The Ink Stained Wretch #135: 5/22/24
This Week's Sketch needs More Cowbell, Another "Wall of Shame" entry, and Reviews that are Pure CLAPTRAP!
What? Wednesday AGAIN !?! Here we go with another of the dreary, dull, and dreadful bits of dissemination that are these newsletters! This week's sketch will give you a real headache, we visit MADison Avenue’s M-Ad Men, and ask you CLAPTRAP readers for a (hopefully positive) review ... on with the 'Wretch!
Sketch o'the Week: One Shot?
Click here if you are interested in this original sketch
It's another "Famous Movie Moment" sketch, and this one isn't very lucky. In "The Deer Hunter", Christopher Walken's character Nikanor “Nick” Chevotarevich endures a lot as a soldier and prisoner of war in Vietnam, and ends up killing himself in a game of Russian roulette in a Saigon gambling den. There's a lot more to the story. It's a brutal and tragic film. Walken won an Academy Award for his role.
Premium Subscribers get to watch a video of me do this drawing from beginning to end, along with me describing my process and thinking behind each step, along with early access to the newsletter and occasional other exclusive things. Want to stick with being a free subscriber? 100% cool. Want this exclusive content and help support the Ink Stained Wretch? Consider upgrading to being a premium subscriber:
Real MAD Men
Every once and awhile, when I was doing movie and TV parodies for MAD, one of the people associated with the show or film we spoofed would contact the magazine and express how much they loved seeing their show in MAD. This was usually the creators or writers or producers of the shows as opposed to the stars, but occasionally one of the actors would do this as well... a LOT of people grew up reading and loving MAD and being lampooned in the magazine was a badge of honor. Sometimes these people would ask about buying the original art or getting prints of the splash pages made as gifts for the cast and crew.
One of my favorite instances of this happening was when we did a parody of the TV show "Mad Men". The spoof was written by Arnie Kogen and drawn by me, and it remains one of my favorite jobs for MAD. For starters I loved the show, which always makes for a more fun experience doing the parody. I enjoyed watching it, and as a result really got to know the storylines as well as the characters and their idiosyncrasies, which gives me lots of ideas for visual gags. The fact that the show was set in the 60/70's was also fun for me. I was drawing fashions and environments and hairstyles that were representative of the era when MAD was in its heyday... it made me feel like I was back in the Bill Gaines era.
Shortly after the issue with "Sad Men" in it came out I got an email from actor Rich Sommer, who played the character “Harry Crane” on Mad Men. Turned out Rich was a fan of MAD Magazine, and also originally from Minnesota. He wrote to tell me he and the rest of the cast loved the show’s parody in MAD, and he invited me to attend a fundraiser for a Minneapolis improv theater he’s associated with. I was able to attend, and got to meet Rich and enjoy the show. I donated a signed copy of the magazine for the fundraiser, which may have fetched as much as $4.00! Seeing as how the cover price was $5.99 you can see how much my signature is worth.
Anyway I offered to get an oversized print of the splash made for him if he'd get some signatures on a second print and send it back to me. Rich was kind enough to do this, and a few months later this beauty was hanging on my studio 'Wall of Shame":
Signatures from left to right: Robert Morse, John Slattery, Elisabeth Moss, John Hamm, Jessica Pare, Jared Harris, Jay R. Ferguson, Vincent Kartheiser, January Jones, Christina Hendricks, Aaron Staton and Rich.
CLAPTRAP in Review
Besides buying a copy, what can you do to help Des and I sell all these copies of CLAPTRAP and get them the hell out of my garage?
Glad you asked!
Whether you bought it from Amazon or not, you can leave a review of the book on its Amazon sales page. You will need to have an Amazon profile and have made at least $50 of purchases from Amazon in order to qualify to leave a review, but you can review any product listed there regardless of where you bought it. Positive reviews help our search results, and get the book noticed by new potential readers.
So, if you loved the book and are so inclined, visit this page and leave a review. If you hated it and want to leave a bad review, visit this link.
That's a fair comment. It's a toss up for me between that, "Platoon" and "Apocalypse Now"
“The Deer Hunter” is the best Vietnam War movie ever produced.