Mort Drucker, Master of the ‘Mad’ Caricature, Dies at 91

J. Hoberman, The New York Times:

From the early 1960s on, nearly every issue of Mad included a movie parody, and before Mr. Drucker retired he had illustrated 238, more than half of them. The last one, “The Chronic-Ills of Yawnia: Prince Thespian,” appeared in 2008.

Mr. Drucker compared his method to creating a movie storyboard: “I become the ‘camera,’” he once said, “and look for angles, lighting, close-ups, wide angles, long shots — just as a director does to tell the story in the most visually interesting way he can.”

I simply adored Drucker’s parodies in Mad. I could never decide what was better — when Mad poked holes in a good movie, or when they skewered a bad one.

Loved this bit:

But not everyone was so pleased. According to Mr. Hendrix, Mad’s 1981 parody of “The Empire Strikes Back,” “The Empire Strikes Out,” prompted the Lucasfilm legal department to send a cease-and-desist letter demanding that the issue be recalled. “Mad replied by sending a copy of another letter they had received the previous month — from George Lucas, offering to buy the original artwork for the ‘Empire’ parody and comparing Mort Drucker to Leonardo da Vinci.”

★ Thursday, 9 April 2020