Go Behind the Scenes of The New Yorker's Iconic Cartoons

“Just imagine that you’re from another planet, and that you just start to look a little more carefully at your world and see it as alien…but still your world. That’s what The New Yorker cartoons do.” These are the words of Robert Mankoff, The New Yorker’s cartoon editor for the past 28 years. Mankoff’s life and laughs are the subject of a new documentary from director Leah Wolchok, Very Semi-Serious: A Partially Thorough Portrait of New Yorker Cartoonists, which debuts exclusively on HBO tonight. Wolchok goes behind the scenes of Mankoff’s scrap-strewn desk to unpack the magazine’s turbulent history of humor. The film takes us through this history, from the formative years in the 20’s—featuring early work from cartoonists such as Peter Arno and James Thurber—to the raunchy, riotous 60’s, and right into the present day, where cartooning faces an amplified obligation to “stay relevant.”

The film begins with an obligatory shot of Mankoff at his desk, pen in hand and vibrating steadily over the beginnings of an image. Mankoff, who says he has been making this kind of drawing since high school, is a master of the dot cartoon (he admits, it’s the perfect method to conceal that he’s not actually that good at drawing). “I am easily, as you can see here, the world’s most proficient dotter,” he tells the camera. Before assuming his current position, Mankoff was in the same role as the many who now seek his approval, making and submitting these dot drawings to earlier editors. In 1993, his cartoon captioned “How About Never – Is Never Good For You?” was selected by then editor Lee Lorenz. After its publication in the magazine, the cartoon quickly inspired hundreds of spin-off cartoons and memes, made its way into the “The Yale Book of Quotations,” and was even silkscreened on g-strings. Last year, it also became the title for Mankoff’s memoir, with the subtitle: “My Life in Cartoons.”

Very Semi-Serious, however, concentrates on Mankoff's years on the other side of the desk, as editor of the magazine's iconic single-panels. Mankoff succeeded Lorenz in 1997, only four years after his own breakthrough cartoon, during a pivotal point for the department. “About a year [after becoming editor], I realized that, this is a plane that is going to run out of fuel. Unless we interceded, this was going to be the last generation of cartoonists to do this.” And so, he opened up the submission process. Now, every Tuesday, Mankoff receives thousands of submissions from cartoonists. In one-on-one conferences with the competing artists, he begins the process of wheedling down this colossal number to the 15 or so the magazine actually will print. “I go into the magazine every Tuesday and at this point, I’m almost totally inured to the rejection," jokes long-time New Yorker published cartoonist Mort Gerberg. "I used to say, I go into the magazine for my weekly humiliation, along with everybody else.”

Bolstered by the satiric commentary from its subjects, Wolchok’s own tongue-in-cheek style of storytelling creates an eclectic vision of the current school of New Yorker cartoonists: a network of entertaining individuals, lead forth by an editor with an urgency to encourage new voices and new angles in an open and intergenerational environment. As such, both Mankoff and Wolchok seem to be asking, What can cartoonists do that’s new? What still works? What’s the contemporary condition of cartoons?

In attempting to answer these questions, Wolchok looks at the 90-year history of The New Yorker's weekly cartoons along with Mankoff’s more contemporary developments in the department through profiles of several of the editor's peers. These include the above-quoted Gerber, George Booth, an 89-year old New Yorker veteran, the young but prolific Ed Steed, who in the past two years has sold and seen printed over 50 of his cartoons, and the talented but yet-to-be-published-in-the-magazine, Liana Finck. These profiles present a handful of approaches – some classic, some quirky – and the perks and pitfalls of each in the current comedic clime.

In discussions with the younger cartoonists, the film also addresses the very practical problems facing these artists today: the cartooning world that Finck is aspiring to become a part of is, in other words, not the same one Booth entered in 1969. Being a cartoonist in 2015 means having a day job – walking dogs, like SNL writer Zach Kanin or working in your brother’s furniture shop, like cartoonist Liam Walsh. “Being a single panel cartoonist is like being a poet," says Bruce Eric Kaplan who, when not hatching cartoons, is a writer and producer for Seinfield, Six Feet Under, and Girls.  If you think, 'this is my career, I’m going to have health insurance, I’m going to have a great house'…that’s just not the reality of it."

With both these stylistic and practical issues at play and often at odds in the work of his cartoonists, Mankoff himself admits there is still far to go before the plane returns to a cruise-control comfort level. But, perhaps, cruise-control comedy is exactly what the magazine must resist. “It’s an old form,” Mankoff says, “and it has to evolve.”

For the potential viewer of Very Semi-Serious, there is a bit of humor, humanity, and classic New Yorker nihilism for everybody, especially those with a weakness for bio-docs. But, unspoken (and perhaps unintended) there is what might be called a “target” audience that will find this film fulfilling in a way which others will not. I’m speaking of course of the second type of New Yorker reader. Not the first, who diligently turns to the table of contents to peruse the reports and opinions presented in this week’s issue. But the other kind, those who flip feverishly through the pages stopping whenever the corner of a freshly printed New Yorker cartoon catches the eye. For those of you who (like myself) count themselves one of that second creed, this film may as well be y(our) gospel… and I suppose that makes Robert Mankoff, y(our) apostle? In truth, for those devoted cartoon fans who flock to his side every Tuesday, praying that this week will be the week, he might as well be.

Watch Very Semi-Serious: A Partially Thorough Portrait of New Yorker Cartoonists exclusively on HBO at 9 PM tonight.

Find out more on the Very Semi-Serious: A Partially Thorough Portrait of New Yorker Cartoonists' website.

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