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Comic Riffs is a blog devoted to the comics fan. Come in, sit down and put your feet up as we celebrate, contemplate, eviscerate and pontificate on cartoons.
Ever wonder what nationally syndicated cartoonists do when not playing golf, cruising the Mediterranean or hitting drives off of a yacht while sipping extra-dry martinis and cruising oh-so-casually toward the Aegean?
Some of them, it turns out, channel their spare creativity into shooting swell parody films on the cheap.
As Comic Riffs noted from Jersey City a coupla weeks ago, one of the comedic highlights of the National Cartoonist Society's Reuben Awards was the opening video: a parody of "The Godfather."
Yes, yes, nearly four decades after Coppola first spun Puzo into cinematic gold, you can't drop a reference to Fredo without hitting a "Godfather" parody. But how many of them feature Jeff Keane -- aka the immortal Jeffy from "Family Circus" -- as Vito Corleone? Or Jerry Scott -- the collaborative mind behind "Zits" and "Baby Blues" -- as a consigliere? From cartoonland, this is the ultimate "syndicate" -- and "Family Circus" is one of the five families.
About an hour after the video played the room at the Reubens, the video's mastermind -- Reubens show host Tom Gammill ("The Doozies") -- promised he'd send us a link. What can we say -- it was an offer we couldn't refuse.
So here at last, it's one wonderfully campy "Godfather," chock full of cartoon-industry jokes and co-starring "Pearls Before Swine's" Stephan Pastis (bemoaning R.C. Harvey's "criticism"); "Lio's" Mark Tatulli (crooning to his karaoke-heart's content); "Tank McNamara's" Bill Hinds (wishing for "a masculine winner"); cartoonist Sean Parkes (as Sonny/James Caan); and Gammill (as the "bed-bloodied" film director).
Here's the ultimate Reubens sandwich of cartoon campiness -- there's no holding the ham.
WHEN CARTOONISTS TAKE ON "THE GODFATHER"
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