MADness #17: The Sopranos!

We continue our Monday MADness chronological crawl through my work for MAD with a look at appearance number 17 for me in the magazine. This was a feature MAD occasionally did called “A MAD Peek Behind the Scenes on the set of…” which was a sort of parody of whatever show or movie was the subject. I ended up doing a few of these over the years, this being the first. It was written by the late, great John Caldwell and appeared in MAD #422, Oct 2002. It was the only time I ever did the art for a fully Caldwell written piece, although he was one of several writers on another “Behind the Scenes of…” feature I drew some years later.

This piece is significant for me because it was the first one where someone associated with the show contacted me and that contact resulted in my getting a signed copy of the art.

A few months after this issue came out, I was contacted by one of the producers of the show, Terry Winter, about buying the original and getting some prints for the cast. MAD had the prints made and sent to Terry, and also sent one to me. Terry bought the original art from me as well. When I sent the original to him I asked if I could also send him my copy of the print and maybe get a few signatures of any of the cast members on it. Unfortunately he had gotten the prints from MAD just in time for the season wrap party (that’s when he gave them to the cast and crew) and it would be 18 months before they got back to filming. I thought that was the end of it, but Terry told me to send him the print anyway and he’d see what he could do.

18 months later, I got an e-mail from Terry saying he was sending out the print signed by some of the cast. A few days later I got a package from him, containing this:

Signed by no less than 10 cast members including James Gandlofini, Steve Van Zandt, Michael Imperioli, Dominic Chianese, Tony Sirico, Lorraine Bracco, Aido Tuturro, Steven Schirripa and show creator David Chase. He also sent me a copy of the magazine he had signed at a different time which included signatures by Drea De Matteo. Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Edie Falco and others. I wasted no time in framing this print and putting it up in the studio, where is still hangs today. Terry really went out of his way to do this for me, especially after a year and a half had gone by. All the signatures are great, but this signature and the added “comment” is my favorite part of the whole thing (sorry for the off-focus):

Apparently Mr. Gandlofini didn’t appreciate the big gut I gave him. I thought that was appropriate coming from “Tony Soprano” himself!