00:51:46,681 but also in the sense of encountering history. 1013 00:51:47,321 --> 00:51:48,913 It was a complex relationship 1014 00:51:48,937 --> 00:51:52,124 that I had with my father in his decline, as he was an old man. 1015 00:51:53,108 --> 00:51:57,838 I interviewed him and re-interviewed him from 1978 1016 00:51:57,862 --> 00:51:59,874 till he died in '82. 1017 00:52:00,454 --> 00:52:03,115 So as soon as we'd finish, I'd make him go over the story 1018 00:52:03,140 --> 00:52:05,263 again to get more details. 1019 00:52:09,499 --> 00:52:12,663 I'd never heard my mother's story fully. 1020 00:52:13,711 --> 00:52:16,482 It's a horrible absence in that my mother, when 1021 00:52:16,506 --> 00:52:20,016 I was growing up, showed me diaries always meant for me. 1022 00:52:20,504 --> 00:52:23,029 She said, you may not be interested in it now, 1023 00:52:23,053 --> 00:52:24,448 but you may be someday. 1024 00:52:24,472 --> 00:52:26,116 And I was when I began doing this book. 1025 00:52:26,140 --> 00:52:27,535 I kept asking my father about them 1026 00:52:27,559 --> 00:52:31,413 and found out eventually, in a moment of grief after her death, 1027 00:52:31,437 --> 00:52:33,350 my father burned them. 1028 00:52:35,004 --> 00:52:38,004 And at that point, I get furious, yell at him, 1029 00:52:38,028 --> 00:52:42,884 call him a murderer, then vaguely, superficially reconcile 1030 00:52:42,908 --> 00:52:45,495 and walk off with the fact of the matter as, 1031 00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:47,580 I'll never really get her story. 1032 00:52:51,665 --> 00:52:54,440 Art had started working on Maus. 1033 00:52:54,961 --> 00:52:56,396 Do you want one? 1034 00:52:56,420 --> 00:52:58,065 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 1035 00:52:58,089 --> 00:53:01,985 And he was always saying, oh, somebody should print comics 1036 00:53:02,009 --> 00:53:03,237 in magazines. 1037 00:53:03,261 --> 00:53:05,271 Somebody should print comics in The New York Times. 1038 00:53:05,296 --> 00:53:07,649 Trying to fit a letter that goes beyond the cover. 1039 00:53:07,674 --> 00:53:08,734 Francoise. 1040 00:53:08,759 --> 00:53:10,243 And he was always 1041 00:53:10,268 --> 00:53:13,331 disappointed when they never followed through. 1042 00:53:13,355 --> 00:53:16,459 I decided to do Raw magazine. 1043 00:53:16,767 --> 00:53:26,356 In 1982, put together all the ideas that Art was ceaselessly advocating for. 1044 00:53:29,412 --> 00:53:33,475 The idea was to do something that was of its moment 1045 00:53:33,500 --> 00:53:37,771 but also would have the permanence of a book. 1046 00:53:39,418 --> 00:53:41,499 The magazine is not just a publication, 1047 00:53:41,590 --> 00:53:43,401 but it's also where you store weapons. 1048 00:53:43,425 --> 00:53:45,570 The idea here was to put things in juxtaposition 1049 00:53:45,594 --> 00:53:48,365 that it could explode. 1050 00:53:48,389 --> 00:53:51,911 And by putting these different kinds of artists together, 1051 00:53:51,935 --> 00:53:56,766 it was really possible to shape something that became a vision. 1052 00:54:03,530 --> 00:54:06,451 I've been waiting since about '72 1053 00:54:06,476 --> 00:54:09,859 for something like Raw because I was into modern art. 1054 00:54:09,910 --> 00:54:12,413 And so I thought comics had a place in that. 1055 00:54:13,353 --> 00:54:15,267 This character is an amalgamation 1056 00:54:15,291 --> 00:54:16,893 of a lot of characters. 1057 00:54:16,917 --> 00:54:21,022 And it's got Nancy, Orphan Annie, Popeye's chin, 1058 00:54:21,046 --> 00:54:26,866 Dick Tracy's other chin, and Duck's. 1059 00:54:39,812 --> 00:54:42,657 COMIC ARTS BROOKLYN, 2019 1060 00:54:49,056 --> 00:54:54,389 I met Art and Francoise in maybe 1980, '81. 1061 00:54:55,366 --> 00:54:58,768 And I realized that they were publishing Gary Panter. 1062 00:54:58,899 --> 00:55:01,277 I knew that I was going to be in good company. 1063 00:55:01,389 --> 00:55:04,801 BIG BABY CURSE OF THE MOLEMEN 1064 00:55:06,967 --> 00:55:08,612 Reading Raw in high school 1065 00:55:08,636 --> 00:55:12,074 and in college, I was radicalized. 1066 00:55:12,098 --> 00:55:14,493 I studied every single issue. 1067 00:55:14,517 --> 00:55:16,953 I had them out on my drawing tables. 1068 00:55:16,977 --> 00:55:20,624 In college, I took them to painting class with me. 1069 00:55:24,026 --> 00:55:26,922 I owe my life to Art and Francoise. 1070 00:55:26,946 --> 00:55:29,008 They provided an example of an art 1071 00:55:29,032 --> 00:55:32,845 to me when I was a kid that has really meant the world to me. 1072 00:55:32,869 --> 00:55:34,262 And they've meant the world to me. 1073 00:55:34,286 --> 00:55:36,766 And in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm up here with my mom 1074 00:55:36,790 --> 00:55:39,061 and dad in a strange way. 1075 00:55:41,773 --> 00:55:44,273 We put our two projects together. 1076 00:55:44,297 --> 00:55:48,736 I encouraged them to put the first chapter of Maus 1077 00:55:48,760 --> 00:55:51,571 in the second issue of Raw. 1078 00:55:51,595 --> 00:55:57,495 So when we decided to insert Maus into Raw, 1079 00:55:57,519 --> 00:56:01,664 we ended up having to do a couple of things. 1080 00:56:01,688 --> 00:56:04,585 One is create another booklet that 1081 00:56:04,609 --> 00:56:06,087 would be a totally different size 1082 00:56:06,111 --> 00:56:08,672 and that would make it rest by itself. 1083 00:56:08,696 --> 00:56:13,344 And then Art had to draw a page that the booklet would 1084 00:56:13,368 --> 00:56:17,807 rest on and then give us a synopsis of the story so far. 1085 00:56:17,831 --> 00:56:21,185 So the shift in size was specifically 1086 00:56:21,209 --> 00:56:25,898 to make you stop and feel like there was a whole other approach 1087 00:56:25,922 --> 00:56:32,905 to comics and graphics that was done in a more intimate style. 1088 00:56:33,556 --> 00:56:34,777 A - chapter appeared 1089 00:56:34,802 --> 00:56:38,300 in each issue of Raw magazine. 1090 00:56:39,348 --> 00:56:42,622 The pictures are totally in service of the story, so they're 1091 00:56:42,647 --> 00:56:45,754 very quiet, compared to other comic books 1092 00:56:45,779 --> 00:56:47,546 and compared to other things that I've done. 1093 00:56:47,572 --> 00:56:50,756 When I'm drawing Maus, I end up working on typing paper. 1094 00:56:51,036 --> 00:56:54,300 I use a fountain pen and liquid paper to white it out. 1095 00:56:54,325 --> 00:56:55,928 I want to feel like I'm writing, so I'm 1096 00:56:55,952 --> 00:56:57,889 using stationery supplies. 1097 00:56:58,149 --> 00:57:00,487 So it would be more like picking up on a journal 1098 00:57:00,512 --> 00:57:03,285 and looking over one's shoulder to read that journal. 1099 00:57:04,978 --> 00:57:08,157 To me, that's part of the intimacy that comics are capable of. 1100 00:57:08,337 --> 00:57:11,491 And that intimacy is something that was very necessary for me in the strip. 1101 00:57:13,744 --> 00:57:16,217 They're masks that these characters are wearing. 1102 00:57:17,019 --> 00:57:20,358 And of course, my father was a collaborator on the book, 1103 00:57:20,725 --> 00:57:21,954 but then so was Hitler. 1104 00:57:22,494 --> 00:57:25,229 And it involved taking that rhetoric 1105 00:57:25,254 --> 00:57:28,939 and turning this notion of the subhuman back on itself 1106 00:57:28,964 --> 00:57:31,485 and letting these mice stand on their hind legs 1107 00:57:31,509 --> 00:57:33,111 and insist on their humanity. 1108 00:57:37,891 --> 00:57:41,174 This, to me, is one of the most important pages in the book. 1109 00:57:41,554 --> 00:57:45,957 Vladek Spiegelman and Anja Spiegelman, Art's parents, 1110 00:57:45,981 --> 00:57:50,257 were in the city of Sosnowiec in Poland. 1111 00:57:50,551 --> 00:57:55,328 The Nazis have hung four Jews publicly 1112 00:57:55,374 --> 00:57:58,887 as punishment for trading on the black market. 1113 00:57:58,911 --> 00:58:03,625 And it gives us a very large image that's 1114 00:58:03,650 --> 00:58:06,227 also an unbordered image. 1115 00:58:06,502 --> 00:58:11,738 This page is spectacular in a sense. 1116 00:58:12,077 --> 00:58:14,099 It's unbounded. 1117 00:58:14,124 --> 00:58:18,954 It's asking readers to slow down and to encounter 1118 00:58:18,980 --> 00:58:23,537 a shred of the horror of what Vladek must have felt because he 1119 00:58:23,561 --> 00:58:25,622 goes out to look at these people, 1120 00:58:25,646 --> 00:58:27,207 and these are people that he knew. 1121 00:58:27,231 --> 00:58:29,960 And then yet another thing this page does 1122 00:58:29,984 --> 00:58:34,256 is that it gives us what Art has called literal footnotes. 1123 00:58:34,280 --> 00:58:36,132 We see these men hanging. 1124 00:58:36,156 --> 00:58:39,511 And then we get a view in two panels 1125 00:58:39,535 --> 00:58:46,851 below of just their feet, which would seem to be dehumanizing, 1126 00:58:46,875 --> 00:58:50,230 but it's exactly the opposite because in the prose 1127 00:58:50,254 --> 00:58:54,917 below their feet, we learn details about them as people. 1128 00:58:56,093 --> 00:58:58,280 "They hanged there one full week." 1129 00:58:58,304 --> 00:58:59,864 Cohn had a dry goods store. 1130 00:58:59,888 --> 00:59:02,075 He was known over all Sosnowiec. 1131 00:59:02,099 --> 00:59:05,412 Often, he gave me cloth with no coupons. 1132 00:59:05,436 --> 00:59:08,873 I traded also with Pfefer, a fine young man, a Zionist. 1133 00:59:08,897 --> 00:59:10,041 He was just married. 1134 00:59:10,065 --> 00:59:12,280 "His wife ran screaming in the street." 1135 00:59:13,485 --> 00:59:15,255 I - think of this page 1136 00:59:15,279 --> 00:59:19,050 as an example of Maus's explicit anti-fascism 1137 00:59:19,074 --> 00:59:23,513 by particularizing not only survivors, 1138 00:59:23,537 --> 00:59:26,374 but particularizing victims 1139 00:59:26,887 --> 00:59:30,208 that the Nazis wanted to remain nameless. 1140 00:59:34,006 --> 00:59:37,736 Art has never separated work and life. 1141 00:59:37,760 --> 00:59:41,365 So of course, this is what he thought about, 1142 00:59:41,389 --> 00:59:43,950 what he talked about. 1143 00:59:43,974 --> 00:59:46,578 And he got stuck so many times. 1144 00:59:46,602 --> 00:59:53,544 And all I could do was be supportive. 1145 00:59:53,569 --> 00:59:54,696 "I know this is insane, 1146 00:59:54,721 --> 00:59:56,755 but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents 1147 00:59:56,779 --> 00:59:58,798 so I could really know what they lived through. 1148 00:59:58,822 --> 01:00:01,217 I guess it's some kind of guilt about having had an easier 1149 01:00:01,241 --> 01:00:02,344 life than they did. 1150 01:00:02,854 --> 01:00:03,536 Sigh. 1151 01:00:03,561 --> 01:00:05,513 I feel so inadequate trying to reconstruct a reality that 1152 01:00:05,537 --> 01:00:07,608 was worse than my darkest dreams 1153 01:00:08,039 --> 01:00:09,392 and trying to do it as a comic strip. 1154 01:00:09,416 --> 01:00:11,227 I guess I bit off more than I can chew. 1155 01:00:11,251 --> 01:00:13,773 Maybe I ought to forget the whole thing. 1156 01:00:13,797 --> 01:00:16,483 There's so much I'll never be able to understand or visualize. 1157 01:00:16,507 --> 01:00:18,485 I mean, reality is too complex for comics. 1158 01:00:18,509 --> 01:00:20,779 So much has to be left out or distorted. 1159 01:00:20,803 --> 01:00:22,940 Just keep it honest, honey. 1160 01:00:23,352 --> 01:00:24,141 See what I mean? 1161 01:00:24,165 --> 01:00:27,126 In real life, you'd never have let me talk this long without interrupting. 1162 01:00:27,232 --> 01:00:28,779 "Hmmph, light me a cigarette." 1163 01:00:30,521 --> 01:00:33,458 I did see it build upon itself. 1164 01:00:33,482 --> 01:00:37,420 And some things were happy accidents, 1165 01:00:37,444 --> 01:00:40,090 like the publication of the first book 1166 01:00:40,114 --> 01:00:43,635 as a book and then the extraordinary feedback 1167 01:00:43,659 --> 01:00:45,762 that it got early on... 1168 01:00:45,786 --> 01:00:48,223 it was the right thing at the right time... 1169 01:00:48,247 --> 01:00:51,810 and the despair that that swam in. 1170 01:00:51,834 --> 01:00:54,020 The success of Maus was a setback. 1171 01:00:54,044 --> 01:00:56,524 I literally was set back onto a couch, 1172 01:00:56,548 --> 01:01:00,193 staring at a stain for months on end. 1173 01:01:00,217 --> 01:01:02,987 Eventually, Francoise dragged me to a shrink she had met, 1174 01:01:03,011 --> 01:01:05,407 who was the ideal way out. 1175 01:01:05,431 --> 01:01:07,618 He had survived Auschwitz. 1176 01:01:07,642 --> 01:01:10,705 We went to the ruins of the barracks 1177 01:01:10,729 --> 01:01:13,791 my mother had been in, also to the site of the crematoria 1178 01:01:13,815 --> 01:01:15,235 and gas chambers. 1179 01:01:15,260 --> 01:01:21,930 It's an incredibly dark thing to have to delve into day in, day out. 1180 01:01:21,955 --> 01:01:26,011 And there seems to be something insane about achieving 1181 01:01:26,035 --> 01:01:31,903 some kind of celebrity for working in that area. 1182 01:01:31,928 --> 01:01:40,380 There's no way that that feels deserved or relishable. 1183 01:01:46,076 --> 01:01:49,493 Volume 1 was mostly taking place in the ghetto, 1184 01:01:50,002 --> 01:01:52,580 and volume 2 is about the oxymoron 1185 01:01:52,604 --> 01:01:54,371 of life in a death camp. 1186 01:01:55,565 --> 01:02:00,358 I couldn't imagine it, so I went to Auschwitz, 1187 01:02:00,383 --> 01:02:01,896 two different visits. 1188 01:02:02,642 --> 01:02:05,840 This is one of the four crematoria and gas chambers. 1189 01:02:05,865 --> 01:02:07,999 People came down those stairs over there, 1190 01:02:08,024 --> 01:02:10,536 undressed, left their clothes over there, 1191 01:02:10,684 --> 01:02:13,349 and were taken to a shower to take a shower. 1192 01:02:13,761 --> 01:02:17,843 Over here, these were the crematoria, 1193 01:02:17,868 --> 01:02:19,128 where they burned the bodies. 1194 01:02:19,766 --> 01:02:20,766 Went up in smoke. 1195 01:02:35,538 --> 01:02:37,777 I began working on the second volume. 1196 01:02:43,834 --> 01:02:47,231 I remember being in France in the summer, 1197 01:02:47,255 --> 01:02:50,751 and we had baby Nadja by then. 1198 01:02:51,791 --> 01:02:56,782 And I wanted to take her to the beach. 1199 01:02:56,806 --> 01:02:59,904 And I was very happy as a mother. 1200 01:03:00,075 --> 01:03:03,579 And then I would walk into the house. 1201 01:03:03,865 --> 01:03:07,291 And then here was Art struggling on whatever chapter. 1202 01:03:07,315 --> 01:03:09,582 This was in the second book. 1203 01:03:10,101 --> 01:03:13,902 And I was like, oh, my god, when is this ever going to end? 1204 01:03:14,780 --> 01:03:17,566 Because the second book is called. 1205 01:03:17,591 --> 01:03:19,476 And Then My Troubles Began. 1206 01:03:21,980 --> 01:03:26,103 So the descent into hell just... 1207 01:03:26,127 --> 01:03:29,106 it kept going further down and further down. 1208 01:03:29,130 --> 01:03:34,278 I mean, reading about Hungarian Jews arriving 1209 01:03:34,302 --> 01:03:41,951 in the summer of 1944, I mean, this is the end of the war. 1210 01:03:42,294 --> 01:03:46,634 They were killing 10,000 people a day. 1211 01:03:48,228 --> 01:03:51,969 It was both inconceivable, but it was the task at content. 1212 01:03:51,994 --> 01:03:54,610 I'm going to show you these three panels first, OK? 1213 01:03:54,750 --> 01:03:58,035 Francoise and I are sitting around the Catskills table with my father. 1214 01:03:58,060 --> 01:04:00,395 I'm drinking coffee, and Vladek is saying, 1215 01:04:00,776 --> 01:04:02,160 "When the Russians came near", 1216 01:04:02,185 --> 01:04:04,483 the Germans made ready to run from Auschwitz. 1217 01:04:05,069 --> 01:04:08,509 They needed tinmen to pull apart the machineries of the gas chambers. 1218 01:04:09,121 --> 01:04:10,981 They wanted to pack it all to Germany. 1219 01:04:11,373 --> 01:04:14,859 There, they could take all of the Jews to finish them in quiet. 1220 01:04:15,967 --> 01:04:17,696 The Germans didn't want to leave anywhere 1221 01:04:17,720 --> 01:04:20,102 a sign of all what they did. 1222 01:04:20,388 --> 01:04:23,612 You heard about the gas, but I'm telling not rumors, 1223 01:04:23,637 --> 01:04:25,671 but only what really I saw. 1224 01:04:26,614 --> 01:04:29,195 "For this, I was an eyewitness." 1225 01:04:30,198 --> 01:04:32,782 You see a progressive close-up of Vladek, 1226 01:04:32,808 --> 01:04:35,734 and it turns into a close-up of the gas chamber. 1227 01:04:36,831 --> 01:04:39,340 There's also, as an aside, smoke coming out 1228 01:04:39,365 --> 01:04:43,634 of the gas chamber, which turns into the smoke of my cigarette. 1229 01:04:45,285 --> 01:04:48,535 But in the next sequence, he's telling me what he saw 1230 01:04:48,715 --> 01:04:54,026 and describing as accurately as he can the gas chamber. 1231 01:04:54,051 --> 01:04:56,001 And I took whatever information I could get 1232 01:04:56,026 --> 01:04:57,332 to be able to visualize that. 1233 01:04:57,357 --> 01:05:01,237 So it included diagrams that were in the Auschwitz history 1234 01:05:01,263 --> 01:05:03,844 guidebook that was on sale at the camp 1235 01:05:04,040 --> 01:05:06,603 to figure out what it looked like exactly. 1236 01:05:06,628 --> 01:05:09,911 And then he's describing the process of dismantling. 1237 01:05:11,926 --> 01:05:16,182 And then he talks about how one of the worst things that he saw 1238 01:05:16,207 --> 01:05:19,168 was the way the Hungarians were treated. 1239 01:05:19,193 --> 01:05:21,394 They were brought in very late in the war. 1240 01:05:23,996 --> 01:05:27,142 And he says 1241 01:05:28,119 --> 01:05:30,842 he's talking with somebody else working on the tin detail. 1242 01:05:32,378 --> 01:05:33,474 "What are they doing over there?" 1243 01:05:33,498 --> 01:05:35,482 Digging trenches in case the Russians attack. 1244 01:05:36,051 --> 01:05:37,385 Trenches. Hah. 1245 01:05:37,410 --> 01:05:39,416 Those are giant graves they're filling in. 1246 01:05:40,136 --> 01:05:41,879 It started in May and went on all summer. 1247 01:05:41,904 --> 01:05:44,913 They brought Jews from Hungary, too many for their ovens, 1248 01:05:44,939 --> 01:05:47,292 "so they dug those big cremation pits." 1249 01:05:47,750 --> 01:05:51,751 And my father says, "The holes were big, so like the swimming pool" 1250 01:05:51,776 --> 01:05:53,255 of the Pines Hotel here. 1251 01:05:53,429 --> 01:05:56,511 And train after train of Hungarians came. 1252 01:05:56,535 --> 01:05:59,293 And those what finished in the gas chambers before they got 1253 01:05:59,318 --> 01:06:01,931 pushed into the graves, it was the lucky ones. 1254 01:06:02,430 --> 01:06:05,738 The others had to jump in the graves while they still were alive. 1255 01:06:07,184 --> 01:06:09,315 Prisoners what worked there poured gasoline 1256 01:06:09,339 --> 01:06:11,774 over the live ones and the dead ones. 1257 01:06:12,300 --> 01:06:15,310 And the fat from the burning bodies they scooped and poured again 1258 01:06:15,335 --> 01:06:17,236 "so everyone could burn better." 1259 01:06:17,790 --> 01:06:19,487 Jesus, I say. 1260 01:06:21,243 --> 01:06:22,578 Now, that was hard to visualize. 1261 01:06:22,603 --> 01:06:23,830 It was hard to even tell. 1262 01:06:23,974 --> 01:06:27,499 And I was very cautious about how to tell and draw this. 1263 01:06:27,657 --> 01:06:29,501 I needed the only photograph I could 1264 01:06:29,525 --> 01:06:32,380 find of anything relating to this just to begin to imagine. 1265 01:06:32,404 --> 01:06:35,133 It turns out there was a clandestine photo that 1266 01:06:35,157 --> 01:06:37,927 was taken in Auschwitz of the burning pits, 1267 01:06:38,152 --> 01:06:40,016 and it was smuggled out of the camp. 1268 01:06:41,124 --> 01:06:44,520 So that photograph I leaned on for some authority. 1269 01:06:49,015 --> 01:06:52,848 THE OTHERS HAD TO JUMP IN THE GRAVE WHILE STILL THEY WERE ALIVE... 1270 01:06:52,883 --> 01:06:55,531 AND THE FAT FROM THE BURNING BODIES THEY SCOOPED AND POURED AGAIN SO EVERYONE COULD BURN BETTER. 1271 01:06:55,555 --> 01:06:58,330 This picture was one of the hardest for me to draw in the whole book. 1272 01:06:58,355 --> 01:07:00,867 And I've tried my damnedest, not always successfully, 1273 01:07:00,891 --> 01:07:04,526 but I've tried to not let this picture be printed out of context 1274 01:07:04,551 --> 01:07:07,557 because it had to be horrible. 1275 01:07:10,610 --> 01:07:13,046 At some point, I had 20, 30, 40 sketches 1276 01:07:13,070 --> 01:07:14,883 of how to draw this thing. 1277 01:07:15,864 --> 01:07:19,343 And the one clue for me was usually, almost always, 1278 01:07:19,367 --> 01:07:22,597 the mice are shown with their nose at the bottom of the head 1279 01:07:22,900 --> 01:07:24,377 and seen that way. 1280 01:07:24,402 --> 01:07:27,727 And by lifting the head up and seeing their mouths shrieking, 1281 01:07:28,064 --> 01:07:29,362 they became human. 1282 01:07:31,504 --> 01:07:33,566 There wasn't a sense of, oh, my god, 1283 01:07:33,590 --> 01:07:35,318 he's making a masterpiece. 1284 01:07:35,342 --> 01:07:40,198 I didn't perceive of it that way because, I mean, when I met Art, 1285 01:07:40,222 --> 01:07:43,831 he was a master, and nobody else knew it. 1286 01:07:44,797 --> 01:07:50,874 That was the basis of my love and then my life that, 1287 01:07:51,167 --> 01:07:54,115 my god, this guy is amazing. 1288 01:07:54,140 --> 01:07:59,091 And isn't it incredible that the world is not paying any attention? 1289 01:08:02,432 --> 01:08:05,257 Three tickets please... Second class... 1290 01:08:05,282 --> 01:08:09,411 from Sosnowiec to Auschwitz and back. 1291 01:08:16,967 --> 01:08:19,737 I like the idea of being able to spit in somebody's face 1292 01:08:19,761 --> 01:08:22,991 and being able to say, see, here we are, ja. 1293 01:08:23,015 --> 01:08:23,951 We've got a baby. 1294 01:08:23,975 --> 01:08:26,453 And life goes on, in spite of everything those bastards did. 1295 01:08:26,477 --> 01:08:28,663 That's something. 1296 01:08:28,687 --> 01:08:32,587 To be able to go there and walk away from it, that's something. 1297 01:08:41,867 --> 01:08:43,636 This is the family tree 1298 01:08:43,660 --> 01:08:47,140 of Vladek's side of the family, one branch, before the war 1299 01:08:47,657 --> 01:08:48,657 and after. 1300 01:08:52,815 --> 01:08:56,146 I - think that there's a lot of difficult-to-express emotions 1301 01:08:56,171 --> 01:08:59,233 that I feel when I see this blank page. 1302 01:09:01,418 --> 01:09:03,513 I've always grown up with that feeling of we 1303 01:09:03,538 --> 01:09:06,250 are on a little ship with the four of us 1304 01:09:06,275 --> 01:09:09,332 in my nuclear family in this existential sea. 1305 01:09:11,105 --> 01:09:13,830 There's an inherited sense 1306 01:09:13,855 --> 01:09:17,887 of loss of the enormous family that was lost. 1307 01:09:19,449 --> 01:09:22,673 There was a bookshelf that contained every book about the Holocaust 1308 01:09:22,698 --> 01:09:25,397 that my dad had been able to find at the time that he was working on Maus. 1309 01:09:25,421 --> 01:09:28,894 And I was very much given the impression growing up 1310 01:09:28,919 --> 01:09:30,938 that he had absorbed... my mother also, 1311 01:09:30,962 --> 01:09:32,773 in helping him with the research process, 1312 01:09:32,797 --> 01:09:37,302 had absorbed these incredibly intense horrors in a way that 1313 01:09:37,469 --> 01:09:40,042 was like, we did it so you don't have to. 1314 01:09:42,165 --> 01:09:44,035 This comic that I'm about to read for you guys 1315 01:09:44,059 --> 01:09:48,199 by my dad, Art Spiegelman, and it's A Father's Guiding Hand. 1316 01:09:49,204 --> 01:09:51,834 "Hey, Dash, look at what Papa has for you." 1317 01:09:51,965 --> 01:09:52,965 A present! 1318 01:09:53,308 --> 01:09:54,077 Yup. 1319 01:09:54,112 --> 01:09:56,130 It's been in the family for years. 1320 01:09:56,280 --> 01:09:58,967 My dad gave it to me when I was a little boy. 1321 01:09:59,270 --> 01:10:00,630 It's old, huh? 1322 01:10:01,223 --> 01:10:03,350 And now I'm giving it to you. 1323 01:10:03,536 --> 01:10:04,431 What is it? 1324 01:10:04,455 --> 01:10:05,598 A monster? 1325 01:10:06,005 --> 01:10:07,433 It's magical. 1326 01:10:07,457 --> 01:10:09,186 It... it's getting bigger! 1327 01:10:09,340 --> 01:10:11,271 It makes you feel so worthless, you 1328 01:10:11,295 --> 01:10:14,106 don't believe you even have the right to breathe. 1329 01:10:14,131 --> 01:10:15,262 Aieee! 1330 01:10:16,258 --> 01:10:17,735 And just think. 1331 01:10:17,900 --> 01:10:20,481 Someday you'll be able to pass it on to your son. 1332 01:10:21,096 --> 01:10:22,203 "Thanks, Papa." 1333 01:10:27,780 --> 01:10:30,636 The 1992 Pulitzer Prizes were announced today. 1334 01:10:30,661 --> 01:10:32,638 Among the winners, a special Pulitzer 1335 01:10:32,663 --> 01:10:35,765 was awarded to Art Spiegelman for a cartoon book 1336 01:10:35,790 --> 01:10:40,049 depiction of the Nazi Holocaust called Maus in the US. 1337 01:10:40,368 --> 01:10:41,551 Other renowned cartoonists 1338 01:10:41,575 --> 01:10:44,178 are delighted the Pulitzer board has recognized just 1339 01:10:44,202 --> 01:10:46,222 what can be accomplished in their field of work. 1340 01:10:46,246 --> 01:10:47,974 I think it says something more for the Pulitzer 1341 01:10:47,998 --> 01:10:49,141 than it says about my field. 1342 01:10:49,165 --> 01:10:51,227 I mean, all honor is due to the Pulitzer. 1343 01:10:51,251 --> 01:10:53,521 To recognize this kind of brilliance, 1344 01:10:53,545 --> 01:10:55,679 well, it doesn't come around often. 1345 01:10:55,704 --> 01:10:57,512 Art Spiegelman's parents survived the war. 1346 01:10:57,537 --> 01:10:59,360 The thing that amazed me about Maus 1347 01:10:59,496 --> 01:11:02,828 was the audacity to come up with this 1348 01:11:02,853 --> 01:11:04,785 and to be able to make this work. 1349 01:11:04,810 --> 01:11:06,700 It was astonishing. 1350 01:11:06,725 --> 01:11:09,287 What about some people who may be offended? 1351 01:11:09,311 --> 01:11:10,330 I read two remarks. 1352 01:11:10,354 --> 01:11:13,708 One of them was that the cartoon Maus image either trivializes 1353 01:11:13,732 --> 01:11:16,585 the Holocaust or, at some level, reinforces 1354 01:11:16,609 --> 01:11:20,366 the rodent image appropriated by the anti-Semites of the era. 1355 01:11:20,391 --> 01:11:21,617 How do you answer them? 1356 01:11:21,935 --> 01:11:24,859 Well, read the book, I think, is the easiest answer. 1357 01:11:26,418 --> 01:11:28,681 I enjoyed reading the reviews of Maus in different countries 1358 01:11:28,705 --> 01:11:31,211 because the emphasis would change. 1359 01:11:31,831 --> 01:11:34,521 In America, there would usually be a paragraph saying, well, I 1360 01:11:34,545 --> 01:11:35,647 don't know, is it comics? 1361 01:11:35,671 --> 01:11:36,939 Is it tragics? 1362 01:11:37,221 --> 01:11:38,899 In Germany, there was much more concern 1363 01:11:38,923 --> 01:11:41,959 about the propriety of using comics. 1364 01:11:42,066 --> 01:11:44,113 At one point, I remember being interviewed and asked, 1365 01:11:44,137 --> 01:11:45,699 do you think it's in bad taste to have 1366 01:11:45,723 --> 01:11:48,409 done a comic book about the Holocaust? 1367 01:11:48,433 --> 01:11:51,931 I said, no, I think the Holocaust was in bad taste. 1368 01:11:57,809 --> 01:12:00,504 I've had to come to terms with, OK, if I have a posterity, 1369 01:12:00,528 --> 01:12:01,598 it's through that work. 1370 01:12:01,623 --> 01:12:05,203 And I am now proud of what I did. 1371 01:12:05,228 --> 01:12:08,055 But I had no expectations when I was making it 1372 01:12:08,079 --> 01:12:09,973 that it would be discovered while I was alive. 1373 01:12:09,997 --> 01:12:12,184 I really thought we would be publishing it ourselves, 1374 01:12:12,208 --> 01:12:15,270 and it would be discovered more or less posthumously. 1375 01:12:15,876 --> 01:12:19,104 It did leave me feeling drained, Maus. 1376 01:12:20,360 --> 01:12:22,235 When The New York Times put it 1377 01:12:22,260 --> 01:12:25,573 on the Fiction side of the Best Seller list, 1378 01:12:25,692 --> 01:12:29,861 Art wrote this amazing letter to The New York Times Book Review. 1379 01:12:30,435 --> 01:12:32,355 They published Art's letter, 1380 01:12:32,541 --> 01:12:38,000 in which he says, if I had a novelist's license working on this book, 1381 01:12:38,024 --> 01:12:40,504 I could have lopped some years off of the 13 1382 01:12:40,528 --> 01:12:41,838 that I spent researching it. 1383 01:12:41,862 --> 01:12:45,424 So here's a book that was moved to non-fiction that 1384 01:12:45,448 --> 01:12:48,052 portrays humans as animals. 1385 01:12:48,426 --> 01:12:51,807 And in that moment, these huge, dominant cultural institutions 1386 01:12:51,831 --> 01:12:55,743 like The Times had to debate, what does it mean 1387 01:12:55,768 --> 01:12:57,443 to take drawings seriously? 1388 01:12:57,467 --> 01:12:58,870 THESE DAYS, COMIC BOOKS AREN'T JUST FOR KIDS 1389 01:12:58,894 --> 01:13:01,108 That was a major cultural shift that 1390 01:13:01,132 --> 01:13:03,955 basically allows us to have the field of comics 1391 01:13:03,980 --> 01:13:05,323 that we have today. 1392 01:13:18,181 --> 01:13:19,849 I - did a book after Maus 1393 01:13:19,874 --> 01:13:24,167 called The Wild Party, which was a very obscure narrative/poem. 1394 01:13:24,413 --> 01:13:26,868 It had a great, scurrilous quality, 1395 01:13:26,893 --> 01:13:28,765 and it was meant to be erotic. 1396 01:13:32,746 --> 01:13:37,685 The whole thing was to be able to enjoy giving life to his words. 1397 01:13:40,915 --> 01:13:44,553 It was a move sideways, as was joining up with The New Yorker. 1398 01:13:53,349 --> 01:13:54,839 ART EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER 1993 - PRESENT 1399 01:13:54,863 --> 01:13:57,054 Once Francoise started working at The New Yorker, 1400 01:13:57,079 --> 01:14:00,693 that was the next big platform for both of them. 1401 01:14:04,815 --> 01:14:06,209 When I got invited 1402 01:14:06,234 --> 01:14:08,216 to work for The New Yorker, I got in a lot of trouble there. 1403 01:14:08,240 --> 01:14:10,999 There were scandals based on the covers I was doing. 1404 01:14:11,618 --> 01:14:14,442 About the time I was invited in, Valentine's Day 1405 01:14:14,467 --> 01:14:18,586 that was coming up, and I was thinking about the Crown Heights riots 1406 01:14:18,892 --> 01:14:20,835 that brought the West Indian, 1407 01:14:20,860 --> 01:14:23,862 African American community, and Hasidic Jews to blows. 1408 01:14:24,278 --> 01:14:25,340 I was just doodling. 1409 01:14:25,365 --> 01:14:28,872 And I was drawing that Eustace Tilley guy with the monocle 1410 01:14:28,897 --> 01:14:31,449 and said, I wonder what he'd look like if he was a Jew. 1411 01:14:31,629 --> 01:14:34,683 So I just put a Hasidic hat and beard on him. 1412 01:14:34,708 --> 01:14:36,952 And then before I knew it, he was kissing this West Indian 1413 01:14:36,976 --> 01:14:38,655 African American woman. 1414 01:14:38,680 --> 01:14:41,430 And that was my Valentine's cover. 1415 01:14:41,454 --> 01:14:43,682 Why don't they just kiss and make up? 1416 01:14:44,115 --> 01:14:45,767 Man, did that get people upset. 1417 01:14:45,791 --> 01:14:47,497 That was the one that really did it. 1418 01:14:47,544 --> 01:14:49,278 NEW YORKER'S FEB. 15 COVER DRAWS CRITICISM 1419 01:14:49,330 --> 01:14:51,642 RACIAL THEME OF NEW YORKER COVER SPARKS FUROR 1420 01:14:51,676 --> 01:14:53,537 NEW YORKER COVER ANGERS BLACKS, JEWS 1421 01:14:53,643 --> 01:14:55,979 He's very good at comics, which are sequential images, 1422 01:14:56,004 --> 01:14:58,679 but he's also really good at the one image. 1423 01:14:59,934 --> 01:15:01,574 It's like poetry and prose. 1424 01:15:01,598 --> 01:15:04,077 They're different things, but a single image 1425 01:15:04,101 --> 01:15:08,373 can be used to elicit an emotion or a thought, 1426 01:15:08,397 --> 01:15:12,419 and it can also be used to really upset people. 1427 01:15:12,443 --> 01:15:14,854 And sometimes those are the same things. 1428 01:15:14,879 --> 01:15:16,374 COPS FIRED 41 SHOTS 1429 01:15:16,414 --> 01:15:17,516 One of the issues 1430 01:15:17,541 --> 01:15:20,896 that was happening around that time was the Hamidou Diallo case, 1431 01:15:20,922 --> 01:15:23,721 an African immigrant who was coming home from work 1432 01:15:23,745 --> 01:15:26,433 into the Bronx, who was surrounded by cops, 1433 01:15:26,457 --> 01:15:28,352 told him to freeze, then asked for his ID. 1434 01:15:28,376 --> 01:15:30,687 When he reached for his ID, they assumed 1435 01:15:30,711 --> 01:15:35,983 he was reaching for a gun, and they just opened fire en masse. 1436 01:15:36,007 --> 01:15:39,404 My idea was to have a cop that looked like the friendly, 1437 01:15:39,428 --> 01:15:42,658 Apple-cheeked Casey the Cop happily and affably shooting 1438 01:15:42,682 --> 01:15:46,828 at these silhouetted targets, where it says, 41 shots, $0.10. 1439 01:15:47,048 --> 01:15:49,010 And one of the smartest things about this cover, 1440 01:15:49,035 --> 01:15:52,339 if I say so myself, is that the targets were all black, 1441 01:15:52,523 --> 01:15:54,628 but because they're silhouettes, it 1442 01:15:54,652 --> 01:15:57,589 doesn't read as Black Americans versus white Americans. 1443 01:15:57,614 --> 01:16:02,755 It just reads as Americans are under fire from their police. 1444 01:16:02,780 --> 01:16:04,179 New York is talking this week 1445 01:16:04,203 --> 01:16:06,974 about the image one magazine put on its cover. 1446 01:16:06,998 --> 01:16:10,227 The complicated message about cops and police brutality 1447 01:16:10,251 --> 01:16:13,131 depicted with an edge sharp as razor wire. 1448 01:16:13,156 --> 01:16:14,487 I think it's irresponsible. 1449 01:16:14,580 --> 01:16:15,584 It's outrageous. 1450 01:16:15,609 --> 01:16:16,942 Police Commissioner Howard Safir 1451 01:16:16,966 --> 01:16:20,570 is furious about the latest cover of The New Yorker magazine. 1452 01:16:20,747 --> 01:16:24,444 But whether you love it or you hate it, one thing is clear. 1453 01:16:24,501 --> 01:16:27,272 This cover art has struck a nerve. 1454 01:16:34,483 --> 01:16:37,768 This fall will be the 10th anniversary 1455 01:16:37,793 --> 01:16:42,215 of the publication of Maus, 1456 01:16:43,092 --> 01:16:45,928 which I consider a true American masterpiece. 1457 01:16:46,301 --> 01:16:51,265 What Maus is is it's what I guess maybe Truman Capote would call 1458 01:16:51,573 --> 01:16:53,728 a nonfiction novel. 1459 01:16:53,753 --> 01:16:58,609 Do you believe the you have another story 1460 01:16:58,633 --> 01:16:59,818 that's extraordinary in you? 1461 01:16:59,842 --> 01:17:01,194 I mean, I know that's a rough question. 1462 01:17:01,218 --> 01:17:02,404 I don't know. 1463 01:17:02,428 --> 01:17:07,186 I mean, this was such a extended birth pang 1464 01:17:07,211 --> 01:17:09,673 getting this thing to happen, like you said, 13 years. 1465 01:17:09,698 --> 01:17:11,968 I'm at the early stages of just poking around 1466 01:17:11,992 --> 01:17:14,011 for something that's worth contracting 1467 01:17:14,035 --> 01:17:16,931 this long-term disease, going in for a book 1468 01:17:16,955 --> 01:17:19,141 and coming out seven or eight or nine years later. 1469 01:17:19,165 --> 01:17:21,978 So I've been doing a lot shorter hits, one after the other, 1470 01:17:22,002 --> 01:17:24,171 in the hopes that one of them will flower. 1471 01:17:24,624 --> 01:17:27,775 Achieving something of a super high level when 1472 01:17:27,799 --> 01:17:30,319 you're really young, it's like giving yourself 1473 01:17:30,343 --> 01:17:31,529 a father to outlive. 1474 01:17:31,553 --> 01:17:34,759 And so Art's doing that, and he's tortured by that. 1475 01:17:35,526 --> 01:17:37,243 I was just another baby boom boy. 1476 01:17:37,267 --> 01:17:38,160 I grew up in Queens. 1477 01:17:38,184 --> 01:17:38,954 I loved comics. 1478 01:17:38,978 --> 01:17:40,288 My parents survived Auschwitz. 1479 01:17:40,312 --> 01:17:41,455 It's all a matter of record. 1480 01:17:41,479 --> 01:17:43,040 I made a comic book about it, the one 1481 01:17:43,064 --> 01:17:45,084 with Jewish mice and Nazi cats. 1482 01:17:45,108 --> 01:17:47,336 Mein kampf, my struggle. 1483 01:17:47,591 --> 01:17:50,039 I still prowl the murky caverns of my memory, 1484 01:17:50,064 --> 01:17:54,118 but now I feel like there's a 5,000-pound mouse breathing down my neck. 1485 01:17:54,290 --> 01:17:56,387 Remembering those who remembered the death camps 1486 01:17:56,411 --> 01:17:58,414 is a hard act to follow. 1487 01:18:00,081 --> 01:18:01,893 We should just show the other one. 1488 01:18:01,917 --> 01:18:03,936 And put this one as a group of rose. 1489 01:18:03,960 --> 01:18:05,271 Color it black and white colors. 1490 01:18:05,295 --> 01:18:07,565 We'll swap these two. 1491 01:18:07,589 --> 01:18:10,026 And now they're actually present in the chronological order 1492 01:18:10,050 --> 01:18:11,204 of when they were made. 1493 01:18:14,345 --> 01:18:17,657 So what do you think? 1494 01:18:17,683 --> 01:18:19,745 Maybe that could still be a fit. 1495 01:18:19,769 --> 01:18:23,247 It could if we have a certain aesthetic to it. 1496 01:18:23,271 --> 01:18:24,916 I mean, these are rare, but I have that. 1497 01:18:24,940 --> 01:18:26,611 That's the actual cover of The New Yorker. 1498 01:18:26,636 --> 01:18:27,186 Yeah. 1499 01:18:27,211 --> 01:18:28,544 And you can really go for a long time 1500 01:18:28,568 --> 01:18:30,338 without knowing whether there's anything on there. 1501 01:18:30,362 --> 01:18:31,839 Depends on how the light hits it. 1502 01:18:31,863 --> 01:18:34,266 And all of a sudden, it goes to the towers, comes in. 1503 01:18:36,806 --> 01:18:39,679 IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS 1504 01:18:40,366 --> 01:18:42,668 My high school was right underneath 1505 01:18:42,693 --> 01:18:43,829 the World Trade Center. 1506 01:18:43,854 --> 01:18:47,980 And it was my second or third day of high school when 9/11 happened. 1507 01:18:48,005 --> 01:18:50,942 And it was a very difficult day, which my dad then 1508 01:18:50,966 --> 01:18:52,674 wrote about in this book. 1509 01:18:53,927 --> 01:18:55,280 The school was shaking. 1510 01:18:55,304 --> 01:18:56,656 The lights were going on and off. 1511 01:18:56,680 --> 01:18:58,325 Teachers were running out of classrooms. 1512 01:18:58,349 --> 01:19:01,077 Some kids were glued to the windows watching people jump. 1513 01:19:01,389 --> 01:19:03,662 And my parents came to get me. 1514 01:19:03,687 --> 01:19:05,977 We went dashing down there. 1515 01:19:06,482 --> 01:19:10,567 We got her out and began walking to the West Side Highway. 1516 01:19:10,592 --> 01:19:12,213 We turned to see the towers. 1517 01:19:12,237 --> 01:19:15,800 At that point, the other tower was on fire as well. 1518 01:19:15,824 --> 01:19:21,472 And what we saw was so astonishingly unreal-looking. 1519 01:19:21,496 --> 01:19:23,767 My dad and I and my mom, as well, 1520 01:19:23,791 --> 01:19:28,456 witnessed something that you never see in the footage of 9/11. 1521 01:19:28,481 --> 01:19:32,358 It looked like all of the gray of the tower fell first. 1522 01:19:32,382 --> 01:19:34,402 And then there were these bright red beams 1523 01:19:34,426 --> 01:19:36,612 that hung in the air for a really long time. 1524 01:19:36,636 --> 01:19:39,629 And then those bright red beams slowly disintegrated. 1525 01:19:39,856 --> 01:19:43,369 And I remember seeing that so vividly. 1526 01:19:43,393 --> 01:19:46,330 And the fact that my dad saw it, too, and then drew it 1527 01:19:46,354 --> 01:19:47,984 is really beautiful. 1528 01:19:49,901 --> 01:19:51,338 "Equally terrorized 1529 01:19:51,363 --> 01:19:53,087 by al-Qaeda and by his own government, 1530 01:19:53,111 --> 01:19:56,767 our hero looks over some ancient comics pages instead of working. 1531 01:19:56,867 --> 01:19:59,344 He dozes off and relives his ringside seat to that 1532 01:19:59,368 --> 01:20:03,805 "day's disaster yet again, trying to figure out what he actually saw." 1533 01:20:04,706 --> 01:20:06,642 What I did find myself doing almost immediately 1534 01:20:06,666 --> 01:20:08,310 was hide out in what I understood, 1535 01:20:08,334 --> 01:20:10,864 which was the old comics that 1536 01:20:11,951 --> 01:20:13,006 nurtured me. 1537 01:20:13,031 --> 01:20:16,756 And so I was just looking at the old Sunday terror sheets that I had. 1538 01:20:16,781 --> 01:20:19,280 And those just gave me a feeling that civilization 1539 01:20:19,304 --> 01:20:21,306 was worth saving. 1540 01:20:21,806 --> 01:20:23,743 The conceit that occurred almost as soon 1541 01:20:23,768 --> 01:20:26,537 as I started working on it was that in the shadow of the towers 1542 01:20:26,561 --> 01:20:29,151 was the Hearst building and the Pulitzer building, 1543 01:20:29,182 --> 01:20:32,773 the newspaper buildings that published the first Sunday comics in America. 1544 01:20:32,965 --> 01:20:34,795 So my notion is when the towers fell, 1545 01:20:34,820 --> 01:20:37,894 it disinterred the bones of the comics characters 1546 01:20:37,925 --> 01:20:39,636 that lay beneath the city. 1547 01:20:42,692 --> 01:20:46,217 Art always seems to be standing at this point in these histories. 1548 01:20:46,296 --> 01:20:52,741 It's hard to remember the atmosphere that was going on after 9/11. 1549 01:20:52,779 --> 01:20:55,190 Anything even mildly critical 1550 01:20:55,215 --> 01:20:59,610 of the government was seen as almost siding with the terrorists. 1551 01:20:59,635 --> 01:21:02,297 Saying that the war fever that quickly ensued 1552 01:21:02,322 --> 01:21:05,681 was as big a threat as anything that bin Laden had come up with 1553 01:21:05,706 --> 01:21:06,994 was also not sayable. 1554 01:21:07,018 --> 01:21:09,121 I couldn't get anybody interested in publishing it. 1555 01:21:09,145 --> 01:21:11,831 And then when it did come out in Europe, 1556 01:21:11,856 --> 01:21:13,585 I just felt like I was an ambassador 1557 01:21:13,609 --> 01:21:17,212 to prove that America wasn't as crazy as Europeans thought we were 1558 01:21:17,237 --> 01:21:19,954 because my attitudes were almost mainstream there. 1559 01:21:20,247 --> 01:21:22,522 I was amazed because the foreword came through. 1560 01:21:22,548 --> 01:21:25,387 And actually, without worrying about my politics or theirs, 1561 01:21:25,411 --> 01:21:27,454 I got the back page whenever I wanted. 1562 01:21:27,741 --> 01:21:32,136 We published an issue of World War 3 within months of 9/11. 1563 01:21:32,431 --> 01:21:33,419 Here's the issue. 1564 01:21:33,444 --> 01:21:38,231 This is the pre before we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, 1565 01:21:38,256 --> 01:21:40,295 where we said, hey, let's not do that. 1566 01:21:40,320 --> 01:21:41,362 This is a terrible idea. 1567 01:21:41,387 --> 01:21:44,196 And there's Art on the inside cover. 1568 01:21:47,253 --> 01:21:48,771 In the introduction to. 1569 01:21:48,796 --> 01:21:51,443 In the Shadow of No Towers, he talks about this idea 1570 01:21:51,480 --> 01:21:53,021 that disaster is my muse. 1571 01:21:53,074 --> 01:21:54,595 THE SKY IS FALLING!! 1572 01:21:54,620 --> 01:21:58,860 It's true that Art has a degree of comfort 1573 01:21:58,891 --> 01:22:00,647 with misery. 1574 01:22:00,977 --> 01:22:03,495 One thing that he heard from his parents 1575 01:22:03,520 --> 01:22:07,334 clearly is it can all be taken away from you 1576 01:22:07,358 --> 01:22:08,876 from one day to the next. 1577 01:22:08,901 --> 01:22:12,449 So he expects the sky to keep falling. 1578 01:22:13,028 --> 01:22:14,981 And sometime it does. 1579 01:22:16,145 --> 01:22:19,375 His father wanted to teach him to keep his bags 1580 01:22:19,400 --> 01:22:22,462 packed in case the world grid crumbled, 1581 01:22:22,488 --> 01:22:26,555 which was precisely a lesson that Vladek had learned from World War II. 1582 01:22:26,886 --> 01:22:32,088 That seemed to be happening during 9/11 for Art. 1583 01:22:35,079 --> 01:22:38,445 25 years ago, Art Spiegelman published Maus. 1584 01:22:38,470 --> 01:22:42,468 Now he's published MetaMaus, a book and DVD 1585 01:22:42,493 --> 01:22:44,242 about the making of Maus. 1586 01:22:44,644 --> 01:22:48,417 You produced MetaMaus, partly, I think, 1587 01:22:48,442 --> 01:22:50,792 because you thought it was time to draw 1588 01:22:50,817 --> 01:22:53,847 a line underneath the whole episode 25 years on. 1589 01:22:53,872 --> 01:22:55,600 Yet here we are, still talking about it. 1590 01:22:55,625 --> 01:22:58,595 Is this something you can ever put behind you? 1591 01:22:59,076 --> 01:23:00,553 I - like to think so. 1592 01:23:00,577 --> 01:23:02,846 And I know you wrote MetaMaus so that people 1593 01:23:02,870 --> 01:23:04,231 would no longer ask, why pigs? 1594 01:23:04,256 --> 01:23:04,816 Why mice? 1595 01:23:04,841 --> 01:23:07,104 But I'm going to ask the question, why mice? 1596 01:23:11,398 --> 01:23:14,588 "The book seems to loom over me like my father once did." 1597 01:23:14,882 --> 01:23:17,444 Journalists and students still want answers 1598 01:23:17,469 --> 01:23:19,203 to the same few questions. 1599 01:23:19,471 --> 01:23:20,824 Why comics? 1600 01:23:20,848 --> 01:23:21,991 Why mice? 1601 01:23:22,015 --> 01:23:23,357 Why the Holocaust? 1602 01:23:23,388 --> 01:23:24,388 Yikes. 1603 01:23:25,101 --> 01:23:27,664 Or to quote my forefathers, 'Oy.' 1604 01:23:27,855 --> 01:23:31,458 But I thought I'd finally try to answer as fully as I could. 1605 01:23:31,482 --> 01:23:33,878 That way, when asked in the future, maybe 1606 01:23:33,902 --> 01:23:35,719 I could just say, never again. 1607 01:23:36,916 --> 01:23:39,519 And maybe I could even get my damned mouse mask off. 1608 01:23:39,656 --> 01:23:41,009 I can't breathe in this thing. 1609 01:23:41,034 --> 01:23:41,510 Unff. 1610 01:23:41,534 --> 01:23:42,011 Urk. 1611 01:23:42,035 --> 01:23:42,512 Oof. 1612 01:23:42,536 --> 01:23:43,536 Grunt! 1613 01:23:43,828 --> 01:23:44,922 "Aah." 1614 01:23:46,254 --> 01:23:51,031 MetaMaus is a book about the making of Maus. 1615 01:23:53,030 --> 01:23:56,937 Art and I just talked to each other for two years. 1616 01:23:57,553 --> 01:24:00,784 And then I edited the transcripts. 1617 01:24:01,804 --> 01:24:04,701 The book has three threads. 1618 01:24:04,725 --> 01:24:07,828 It's about the aesthetic research that went into Maus, 1619 01:24:07,852 --> 01:24:09,997 the historical research that went into Maus, 1620 01:24:10,034 --> 01:24:12,500 and the family research that went into Maus. 1621 01:24:31,043 --> 01:24:34,105 I think he had a sense when he was doing Maus 1622 01:24:34,129 --> 01:24:35,690 that he was going to do it, and he 1623 01:24:35,714 --> 01:24:41,225 was going to bury these memories in panels. 1624 01:24:41,624 --> 01:24:43,557 In the very last page of the book, 1625 01:24:43,925 --> 01:24:46,993 after you see Vladek and his birth and death 1626 01:24:47,017 --> 01:24:50,497 date and next to him, Anja's birth and death date, just as it 1627 01:24:50,521 --> 01:24:53,082 looks on their tombstone, below that 1628 01:24:53,106 --> 01:24:54,542 is the signature of when I started. 1629 01:24:54,566 --> 01:24:58,077 Maus and the death date of the book, when I finished it. 1630 01:24:58,816 --> 01:25:00,922 He had to think about all this stuff again 1631 01:25:00,948 --> 01:25:02,570 for MetaMaus. 1632 01:25:02,698 --> 01:25:05,302 It made me realize that he doesn't 1633 01:25:05,327 --> 01:25:06,596 want to talk about it again. 1634 01:25:06,620 --> 01:25:09,641 And just because it exists in public form in Maus 1635 01:25:09,665 --> 01:25:12,310 doesn't mean that it's easy for him 1636 01:25:12,335 --> 01:25:15,213 to revisit as an individual person. 1637 01:25:17,713 --> 01:25:21,380 That really changed after Trump was elected. 1638 01:25:22,578 --> 01:25:25,432 So I was stumped when I saw that Trump won. 1639 01:25:25,787 --> 01:25:27,616 My idea of resistance was that picture 1640 01:25:27,641 --> 01:25:29,650 on the left, afraid to get out of bed. 1641 01:25:30,644 --> 01:25:34,791 But my women folks in my family, my daughter and my wife, 1642 01:25:34,815 --> 01:25:37,544 who's here, Francoise, decided to go into action. 1643 01:25:37,568 --> 01:25:41,589 And they published a free newspaper of cartoons and comics 1644 01:25:41,613 --> 01:25:45,182 called Resist that was given away at the women's march. 1645 01:25:45,465 --> 01:25:47,527 I just didn't want to draw Trump. 1646 01:25:47,577 --> 01:25:49,347 So I did one comic strip about not 1647 01:25:49,371 --> 01:25:51,558 wanting to draw Trump, which said, 1648 01:25:51,582 --> 01:25:55,061 "Even a tower full of Tic Tacs can't mask 1649 01:25:55,085 --> 01:25:57,477 the toxic stench of fascism. 1650 01:25:58,379 --> 01:26:02,359 I resisted drawing Trump's smug and ugly mug till now 1651 01:26:02,384 --> 01:26:05,953 because narcissists thrive even on negative attention. 1652 01:26:06,854 --> 01:26:08,865 I hoped he would just burn out. 1653 01:26:08,890 --> 01:26:10,492 Billionaires Lives Matter. 1654 01:26:10,517 --> 01:26:12,704 But now he's got his grubby little mitts 1655 01:26:12,728 --> 01:26:16,165 on the steering wheel and seems set to drive us all off a cliff. 1656 01:26:16,189 --> 01:26:17,917 "To be, sob, continued." 1657 01:26:17,941 --> 01:26:21,045 So after that, I really, for the most part, 1658 01:26:21,069 --> 01:26:24,465 refrained from drawing anything publishable of Trump. 1659 01:26:24,655 --> 01:26:27,144 It's too grave for that kind of joke. 1660 01:26:27,742 --> 01:26:30,912 In this Trump and post-Trump moment, 1661 01:26:31,218 --> 01:26:38,269 he recognized how useful Maus was as a text for people 1662 01:26:38,294 --> 01:26:42,232 explicitly reacting to and fighting fascism. 1663 01:26:42,889 --> 01:26:44,641 My name is Art Spiegelman. 1664 01:26:48,022 --> 01:26:48,970 Thanks. 1665 01:26:48,995 --> 01:26:51,908 I'm going to read a poem by Frank Zappa, 1666 01:26:52,627 --> 01:26:57,100 hopefully, next year's posthumous winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1667 01:26:57,546 --> 01:27:00,667 from the 1966 Mothers of Invention album. 1668 01:27:00,745 --> 01:27:02,012 Freak Out! 1669 01:27:02,361 --> 01:27:04,297 "It Can't Happen Here." 1670 01:27:04,321 --> 01:27:08,363 So I apologize for not being able to read properly off key. 1671 01:27:08,783 --> 01:27:10,427 "It can't happen here, 1672 01:27:10,452 --> 01:27:12,100 It can't happen here, 1673 01:27:12,125 --> 01:27:15,391 I'm telling you, my dear, that it can't happen here, 1674 01:27:15,718 --> 01:27:17,840 Because I've been checking it out, baby, 1675 01:27:17,865 --> 01:27:19,979 I checked it out a couple of times, 1676 01:27:20,003 --> 01:27:22,607 And I'm telling you, it can't happen here, 1677 01:27:22,631 --> 01:27:25,193 Oh, darling, it's important that you believe me, 1678 01:27:25,218 --> 01:27:27,403 Bop, bop, bop, bop, 1679 01:27:27,500 --> 01:27:29,228 "That it can't happen here." 1680 01:27:32,134 --> 01:27:33,368 A Tennessee school board 1681 01:27:33,392 --> 01:27:36,704 has banned the critically acclaimed graphic novel Maus. 1682 01:27:36,728 --> 01:27:39,930 I was flabbergasted, and then angry, 1683 01:27:39,955 --> 01:27:41,460 and then flabbergasted again. 1684 01:27:41,484 --> 01:27:44,337 A 10 to 0 vote removed the novel about the Holocaust 1685 01:27:44,361 --> 01:27:46,952 from the classroom, citing profanity, 1686 01:27:46,977 --> 01:27:50,426 nudity, and scenes deemed too inappropriate for children. 1687 01:27:50,450 --> 01:27:52,892 Here you are now on a news show 1688 01:27:52,917 --> 01:27:55,181 after a year of pretty constant interviews, 1689 01:27:55,205 --> 01:27:58,667 having to discuss the banning of Maus or people 1690 01:27:58,692 --> 01:28:00,040 who don't want people to read it. 1691 01:28:00,065 --> 01:28:02,647 Let's talk more about that, that you are now 1692 01:28:02,671 --> 01:28:04,959 the story about the story. 1693 01:28:06,217 --> 01:28:07,773 Yeah. And I've made a... 1694 01:28:07,820 --> 01:28:11,071 I've taken great pains to expand it from Maus 1695 01:28:11,096 --> 01:28:12,741 to talk about all the other book banning 1696 01:28:12,765 --> 01:28:14,910 that's going on because I've been 1697 01:28:14,934 --> 01:28:18,671 puzzled by the focus on Maus. 1698 01:28:18,709 --> 01:28:19,982 Joining me now is Art Spiegelman, 1699 01:28:20,006 --> 01:28:22,333 Pulitzer Prize-winning artist, Illustrator, and author, 1700 01:28:22,358 --> 01:28:24,668 and Jerry Craft, Newbery Medal-winning 1701 01:28:24,692 --> 01:28:26,670 illustrator and author of New Kid, 1702 01:28:26,695 --> 01:28:29,758 a graphic novel pulled by a Texas school district 1703 01:28:29,782 --> 01:28:31,703 after a white parent complained 1704 01:28:31,728 --> 01:28:34,721 that it promoted critical race theory and Marxism. 1705 01:28:34,745 --> 01:28:37,098 It's a Black kid going to private school. 1706 01:28:37,122 --> 01:28:38,183 There's no cursing. 1707 01:28:38,207 --> 01:28:38,976 There's no sex. 1708 01:28:39,000 --> 01:28:40,143 There's no drugs. 1709 01:28:40,167 --> 01:28:42,062 New Kid's in 13 different languages. 1710 01:28:42,086 --> 01:28:45,978 So you could read it in Spanish, French, Korean, Romanian, 1711 01:28:46,385 --> 01:28:48,442 German, Albanian. 1712 01:28:48,473 --> 01:28:52,030 You just can't read it in parts of Texas or Florida. 1713 01:28:55,129 --> 01:28:57,576 I never thought I would live to see something 1714 01:28:57,601 --> 01:29:00,872 where America, which saved my parents after the war 1715 01:29:00,896 --> 01:29:02,582 and gave them a new start in life, 1716 01:29:02,712 --> 01:29:05,920 could be tilted toward a new kind of fascism. 1717 01:29:05,944 --> 01:29:08,255 And it's what I see everywhere I look now. 1718 01:29:08,279 --> 01:29:11,633 But you know the images of Nazis burning books 1719 01:29:11,657 --> 01:29:14,075 in the '30s in Germany. 1720 01:29:15,785 --> 01:29:18,181 And now books are being thoroughly banned 1721 01:29:18,205 --> 01:29:21,935 in libraries in Missouri, in Florida, in Texas, 1722 01:29:21,959 --> 01:29:23,161 and in Tennessee. 1723 01:29:25,297 --> 01:29:28,234 It's like destroying memory yet again. 1724 01:29:28,258 --> 01:29:30,319 When I called my father a murderer 1725 01:29:30,343 --> 01:29:33,197 for murdering the written word, the diary, 1726 01:29:33,221 --> 01:29:35,366 it's what we're doing to our entire culture 1727 01:29:35,523 --> 01:29:38,298 by murdering the books, banning them, taking them off shelves. 1728 01:29:38,351 --> 01:29:40,926 RED STATES THREATEN LIBRARIANS WITH PRISON AS BLUE STATES WORK TO PROTECT THEM 1729 01:29:40,950 --> 01:29:43,164 I think we're in for a fascist society, 1730 01:29:43,188 --> 01:29:45,667 unless things change around 180 degrees. 1731 01:29:45,691 --> 01:29:47,586 This is really dangerous times. 1732 01:29:47,610 --> 01:29:49,963 I never thought I'd see anything like this again. 1733 01:29:49,987 --> 01:29:52,173 It won't take exactly the same form, 1734 01:29:52,197 --> 01:29:57,345 but it's clear that, as Faulkner said, the past is not dead. 1735 01:29:57,369 --> 01:29:59,347 It's not even past. 1736 01:29:59,732 --> 01:30:05,185 And that informs all of this thinking. 1737 01:30:05,428 --> 01:30:09,983 This is an image I made called The Past Hangs over the Future, 1738 01:30:10,007 --> 01:30:12,776 me with my daughter mouse, Nadja, when she was very young 1739 01:30:12,928 --> 01:30:15,322 and hanged Jews hanging behind it. 1740 01:30:21,268 --> 01:30:23,817 Nothing like a Lifetime Achievement Award 1741 01:30:23,855 --> 01:30:26,430 to make me feel like my lifetime might be over. 1742 01:30:28,025 --> 01:30:32,047 My year culminating in this award has been really sobering. 1743 01:30:32,266 --> 01:30:36,802 I'd always vowed to not become the Elie Wiesel of comic books. 1744 01:30:39,418 --> 01:30:42,019 In fact, in the years after Maus, 1745 01:30:42,057 --> 01:30:45,871 I would draw myself trying to outrun a 500-pound mouse, 1746 01:30:46,399 --> 01:30:49,385 trying to either evade or supersede that work. 1747 01:30:50,044 --> 01:30:52,992 But now I have had to try to become a mensch. 1748 01:30:53,017 --> 01:30:57,866 It's been a long march to turn around and embrace the 500-pound mouse, 1749 01:30:57,891 --> 01:31:03,118 while fascist storm clouds gather yet again all over our frying planet. 1750 01:31:03,326 --> 01:31:05,872 So I'm even grateful that Maus may now 1751 01:31:05,897 --> 01:31:08,640 have an afterlife as a cautionary tale 1752 01:31:08,781 --> 01:31:10,543 that it might make readers insist never 1753 01:31:10,567 --> 01:31:14,493 again in the future, even if the past for other minorities 1754 01:31:14,530 --> 01:31:19,537 has often been a matter of never again and again and again. 1755 01:31:19,632 --> 01:31:22,067 EIGHT AUTHORS ON HOW IT FEELS TO HAVE THEIR BOOKS BANNED. 1756 01:31:22,119 --> 01:31:25,387 THE WRITERS OF AMERICA'S MOST FREQUENTLY BANNED BOOKS 1757 01:31:25,419 --> 01:31:29,080 TALK ABOUT THE THREAT TO CREATIVITY AND DEMOCRACY 1758 01:31:33,315 --> 01:31:37,695 After being the poster boy for books being censored, what 1759 01:31:37,719 --> 01:31:41,423 I was calling the Tennessee waltz while it was going on, 1760 01:31:41,448 --> 01:31:43,452 I eventually stopped drawing altogether. 1761 01:31:43,476 --> 01:31:46,246 And as a result, my hand froze. 1762 01:31:46,271 --> 01:31:47,748 It's not like a bicycle. 1763 01:31:48,070 --> 01:31:51,513 You don't just get on and remember how to stay balanced. 1764 01:31:56,254 --> 01:31:58,876 When I was a kid, one of the things 1765 01:31:58,901 --> 01:32:02,581 that first made me enjoy making marks on paper 1766 01:32:02,814 --> 01:32:07,392 was a game my mother would play with me. 1767 01:32:07,416 --> 01:32:09,061 She'd make a bunch of scribbles and say, 1768 01:32:09,085 --> 01:32:10,104 what does that look like? 1769 01:32:10,128 --> 01:32:10,856 Draw it. 1770 01:32:11,036 --> 01:32:13,745 And so I'd look around and then just draw something. 1771 01:32:13,909 --> 01:32:15,546 And then I'd do a scribble for her. 1772 01:32:15,570 --> 01:32:17,799 And, I mean, she kind of cheated. 1773 01:32:17,824 --> 01:32:19,218 She would just make more scribbles 1774 01:32:19,242 --> 01:32:20,303 and make it into a hairdo. 1775 01:32:20,327 --> 01:32:22,429 And then she could draw a profile of a woman's face 1776 01:32:22,453 --> 01:32:23,513 that she knew how to draw. 1777 01:32:23,537 --> 01:32:25,697 So it was always just different hairdos on that head. 1778 01:32:26,248 --> 01:32:28,559 Recently, I was messing around with watercolor. 1779 01:32:28,584 --> 01:32:31,552 I just make a bunch of scribbles, but in color, 1780 01:32:31,577 --> 01:32:33,632 or at least in gray for many of them. 1781 01:32:33,839 --> 01:32:35,234 And then I'd let it dry. 1782 01:32:35,258 --> 01:32:37,027 And then I was looking at clouds, 1783 01:32:37,240 --> 01:32:39,530 and I'd just start making something. 1784 01:32:39,554 --> 01:32:42,658 So it helped me overcome my recent inhibition 1785 01:32:42,682 --> 01:32:45,244 about drawing anything at all because it was always 1786 01:32:45,268 --> 01:32:47,204 getting me into trouble, this drawing stuff. 1787 01:32:47,229 --> 01:32:50,222 So this was one of the first ones. 1788 01:32:51,358 --> 01:32:53,669 This one was, "Meanwhile, in a universe next door, 1789 01:32:53,693 --> 01:32:56,402 the Earth is destroyed by a giant-sized chicken." 1790 01:32:58,071 --> 01:33:00,299 I didn't understand it right away, but part of it 1791 01:33:00,324 --> 01:33:03,596 really was getting in touch with my mother again. 1792 01:33:03,890 --> 01:33:05,347 Getting in touch with my mother and father 1793 01:33:05,371 --> 01:33:08,726 was part of reliving Maus for that year and a half of having 1794 01:33:08,750 --> 01:33:11,353 to talk about it in public from a different angle 1795 01:33:11,377 --> 01:33:13,584 than I ever had to before. 1796 01:33:14,755 --> 01:33:17,483 So I'm doing these weird drawings, 1797 01:33:17,508 --> 01:33:19,611 and I figure, OK, I'll just make a bunch of shapes. 1798 01:33:19,635 --> 01:33:22,406 But afterwards, I'm going to look for a mouse head. 1799 01:33:23,538 --> 01:33:27,536 And I began to just draw around it, and it grew into a picture. 1800 01:33:27,560 --> 01:33:30,498 And it's a mouse suspiciously looking 1801 01:33:30,522 --> 01:33:34,001 like the one that represents me in the book with a vest. 1802 01:33:34,025 --> 01:33:38,381 And there's a Ku Klux Klansman holding a very large wild cat. 1803 01:33:38,405 --> 01:33:41,883 And the cat, which is, of course, a symbol for fascism 1804 01:33:41,907 --> 01:33:45,011 in Maus, is scratching my face. 1805 01:33:45,035 --> 01:33:48,266 It was an image of book burning and banning with a pig 1806 01:33:48,290 --> 01:33:51,519 breathing flames, small cat in the background with a Hitler 1807 01:33:51,543 --> 01:33:52,812 mustache somewhere. 1808 01:33:52,836 --> 01:33:54,856 And it's just finding what could happen around 1809 01:33:54,880 --> 01:33:57,253 this image of the cat scratching. 1810 01:33:57,278 --> 01:34:02,611 And voila, there we have the bonfire of the 21st century. 1811 01:34:15,357 --> 01:34:17,670 But this could look like that from the same edge, right? 1812 01:34:22,001 --> 01:34:24,695 One of the things that I really love about Art's work 1813 01:34:24,726 --> 01:34:28,847 is that at a time when most artists just plagiarize 1814 01:34:28,872 --> 01:34:29,974 from their last success... 1815 01:34:29,998 --> 01:34:31,475 they just find one thing that works, 1816 01:34:31,499 --> 01:34:34,270 and they do it over and over and over again until they die... 1817 01:34:34,346 --> 01:34:36,808 Art is the exact opposite of that. 1818 01:34:44,325 --> 01:34:47,658 He opened up a door that a lot of us went through. 1819 01:34:47,683 --> 01:34:50,372 FOOTNOTES IN GAZA 1820 01:34:52,959 --> 01:34:54,415 PERSEPOLIS THE STORY OF A CHILDHOOD 1821 01:34:54,439 --> 01:34:56,166 The book that made me 1822 01:34:56,190 --> 01:34:58,836 become a cartoonist was Maus. 1823 01:34:58,860 --> 01:35:02,840 It is true because I didn't have any idea about what comic was. 1824 01:35:02,864 --> 01:35:05,760 It was when I read Maus that I was like, oh, my god, 1825 01:35:05,784 --> 01:35:07,125 you can do that, too. 1826 01:35:11,581 --> 01:35:13,433 Everybody doing graphic novels 1827 01:35:13,457 --> 01:35:16,020 owes Art Spiegelman this debt. 1828 01:35:16,044 --> 01:35:18,189 You wouldn't even be doing a graphic novel 1829 01:35:18,213 --> 01:35:20,358 if Art had not done Maus. 1830 01:35:20,382 --> 01:35:22,985 It completely changed my life. 1831 01:35:23,009 --> 01:35:26,252 It put an idea in my head for something to shoot for, 1832 01:35:26,277 --> 01:35:28,608 which I don't even think I've reached yet. 1833 01:35:30,999 --> 01:35:33,997 MY FAVORITE THING IS MONSTERS 1834 01:35:34,022 --> 01:35:38,670 I was assigned Maus at the Art Institute of Chicago. 1835 01:35:38,903 --> 01:35:40,693 And I realized, this is the medium 1836 01:35:40,718 --> 01:35:44,376 that I can use to say things I really need to say. 1837 01:35:50,593 --> 01:35:52,658 NEW KID 1838 01:35:54,211 --> 01:35:56,476 He sent me Maus. 1839 01:35:56,501 --> 01:36:03,526 I was absolutely floored at what you could do with a comic. 1840 01:36:03,550 --> 01:36:09,115 It really opened my eyes and my mind and my heart 1841 01:36:09,139 --> 01:36:12,284 as far as, I can really take my stuff 1842 01:36:12,308 --> 01:36:15,420 and push it to a whole other level. 1843 01:36:15,555 --> 01:36:18,743 Thank you, all, and see you in the funny papers. 1844 01:36:20,691 --> 01:36:24,586 Before I get the hook, I want to thank, most especially, 1845 01:36:24,612 --> 01:36:28,718 Francoise, my better half for over 40 years, 1846 01:36:28,742 --> 01:36:34,265 my love, my tech support, and my most astute editor. 1847 01:36:34,289 --> 01:36:37,059 Merci beaucoup for putting up with me. 1848 01:36:37,083 --> 01:36:39,311 Francoise, you get half the medal. 1849 01:36:39,335 --> 01:36:40,335 Thank you.