Skip to footer

You know Saul Bass, even if you've never heard of him

3. It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

  • By Aimee Ortiz

The designer and artist created the four-minute title sequence for Stanley Kramer’s 1963 comedy 'It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World."

The movie follows strangers that meet after a roadside crash. The injured driver, Grogan, tells them where he’s hidden some loot and hilarity ensues.

Bass incorporated this into the long opening sequence. The cars blowing out, a flight, running, cutting, tools, everything the people need to retrieve the loot is included with the opening title.

The background, the globe, the little man, and the giant hands that control a lot of the scene have become a staple sequence for upcoming designers to watch. Once again, Bass’s grace lies in his simplicity.

“The goal, and the ultimate achievement, is to make people feel as well as think,” Bass said of his work, according to the New York Times. 

If there's one thing that can be said about Bass, it's that he reached his goal. The film's opening is chock full of quick humor and all of Bass's style. 

3 of 4
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.