Tells how the Lone Ranger hooks up with Tonto. With Lenny Bruce doing all the voices, this animation of a Bruce routine begins with local folks upset at the Lone Ranger because he won't stay around to be thanked after a good deed. So, he stays and finds he likes hearing "Thank you mask man." When their attention starts to shift elsewhere, he shocks and disgusts the townspeople with a final request. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
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.