Illustration Thurowback: Judd Apatow!

This is a two page spread I did for the book Inside MAD back in 2013. It was just for the book and never appeared in the magazine.

Inside MAD is a large book full of rarely seen reprints of MAD features as chosen by the Usual Gang of Idiots, as well as essays by a number of famous entertainers about how MAD influenced their careers. The introduction of the book is written by the comedy film writer, director and producer Judd Apatow. In his intro, he vehemently points out that MAD never has done a spoof of any of his movies or TV shows. Turn the page, and you see this. Written by MAD scribe (and my CLAPTRAP cohort) Desmond Devlin and TV/Film writer Paul Rust, this was a special two-pager entitled “A MAD Look Behind the Scenes at Apatow Studios”, in which I did about 50 or so caricatures of stars from Judd’s different films and TV shows. It’s ALMOST like having your work parodied in the magazine.

I believe the whole “complain about not being spoofed in MAD followed by a big spoof of a lot of my TV shows/films” gag was Judd’s idea, but I might be wrong about that. Certainly he contributed to it, as I remember working directly with him on it. This job also led to my doing a number of other things for Judd over the years, both officially for some of his projects and some personal commissions. Great guy.