LOS ANGELES (AP) – Michael Gross never planned on joining the front lines of the fight against cancer.
The guy who once put a terrified-looking dog on the cover of National Lampoon magazine with a gun to its head and the words, “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog,” was only thinking he’d have a little fun with his art students when he told them to draw a hand with a raised middle finger.
“Makes a dramatic statement and teaches a little about anatomy,” the gruff, gravelly voiced artist quipped one recent morning as he sat on the deck of his beach-front bungalow in Oceanside, sipping coffee.
It was only after he reviewed the drawings that Gross, who is dying of kidney cancer, had one of those white-light bursts of inspiration: “I said to myself this is really funny. And I said this also makes a nice statement about how I feel about cancer.”
So the artist who spent a career corralling others to work with him on magazine covers and films began calling in favors from muralists, abstract expressionists, illustrators and others. Whether they worked in oil or acrylic, pen or pencil, they would all do the same thing: Create a drawing of a hand with a raised middle finger.