MADness #14: The Royal Tenenbaums!

We continue our Monday MADness chronological crawl through my work for MAD with a look at my 14th appearance in the magazine, and my third movie parody. This one was a spoof of the Wes Anderson film “The Royal Tenenbaums”, written by Arnie Kogen and appearing in MAD #417, May 2002.

This was (and remains) one of my favorite movie parodies I did for MAD. It’s not a favorite because of the work I did on it…I was still learning the ropes of doing these continuities. I loved working on this one because it was one of the most unique movies I ever got to do. MAD doesn’t spoof comedies very often (this was one of only two films that could be categorized as “comedies” that I drew the parodies of), and this movie was not your average comedy. The film was highly stylized, using a “chapter book format” and narration by Alec Baldwin, while inhabiting a New York City that was both full of odd, vibrant colors and amid an ambiguous time setting that made it a challenge to capture visually. That also made it a lot of fun.

The movie characters were also a joy to draw. They were all very eccentric and over the top, especially Gwyneth Paltrow‘s “Margot”. I was joking a few posts ago that I had become MAD‘s resident “Owen Wilson/ Gene Hackman movie parodist” because I had just done a movie parody two issues earlier starring them both, and here I was drawing them again.

The other thing that makes me remember this parody fondly is that it was one of only a few non-big-budget-blockbuster films I did. It was about this time that MAD kind of abandoned spoofing dramas and critically acclaimed films and did (not all, but) mostly big-budget “event” movies. I believe their thinking was that films now debuted on 3000 screens in cineplexes all over the country and most were long gone from theaters by the time the MAD spoof came out, so they needed to stick to the higher profile films that would have more relevance to MAD readers months later.

Speaking of big-budget, blockbuster event movie parodies, toon in next week for a look at another movie spoof (this one mercifully NOT featuring Owen Wilson and/or Gene Hackman) and what would be the end of a seven issues in a row run by me.