Sunday Mailbag- Picking the Movies?

Q: I’m really excited about your Claptrap project. I’m curious to hear more about how you and Desmond decided on which films to parody. I’m sure it was very collaborative, but, was there an instance where you each had at least one movie you absolutely wanted to do and asked the other to include?

A: When Des and I started putting this together, “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” was always the first one we were going to do. That was a total no brainer, since it was the ONLY major Star Wars movie MAD would not have done a spoof of. So that one was a given.

Originally we were going to do a mix of classic films MAD had never spoofed, and new movies that came out in the months were were doing the book. Then 2020 happened, and there are essentially no new movies to do. So we switched gears and decided to do nothing but films that had never gotten the MAD treatment, but in retrospect should have. That’s actually a pretty long list. If you want to see a list of all the movies MAD did spoofs of, check out Doug Gilford’s fabulous MAD Cover Site’s list.

When we started discussing what other films we should do, “The Shawshank Redemption” was the first one out of both of our mouths. That was another no brainer. That movie was not a big box office hit, probably since it was up against “Pulp Fiction” and “Forrest Gump”, but has since become a film that constantly appears in “Top Movies of All Time” lists, and in almost universally hailed as such. So that one was another instantly agreed on film.

We started throwing other film names about, and then Des put together a list of movies MAD missed doing that he thought were good possible subjects. He listed movies that were either highly critically acclaimed i.e. having won or been nominated for Oscars and other major film awards, huge box office smashes, and/or have become cult classics. From that list, we wanted to pick movies that represented different genres like sci-fi, action, dramas, comedies, westerns, etc. We didn’t want our selections to be too heavy on any one genre.

We discussed various choices from the list, but we each had at least one we really wanted to do. Mine was “Blade Runner”, which might be the greatest sci-fi movie ever. Des really wanted to do “Goodfellas”, a star-ladened movie many consider the best of Martin Scorsese‘s career, and which was nominated for six Oscars, winning one. Both of us were as enthusiastic as the other about those two choices, so no problem there. That really only left two spots open, because the final four were being chosen by others. We wanted a comedy, and “The Big Lebowski” is as big a cult comedy hit as there is. We wanted a western. “Unforgiven” won four Oscars, and Clint Eastwood was nominated for Best Actor and lost to Al Pacino for “Scent of a Woman”.

That’s 6 of our 10 movies. The other four, as I said, are being picked for us.

Two of these are from our top perk tier, the “Megalomaniac”. The two Megalomaniac backers got to tell US what movie to do. They will also be drawn into the spoof and get all the original art. Both our Megalomaniacs have made their choices, and in fact we’ll be revealing both before the end of the campaign. One will be announced tomorrow! The other will be announced on Nov 10th, along with a sneak peek of the splash page from the spoof. Both movies are great choices and check a couple of boxes we loved to see with respect to movie genres.

The final two will be selected by our “Doofus” backers and higher. Once the campaign is over and we switch to “Indemand”, we will contact all Doofuses and up via email with a call for nominations of movies for us to parody. The only criteria is they have to me a major motion picture and have NOT been already spoofed in MAD. Then we will put together a list of the top nominees, and send out a ballot via email for all Doofuses and up to vote on. The top two movies will be in the book! We will just roll with the choices, regardless of genre.

It looks like we are going to reach our big stretch goal that will mean an 11th parody will be added. Des and I will pick that one, but not until we see what the backer choices end up being for spoofs nine and ten so we avoid having too many sci-fi movies, for example.

There are so many great movies that, for whatever reason, MAD never did. We had no shortage of great choices.

Thanks to Greg Lunzer for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!