I've had enormous luck and enormous pleasure in working in such forms as movies and plays that I loved when I was a kid and I just - because I could always write dialogue, because I always had a sense of how people spoke. And because I had a strong narrative sense; growing up and loving stories, loving novels, I just seem to know how to tell a story and I read a lot, I went to a lot of movies, I went to a lot of plays, and it rubbed off on me. And that's all. It just rubbed off on me.
Jules FeifferAt sixteen I was stupid, confused and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?
Jules FeifferI'm not sure about that role any longer. The role used to be to mix things up and I think to a great extent it still is, but the quality of the work of the political cartoon has been succeeded by the wisecrack, the gag cartoon, so that the cartoonist becomes more of the equivalent of the Jay Leno monologues, or David Letterman monologues.
Jules FeifferArtists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid.
Jules FeifferMy success was the shock of recognition, probably, rather than the quality of the work. I mean, the quality may have been fine, but there's a lot of fine work out there. It was the fact that I was doing something that at that time, nobody else was doing, except for say, Mort Saul out in San Francisco on The Hungry Eye, and "Second City" was emerging out in Chicago. Nothing in print. It was basically happening in cabaret and nothing in fiction. And certainly nothing in New York in cartoons.
Jules FeifferAt the time, liberals didn't understand that they had First Amendment rights. So, I was doing cartoons in this narrative cartoon form about subject surrounding that and as I was turned down by editor after editor at each publishing house, I began to notice on their desks this new newspaper called The Village Voice, which I then went and picked up and thought, well my god, these editors that were turning me down all, whom tell me how much they like my stuff, but they don't know how to market it because nobody knows who I am. If I got into this paper, they would know who I am.
Jules Feiffer