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
Yes, the people I draw don't have a wide variety of looks. Every now and then I'll spruce it up, like a woman will be wearing a two-piece suit as opposed to a one-piece, or a man will not be wearing a tie; he'll just have a collar.
James Thurber was an inspiration because his drawings were so primitive. I am self-taught - I didn't go to art school - so I thought when I started doing them, 'If James Thurber can be a cartoonist, I can,' because his stuff is very raw.
In many ways, cartooning is my therapy. I've always said they're like my diaries. It's thoughts and feelings and things I've seen on any particular day.
In Los Angeles, it's always nice out. In New York, it can be nice out or horrifying. You really have no idea what you're going to get on any given day.
In L.A., you can put out a craft-service table anywhere, and it's no big deal. But in New York, people who walk by it on the street get really angry about it.
I never really got into 'The Munsters' that much, but there was one aspect that was compelling. That was Marilyn. She was the only normal one among this group of creatures.
It was memorable the first time 'The New Yorker' bought a cartoon from me. I had been sending them batches for years every week, and they didn't respond to them.
I've had mostly book parties, where I get very focused on inviting everyone and not forgetting anyone, although of course one always does, and being worried no one will show up, but mostly the book comes from going to parties and feeling very, for lack of a better word, anxious.
I started trying to be a writer and failed for years. I tried novels, short stories, sitcoms, movies, plays, anything. And then, to support myself, I had millions of jobs on the fringes of show business.
One quintessential moment in time is when you're 22, when you graduate college. And then another quintessential time is as a middle-age man. That's the convergence.
Of course I loved 'I Love Lucy' and saw every episode over and over again. I found it heartbreaking that Ricky got to be famous and have an exciting life at the Tropicana while Lucy was stuck in that terrible apartment with the Mertzes.
There was never any butter in our home. Just margarine. My parents acted like butter was lethal. I don't think I ever saw either one have a piece of butter. I would go over to friends' houses and down sticks of butter.
We are all just little dolls of ourselves. Who occasionally pull back the curtains to reveal the real us.
When I was a kid, and I was watching TV, I just loved it so much that I wanted to crawl into that TV.