MADness #28- School of Rock!

It’s yet another stop on our long and winding road of jobs I did for MAD Magazine. Today is a look at MAD’s spoof of the movie “School of Rock”, written by Dick DeBartolo and appearing in MAD #438, Feb 2004.

I am sometimes asked if doing parodies of comedies is a bit trickier than doing them of dramas or “serious” movies. It is but really only from the writing sense. Making fun of a plot that is in and of itself a satire or meant to be silly is a tougher nut to crack for the writer. Dick did a great job on this script by going after the formulamatic aspects of the film, and making fun of the over the top performances. Visually I am really just doing what I always do, trying to capture the look of the film and incorporate some gags when they fit.

Jack Black is a walking caricature, but I tried to exaggerate his physicality as well as his blockhead.

In 2009, a few years after this was printed, I ran across Miranda Cosgrove, who played the band “manager” Summer Hathaway in the movie. It was a total chance meeting… The Lovely Anna and I were climbing the Harbour Bridge in Sydney and Miranda and her group were right before us. We geared up together in the staging area. I wasn’t going to tell her that I drew here in MAD Magazine but Anna approached her and mentioned it. Miranda was polite but she obviously didn’t have a clue what MAD was, which was exactly why I wasn’t going to tell her about my drawing her in it. None of us fell off the bridge.

A few more years after that, Jack Black did a signing at the National Cartoonists Society booth at San Diego Comic Con, courtesy of NCS member Luke McGarry, who had done a poster and other promotional work for a music festival Jack was doing. Jack HAD heard of MAD Magazine. I got he and Kyle Gass to sign a print of my splash page:

Toon in next week (back to Mondays) for another enthralling chapter in our chronological travels through my MAD work, when we take on “American Idol”!