All language subtitles for Mr. Fish Cartooning from the Deep End (2017)

(faint beeping)

(Emergency Broadcast System beeping)

- [Narrator] This is a
test of the First Amendment

to the Constitution of the
United States of America.

This is only a test.

(bright music)

- Well I know I was seven
when I did the airplanes.

The great idea I had was to
go get a stack of white paper

and write what, to me at the time,

was the most outrageous, filthy thing

anybody could say,
which was fuck your ass.

Write that on white pieces of paper,

fold them into paper airplanes,
send them out the window.

Which I did.

And my imagination said
okay, each of them land,

an innocent person's gonna come along,

pick it up, read it,
he'll be so freaked out

that he'll go get a policeman.

Officer, officer, y'know constable.

I would be arrested, I would
literally be handcuffed,

taken away, my mother would be crying.

In the back of my mind, I'm
like everything will be alright.

I'm gonna liberate everybody
with what I'm about to do.

Go to trial, I would be
in front of the judge.

The judge would ask me what I did,

(gavel banging)

I would say what I did, and
then right before the sentencing

I would say now why is
it wrong to do that?

What is wrong with the
words fuck your ass?

And the judge would have no answer,

and all of the sudden
he would have no answer.

The judge doesn't have an
answer, oh my goodness.

Then people would try to figure out

what the answer to that
question is, why is it wrong?

And it would slowly unravel and I would be

the great liberator of obscene words.

What ended up happening was my twin sister

picked one up and
immediately told my mother

and all the sudden my philosophy
went right out the window.

My mother looking for 'em,
where is he, where is he?

Why those words, what are those words?

And I said I don't even
know what they mean.

Who told you those words?

And the only person I played
with was my friend Paul Hummel

so I said Paul told me those words.

She says you're not allowed
to play with Paul anymore.

Get out there and pick up all that trash.

So I went out and picked
up, got the trash,

and didn't save the world.

1973, but I've been trying
to get back to that place

where I won't get trouble and be told

to go pick up all my trash (laughing).

(upbeat music)

(audience applauding)

This idea just to basically describe

what the profession feels like.

(audience laughing)

It's self-explanatory.

I'm proud to say that I
show my original cartoons

at Bergamot Station at the Berman Gallery.

And this is priced at a million dollars.

(audience laughing)

I thought it served the
idea of the cartoon.

I haven't yet sold it, so rush right over.

And here's another one of mine that I did,

it's Jesus as a young
man learning carpentry.

(audience laughing)

So again, one of the
things that a cartoonist

tends to do is to surprise
and delight, of course,

but also ask that question,
y'know you wanna be

a little bit of an outlaw and you want to

be able to have a conversation about Jesus

as something other than so precious

that he should not be seen
as a radical troublemaker

that the mainstream religion
and government at that time

saw fit to execute, he
was that dangerous, so.

- He is doing, really,
what editorial cartoonists

are meant to do, I mean he is questioning

and he's getting pushback, and
he's not retreating from it.

I mean, he's almost pushing more.

This guy has balls (laughing).

- Fish is a savage,
incredibly honest artist.

Well, the powers that be
are not gonna reward it.

He's not Andy Warhol, y'know?

Fish is incapable of playing that game,

but if he played that game,

we wouldn't be here discussing him, right?

- And here's one for Memorial Day.

I like to do things that sort of push past

the simplistic notion
of soldier equals hero,

and so it's putting the
have a nice day face

on something that is horrible.

- Well, what's obscene?

Fish making that drawing or a government,

a society like ours making decision,

y'know, to send people to war?

I mean, what is obscene?

- And the last slide I have is sort of

just about what I'm
about, that's Lenny Bruce.

It's called Sick and Satired,

and the quote of Lenny Bruce is take away

the right to say fuck and you take away

the right to say fuck the government.

That's it, thanks.

(audience applauding)

- He's my best friend,
I've known him forever.

We met when I was in college.

I always say I'm his biggest fan, y'know?

But that's not 'cause
I always like his work

or even agree with all of it.

No, I'm always the first one to be like

do you have to say motherfucker

or does that penis have to be in there?

Like why, why does it have to, y'know?

So I'm always like the little old lady

in the relationship that way.

He's the Bugs Bunny on my shoulder.

- It's exactly what you
were not looking for.

- [Diana] That's right.
- You were not raised

to look for that.

- No, when I was a kid, Bugs Bunny to me,

the cartoon was that Bugs Bunny
was fresh and disrespectful.

- Yeah, and being a smartass.

He was the first freakin' outlaw smartass.

- And he'll show me cartoons

that he's working on, I
don't always get them.

- Growing up, I always wondered

what is the real relationship
between John and Yoko?

I always liked Yoko, but
it's sort of a similar thing

where there's something else
that isn't just about the work.

I would not trust her to
interpret his art for me.

And I wouldn't trust you to do mine.

(both laughing)

Some of the really involved
realistic drawings,

it's sort of intense work for hours

that you can't screw up.

You do have to breathe into it,

and I guess that part
is like a meditation.

But sometimes when I'm drawing a drawing

and I'm getting into it,
and then all of a sudden

halfway through I start to think

that maybe the idea wasn't so great.

But still I want to finish
it, that's grueling,

because sometimes you get the feeling

of like I'm gonna work
on this for seven hours

and then I'm gonna have a drawing

that I'm not gonna be
able to do anything with.

And that is a nightmare,

that's when I wish I
wasn't, y'know, what I am

as a job.

(relaxing music)

- Y'know, the placard
explains that she's a victim

of the bombings in Iraq,
it's an ironic comment.

But with such bite and
such, it draws blood.

'Cause it makes you think
of the deaths of children

and the juxtaposition
of get me a subscription

to the New York Times so
someone can explain this to me.

Well, this is what we do, in a sense.

We are in the act of
explaining to ourselves,

through our news media, what we're doing

when this is the reality
of what's happening.

Great thing about Fish is he
cuts through the membrane.

He's always, so to speak,
penetrating the barrier

between the walled garden that

we're inhabiting and the world

that we're creating
outside that walled garden.

- We didn't really have a normal life.

- Turns out.

- Like, I think Dwayne was put outside

in a cardboard box in the rain once.

He was always drawing.

I know people used to ask him
to draw Peanuts characters.

- Yes, I had to learn how to do that.

- You did.

- And I would draw like
murder scenes, you remember?

- Yes.
- Linus laying

back there in a pool.
- Of blood.

I remember asking if you were
gay once, you remember that?

- Yeah.

- No.
- Yeah, that was

the question on everybody's mind.

- It's okay, he was
more on the artsy side,

which wasn't the norm, I guess.

- Faggot.

(both laughing)

- Dwayne said to me once I appreciate you,

you taught me how to treat a girl

like a person, not an object.

That was touching.
- That's true.

- Oh I passed on my social
studies test, I got an A plus.

I got 108.
- On what?

- My social studies test, I got an 108,

which is an A plus.
- Wow.

Why don't you tell papa your
favorite vocabulary word,

spell it and tell him what it means.

- Misogyny, M-I-S-O-G-Y-N-Y,
it means a hatred of woman.

- [Dwayne] Hatred of women, that's right.

- For some reason, we both broke

our ankles at the same exact time.

- When I was seven, I
wanted to be Angela Davis

and I put my seven year
old face where it belongs.

I knew she was so
dangerous, she was political

and a real threat, she was threatening

just as a picture of herself, y'know?

There was no picture of me
that threatened anybody.

'Cause I wasn't even aware of
like what she was even about

and I knew, just looking at
those pictures of her with her

fist in the air, you could
tell that she was heroic.

My best friend at the
time, who's J.J. Santellin,

he was the black kid, he
was so freakin' cool, right?

I knew women were not less than

and I knew that people of
color were not less than.

Because I know, I've
got my best friend J.J.

and my freakin' twin sister to
disprove the dominant theory.

Now she was given something
immediately to fight against.

It is a strange thing to
be jealous of, I guess.

(reflective music)

Leading a bunch of people from the '60s,

wavy gravy and David Crosby
and Graham Nash and Joan Baez,

these guys inspired me to
make me want to be part

of that group that made
it really cool to dissent.

Where is the threat to the
dominant culture nowadays?

You've broken my heart, y'know?

You promised my generation
a different future

that we would live in,
where there was feminism,

there was black power, there
was speaking truth to power,

however that manifests itself.

There's still so much work to do.

So, I don't know.

I don't know who's gonna do it.

I am.

- It all kinda climaxed,
strangely enough, in Woodstock.

But it was also, in an interesting way,

the end of something, it
was the end of four or five

guys or girls getting together in a garage

and creating this sound
and selling these records

and having success and
it was the beginning

of corporate invasion into music.

I think when the
corporations really realized

that they could have sold
an extra pair of sneakers

and a cola to those half a million kids

that were at Woodstock,

I think that's when it
started to turn sour.

(somber music)

- One of the reasons
Fish's work is so shocking

is because, for the last 20 to 25 years,

there has been a kind of ice age

in terms of public expression.

Y'know, from about 1965
to about 1980, there was,

in pop culture, a tremendous
amount of satiric expression

that you found in the daily newspapers.

You would find all kinds of outlets

for contradictory opinion.

After 9-11, this was especially true,

but it was even true in the '90s,

the idea that there's certain
things you don't talk about.

(energetic rock music)

- I only would do a cartoon if
I was really really motivated

to do it and I felt like
I could do it better

than the cartoonists that
were being published.

And the first publication
I was in was Anarchy

and I'd only been submitting
cartoons for just a few months.

And so I got a cartoon in Spy,

and the Spy cartoon was the grant cartoon.

And that was picked up by
Harper's, it was sweet.

And that's actually when
I got the excitement

of just like maybe I'm a cartoonist.

Then, once I got into Harper's,

it was just like oh there's
real, legitimate magazines

that now I can really expect to be in.

So, Mother Jones, the Utney Reader.

And I was in The Advocate,

Vanity Fair reached out to me

and I did a cartoon for their website.

Bob Scheer started Truthdig and I

was a real big fan of his work.

I sent my cartoons over and we

started working together that day.

And then, I got this reputation for being

sort of the bad boy of Harper's.

(upbeat music)

(siren beeping)

The system is set up in such a way now

where it has to mirror
the corporate model now.

It has to mirror like a business model.

So, as a result, you're
gonna dumb yourself

down a little bit, you're gonna become

a little less insightful and
a little less controversial.

And as soon as you do that to yourself

and you have that self-censorship,

that's gotta do something
to the art form as a whole.

I mean, do you guys see that?

It's just like, as a modern phenomenon?

- The broader issue is
what is our responsibility?

Is our responsibility to our opinion

or to our readers or to our editors?

As a left of center cartoonist,

I get a lot of attacks from Democrats

who are upset when I attack
Democratic politicians

or like the current president.

- That's what I find most frustrating,

'cause I get that to, it's
just like wait a minute,

I thought you were a liberal.

It's just like what, I'm
criticizing the chair of the power,

the most powerful person

on the planet.
- You're confusing

criticizing Democrats, if
you criticize Democrats

from the left or
Republicans from the right,

editors don't know what to do.

- I want cartooning to be dangerous

and I want it to be something
more than just ink on paper.

- The problem, for me, there's no place

any longer to do this, no venues.

(slow rock music)

- Do I want my art to be a
threat to the dominant cultures?

Yes, what does that mean?

All that means to me is you present

an alternative point of
view, that is the threat.

And I knew that there were
always rumblings happening

about don't say anything
negative about Obama.

For example, the cartoon I did
that has Martin Luther King

being attacked by attack
dogs being held by Obama.

I did that one, sent it in on the week

when Obama was dedicating the
Martin Luther King statue,

and they got a lot of angry letters.

The upper echelon there at
Harper's came down on my editor.

He said next time, we
should be more sensitive

to what's happening in the news

before we run a cartoon like this.

And I wrote back, you're exactly wrong.

Their policies do not have
anything to do with each other.

The only thing they share is the fact

that they're both African Americans.

That's it.

And you do it on a day when the spotlight

is on both those guys, y'know?

And then you have an educated conversation

about what all this means.

When they let me know that
they were discontinuing me,

they were discontinuing me as somebody

who was getting the most hits on the site.

It was just the politics

just got way too much, way too much.

- When Fish starts going after Obama,

I can't resist looking at those images,

those images make me think okay,

am I really giving Obama a free ride

or is there something I need to look at?

And that's why Fish as a
contrarianist is so valuable.

He's also forcing us to
look beyond the charm.

- Somebody is gonna have a different

favorite color than you, be warned.

It's not a statement
against your favorite color.

It's not saying that your favoritism

should match up exactly.

It's a demonstration that
there are differences

and we should have differences.

A lot of people who say the world

would be a lot better off
if we all went to church

and we all had the same
concept of patriotism.

It's impossible, you should be
comfortable with the reality.

Rudy can think differently

so therefore everybody
will think differently.

So get used to it, don't
take it personally.

(relaxing music)

- Y'know, there's a lot of
political acumen in his drawings,

there's also some very basic
lewdness in his drawings.

I'm thinking particularly of an early one

that he did of Ronald Reagan.

You've got Reagan looking very dignified

with his hand over his heart
but then he's got his dick

in his hand at the bottom of the drawing.

Okay, where does that leave us?

Well, it leaves us in reality

because presidents have penises, too.

- As the owner of a penis,
it began to strike me

as just like now what is so
dangerous about this organ?

I liked having one.

The mythology around male genitalia

always was strange and ludicrous to me

so I always try to put it in art

and let people work
through their own concept

of that black magic if
it's there for them.

Y'know, it exists, it serves a purpose,

and it's fun much of the time.

(laughing) Like that, oh yeah.

What are you doing out there, drawing?

- There's no joke too low
that it can't be represented

alongside the highest and most elegant.

It's actually part of the way we live,

'cause we do all these things.

This is the juxtaposition
that Fish trades in.

- It's the guy with says
nigger lover on his shirt,

he's got Jewish stars,
and he's got a swastika

and a penis nose and a cross
and a brassiere on the dog

and he's saying this feels
like a Tuesday to me.

And this is an example of like my wife

coming through the room
and just being like

this is disturbing on so many levels.

(laughing) She's right.

- I love you with all my heart (laughing).

If he'd go out shopping or something,

he'd leave me a little note to let me know

where he was when I came home.

If love were a four
letter word, I'd fuck you.

I'm gonna blush, I can't
even read this note.

I went to Pasta Milani
to get us some dinner.

Oh, there he is killing the crocodile

we're gonna have for dinner.

I went for a walk, don't worry about me.

He's lying in a puddle of blood.

I suppose this is a holiday
we spent separately.

The spirit of Christmas
was in my house yesterday.

It was made collectively of all the ghosts

of all the dead people stuffed dumbly

into the skin I recognize as my family.

In other words, boy am I glad to see you.

I hope you had a good time, I guess.

We'll have to get married, you know,

to prevent me from ever
having a bad time again.

Call me, talk to me, pity me,

then scrape me up off my own pretension

and pour me back into
my shoes, I'll stand.

That was when we had time for all that.

We had time to finish conversations

and time for him to
even draw me a picture.

- Diana teaches in New Jersey,

she's been a teacher for decades.

It's a very long commute and
she's away from home a lot,

and doesn't get to hang
out with me or the kids

but it gets us our health insurance

and enables us to pay our bills

which I couldn't do with any consistency.

And he says please pass me Florida,

everything west of the
Appalachian mountains,

a huge ass portion of
Canada, some of Mexico,

a fistful of islands in
the middle of the Pacific,

sorry I mean pass me the mashed potatoes.

- (laughing) They didn't have
mashed potatoes back then.

Please pass the duck, change
it to please the duck.

- Duck is a good punchline.

- [Judah] What is duck?

- I got one, please pass

the fucky ducky.
- Now, come on.

Go get dressed, we're
going to Thanksgiving.

- I hope no adults sees
this and sees me cursing.

- I know, it's horrible.

What does it mean to you?

- It's like they helped and
then he's taking all the land

and he's like sorry, I mean
please pass the mashed potatoes.

- That's right.
- I know, right?

(bright music)

- Wait, you got everything?

- Well, I can hold
something in my lap, too.

- That's a really packed car.
- Yeah,

this is all very exciting.

Alright guys.

This is some freaking tasty smelling food.

- Daddy, is there a Santa Claus?

Please tell the truth.

- Well, I told you the truth

and then I got in trouble for it.

- Oh, right.
- 'Cause mama still believes.

I used to tell them when they were little,

I would say yes there is a
Santa Claus but there's no

such thing as god or Jesus,
that's all nonsense, right?

- Mm hm.

- But you guys didn't
answer about the pagans.

The ancient hippies.

- They danced and took off their clothes.

- That's a hippy for ya.

Dirty, dirty hippies.

(daughters laughing)

- Dwayne, what you're experiencing now,

their inability to answer
has everything to do

with the fact that kids who
have a religious upbringing,

regardless of what it is, have a sense

of symbolism of the different holidays

because they have been
immersed in the stories.

- It's about the seasons
and about what the Earth

was doing at the time,
not a particular person.

- And gift giving and bounty,

and it's also the winter solstice.

- This is why I don't believe,

shouldn't believe anything
and just go to a diner.

Make fun of people, right?

- Boy.
- Yeah.

Alright, is there a doorbell?

Now be careful, the bag at
the bottom here is torn,

I just didn't want it
to end up on the ground.

- [Woman] Okay, okay.

- Are we at the right house?

- There you go.
- [Woman] Yeah, thank you.

- Happy Thanksgiving.
- Thank you.

- [Woman] You too.

- I would say that having children

did for me what art did for
me, to a certain extent,

and what it does for a lot of people,

it reminds you of how precious life is,

and reminds you of how
vulnerable people are.

Now we're in much more danger
of poisoning ourselves,

what we do to the ecosystem,
than dropping an atomic bomb.

It's just a slow motion doomsday
is what we're experiencing.

While people are trying to prevent

the flash of the instantaneous doomsday,

but the threat is the
slow creeping doomsday

that everybody gets used to.

One of the statistics
was how long was it safe

for a newborn baby to breathe the air

before there was measurable damage?

And it was something like seven days,

and I was just like,
children aren't even born

and all the sudden I'm
like welcome to the world.

In seven days, the damage is
going to start to affect you.

And then you do, you become somebody

who's just like okay, I've got to make

the air clean and I've got to protect

the health and wellbeing of my child.

(somber music)

- The democracy has timed out,

the elected leadership is taking

way too fucking long to respond.

The system of checks and balances

could be irrevocably corrupted.

Try not to trust that the government

has your best interests at heart.

If you're unable to give
a shit about what happens

to the human species,
check your connection

to all living things that surround you.

If your ability to
experience love and empathy

and concern for your fellow human being

is being blocked by a religious
or a political ideology,

then you're an asshole.

(laughing)

- I eventually hung this
up because my mother

would always come in and
tell me come on, quick,

get out of bed, and I would say I can't.

And so after a few years,

I finally just put this up over the door.

I never pointed it out, but y'know,

maybe she read it and she did stop

trying to get me out of bed immediately.

I wrote this book
because I think the world

is going to end soon if we
all don't start communicating.

Hey look, one thing we have to do

is remove the concept of
obscenity from all our languages.

That's what the book is about.

Everybody's beliefs
are forms of obscenity.

Just that reflexive thinking,
I guess, what I was on about.

I'm saying here that I
refuse to believe in it,

not gonna believe in god,
I'm not gonna believe

in Americanism, I'm not
gonna believe in money.

Yeah, the not believing in money thing

I have yet to, I can't shake it.

So as a result, doesn't
come to me very easily.

- It's lonely being married to somebody

who doesn't believe in the
system that we're operating in,

in money, in worrying about debt.

I get to do all the
worrying, he gets to do none.

That's often how it feels to me.

Again, understand that that's not

necessarily indicative of the reality.

So if I accuse him of not
being aware of the debt,

for example, he's aware of the
debt, he's not stupid, right?

He's aware that we have
it but I can't shock him

if I add it up for him, y'know.

He does not wanna raise
our kids panicking about

being about to lose the house.

So he's resisting the climate
in which he grew up in.

- So this is the house that I grew up in.

We moved here when I was six, seven,

and this is the tree
that I would hang from.

It's different now.

So we finally sold it, so
I'm here to get the last

little remnants of whatever
went on in the '70s and '80s.

My stepfather started
to get, the depression

and alcoholism just really started

to like seep into his soul in
like a really really dark way

and he started to get
sick every time he knew

it would be the wrong time to get sick.

We need to pay this bill or something,

he would get really really sick.

So, my mother would call me crying,

she could not take the stress

of just having the
ambulance 'cause constantly,

then it was the house was gonna die

because they couldn't pay for it.

So my mother was just
like I can't take it,

I can't take it, I can't take it.

And I think that what happened

was she drank herself to death
so she could die before him

because she couldn't take
the stress, she couldn't take

the pressure so she did,
her like liver exploded.

There he is there, my stepfather Dave.

That's my mother.

Yeah, I never ever got a
compliment for any of my art

growing up in this house
from any family member.

And it was shocking to people,

we had friends that lived
across the street and his mother

saw it, she was like oh
my god this is incredible.

I'm like well thanks, she said don't you,

hasn't anybody told you
that this is incredible?

And I'm just like no.

She said your parents
or nobody in your house?

And I'm just like, and
it just all the sudden

struck me, is that odd
that nobody in the house

said that I had talent or that anything

I was doing was good, as far as art goes?

- Yeah look, he's got a hard
on, he's poopin', strong.

It's a good day.

- This one.

- What's the clown's conscience?

Have sex with puppies, kill the puppies.

(both laughing)

- Alright, so the book that
I use to teach my class

at Penn is this book here that I wrote.

And mind you, I only teach once a week

and I cannot teach two semesters in a row,

so it's every other
semester so it's a real

part time type job in
every sense of the word.

As you can see, this
slide says I can't look

equates exactly to I can't see.

When you look at something
and you have that feeling

of just like uh, I can't
look at that, alright?

And when you can't see something,

you're not experiencing something.

You're not experiencing something,

you're not able to think about
that thing you're missing

and then you can't comment on it.

And if you can't do any of those things,

you can't comprehend, all the avenues

toward comprehension are gone.

Does anybody know who
Madeline Albright was?

So she was Bill Clinton's
Secretary of State,

and one of the things was
the sanctions against Iraq.

Some sanctions are one thing,

sanctions for everything
might be a little harsh.

So the question to Madeline Albright

was we have heard that half
a million children have died.

I mean, that's more children
than died in Hiroshima.

And y'know, is the price worth it?

And you see Madeline Albright's answer,

which is I think this
is a very hard choice

but the price, we think
the price is worth it.

It is a chilling piece of
film if you wanna watch

somebody say, to say it's worth it.

Because what you're missing
is the graphic imagery

that goes along with that statement.

And you can intellectually
say I understand that here

as sort of just like a sad
thing, maybe that's not right.

But when you're shown something like this,

like then this is
something a lot of people

are just like I can't look,
and then for all the reasons

that we talked about
just a few minutes ago,

if you can't look, you can't
see, you can't deliberate,

you can't comprehend the gravity

of a political situation
in a way that is real.

Because imagery shows you the proof.

Can we do something less
obviously like American today?

- It is the 4th of July.

- They had the best of Glenn Beck on today

and the best of Rush, have
you tuned into that yet?

- I have not, I can't find the humor.

It just makes me sad.

- [Dwayne] You know what
the trick is, though?

You know what I figured out?

- Laugh?
- You know why?

'Cause I used to be the same way,

but you know why I was that way?

Because I thought that the other side

had integrity, that was the mistake.

Y'know, but now that I think everything

is just so skewed equally
in both directions.

- It's just about what the
4th of July means to us

and what this country means to us.

Why don't you start on it?

- We suck and we kill a lot of people.

Your turn.
- There it is.

That's it (laughing).

- Okay, now here's, what do we do?

You go ahead.

- We send a lot of people
to prison for no reason.

- For no reason, that's right.

We send the brothers to
prison for crack cocaine

when white guys get off
for just general cocaine.

- [Dwayne] I thought
there was a rhyme there.

- I was workin' on it.

Did you gain this weight,

did you go to Ireland?
- Tom says you're

opposed this way.

- No, I went to Scotland.

I actually went to Edinburgh.

(reflective music)

- These are not the
pieces that most people

are gonna wanna have
hanging in their office.

These are tough works of art that belong

in a really good
collection or in a museum.

It's done with no fear,
it's done with intellect.

It's done with great humor,

it's done with very serious content.

- Both sides (laughing).

- Oh my god.

(bright jazzy music)

- It's fun,

and to be disturbing
in a fun way is a gift

and I think that makes
the disturbing easier,

doesn't freak me out, I have fun with it

and yet the same time like oh wow,

probably wouldn't have gone there, y'know?

- I liked how, when you look at things,

you want to put it in a
box, you want to put it

in a box so you can understand it.

And I wanted to make sure these

were not going to be able to be boxed.

- What do you see?

Why do you think he did each?

- I don't know.

I don't know.

- I wanna make it a little bit harder,

I wanna make it a little more satisfying.

I want people to eat their
vegetables, that's what I want.

Snack time's over.

- The only one that I find rather amusing,

I'm an artist, by the way, is the one of,

is that Mick Jagger?
- [Dwayne] It is.

- That one, I find kind of funny.

Because I'm also an old lady
so I think that's funny.

(both laughing)

- Okay, you can come and read this here.

Frank, come here.

No no no, come here, no no no, come here.

Right here.

N-I-G-G-E-R, kike.

Wow.

(bright music)

(crowd clamoring)

- The newspapers are dying
and there's no staff positions

that are going to enable people

to actually support
themselves and have a family.

So, it's the great return
of the starving artist.

- Well, there's been a
radical transformation

in the American newspapers
and the consequences

of the collapsing business
model of the American newspaper

has been all kinds of cuts.

- It's not a dying profession,

it is a profession that is
being systematically murdered,

like baby seals being clubbed to death.

- Don't the new media and
all these ads and everything

provide many more places on
which to show visual images?

- Online, there are sites that
can afford to run cartoons

and should have them because
of the kind of content

that they publish, I mean
Salon, Slate, Huffington Post,

these are big audiences, big budgets,

they have staff writers, they're
not hiring any cartoonists

or running any cartoons at all.

Even when it's there,

the most popular feature in a publication.

They still eliminate them.

So, it's not just a money thing,

it's a political decision
to get rid of this stuff.

- This is Normal Rockwell's
painting about Ruby Bridges

being taken to school
by the U.S. Marshals.

And as you can see, it's got
the word nigger on the wall,

we've got tomato splats,

so I mean everybody knows this thing.

So I did an updated version of this piece

and I put a Muslim girl
with sandniggas on there

just to update the terminology

and this was supposed
to run on Truthdig.com,

which is a self-proclaimed
left-leaning radical site

but they wouldn't run it as I depicted it

because they didn't like sandniggas,

they thought would be offensive.

So they kept sandniggas off the front

by cropping it out, and then
when you clicked through

where the full image was
posted, it could not be enlarged

by clicking on it so that you basically

could not read the word sandniggas on it.

- I don't recall objecting to this.

- If I was Truthdig, I'd
be have more of a problem

with the tomato, 'cause
who throws tomatoes anymore

at something that they don't like, y'know?

I'd have more respect
for them if they said

y'know that's a little
antiquated and just like

nobody's gonna get that, can we have

not a tomato in here hitting
this sandniggas wall?

- Okay, I just tell you categorically,

if I stop these three, any
of these, then I was wrong.

- I worry about it and I think he

probably would knows I worry about him.

So I'm sure I'm a little bit in the dark,

like his family is, about
probably some of the people

that really say, just very plainly,

if I ever get a chance, I'm gonna kill you

or you should die or should
have your hands cut off

or things like that, I
mean people will put that

in even public comment things.

So yeah, I worry about
that but I don't, I.

I worry about that, but I don't see it

as much as I think it
really happens, right?

- Uh yeah, well you know
that I have street smarts

and my karate, so he
doesn't worry about it.

- Yeah no, fair fight I
think you'd be alright

but y'know some of those guys'll.

(guns firing)

- [Reporter] The controversial French

satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo

has been attacked with
11 people confirmed dead.

- Without freedom of speech, we are dead.

(somber music)

- [Man] The prophet, not
wishing to be depicted,

because he is tired of being associated

with psychopathic
extremists who are incapable

of imagining that there is an alternative

to mass murder of real
people when it comes

to the satirical antics of
disagreeable cartoon characters.

It's depressing in a way
because it's just the places

where you can have political conversations

or significant conversations
about what's happening

with the culture and where
we're headed are dwindling.

It's not just about me
losing a place in magazines,

it's just those magazines are softening

their editorial positions
or they're disappearing.

In just a broad sense,
everybody's losing the ability

to be intelligent about where we are

and who we are and what we're doing.

(relaxing music)

- I'll be right over there.
- Hi.

- Hi, how are you?
- How are you?

- Good to see you.
- I made it.

Did you fly?

I did.

(crowd clamoring)

- [Man] How is life in your cartoon world?

- Dead, because my work

is so inflammatory to so many groups.

I never wanted to become
a political cartoonist.

I had no real heroes in
political cartooning.

I just fell into it,
actually, by accident.

Because I hated a lot of
the stuff I was seeing

and I thought I could do better

and I started getting published.

I want to create art that
stays with people and reflects

their humanity, I just
wanna get to their hearts.

- Speaking as a guy who
tried to sell your work,

I couldn't sell your work and so people

were not seeing your work through me.

And guys who were making similar points,

though not as strongly as you,
were getting their work seen.

And so I'm dealing with these realities

that you shut out of your definition

of what is the cartoonist's role.

I include the audience as part

of the cartoonist's role and you do not.

- I trust the audience more,

I don't trust the vehicle
that gets my work to them.

- What editors like are funny little jokes

that offend no one, that
tends to screen out the guys

who have stronger points of
view or who make cartoons

that can be something that could motivate

an old lady to cancel her
subscription to the paper.

I could go through your archive,
redact the dirtiest part,

put a little thing over
people's private parts,

- [Dwayne] Do I draw a
lot of private parts?

- You do, and I could make

80% of your cartoons eighth grade safe.

- Everything's circumstantial,
I can imagine theoretically

I could say yes, I could change that.

So, in theory yes, I would change things

but in practice, I guess I never have.

- But I appreciate your
unwillingness to compromise.

I suppose there is some merit in that,

you can be an uncompromising cartoonist

who's not read by very many people,

that's the compromise you make.

And I noticed that you
didn't put a lot of value

on the size of your audience.

- Right, yeah.

(reflective music)

(phone ringing)

- [Diana] Hey, how are you?

- Hi, I'm just tired.

- [Diana] Aw, I'm sorry, I miss you.

- Oh, I miss you.

Well are the girls behaving?

- [Diana] The girls, we
had a purple wedding.

- Good, thanks for recognizing

my passion for this sort of stuff.

It's significant so I just
wanted to say that I just need

to drink some water and
get used to the smell

of Vitalis and Hai Karate
cologne, I don't know

what went on in this room
before I got here, but.

It's a bigger party than I'm having.

- [Diana] Bye baby.
- Love to the team.

- [Diana] Okay, love you too.

- Bye.
- [Diana] Bye.

(somber music)

- When I think of Fish, I
think he's one of those people

who said no, I'm not going to sell out.

That's the most important thing,

I'm going to stand for something.

If you teach at these universities,

what we teach is how do you sell out?

How do you accommodate
the dominant culture?

How do you get yours?

And Fish is an odd duck
that way, you can't buy him.

He's what, the throwback to Lenny Bruce

or to John Lennon or somebody who said

wait a minute, this is fucked
up and I'm gonna call it out.

- Because I could sense that he was

becoming slowly unemployed,

that definitely brought on a lot of panic.

And I'm also tired of
it, I would like to live

not in debt and I would
like to be able to say

the car is broken or we
need a new dishwasher,

I would like to be able to replace it

without freaking the fuck out.

It's so easy to cherry
pick and be like well,

I'm not gonna understand
how mutual funds work

but I'm gonna buy things in stores

if we continue to think
ourselves above the system.

- We get punished, it's set
up to punish people like us.

- That's right, it's going to.

- I think that mutual
funds and all the stuff

that we do to sort of buy gas
for our cars and everything,

it is something I wanna
remain angry and upset about.

And then feel a little bit of the pain

of having to go down into the miry clay

to get myself dirty, I
always wanna feel filthy

and a little bit upset about that.

- [Diana] You should.

- Well thank you, I will.

- I definitely think it's
time to step up and grow up

and realize that I'm not above any of it.

- This actually started
with just that, that guy.

Drew that guy and said
now what's he doing?

I looked at the face for a while.

And I saw that it's the greatest
supervillain of our time

has already succeeded in his
quest for world domination

and is likely to achieve his
next objective of destroying

the Earth and killing
everybody who lives there.

And what makes him so
successful as a supervillain

is the fact that he doesn't know he is one

and neither do his victims
because he loves his kids

and goes to church and pays
his taxes and gives to charity

and roots for heroes in comic book movies

and refuses to even entertain the notion

that big business and the commodification

of everything under the
sun, including people,

can reduce everything under
the sun, including people,

to economic variables
to be traded, inflated,

and devalued like increments
of some abstract currency

that is always changing and is meaningless

outside of an economic model
that measures its relevance

by how reliably it can turn a profit.

Having zero to do with morality

or the survival of the species.

And see how benign he is?

The irony about selling
it as a signed print

over and over again is
that I'm selling it.

This cartoon implicates
everybody as being part

of the problem, including myself.

Y'know, when I do a cartoon like this,

I don't assume that
I'm outside looking in.

I feel like I'm part of the situation.

(whimsical music)

So I started to get frustrated and angry

about cartooning and I wanted
to do something different,

something else, and it
corresponded with a time

when a animation company in California

called Bento Box got ahold of me.

I pitched them a number of shows.

The one they liked the most
is this show about a dog park,

so that's the one I'm actually
creating the animation for.

- Are you a rescue?
- A rescue?

- I told you not to answer that.

- Rescued from what, motherfucker?

I'm a goddamn slave in
chains, that's what I am.

I used to bang a different bitch

every night of the week doggystyle.

- Oh, I see, a ladies man.

- A ladies man?

Christ, I used to have
to douche my mustache.

I was a legend.

My hair was a huge ass
explosion of fuck you

scribbled onto my head
like it was put there

by an angry vandal with a spray can.

Now look at me.

- What, what are you laughing at?

- Nothing.

It's funny.
- [Diana] Who's supposed

to keep this ship afloat?

- I am.

- [Diana] I am.
- I've made more money

than you this year.

- You have made more
money than I bring home

but then you gotta subtract taxes,

retirement, taxes, health insurance,

life insurance, a ton of things.

- Yes.

- But we have a lot of debt

and we don't have any retirement for you.

- So I should be doing something

that is bringing more money in,

hence more to do with my career.

That's the money maker.

- Everybody we know who
has a creative career

does bread and butter crap
that they do as a staple.

You've done it before, too.

- Yeah, and right now I'm not

in between those kinds of
gigs, right now I'm heavily

into a gig that is
paying me lots of money.

- Everybody needs to do
like some of the basic

stuff you do just to earn money,

and have like a basic income
that's like predictable.

- What have I not done?

I don't understand, like
it's just like this new thing

that all the sudden I'm not doing.

- [Diana] Truthdig provided
us with a predictable amount

of income every month
that we could rely on.

- It was this much.
- [Diana] That's fine,

but it was reliable.
- Okay, and now,

over the last four months,

compared to that I'm
making about this much.

- [Diana] It's not reliable.

- Even if it weren't reliable right now,

to what they owe me, to where I am now,

I think that it's about
four times the amount

I've ever made in my
entire lifetime in a year.

But it was predictable,
that's not a justification

for slowing down or
jeopardizing and doing it right.

- Okay, except it's
finite, that's my point.

(somber music)

- Guys, come on, eat the right thing.

I had a hard day at work.

- Do you hate it?

- You're asking me if I hate my job?

- Yeah.
- I hate having a job

but I don't hate the job.

Make sense?
- Yeah, you just

wanna be broke and live in a shabby house?

- [Dwayne] No.
- Judah, that is so mean.

You just wanna be broke
living in a shabby house, huh?

- You guys would rather
have me home, right?

When you get home?

You actually like coming in now

and just eating what you
want and watch television.

That's really what this is about.

Yeah, we miss having you here.

- We do.
- We do.

- Actually, that's a lot
more like how I grew up.

- [Judah] Watching television?

- Straight home, make 13
peanut butter crackers,

pour a big can of root beer,

and just watch television
until like 5 o'clock.

(bright music)

(solemn music)

Feel like I'm just marking time,

holding my breath a little
bit until something happens.

So it's fine-ish.

In many ways, it's nice,
it's nice to be reminded

how things fit together,
y'know, how the hive works.

It's humbling.

I'm not tortured so much
but I do feel like I'm,

it's like limbo, y'know,
I'm just in limbo right now.

It's debilitating in the sense

that it sort of slowly eats you alive.

I gotta get out of that fucking place.

I need to go to California.

You know what sucks about this place most?

Is that I'm really good at it

and that everybody's very nice.

I used to be somebody
who would get hate mail.

I knew what I was doing then,

I don't get any hate mail here.

So, I need to get to
California, make some TV shows.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ A cool, dark, and lonely night ♪

♪ Oh yeah, I'm still alive ♪

♪ Oh yeah, I'm still alive ♪

♪ Oh yeah, I'm still alive ♪

- [Man] After 4 a.m. on the
East Coast, Donald Trump

will be the 45th president
of the United States.

- [Reporter] Donald Trump elected

president of the United States.

♪ Hey hey, ho ho ♪

♪ Donald Trump has got to go ♪

♪ Hey hey, ho ho ♪

♪ Donald Trump has got to go ♪

♪ Hey hey, ho ho ♪

♪ Donald Trump has got to go ♪

♪ Hey hey, ho ho ♪

- [Dwayne] How do you inspire people?

How do you inspire that collective?

The collective attempts to save ourselves?

Art, like I said about
y'know making us aware

of certain things about
war, the labor movement,

but also the problems of
prejudice and discrimination.

It's artists and poets and
writers who first export

the notion that black
people are not less than,

that gays are okay, that women are equal.

And it's artists who convey
that, it's always just artists.

(reflective music)

- When you look at Fish in relation

to all the other cartoonists
that you can name,

he is in dark channel of his own.

He is a poet who's operating
with a cartoonist's pen,

and he's operating with a satirist's goal

of making you see further.

A cartoonist like Fish is a
guy who's not gonna produce

immediate change, he's
not gonna produce a vote

that's for something, but
what he's gonna produce

is a certain resistance to falsehood.

- [Narrator] Mr. Fish, in
2003, deciding that he wants

to be a disease when he grows up

because he knows that the
world will never be saved

by the might of a Superman
or the will of a Jesus

or the ingenuity of an Apple computer

or the prejudicial trajectory of a bullet,

but rather by the steady
introduction of unpopular

and crude and perverted ideas capable

of activating, like a antibiotic,
the moral immune system

of the public who will
then survive or not.

(reflective music)

(bombs exploding)

- He doesn't wanna play the
game, in a lot of sense.

And that's what Hollywood requires,

that's what the ad agencies require.

That doesn't come naturally to him

and why should it, y'know?

There's a reason people are together.

I'm a little more
practical and I'm a little

more willing to play
the games but I relate

to not wanting to play the game, either.

- I think it's a
responsibility of every artist

to reflect the times in which they live.

That's why Mr. Fish's
work is really important.

And it started with that
very very first one,

y'know, the paper airplane

that he constructed
with those words on it.

What happens when you
learn to do your craft

is that you learn to
throw those paper gliders

a little further, just a little.

But that's enough.

(happy music)

(artillery exploding)