Thank You Mask Man (1971)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Directors:

Lenny Bruce
John Magnuson

Writers:

Lenny Bruce (story)
Jeff Hale (writer)

Genre:

Animation | Short | Comedy

Plot:

Tells how the Lone Ranger hooks up with Tonto. With Lenny Bruce doing all the voices, this animation...

Plot Keywords:

Mask | Cult Favorite | Adult Animation | Gay Interest | Homosexual

Cast

Lenny Bruce

...

The Lone Ranger / Various (voice)

Runtime:

8 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Columbus Productions

Quotes:

The Lone Ranger: I'm not a fag! But I've heard a lot about it and read exposes. I want to try it now to see how bad it is. Just once.

Movie Connections:

Spoofs The Lone Ranger (1938)

ingenious little short, like a newspaper comic strip with sharp wit

Thank You Mask Man is featured as a bonus on the DVD of the Lenny Bruce performance film, and I was very glad I watched it. It reminded me of what I saw once in a Carlin special from the 80s where he put in little animated bits that all visualized his bits. That this comes more than a few years before that is impressive, but more so that it actually works to fit the riff-style comedy that Bruce excelled at. This is basically drawn like, well, basics- the comic-strip characters could've been taken out of any newspaper or other, and it's all crude to the point of not having to focus as much on it. Perhaps most of the strengths, aside from the curious, off-kilter nature of the drawings, do spring out of the material, as a story of a bunch of people having to deal with a 'masked man' on a horse. It happens to be a good Bruce bit on its own, but then the curious thing does happen that towards the end of the film- when the townspeople then all taunt Masked Man to be gay- the comedy and the look of the film do totally gel somehow. That Bruce is also behind a good part of the style of the picture himself probably explains how some of the same inspired dementia in this story in particular (one with an absurdity to it but also some truth sprinkled around) merges with simplistically weird animation. It's probably not one of my favorites ever, to be sure, but I had a lot of fun watching it, as a crazy little anecdote given life and still kicking more than forty years later.