How ‘Mad’ magazine helped Ebert (BS ’64, journalism) win a Pulitzer Prize
10/30/2018
In an introduction to a Mad magazine movie parody issue in 1998, Roger Ebert, a journalism alumnus from the University of Illinois, wrote that Mad had broadened his horizons and opened his mind to the realities of movie-making:
“Mad’s parodies made me aware of the machine inside the skin—of the way a movie might look original on the outside, while inside it was just recycling the same dumb old formulas. Today’s moviegoers are surrounded by a sea of cynical media. It was more innocent in the far-off days of my youth in downstate Illinois.”