Search Results for: mad mad mad mad world

Mark Bosselman writes…

I know how much you enjoy Four Mad World but are there any films that tried to replicate Mad World that you kinda of enjoyed?

Depends on what you mean by "replicate." There have been a couple of movies that "borrowed" the idea from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of someone setting a mob off on a grand chase and then that mob — full of familiar faces and growing — goes off on a big find-the-treasure hunt. The only one of those I've seen was The Million Dollar Mystery from 1987…

…and I didn't like it very much, though I have trouble really disliking any film with Eddie Deezen in it. One friend of mine was one of its screenwriters and another guy I knew died doing stuntwork on the film. I don't think either one of them liked it very much either. The film ran a contest with a million-dollar prize and it was won by a 14-year-old girl from Bakersfield. I would imagine she thought it was the greatest movie ever made.

If you're talking about all-star "gang" comedies, there were a few that seem to have been green-lit by studios because they wanted to replicate the success (not the plot) of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I liked The Great Race and I liked Who's Minding the Mint? and I sorta liked Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines but I don't see any of them as being on the same tier as Mad World. I suspect that the main element of Mad World that was most imitated was hiring Jack Davis to draw a big crowd scene for the poster.

Robert Rowe sent me this question about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World…

Some Internet search results say Bob Hope was unable to appear in the film because a studio he was under contract to forbid it. Is that also your understanding?

I could give you a short answer but I don't do that when I can give a long, wandering answer. What I know about this and how I know it is buried deep within the following. But first, I need to post another one of these…

Now then: In 1980, I left (on good terms and not forever), my long-term employment with Sid and Marty Krofft. I turned down writing their new series, Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters and took a job on a non-Krofft series done at a different studio. I wasn't away from them for long. They decided, not because of me, to tape the Mandrell show at the studio where I was now working and moved into offices just down the hall from mine. Suddenly, I was writing on my new gig and also helping out unofficially on the Mandrell series…all this while also story-editing and writing Richie Rich cartoons for Hanna-Barbera and whatever I was then doing in comics.

So one day, Marty Krofft walks into my office and says, "Mark, I need you to help me out with something. Can you come with me?" Marty was a hard guy to say "no" to and saying "yes" had usually turned out to be the right answer. So I went with him and as we walked, he explained that they had a guest star who was there that moment to tape a spot with Barbara Mandrell and also one for another show the Kroffts were producing concurrently — a series of syndicated specials for the Oral Roberts Foundation.

Things were running behind on the stage where both shows were taping and this guest star was waiting in his dressing room, getting impatient. Marty said, "I need you to baby-sit him for a half-hour or so…just keep him company." But he didn't tell me what star I was going to be baby-sitting.

Then he took me into the dressing room and said, "Bob, this is my head writer, Mark Evanier. He's one of your biggest fans and he knows absolutely everything you've ever done." I shook hands with the star and he said, "Great! If the writing business doesn't work out, he can make a good living as a blackmailer."

And then Marty left me there with Bob Hope.

This was not the first time someone had done this to me. Marty did it to me once with Jerry Lewis and another time with Sid Caesar. And both Marty and my friend Susan Buckner did it to me on separate occasions with Milton Berle. Oh — and a producer I worked with named Bonny Dore did it to me with Dick Clark and later, Dick did it to me with Henny Youngman and James Coburn and I could probably think of other instances.

I wound up talking with Mr. Hope for about twenty minutes — about his movies, about his co-stars, about whatever came to mind. I told him how I used to sneak in to watch him tape his specials at NBC Burbank.  Every time Hope got a line wrong, he'd yell at his cue card guy, Barney McNulty, like it was Barney's fault.  When I mentioned that, he said to me, "We paid Barney real well to take the blame because I never learned how to read."  Then he told me some affectionate stories about Barney.

I asked him about the Bob Hope comic book that DC Comics published for eighteen years and he told me he had a complete collection and someday, might get around to reading one of them. And of course, I asked him about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and why he wasn't in it. His reply went roughly like this…

Yeah, they really wanted me in it. Stanley Kramer must've called me a half-dozen times and I wanted to do it. All my friends were in it. The trouble was I was under contract to a movie studio at the time. I owed them a picture and I kept turning down these terrible scripts they sent me and they were getting impatient. So when I went to them and asked if I could do a bit part in Stanley's picture, they said, "Not until you commit to a start date on that picture you owe us" and I wasn't about to say yes to one of those lousy scripts.

I also asked him if he had any idea what he would have done in the film if he had been in it. He had no idea. I'm fairly certain it would have been a quick cameo that would have been written expressly for him. He would not have played a part that someone else played in the movie.

That was all I got out of him and his answer raised some questions I was not prepared to ask at that moment. Mad World began filming on April 26, 1962. At the time, Hope was filming Critic's Choice for Warner Brothers and then the next film he made was Call Me Bwana, which began filming in September of that year. Call Me Bwana was made for a company called Danjaq that made a lot of the early James Bond films and released its movies through United Artists — the same company that released It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

I can't quite figure this out. Why would Hope sign to do a picture with Danjaq if they didn't have a script he wanted to do? Or if the company he owed a picture to was United Artists, why wouldn't they let him do a cameo in a film they were distributing? At the time he officially committed to Call Me Bwana, Mad World was still in production…so I don't get it. Maybe Hope was committed to yet another company, they refused his request to do Mad World and later that deal was canceled…but then he still would have had time to do a day on Mad World before he started.  Or maybe…

Never mind.  I give up. This might be a time to fall back on the simplest explanation which would be that what Hope told me wasn't the truth or at least the whole truth…but that's what he said and he apparently said it to others who asked.  Make of it what you will. People do sometimes make up simple explanations when they don't want to give you the complicated or embarrassing real one.  I suspect some contractual commitment prevented him doing the cameo but it's a lot more complicated than we could imagine from afar.

Lastly, before someone writes to ask what Bob Hope was like in our somewhat-brief encounter:  He was very much like the way Dave Thomas played him in "Play It Again, Bob." That was (in my opinion) the most brilliant of the many brilliant sketches on the old SCTV show and it really nailed the Hope I met. A very clever writer I knew named Jeffrey Barron — who wrote for SCTV and also for Hope — told me he worked on the sketch but he was not a credited writer on the program at that time. Someone familiar with the off-stage Hope had to have written it.

I'll post a link to the sketch here for you but first, I need to insert one of these…

That said, I've embedded the entire episode of SCTV below but the link is configured so on most browsers, it should start playing with the sketch in question. "Play It Again, Bob" is in two parts with a commercial break in the middle but stick with it through that. And if you want to watch the entire episode, move the little slider back to the beginning. Thanks to Robert Rowe for jogging me into telling a story I've never told here before. Amazingly, I still have some…

As longtime followers of this blog are sick of hearing, I love the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I usually refer to it as my "favorite" movie rather than the "best" movie ever made…and I pick that adjective because when you use the word "best," there's always some clown who wants to correct you as if you'd stupidly said that 2 + 2 equals 749 or that the Mona Lisa was painted by Desi Arnaz. Like it's an established fact that whatever he thinks is the best movie is The Best Movie — end of discussion, you chowderhead!

"Favorite" cuts down on that, at least a little…though a few years ago, I did have one guy stop me at a convention and try to convince me that my favorite movie was not my favorite movie; that my favorite movie was actually his favorite movie. In fact, it was probably your favorite movie too, even if you didn't see it.

All that is one of the reactions I get when I say Mad World is my favorite movie. Another is that every few months, I get a call or e-mail from someone who wants me to tell them how to go visit The Big "W" from that film. I got one this morning from someone who read this article that I posted here. That piece was written by my dear, no-longer-with-us friend Earl Kress, who did once make the sacred pilgrimage to visit the location.

I need to inform the gent who wrote this morning that, first of all, that article is about thirty years old. Secondly, I have never bothered making that trek because I've been informed — reliably, I think — that the current owners of the property do not indulge visitors the way the previous owners did. I have also been told that there is absolutely nothing left there that in any way matches up with what was there when the movie filmed in 1962. The last of the four palm trees that formed The Big "W" fell down or was cut down a long time ago.

There are locations that can be visited. Stick "it's a mad mad mad mad world filming locations" into any search engine and you'll find all you need. The most recognizable and easiest-to-get-to is probably the California Incline, which is a road/ramp in Santa Monica that leads down to the Pacific Coast Highway. The ramp itself was completely rebuilt a few years ago but the area there still has the feel of the same period and a couple of key scenes were shot there.

But there's no reason to visit The Big "W" today, starting with the fact that there is no Big "W" there. And the $350,000 payroll from the tuna factory was dug up a long time ago.

The Fine Arts Theater on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills is running my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at 2 PM on Sunday, April 14. I mention this because folks keep writing me to let me know. I know, I know. I doubt I'll be attending. The Fine Arts is a lovely place to see most movies but I'm spoiled. I need my favorite movie on a bigger screen and will probably wait for the reopening of the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood even if, as it now appears, that ain't happening in '24.

I also don't think my ankle will be up to going by then. It's getting steadily better and I'd know that even if the surgeon who reassembled it hadn't said as much in a post-op visit last Wednesday. But it's still going to take a while…

For those of you who live in Southern California — say, anywhere between Crockett County and Santa Rosita — the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood is showing my fave film, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on Friday evening, December 22. Tickets are on sale now at this link and they will probably sell out. Every time some local theater shows this movie, tickets sell out quickly and I am at a loss to explain why more houses don't show it more often.

And yes, I've bought my tickets. As you may know, this is a movie that I believe needs to be seen on a big screen with a big audience that appreciates its big cast of big stars. Watching it at home without a big audience and/or a big screen is okay if you've already seen it a few times The Right Way and you're just refreshing your memory of that viewing. And if you do, watch the Criterion Collection DVD or Blu-ray of it which, among its other features, has a really, really long and detailed commentary track by Yours Truly and my pals Mike Schlesinger and Paul Scrabo.

Some of you, by the way, have clued me in that the film can be viewed for free on YouTube. The reason I haven't embedded it here is that I can't think of a worse way to experience this film, especially if you watch it on your phone while waiting for a dental appointment.

And there's another reason why I'm going to the Egyptian that evening. That theater has been completely remodeled and it's supposed to be beautiful and a grand place to watch movies now. We're going to get there early to see the place…and by the way, they're running Mad World as a 70mm film print. That's about half the size of Jimmy Durante's nose.

While searching my cluttered hard drive for some info on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World for a post here the other day, I came across a JPG of this newspaper clipping…

Some of you may be thinking, "Jackie Mason? Barbara Heller? I don't recall either of them in the movie!" That might because they weren't in the movie. Jackie Mason was originally signed to play one of the gas station attendants but it turned out that his schedule was so full of club dates and bookings that they couldn't know if they'd have him when they needed him. I got the impression from Stanley Kramer that he thought Mason's agent had misled them about his availability. Anyway, Mason was replaced.

Originally, the two gas station attendants were to have been Mr. Mason and Joe Besser but Besser was then a regular on The Joey Bishop Show, a sitcom at the time. Mr. Bishop would not allow Mr. Besser the necessary days off to be in Mad World so he was out. I think the way it worked was that Arnold Stang was hired to replace Besser and then a little later, Marvin Kaplan was hired to replace Mason.

Rumor has it that Ms. Heller was signed to play the wife of Ben Blue, who played the airline pilot…a role ultimately played by Bobo Lewis.  But there were a lot of scenes cut from Mad World — some filmed, some not — and she might have been in or intended for one of them.

And speaking of people who were cut from the film: When I showed you the Jack Davis poster in this posting here, I meant to point out the officer on the ground below the car driven by Milton Berle. That was Allen Jenkins, a character actor probably best known for voicing the character of Officer Dibble in the cartoon show Top Cat…which also featured voices by Stang and Kaplan. A photo of Mr. Jenkins was in the souvenir book for Mad World sold at the roadshow engagements but he was cut from the movie just before its release.  He apparently played a policeman or sheriff.

And I haven't figured out where Herbie Faye might have been in the movie.  Faye, seen above with his long-time friend Phil Silvers on Sgt. Bilko, is in several stills taken during the desert scenes in Mad World. It's unlikely he would have schlepped out there in 105° heat just to say hi to Phil. Whatever he did never made it into the movie. He had to be content to guest star on just about every sitcom of the sixties and about half of the funny movies made in that decade. In show biz, he went back to the days of burlesque when he was First Banana (lead comic) and Phil Silvers was Second Banana (supporting comic).

There were others who didn't make it in…and before someone asks, as people seem to do hourly on Facebook, about Don Rickles: Don Rickles was never going to be in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and the reason he was never going to be in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is that when the film was casting, he was still an unknown, especially in the comedy world. He didn't even appear on The Tonight Show until 1965.

I have a couple of folks who send me e-mails and sign them "Smiler Grogan," which was the name of Jimmy Durante's character in my fave film, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  There are at least two, maybe three, and one of them wrote to ask me…

I've heard you in interviews say that when you got into the TV business, you tried to work with or at least meet everyone you could who was in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  Could you furnish us with a list of who you met? And how many of them told you that they were very proud to have been in the movie?

In the immortal words of Curly Howard, "Soitenly!"  Here's a list of everyone in the film who wasn't a stunt person or extra.  I have boldfaced the names of those who I worked with and/or got to spend a decent amount of time with and I have italicized the names of those I met in what I would consider brief encounters…

Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, Jonathan Winters, Edie Adams, Dorothy Provine, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Jim Backus, Ben Blue, Joe E. Brown, Alan Carney, Chick Chandler, Barrie Chase, Lloyd Corrigan, William Demarest, Andy Devine, Selma Diamond, Peter Falk, Norman Fell, Paul Ford, Stan Freberg, Louise Glenn, Leo Gorcey, Sterling Holloway, Marvin Kaplan, Edward Everett Horton, Buster Keaton, Don Knotts, Charles Lane, Mike Mazurki, Charles McGraw, Zasu Pitts, Carl Reiner, Madlyn Rhue, Roy Roberts, Arnold Stang, Nick Stewart, Sammee Tong, Jesse White, Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny, Stanley Clements, Joe DeRita, Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Nicholas Georgiade, Stacy Harris, Tom Kennedy, Ben Lessy, Bobo Lewis, Jerry Lewis, Eddie Rosson, Eddie Ryder, Jean Sewell, Doodles Weaver and Lennie Weinrib.

Of those I met, the only two who ever expressed negative feelings about the film were Mickey Rooney and Carl Reiner, both of whom seemed to feel that the film was loud and crowded and not as funny as it could or should have been. Mr. Rooney made some great films in his career but he was not, shall we say, the most stable human being, always announcing wacky business ventures and show business productions that never materialized. His appearances at Mad World revival screenings were punctuated with all sorts of strange anecdotes that never happened including the ridiculous assertion that he and his co-stars had ad-libbed the entire script. A copy of the entire script — yes, of course, I have one — shows that this was not so.

I never found much logic in anything Rooney said about the movie and the one time I got to speak with him about it, he was somewhat incoherent and he wound up screaming and running out of the room about another matter. Mr. Reiner, I think, was imagining what he, as a writer-director, might have done with the cast and budget that Stanley Kramer had. It would have been a very different film and I'm not saying it would have been a bad one.

Both of those gentlemen somewhat recanted late in their lives, saying only good things about the picture. I suspect this was because they kept being invited to screenings full of fans who pledged undying allegiance to the movie. This is just a theory on my part but I think they came to realize they'd been a part — in Rooney's case, a rather large part — of something that meant so much to so many and they decided to stop being negative about the experience.

They may also have noticed that some of their co-stars — folks they truly respected like Jonathan Winters and Don Knotts, to name but two — were bursting with delight to have been part of the film. So to demean the film was to demean Jonathan's or Don's gratification and pride. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion but they're also entitled to change their minds.

We wish the folks who run the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood would reopen that fine movie theater and we further wish they would resume their occasional screenings there of my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. That theater was literally built to show that film and seeing it there is the best way to see it.

There is no news about the Dome reopening…just a few rumors that aren't worth raising one's hopes for. But it is a fact that the Aero Theater in Santa Monica is showing my fave film in 70mm on Saturday, July 30 at 7:30 PM. Details and tickets are here. I have not been in a theater of any sort since The Pandemic descended upon us. This may be when I break my fast.

From Robert Rose…

The subject of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World came up in a Marx Brothers discussion group I participate in. Opinions on the movie varied (the most interesting to me was the fellow who says he loves the film but that it isn't funny; I'm not sure how that works) but of course in that group the burning question was "Why wasn't Groucho in it?" There were various explanations and theories advanced, but rather than list them I thought I'd toss the question your way, as an acknowledged expert on the film who also seems to have come across the occasional stray fact about the Marx Brothers, too.

(I did first try to search through your blog to see if you'd addressed the question before, but eventually gave up, defeated by the sheer number of posts that mention Groucho, some of which even do so without mentioning Frank Ferrante.)

I hope people understand that even an "acknowledged expert on the film" can't know everything for certain and that if you'd asked Stanley Kramer at the time about the movie, there are some things even he wouldn't know. A movie involves a thousand decisions and you can't track and dissect every one of them.

I can tell you that a lot of the casting decisions were last minute "get anyone you can" decisions. On a film like that with so many set-ups and so many players and so many stunts and tech problems, you can never be sure when you'll get to certain scenes. A lot of folks who were not in the film weren't in it because they were shooting another movie or a TV series at the time.

I asked Dick Van Dyke and he said he was never approached. (Carl Reiner was in it but since Carl wasn't in every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, he did a lot of other things while that series was in production. Morey Amsterdam recorded a voiceover for Mad World that was cut from the film but that was a voiceover that might have taken an hour.) Anyway, that's probably why people like Lucille Ball, Danny Thomas and Jackie Gleason weren't in it. Joe Besser was cast as one of the gas station attendants but couldn't get time off from The Joey Bishop Show.

Stan Freberg walked onto the set one day to discuss the commercials he was producing for the film. When Kramer had a break in filming, he instead said to Stan, "What size shirt do you wear?" They needed someone to fill a role they were prepping to shoot an hour or so later.

Howard Morris is nowhere in the film, nor did he ever appear before the cameras. But on two separate occasions, they booked him for a day's work (and paid him) because they thought they might need him to replace someone else, depending on scheduling. He never knew what the role was and the following is just my theory…

I suspect he was engaged in case the schedules on Mad World and The Andy Griffith Show didn't come into proper alignment so Don Knotts was available. If when they needed to shoot the scenes with Don, he couldn't get away from Mayberry, Howie would have been in that part and people would be asking, "Why wasn't Don Knotts in the film?" Or maybe Knotts would have wound up in a different role.

Either of those would have been a shame because he was so perfect in the part he played. Don made such a strong impression in the movie that people think he was in a lot more of it than he was. His total on-screen time totaled exactly 120 seconds.

Mr. Kramer told me that Sterling Holloway's casting as the fireman was one of those "we couldn't find anyone else when we needed someone" moments and that he hoped there'd be an opportunity to reshoot it later with a bigger star — and there wasn't. I theorize the part was written for Ed Wynn…and hey, that might have been a good spot for Groucho. I've heard there do exist script pages for a never-filmed scene where Groucho would have cameoed as a doctor treating all the major male cast members at the end.

It would have given Groucho the last line of the movie and they might have decided that at that point, the focus of the last scene should have been on the stars of the film instead of on an interloper. Or Groucho might not have been available. Or Groucho might have wanted too much money. Or there might have been some reason no one could have imagined.

At some point during the filming, a small role was apparently offered to Jack Carter. Mr. Carter was fiercely competitive with other comedians and he wasn't about to come in and do two lines in a movie starring guys like Milton Berle and Sid Caesar with whom he had what we might call "rivalry issues." He turned the job down saying something like, "Call me when you have a real part." They never did, either because one did not come along or because they just decided not to deal with someone who took that attitude. The one time I got to talk to Stanley Kramer, I asked him about it and he said, "I don't remember. I probably had too many things to think about." That's the way it is with some things.

The Palace Theatre, a restored art deco-style 1940s theater in Dallas-Fort Worth runs classic/vintage movies. This Saturday at 4 PM, they're running It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on what I'm told is a big screen. That's one of my two requirements for enjoying this film at its maximum strength. The other is a large, enthusiastic audience.

The Palace is currently operating at 75% capacity so people don't have to sit so close to strangers. Their website also says "While masks are no longer a requirement, they are highly recommended. Staff will continue to wear masks." Even fully-vaccinated, I don't think I'd take the risk but you do what you want to do. And either way, let's thank Dan Koller for letting me know about it.

Turner Classic Movies is running my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World Monday. The schedule says that, at least on my cable service, it starts at 5:15 PM and is followed at 8 PM by It's Always Fair Weather. That would suggest they're running the 2 hour and 42 minute version of Mad World — which is the version I'd show if I were them.

On the TCM site, they list the running time for the movie as 3 hours and 12 minutes. I know a lot of people don't believe in science anymore but I believe it's still impossible to show a 192 minute movie in a 165 minute time slot.

The running time of this movie is actually difficult to discuss because there are all these different elements: The overture, the Intermission, the recorded police calls during the Intermission, the Entr'Acte, the Exit Music and a couple of different versions of the movie, trimmed and untrimmed. When someone cites a running time, they're sometimes counting some of those elements and not others. I believe though the version that TCM always shows is 162 minutes from the first note of music to the last. I could easily be wrong.

I would ordinarily tell you not to watch it, especially if you've never seen it before or haven't seen it in a very long time. I love this movie but I love it on a huge screen in one of these things we used to go to called a "movie theater." Google that term if you don't remember what that is. And it should also be seen with a packed audience that's primed to laugh. It's greatly diminished when viewed alone or with one other person on a small home screen.

However, it may be some time before it's possible to see it that way. And if they show it that way in the next few months at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood — a theater that was literally built to show this movie — I'm not sure I'll even go.

It would be nice to. I first saw this film at the Cinerama Dome on 11/23/63 — the day after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, a day when the entire world was still in shock. One of the reasons I love it so much is that for for 201 minutes (the running time at that point), I was living in a world of very funny people…a world where insane things happened but at least no one shot the President.

Some but not all of my affection for this movie flows from that. The rest has a lot to do with the age I was when I first saw it, my affection then and now for the performers, my affection for how fascinating every moment of the film is to me, and affection of other factors too numerous to mention.

I'm not recommending watching it on TCM but because it may be a while before you can see it the right way. I'm also not recommending not watching it on TCM. Proceed at your own risk. And if you don't like it there, don't judge it by that.

As you know, I'm a big fan of the 1963 movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World…though really only when it's on a big screen in an actual movie theater with a lively, packed audience.  As far as I'm concerned, if you haven't seen it that way, you haven't seen it.  I still recommend the superb Criterion DVD/Blu Ray release of the film with me and two pals on the commentary track…but please experience the film as God and Stanley Kramer intended it before you watch it in your den.  (God, by the way, is the only filmmaker who really and truly gets "final cut.")

The fine writer Craig Shemin informs me that the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York is showing a 70mm print of my beloved film on August 31, September 1, September 7 and September 8.  Details are here…and if/when you visit, check out the Jim Henson exhibit they have there.

Keith Enright has a question about the Criterion release of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on DVD and Blu Ray. As you may recall, I am heard on the commentary track. (If you don't have a copy, I highly recommend it. You can order a copy of it here. And now, let's tackle Keith's question…

Maybe my memory is failing and you can just point me to a previous post, but I'm wondering if you have any further stories about working with Criterion on this? I'm a huge Criterion fanatic and have also loved this movie since childhood. I have the previous MGM Laserdisc boxset as well as the Criterion set and consider them both essential to telling the story of the film.

I think the Criterion set is amazing and I love that you're a part of it. Any tidbits on how you got involved, whether they paid you in discs, or if you were involved in anything that didn't make it to the final product?

There were a few hunks of the commentary track that didn't make it in due to time limits. People think that such tracks are recorded in real time while the commenters are watching it once…and some are. This one was done in long chunks in three sessions and we did some sections over and over until everyone was satisfied with them. Then there was a lot of editing to move certain speeches closer to the on-screen action they were describing. I was very impressed with how Criterion sets a high standard and then spends the time and money necessary to achieve it.

They paid me in money and sent me some discs. And how I got involved is not that interesting a story. My friend Mike Schlesinger was at a film screening and he ran into a friend of his — Karen Stetler, who is a producer for Criterion. She told him, "We're doing a restored version of Mad World." He said, "You have to have a commentary track by Mark Evanier and me." She said fine. They called me and I said yes and suggested we also get Paul Scrabo on the track. They said yes.

We recorded the track over several days…in the same recording studio where I voice-direct The Garfield Show and most of the other cartoons I've done. It felt a little odd to be on the wrong side of the glass but I got used to it after an hour or so.

If I didn't make it clear in past posts, let me state clearly that this was one of the great thrills of my life, being involved in the super-deluxe release of a movie that meant so much to me. Don't tell Karen but I would have paid them for the privilege. If you don't like this movie, fine. I probably don't like at least one of your favorite films and you're not going to convince me it's not wonderful just as I'm not going to convince you that yours is not a great movie. I'm just real, real glad that I had the chance to "give back" a little to this film.

Jeffrey Martin, a reader of this site, informs me that It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is being run in Chicago a little more than a month from now at the Music Box Theater. There are three showings — February 26, February 27 and March 2. Sounds like another opportunity to view this film as nature intended it: On a big screen with a big audience. Tickets are on sale now here. I'd be there but I only go to Mad World screenings within two thousand miles of my home and this one is 2,032 miles.