When We Went MAD!, 2025.
Directed by Alan Bernstein.
Starring Quentin Tarantino, Bryan Cranston, Howie Mandel, Judd Apatow, Gilbert Gottfried, Weird Al Yankovic, and The Usual Gang of Idiots.
SYNOPSIS:
Twelve years in the making, the documentary When We Went MAD! has finally been unleashed on the world. It’s available to buy or rent on several streaming services, and you can also pick it up on Blu-ray. Unfortunately, the disc doesn’t have any bonus features, but maybe a more elaborate edition will show up eventually. I just hope it doesn’t take another 12 years.
This one has been in the works a loooooong time. I backed their Kickstarter all the way back in 2013, when Barack Obama had just started his second term in office and Donald Trump was a reality TV star (I’ve never watched his shows) who liked to shit post on Twitter.
I’m glad this documentary finally came to fruition, but, wow, 12 years is an eternity in our modern culture. My understanding is that my Kickstarter pledge will secure me a copy of this movie on Blu-ray, but when I had a chance to get a review copy via AV Entertainment, I figured I’d check it out. After all, it might be another 12 years until my Blu-ray arrives.
Directed by Alan Bernstein, When We Went MAD! is a fun little trip down memory lane, especially for those of us in the Gen X and Boomer generations who fondly remember the magazine. It’s wild to think it was so controversial at one time, but, yeah, that was the era it existed in; don’t forget that you could see Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips on TV, either. Won’t someone think of the children?!
Speaking of the kids, the celebrities interviewed for this documentary include Quentin Tarantino, Bryan Cranston, Howie Mandel, Judd Apatow, Gilbert Gottfried, and “Weird Al” Yankovic. All of them have the same memories of the magazine’s subversiveness, especially the ones who were around when it debuted in comic book format in 1952 and later became a magazine, which enabled it to skirt around the repressive Comics Code Authority that had been created as a result of the Estes Kefauver hearings.
Of course, all of them have their own unique spins on those recollections, which keeps When We Went MAD! from becoming repetitive. The Usual Gang of Idiots, as they were known, are generously represented too, including, but not limited to, Sergio Aragones, Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee, Dick Debartolo, Frank Jacobs, Arnie Kogen, Al Feldstein, Nick Meglin, and others.
Fun fact: I was on a field trip to a museum with my daughter way back when, and I saw some artwork that I thought looked a lot like Jack Davis’s work. Sure enough, it was him, but I didn’t get the sense that any of the parents with us would have even known who he was, so I kept it to myself. Oh well. MAD Magazine didn’t subvert all of us, unfortunately.
MAD’s founder, Bill Gaines, died in 1992 but shows up in plenty of archival footage. He was such a character, and this documentary does a great job of giving the viewer a sense of the mayhem and craziness in those Manhattan offices way back when. He was clearly a great boss, even when he was chasing someone down to pay 15 cents for a personal phone call they made on an office line.
Unfortunately, this Blu-ray is bare bones, without any bonus features included. I’m sure there must have been plenty of interview footage that was left on the cutting room floor, so to speak, so maybe it will show up on the discs they’re sending to Kickstarter backers. Maybe.
But in the meantime, this documentary is worth checking out, even if you just rent it on a streaming service for now.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
