RELIGION

IAN FALCONER ON RELIGION:

“I just wanted to do a silly gag, a ridiculous Charles Addams–like situation: ‘No room at the inn,’ but taking place in one of today’s boutique hotels. I should have put Mary on a donkey—it would have been clearer. No special event in the news prompted this image.

“What I liked about the old New Yorker covers is that they didn’t necessarily have to be timely or topical. No matter what was going on in the world, The New Yorker I grew up with, William Shawn’s magazine, would probably have a cover of a flowerpot on a windowsill in Cape Cod. At the time, I thought it was better to not bow to the current news cycle; you get dangerously close to being like the other newsweeklies when you do topical covers. But, as an artist, you come up with a gag and you run with it. You know those strange ideas that come to you when you’re half asleep in the morning? You’re just waking up, still in bed, dozing—you get very vivid oddball dreams.

“My grandmother finally stopped going to church at the end of her life, and she told me, ‘I’ve tried and tried and tried, but I just don’t believe it.’ Me, I’ve never tried, though I rather enjoy Roman Catholicism—they put on such a good show.

“It’s easier to make a joke about what you know. If I start doing a Yiddish accent, it doesn’t play at all—I’d probably do it very badly. I wouldn’t be comfortable joking about somebody else’s religion. I don’t really know much about the born-again Christians, so I can’t really make any jokes about that. But the rapture, that would make a funny cover, wouldn’t it?”

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