BIGGIE

BIG (1988)
dir: Penny Marshall

BIGGIE
MAD #284, January 1989
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker

Josh Baskin (Tom Hanks) is a pre-teen trying to impress Cynthia (Kimberlee M. Davis) with his ability to tolerate an amusement park ride. He finds out she has an older boyfriend and to add insult to injury is to short for the ride. He goes to a wish machine wishing to be big so he can impress Cynthia, and that's how the movie starts.

(There was obviously some gag meant for the street signs and captions meant for those people in the background that weren't filled in for the deadline. “Height Report” was a pun on The Hite Report, a sex survey from a few years earlier. People being turned away from the roller coaster are Danny DeVito, Herve Villechaise, and Gary Coleman).

Josh wakes up inside the body of Tom Hanks. His mother doesn't believe it's him and he eventually convinces his best friend Billy (Jared Rushton).

(The issue of MAD here was from a cover earlier that year and probably the current one while this was being drawn).

His friend suggests he move to the city and find a job while they track down the company that made the wish machine so he can turn back into a boy.

Josh gets a job at the MacMillan Toy company and Billy stays with him when he's not in school. They live in a sleazy Times Square hotel. The owner of the hotel, played by Rockets Redglare, doesn't look anything like this but does have a gap in his teeth.

(52nd St. and Madison Ave. was where the MAD offices were located. Maybe Koch was a reference to Mayor Ed Koch and the 22 was a play on the phrase “Catch-22”? Anyone know?)

During a trip to F.A.O. Schwarz (tourist toy store), he runs into his boss (Robert Loggia) and they bond over a life-size player piano in the scene most people know.

Susan (Elizabeth Perkins) and her boyfriend (John Heard) can't figure out why the boss has taken a liking to Josh and promoted him. They think his acting like a child is some kind of power grab.

Josh shows up at a company party in a rhinestone cowboy tuxedo and Susan is intrigued by his childlike behavior and ends up going home with him. She finds him refreshing and they begin dating. Billy has found the machine that can turn him back but he's now fully committed to being an adult and become a workaholic.

(They always had in-jokes around this time of editor Nick Meglin playing tennis. Why they would have him here when there was a scene that took place while they were playing racquetball, I don't know.)

They used the movie an issue later, in an article called Recasting Old Movies with Today's Famous Wrestlers by John Prete (John Ficarra) and Sam Viviano. It took only one month for the movie to be considered old.
PIG
Cracked #241, December 1988
w: Tony Frank (Lou Silverstone)
a: Rob Orzechowski

Not much to say here, since it covers all the same bases as the MAD parody. Though the movie doesn't begin at the school.

I still want a Don Martin T-shirt.

Another potshot at MAD publisher William Gaines.

I don't recognize any of the fathers except for Bill Cosby, but that probably has to do more with the drawing style as much as it has to do with knowledge of 80s TV. Bill Cosby alone with children has a different connotation now.