MADness #21- 2003 Oscars!

The next stop on our MADdeningly slow chronological slog through my MAD work is a look at my 21st piece in the magazine, “MAD Sizes Up the 2003 Oscars: Best Picture” from MAD #428, April 2003. The writing is credited to Greg Leitman, Barry Liebmann, David Shayne and Mike Snider. The Alfred “Oscar” statue is by Harry North, ESQ.

MAD #428 had two other of these “”MAD Sizes Up the 2003 Oscars” features, all written by the same crew. “Best Actor” had art by Drew Friedman, and “Best Actress” had art by Rick Tulka. As it happens, we are finally reaching the point where I was saving my pencil roughs/sketches for these jobs, so here’s the pencils I sent to MAD for approvals before going to final art:

This was a pretty straightforward piece… each film had a spot illustration and I needed to do a single image for each. In some cases I did a gag that related to the copy, like the one with Nicole Kidman‘s ridiculously fake nose from “The Hours”. In some I did a separate gag, like having Richard Gere doing a high leg kick along with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger from “Chicago” complete with fishnets.

I did have one gag rejected, though. Not because it was offensive or bad, but because it was apparently too good! This was the original gag I came up with for “The Two Towers” spot:

MAD art director Sam Viviano got back to me to say I couldn’t use that gag, because the staff had come up with a similar one for the cover of that issue:

Independently coming up with the same joke happens a lot in humor writing… it’s an obvious gag. I just liked my image with Gollum straining to squeeze out a number two and the hobbits looking annoyed, so I was bummed I had to skip it.

Toon in next week for a return to the world of superhero movie spoofs, and the story of the biggest goof up of my entire tenure with MAD (although it was not my fault).