Bruce Eric Kaplan
Bruce Eric Kaplan
Bruce Eric Kaplan, known as BEK, is an American cartoonist whose single-panel cartoons frequently appear in The New Yorker. His cartoons are known for their signature simple style and often dark humor. Kaplan is also a screenwriter and has worked on Seinfeld and on Six Feet Under. Kaplan wove his New Yorker cartooning into Seinfeld with the episode "The Cartoon." He graduated from Wesleyan University and studied there with Professor Jeanine Basinger...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCartoonist
Date of Birth9 September 1964
CountryUnited States of America
Shooting in Los Angeles is always pleasant and comfortable. Shooting in New York is like being on 'Survivor.'
One identity is as a television writer, which is very classically Southern California, but another of my personae is as a New Yorker cartoonist.
No, I never - no one ever - I never learned anything when I was a kid. Honestly, my parents had nothing to tell me - like, no wisdom, nothing.
My father would often start to say something, then say 'Forget it.'
It's self-soothing for me to draw. So if I'm upset, drawing makes me less upset.
In television writing, you want to hear what the characters say as opposed to giving them something to say. It's the same with the cartoons.
In New York, all the crews read 'The New Yorker.' In Los Angeles, they don't know from 'The New Yorker.'
I've sat through boring speeches; didn't get up and leave.
I've had to whine for everything I've ever really wanted.
I'm continually working on myself. Nothing ever actually works.
I was trying to be a writer, and I was kind of getting sidetracked, so I started doing cartoons as a form of expression.
I used cartoons as diaries. I still do. They're my way of figuring out the world, what's happening to me or what I'm thinking about.
I started doing a Twitter feed when my father was dying. I was very distracted, preoccupied. It was upsetting.
I loved Charles Addams more than anything. Still love him.