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
What I like about graduation speeches is that they're an opportunity for someone to make sense of their life and to impart that wisdom to someone else. It's like a sanctioned self-help moment.
As an adult, it's hard for me to remember my mother before her sickness. But if I go back into childhood, I can access that.
It's not like during your normal day, anyone says, 'How do having meaning in your life? How do you make meaning in your life?'
Actually, I think that 'Seinfeld' tackles the same kinds of issues as 'Six Feet Under,' just in a different way.
I actually thought, like, I was sure 'Get Smart' and, like, 'James Bond' movies, I was sure that that's what real life was like.
I always doodled as a kid while I was talking on the phone or watching TV.
I go through my day remembering things like telephone cords.
I love graduation speeches. I have always loved them; I will always love them.
I loved Charles Addams more than anything. Still love him.
I started doing a Twitter feed when my father was dying. I was very distracted, preoccupied. It was upsetting.
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've sat through boring speeches; didn't get up and leave.
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.
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.