BROADCAST SNOOZE

BROADCAST NEWS (1987)
dir: James L. Brooks

BROADCAST SNOOZE
MAD #280, July 1988
w: Stan Hart
a: Angelo Torres

James L. Brooks was famous for co-creating many hit TV series such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Simpsons, but as writer-director in film he's more known for his tearjearker-romantic comedies.

Jane (Holly Hunter) and Aaron (Albert Brooks) are good friends, she's a producer and he's a field reporter for their local news team. At a broadcasters' convention. She meets Tom Grunick (William Hurt), a sports reporter who goes on a date with him that doesn't work out and it turns out he'll be working at their station. Tom looks good on the air but he isn't very smart.

(Jack Nicholson has a small role as the news show's anchorman. The man with the beard is director James L. Brooks.)


Aaron has feelings for her and tries to expose Tom's vapidity. She still only likes Aaron as a friend.

Aaron auditions to be anchorman when there's an opening slot. Even though he doesn't like Tom or feel he's experienced, he seeks advice on how to play well to the camera. When he finally gets his shot on air it doesn't go over too well.

(Modern Romance was a film actor Albert Brooks made a few years earlier. “What's the frequency, Kenneth?” was something Dan Rather claimed people who beat him said. What was meant by this was never solved.) At one time Woody Allen wasn't controversial.


The station suffers a few cutbacks and Aaron quits. Tom is promoted to reporter in London. He has a week off and suggests she take some of the vacation time owed her so they can spend it together. She pulls out at the last minute after finding out one of his reports was faked.

In MAD's version, the news is all sensationalized anyway, so she decides do go with him and become corrupt.

The parody ends like the movie, flashing forward several years, with Aaron now a father with his own family and the three of them together again. Except the new news anchor is now ALF, which followers on this blog are familiar with for his frequent use as a punchline.

(The names on the buttons in the first panels were titles of the movies they were in before this).

BEAUTY IS THE BEAST

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
1987-1990 CBS

BEAUTY IS THE BEAST
MAD #280, July 1988
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Jack Davis

Prime-time TV romance about assistant to the district attorney Catherine (Linda Hamilton) and her relationship with the monster Vincent (Ron Perlman) who saved her life.

Vincent comes up to the surface when he senses Catherine is in trouble.

She has summoned him because one of the tenants in her building is in trouble. The landlord is treating all his tenants this way.

Vincent has decided he wants to move out of the city. Years later, they visit his father with their new child.

CUTIE AND THE BEAST
Cracked #246, August 1989
a: Rick Altergott

Cracked also parodied it with parodies of ALF and Star Trek in an article called The Final Episodes of Fantasy Shows.

UPDATE:
Cover to the British edition, which often had covers for movies and shows that weren't on covers here.

ARFUL

ALF (1986-1990) NBC

ALF stood for Alien Life Form, a sitcom about an alien that crashed into the home of the Tanners, father Willie (Max Wright), Kate (Anne Schedeen), Lynn (Andrea Elson), and Brian (Benji Gregory), hiding from the government until he can have his spacecraft fixed and return to his home planet of Melmac.

In this parody, Alf is sick, so they've called experts to see what to do about it. The first is Richard Dreyfuss reprising his role from Close Encounters of the Third Kind parodying the scenes there where he tries to recreate the mountain he keeps seeing with mud.

The alien experts they call are all characters from other science fiction movies. There's also Ripley from the Alien series as well as McCoy and Scotty from Star Trek.

Then comes E.T., as well as Cliff Robertson, known then for doing AT&T commercials

Then in comes Chewbacca.

They call in Dr. Ruth, who reveals ALF's problem is he's a person in a costume. That person in a costume is Simon McKay, a character played by actor David Rapopport in a concurrent show called The Wizard.

In the last panel, puppets and characters from other science-fiction programs who hadn't appeared previously make appearances, including the lead character from Eat and Run, which probably had a smaller audience than this article, but was used here because it was co-written by MAD writer Stan Hart and directed by his son Chris Hart, also a MAD writer.

The German edition of MAD often did their own covers when they translated American articles.

One of ALF's main traits was that he was always trying to eat the family cat. In MAD #282 (October 1988), they published an article about this motif, ALF's Celebrity Cat Cookbook written by John Prete (John Ficarra) and illustrated by Sam Viviano.

Which I guess was the cover story for their Swedish edition.

R. A. L. F.: REAL ALIEN LIFE FORM
Cracked #228, July 1987
w: Joe Catalano
a: Walter Brogan

They also included Star Trek characters and used the same punchline of ALF really being a famous little person in a costume.

These were two pages of a longer article called The Final Episodes of Fantasy Shows from # 246 in August 1989, drawn by Rick Altergott.

ALF was a long-running comics series that was drawn by Dave Manak, artist for MAD as well as Crazy and Sick.

UPDATE:
From the Mexican version of MAD.

And the Australian version. Even though there was cover art for the U.S. Edition, they probably wanted the art to be consistent with their original covers, or to tie in with their original articles.