“You haven’t made it in Washington until Pat Olphant has made fun of you,” says our narrator at the beginning of A Savage Art: The Life & Cartoons of Pat Oliphant , a new documentary about the man the New York Times called “the most influential editorial cartoonist of the day.”

Written and directed by Bill Banowsky, the film traces Oliphant’s life from his childhood and early career in Australia to American success shortly after moving his family here, a remarkable feat of self-confidence. Although Banowsky doesn’t specifically mention it, Oliphant was likely the first editorial cartoonist to sketch his subjects as exaggerated, even grotesque caricatures. (His Jimmy Carter was particularly mean.) “Polite” and “gentlemanly” are words that have likely never been used to describe the art that won him a Pulitzer Prize.

A substantial portion of this documentary is given to the history of editorial cartooning, a skill that may be going extinct as newspapers across the country cut back or shut down all together. Like film criticism, it has largely been taken over by amateurs who are primarily motivated by how much attention they can get rather than the depth of their commentary. 

A Savage Art relies heavily on old interview footage with the now-retired Oliphant and his fans and contemporaries (including the Buffalo News’ Adam Zyglis). It’s the kind of thing that documentaries do, though viewers may well grow frustrated at their inability to study any of Oliphant’s work in detail: like all of the best cartooning, political or otherwise, his best panels contain more deft slashes and witty grace notes than you’ll ever get from a photo with humorous caption slapped on it (which is all most memes are).