- Meet Frank Cotham.

Almost every day at his home near Memphis, Frank faces a blank screen and creates cartoons, and he makes people laugh.

Any regular reader of The New Yorker magazine knows Frank Cotham's work.

So how does a cartoonist do this stuff?

That's what we're asking in A Conversation with Frank Cotham.

[light playful music] Hello, everybody, I'm George Larrimore.

Welcome to "A Conversation With."

We are Talking with Frank Cotham.

Frank, thank you so much for being here.

- Well, thank you.

- Now, I read somewhere that there, that anytime that anyone speaks to a cartoonist, there are two questions they ask you.

So let's get those questions out of the way.

The first question is, where do your ideas come from?

- I like to listen to people talking.

I like eavesdropping, I guess.

I used to work at a, in a room with cubicles, lots of people around me, and I could hear their conversations, and that would trigger an idea.

It would trigger a caption or a idea for a drawing.

And then other times when I don't have an idea, when I haven't heard anything I thought I could use, I would just start doodling on a piece of paper and eventually something, you know, something will, the drawing will trigger something.

- All right, question number two.

Which comes first, the image or the caption?

- For me, it works both ways.

Sometimes the caption will come first and then at other times it's the drawing.

I'll start doodling on something then when I don't really have an idea, and eventually it materializes into more or less a full-size cartoon, and I just try to think of something that will fit.

It's hard to say.

It works both ways, really.

- Now, your wife, Janice, you've been married since 1972?

- Yes.

- Is she an audience for you?

- She very helpful.

She never tells me that she really hates that cartoon.

She'll just kind of look at it and, "Hmm."

We've been married 50, 52 years, [laughs] but we've known each other since I was 12 and she was 11, so we're pretty attuned to each other by now.

But she usually will laugh at my stuff, and if she doesn't think it's funny, she just, no comment.

- You work on an iPad.

You do not draw cartoons, right, physically with pen or pencil or anything?

- I do the roughs that I send in to the magazine on the iPad.

But the finished art I do traditionally.

I do it with pen, and watercolor, and watercolor crayon.

So it's sort of a mixture, I guess.

- Now you've been dealing with Parkinson's for how long?

- I was diagnosed with it in my 50s, so it's going on 20 years now.

- What was your reaction when you heard that?

Knowing how it, I guess, guessing perhaps thinking the worst, how it might affect the way that you work.

- Well, I was worried.

Yeah, I was worried about it.

I kind of was expecting the diagnosis because I'd been showing some symptoms on one side for quite a while, for a long time, several years.

So the diagnosis really wasn't that big a surprise.

But yeah, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to keep working.

But fortunately, when I start working, the tremor diminishes quite a bit.

It's mostly a resting tremor, and I'm trying to rest now, but when I move my hands to draw something, it diminishes enough that I can draw.

So, you know, it's worked out okay so far.

The only problem, I guess, is really stamina.

I don't have the stamina that I used to.

I kind of cut back on output quite a bit.

- Now the iPad makes a difference, though, in terms of your ability and comfort level.

- Yes, it's really been very helpful because I don't have to handle light little pieces of paper, which is a real trial.

The finishes that I do, I do those on Bristol board, and so it's a heavier weight, and I can handle that better.

But the iPad has really been very helpful.

I tend now to draw things a lot smaller than I used to.

Like, my handwriting is real tiny and the drawings tended to be smaller and on the iPad I can easily resize it so I can get it up to a workable drawing to send in.

- Frank, if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about what you were doing before The New Yorker came along in your life.

- I worked at WHBQ.

I did graphics, news graphics is what I was hired to do.

And then I did a little bit of everything there.

Studio camera and all that.

- You and I worked together briefly.

I was only there for a little while at Channel 13, but what you did for a time was the graphics that they used to, the way they used to do them.

- Yes.

- The anchor person would sit there and there'd be a picture of something over their shoulder.

So you're back there at a desk doing that stuff all day long.

- Yeah, everything was done by hand art-wise, back then.

I'd get a list from the news department.

Supposed to get it like at one o'clock in the afternoon of what graphics they needed.

But the way it worked was, I'd get it like at three o'clock in the afternoon for the five o'clock news.

Think it was five o'clock news.

And I'd frantically draw something.

Of course, I kept a lot of things on file so I'd have something ready to go.

- Frantically being the key word.

- Yeah.

And I just got used to working quickly like that and repetitively, and I guess that kind of led into kind of the way I do the cartoons.

But yeah, I did those little news graphics and this was obviously before computer.

I would do it by hand.

Make them like about that size.

And they had a tray, a plastic tray, that they had worked out, and a little slot for each drawing, a little card.

And they would just slide it through and it would pop up.

I don't know how all this works.

Pop up over the anchor's shoulder.

And, of course, that all ended with Chyron and all that, so.

- Right, electronics.

Yeah.

- The weather graphics, when I first started at the station, they were just cardboard cutouts.

I'd take an X-Acto knife and make little clouds, and then I'd glue a magnet on the back of it.

And that was bad enough.

And then somebody decided, discovered this magnetic material that would be better, look better than the cardboard.

And I had to cut it with an X-Acto knife, and it was hard to cut.

And I'd see Dave Brown or Byron Day coming, and, oh no, those things have gotten dirty.

Somebody's put their thumbprint right in the middle of something, so they've gotta have a new one, and I'd have to cut it.

It was hard to do but everything was done by hand.

- Let's talk about The New Yorker.

That's where most people, I think, most people know your work and know who you are through those cartoons, which appear often in the magazine.

Tell me, when did you start with them, and how did that work?

- Well, a friend at the station suggested that I send these "stupid little drawings", as he put it, into magazines and try to sell them.

So I did.

I tried to do it by mail.

I figured, well, I'm too timid to go to New York and present my stuff in person.

Too expensive too.

But I just started mailing them in every week obsessively for 15 years from the late '70s to finally selling 1 in 199-, '93 I think.

Yeah, 93.

- You started sending cartoons to The New Yorker in the '70s, and you finally published 1 in 1993.

And again, how many did you send them?

- Maybe 10 to 12 cartoons every week for 15 years.

I don't recommend doing it that way.

There's gotta be an easier way to do it.

- But you're saying you sent them thousands of cartoons, which they never published, but you never stopped trying?

- No, well, I took those cartoons that were failures and sent them to other magazines.

I'd have like a hierarchy of magazines.

The New Yorker would be the top market.

And then, well, in my case it was Penthouse who was a second market, and I did a lot of work for Penthouse.

- Who else?

Where else did you publish?

- Well, Penthouse, and Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Saturday Evening Post, and Reader's Digest, and Woman's World, and occasionally to National Enquirer.

My wife is an accountant.

I asked her once if she really objected to me selling work to Penthouse and some of those other magazines, and she said, "You have your morality on one hand and you have your accounts receivable on the other."

So she was okay with it.

- Okay, so you submitted to The New Yorker for 15 years.

What kept you going?

- About 10 years in, I'd been sending these cartoons, and just I'd get the form rejection, "The editors regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material," and I've memorized it.

But about 10 years in, well, I guess maybe, I included a note, I asked, "I've been sending this stuff in for 10 years now.

Am I just wasting my time?"

And Lee Lorenz was the cartoon editor then.

He wrote back, "Sorry, nothing seems to click."

And I thought, "Ah, there's hope.

This is encouragement."

And then I started noticing that I would get some drawings back and there would be like a paper clip indentation in the paper.

I thought there has been a note attached to this.

And it was either tell this guy to stop sending this crap in or they were considering it.

And anyway, five years after that note, I got a, they sent an okay by FedEx.

That was the way they used to do it then.

And it was a drawing that I had sent in, and it had a little circle down in the corner.

If a cartoon was okay, they were gonna buy it, it would be indicated with a circle.

But he had also written, "Okay, you know, do a finish on this," in case I didn't understand what the circle meant.

- What was the caption on that one?

- I wish I had that drawing.

I think somebody may have bought the original.

It was all the doctors and the technicians around the operating table.

And the doctor says to the nurse, "Damn it, nurse!

I didn't ask for a twenty.

I asked for a ten and two fives."

That was my big hit.

[laughs] And I thought, "I'm gonna mess this up and they're never gonna buy anything again."

And I've, you know, researched how accurate the drawing had to be.

Back then, they wanted the drawings to be plausible.

And if you're drawing a dragon, how plausible can it be?

But if you have draw a mailbox, you want the flag to be on the right side that it's supposed to be on.

And anyway, this was a drawing of like an operating room and I thought, "I don't know anything about operating rooms," but I winged it and they accepted it and bought that one.

And a few weeks later I got another one and they kind of picked up after a while and started buying regularly.

- Okay, now you are an established cartoonist at The New Yorker.

Been working for them for a long time, so to speak, but you still have to send them a lot of stuff for them to choose from.

How many cartoons do you send them every week?

- I tell everybody that I send 10 and that they should send 10, but last few years I've been sending eight.

I just can't crank out quite as many each week.

And they let me get by with eight.

But most people, they send in like 10 to 12 cartoons.

And I used to do that all the time.

But you know, there are new people coming along all the time and you still have to, I guess your chance is good as anybody's.

- So you had to, there had to be a day where you go, "We've reached the tipping point.

I can make a living at this now."

- Yeah.

- How did that feel to you?

- It was kind of scary.

I don't think Janice thought too much of the idea at the time, but I thought I'm making almost as much as I'm making at the TV station.

And the TV station has been real nice not to bother me when I was busy to do something for them.

Yeah, it was definitely a big leap.

But I think Janice supported me.

She always has.

"Whatever you think best, "even if I don't think it's a good idea, whatever you think best."

So she's always been very, very supportive.

- Let's talk about some of the favorites.

The older couple sitting on the porch of the shack, which is a theme that you use often.

And the way I understand it, that idea to some degree came from a photograph of your great-great grandparents.

Now tell us where they lived.

- Well, my father came from Hog Creek, Tennessee.

- Hog Creek, Tennessee.

- Yes, there really is such a place as that.

My parents' backgrounds, they were, or my father's anyway, they were all rural, rural Tennessee.

And my mother's people were off the farm.

They were rural Arkansans.

- But what you do with them, with those two characters, is you put words in their mouth that don't fit people sitting on that porch.

That's a lot of time.

I was thinking about it the other day, they're sitting there saying, "Well, we really haven't seen an upturn in the housing market," sitting in a shack in the middle- - Well, they probably didn't say that, but.

[laughs] No, it's just a vehicle for a couple talking.

Husband, wife, talking, which is, I guess it's stand-in for Janice and me probably.

But I can drive down the road over here, and you can see houses like that.

- Doctor's offices.

- Well- - You don't like doctors.

I think you- - Well, I like the doctors.

My doctors I have now, they're great, and they're funny guys.

I mean, we talk, and one is really interested in the cartoons, but I guess I have, they call it white coat syndrome.

I've got that really bad.

I mean, I see a white coat, I panic.

But when you get old, you go in for your physical every year, and it's always gonna be something.

And if anything can go wrong, it will.

- But you find a way, know with all that knowledge, you find a way to make us laugh about it.

- Well, I guess it's kind of like a way of calming myself down.

Kind of a defense or coping mechanism, or I guess those are kind of cliches, but, you know, cartoons depend a lot on cliches and stereotypes that quickly grasp what it is you're trying to say or a setting.

- Now, you also use, again, one of my favorite characters that you draw is the dog.

Is there more than one dog, or it seems like it's the same dog.

- I've had many dogs, yeah, and I kind of draw them the same way with the long snout and the teeth.

And we've had several dachshunds, and, of course, they've got the long snout and the teeth, and I'm just a big dog fan.

To me, any cartoon, it doesn't matter what it is, can always be improved by the addition of a dog.

I like for a cartoon to be funny just by looking at it, even before reading the caption, if that makes any sense.

Just like for it to be something that you can hold in your hand or in the magazine, and it just makes you smile or laugh before you even read the caption.

And my dog, Louie, I talk to him all the time, and he seems to talk back to me.

I can tell what he's saying just by his expressions.

And I guess that is anthropomorphism carried to an extreme, but I can't resist doing it.

- Yeah.

Were you the kid sitting in the back of the class doodling all the time?

And when did that start?

- Oh, I guess as soon as I started the school or before.

I'd sit on the sofa in our living room and just, you know, draw.

I'd get some paper.

My father would bring me some paper home from, he was in the Navy, he'd bring home paper and get me sketchbooks and I'd just draw.

But I, you know, did it in school when I could get away with it.

I remember once a teacher held my drawing up.

I don't know why.

We were, I guess art session or something.

They didn't have art classes then, but held up this drawing and I thought, "Oh, she's gonna say something nice about it."

And she said, "Class, what's wrong with this?

"And you don't color this way, "you don't go this way and that way.

You do it in the same direction."

So that was kind of a sore point with me with elementary school teachers.

But, yeah, I doodled in class when I could get away with it, but it was hard to do sometimes.

- And you went on to graduate from Memphis State, what was called Memphis State then, with a degree in fine arts.

- Nobody cares.

- Yeah.

- It's not been really a practical degree, I don't think.

I don't recommend it.

- Well, now wait a minute.

But you're an artist.

- Well, yeah, cartoonist anyway.

- I'd still call you an artist.

- Oh, thank you.

- Do people come up to you and say, "Wait, I've got an idea for a cartoon."

- They do that all the time.

I get that all the time.

- Does any of it ever work?

- No, they never do.

The ones who have ideas for cartoons are not, they don't look at cartoons.

I guess people always handy with advice or something you should do.

- It would seem to me to be very difficult to get up and turn on that computer in the morning and that blank screen there.

Is that difficult?

Or have you been doing this for so long and so successfully that you know how to get going?

- I guess I know how to get going by now.

This is kind of like, for me, a safe spot.

I don't have to go out and deal with people and be in crowds or anything.

And I've got all these little fortifications around me, the desk, and this table, and I can keep an eye on the street.

Louie keeps an eye on the street for me.

He sits there at that window and barks at everybody who goes by.

So that's kind of my safe place, and I know how to get going in the morning.

I'll see what's on the, what terrible things happened on the news, and, you know, that'll give me an idea or not.

And then I go through my notes and doodle and, you know, just get started that way and get up in the morning and have three cups of coffee, and a glass of orange juice, and a cup of Raisin Bran Crunch.

And that gets me all primed and ready to go.

So I just work that way.

And I try to maintain very rigid schedule, always stay structured, I guess.

I do this a certain time of day and something else a certain time of day.

I look at my watch to see how close it is to noon.

And Janice comes home from...

I used to go meet Janice at her office.

We'd eat there and bring something for a sandwich and then started falling asleep driving.

So Janice, "Just stay at home and I'll come home and fix you a sandwich."

So Louie and I wait till she gets home, and she fixes us something for lunch.

And to me, it's more productive if I stay on a very rigid schedule.

- Frank, listen, I really appreciate you being here with us today.

I've really enjoyed talking with you.

I really enjoy your work.

- Well, I appreciate being invited to do this.

I've enjoyed it.

- Thank you, everybody, for being with us today.

I want to thank WKNO for giving us the opportunity, Bard Cole for being here with his great crew, my wife Judy Card for being someone to bounce ideas off of.

And we will see you next time on "A Conversation With."

I'm George Larrimore.

[light playful music] [acoustic guitar chords]