When We Went MAD! The Unauthorized Story of MAD Magazine was directed by Alan Bernstein and co-written by Bernstein, Nate Adams, and Jonas Smensgard. It contains a mix of archival footage from the offices of MAD, interviews of both lesser and more well-known artists and writers for MAD, and a group of celebrities who discuss the impact MAD Magazine had on their childhoods, and the many ways the magazine influenced them for good and ill.
Buy When We Went MAD! The Unauthorized Story of MAD Magazine Blu-rayThe best sections of the film are the interviews with the creatives behind MAD Magazine. “Old” interviews with William Gaines (publisher) and Al Feldstein (editor) add much information about the iterations of MAD Magazine, including switching from a comic book to a magazine where the government could not claim they were hurting children with lascivious content. Sergio Aragones is most known for his hilarious drawings on the edges of the magazine pages. He gives us insight into the fact that to begin with, those drawings had been funny little quotes that started to morph into the little pictures that helped make Aragones famous. Many artists and writers that you are unlikely to have heard of, give great insight into the madhouse of ridiculous activity that made MAD the book for parodies, wit, and satire.
While it is infectious to hear the exuberance and excitement about MAD Magazine from rather well-known celebrities (Quentin Tarantino, Bryan Cranston, Howie Mandel, Judd Apatow, Gilbert Gottfried, and “Weird Al” Yankovic). They have the exact same responses to MAD as we all did when first finding a copy of MAD in the 1970s and ’80s. The celebrities tell us there was gross-out humor; there were political screeds they didn’t quite understand; and the next-tofinal page was a MAD Fold-In where the page could be manipulated to create a new picture and also reveal the punchline. In other words, the celebrities don’t feel all that necessary. They certainly don’t give any information into how they were influenced by the work in MAD Tarantino claims he designed the cover of the issue of MAD that appears in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. A tiny bit of searching, though, and we discover that while Tarantino had a few minor suggestions, it was MAD caricaturist Tom Richmond who handled the overall design.
MAD Magazine is still alive and well since it came under the banner of DC Comics in 2018. You can no longer get MAD on newsstands, though they are available in comic shops and through subscription. Keep in mind that new issues are a mix of old and new gags in each issue.
