Directed by: Bart Simpson
Written by: Harvey Kurtzman et al.
Starring: Harvey Kurtzman, Adele Kurtzman, Denis Kitchen, Terry Gilliam, Robert Crumb
Film review by: William Hemingway
Harvey Kurtzman, along with his closest family members and colleagues, take us through the history of his illustrations and his publishing career, from the highs of creating MAD Magazine in the 1950’s all the way through to his final days as a lecturer in New York.
Harvey Kurtzman (1924-1993) has been considered by some to be more important than Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Woodstock, Flower Power, or LSD ever were in the counterculture movements leading from the 50’s into the 60’s and beyond. Despite being quite an introverted figure in his home life, he instead got all of his feelings, concerns, and criticisms out onto the page in cartoon form from a very early age. Drawing and writing about all the things that bothered him in the real world, Kurtzman lanced, lampooned, lambasted and satirically lynched those in power and authority, desperate to get the word out to the people that those in the establishment were lying to them – and lying to them every day in a big way.
From his early college days, drawing cartoons and comic strips for his fellow class members to pore over on noticeboards and the like, Kurtzman joined the team at Timely Comics, which eventually became Marvel Comics, and was set to work by the editor, a man by the name of Stan Lee. After a few years of producing the strip, Hey Look!, and getting close to his future wife, Adele Hassan, whom he emancipated from her relationship with his sometime business partner, Will Elder, Kurtzman swivelled towards EC Comics and began to get more and more work from there. These comics focused more on the harsh realities of the world and Kurtzman was enlisted to draw strips about subjects such as contracting syphilis, and the ever-present theatre of war.
Kurtzman’s work brought comics into a new age and a new realm as they dealt with these everyday, serious subjects, and treated them more with reverence, respect, and realism than the fantastical fantasies that were the backbone of comic books and comic book stories at the time. Through this he eventually created the comic book, MAD in 1952, scripting every story in the first twenty-three issues, and having them fleshed out and drawn in by his team of artists which included his old friend, Will Elder. The rest, as they say, is history.
In The Mad World Of Harvey Kurtzman, we are invited into some of the small, out of the way spaces that he inhabited, and in which a lot of his drawings and work still reside. His youngest daughter, Nellie, takes us to his old partner and cartoonist, Denis Kitchen’s place, where he manages what’s left of the estate, and we are then drawn into the story of how Harvey managed to create the world, or worlds, that he drew for everyone else. Along the way we are treated to many interviews of the time, with such figures as Stan Lee himself, as well as lots of the illustrators and publishers that Harvey worked with during these periods. We also get to hear contemporary testimony from those still alive who loved and worked with Harvey, including Terry Gilliam, Robert Crumb and Matt Groening.
These talking heads are all interspersed with many reams of paper evidence and video contextualisation, as we see invoices, memos, telegrams, sketches and whatever else to help build the story around what the people are saying. Every so often Harvey pops up in some wide-ranging interview to tell us himself about how he feels about his work, and so we are carefully led through his story by an intricate pattern of memory, nostalgia, anecdotes, and physical evidence, that is as fastidious about the facts and history of Kurtzman’s work as he was himself in producing it.
With MAD only being one in a long line of publications that Kurtzman created or worked for, the documentary takes time to remind us of all the other things that Harvey did once he left the contemporary cornerstone he’d helped create. In a full ninety-minute feature we get a near birth to death storyline that can only realistically serve as a highlight reel, or a best-of anthology, that skims us through all the relevant bits of his work and a little bit of his private life. While the documentary is explicit in what it does tell us, there are many other things that are necessarily left out for the sake of time, or fluency, or narrative structure, that could be construed as ‘holes in the plot’. While this does not impinge on the information or the enjoyment of what we see, the audience is however aware of the fact that we are missing parts of the story.
For what is a quick and light documentary about the man and his work, The Mad World Of Harvey Kurtzman will no doubt appeal to fans and to a new generation of comic book nerds who need to brush up on the origin story of the true comic genius of his time. For those who are looking for a more in-depth look into the feelings and motivations behind the scenes, they may very well be disappointed, as may those who are being inducted into Kurtzman’s work for the first time and would prefer a more theatrical, cinema friendly film to do that, as a lot of it still remains quite dry. While there are no revelations or big reveals to speak of, The Mad World Of Harvey Kurtzman is a good way to become initiated and informed about his work, which is told with care and attention by those who knew him best.
The World Premiere of ‘The MAD World of Harvey Kurtzman’ at Edinburgh International Film Festival took place on Sunday 16th August