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
When I was a kid, I would be watching TV shows like, you know, like 'Get Smart' and be like, 'That's what being an adult is.'
When I was a kid, and I was watching TV, I just loved it so much that I wanted to crawl into that TV.
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.
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.
Sometimes I'll be reading something online and just get so frustrated because of what people are saying.
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.