It was more obvious 40 years ago, but we in America live in a MAD culture, a land of mockery, parody and running gags aimed at the institutions, pop trends, entertainment and “Americana” that we once thought of as “sacred cows.”

Generations grew up with MAD magazine, “Humor in a Jugular Vein” as it was billed in the early days. And many of those of us who grew up with it came to make a mocking mark on the culture in their own vein, from the ’60s, when that first generation of kids who grew up on it started pursuing careers in comedy, sketch and humor writing or cartooning, to today, when cultural mockery has spread from “Saturday Night Live” to “The Daily Show” to Tik Tok, Youtube and beyond.

“When We Went MAD!” is an affectionate documentary history of this magazine, taking us back to the prehistory — publisher and founder William M. Gaines was the son of pioneering comics publisher (“Wonder Woman,” “Green Lantern,” “Hawkman”) Max Gaines — on through the magazine’s 2019 demise, with a Quentin Tarantino “Time Warp Final Issue” conceived to provide set decor for “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.”

MAD was conceived as a venture in juvenile humor from a company (EC Comics) that had devolved from its “Education Comics” mission — with illustrated stories from The Bible as one of their titles — into tween/teen horror comics like “Tales from the Crypt” and “Vault of Horror.” The horror titles and violent “Two-Fisted Tales” had gotten EC into trouble with Congress during the “juvenile delinquincy” panic of the 1950s, an earlier version of the culture’s later panics — fear of TV, rock music, video games and social media’s impact on children.

The idea in house was to write for older juveniles so that the mag would appeal to younger ones.

“Things that go over your head make you want to life your head up,” writer Desmond Devlin reasons.

“When We Went MAD!” hits the red letter dates in that early history that gave the magazine its style, its mission and its cover-boy, Alfred E. Newman. Politics and social mores, movies and TV and pop culture phenomena were targets that worked their way into the comic book that transitioned into a “slick” (monthly magazine with better paper, sharper images) to hang onto an early editor.

“MAD went after EVERYone,” one and all marvel as Gaines & Co. assembled staff and contributors who came to be known as “The Usual Gang of Idiots” as they were credited on the masthead.

Early readers became aspiring writers, and the irreverent style was established with that blend of old art and gag writing pros and youth culture alumni who turned the magazine into a major force in America in mid- ’60s through the ’70s.

The testimonials here— Bryan Cranston, Howie Mandell in interviews and Jerry Seinfeld, Howard Stern and others in archival clips from TV appearances, are filled with performers and personalities needing “no other honor” in their lives after their show or shtick earned them a MAD Magazine cover.

Bernstein’s documentary revels in Baby Boomer nostalgia and the magazine that mocked much of what Boomers still get nostalgic over. And we get a hint of just how “out there” the mercurial personalities and wise-crackers who wrote it, drew and joked MAD up could be.

The man behind it all — Gaines — was a hands-off publisher who didn’t see any issue until it hit his desk at publication, with a staff that lovingly hated him awaiting his first belly laughs. Gaines is remembered as a bon vivant, generous cheapskate and “one of the biggest nuts who ever lived.”

But the genius of the magazine was its instinctive wrong-footing of the reader. Nothing was sacred. Capitalism and socialism were mocked in equal measure, politicians were punctured and smoking and faux “patriots” and “gun nuts” were relentlessly ridiculed.

“The curse of being a satirist,” former editor Nick Meglin opines, is “you laugh in the WRONG places.”

That first pop culture parody, in the fourth issue way back in the ’50s, was a comic book goof titled “Superduperman,” and it’s as hilarious on the page as it ever was. So much of the humor was timeless — song parodies, gender jokes, stupid TV,, hypocritical politicians — that books collecting Mad back issues became a big part of the publshing empire’s bottom line and remains so even after the magazine stopped published. That’s how much of us from later generations experienced the wit of the earliest issues.

“When We Met MAD!” doesn’t translate all of the humor, but if you ever wondered about that curious mother wandering the edges of the frame during early parodies like “Superduperman,” calling out “Villy…Willy ELDER!” to fetch her son home for dinner, Will Elder is identified as an influencial early staffer.

I vividly remember spending paper route money on my first issue because “The French Connection” was the “new” movie being sent up. The parodied bigot Popeye Doyle narrates his own reckless car chase, bragging about this or that ethnic, religious or gender group he runs over along the way, with “they should go back” to wherever this or that group came from warnings.

“Stupid orphans,” was the punchline. “They should go back to ORPHANland, where they came from!”

Magazine mascot Alfred E. Newman’s presidential campaign theme song, sung to the tune of the showtune “Try to Remember,” burrowed into the brain.

“Alfred E. Newman with brain of albumen, will win like Truman did from Missouri.”

Gaines had to go to court to fight Irving Berlin and others’ efforts to resist having their tunes parodied. “Weird Al” Yankovic is here to thank Gaines for his service.

To this day, I can’t watch a Roman Empire epic without this bowdlerized “Home on the Range” bubbling out no matter how hard I try to suppress it.

“Rome, Rome you’re just FINE..with that crazy SPQR sign. Where pizza is best, though it’s hard to Di-GEST, and each Christian is fed to a LION.”

The parade of people interviewed for this film gets at the magazine’s blindspots and one of the ways it limited its success, even in its peak years, when it spawned a TV show. The disproportionately Jewish staff meant that Jewish humor filled it, especially in its early years. Yes, many kids’ first exposure to funny words in Yiddish came through Mad. But that set the tone for decade after decade lacking anything approaching ethnic diversity — a Latin or two, a handful of standout gentiles over its entire history.

And almost no women worked in this “boy’s club,” with only one interviewed here — along with Gaines’ widow. Did Bernstein have that much trouble tracking down female fans for what was recognized as a rude “boys” magazine? Cyndi Lauper, Megan Fox and cartoonist Lynn Johnston (“Kathy”) have gone public for their affection for it. Did MAD really have that small of a female readership?

Surely Sarah Silverman was a fan. I mean, come on.

That said, if you’re a Boomer who read it — either your copy or your older brother’s — “When we Went MAD!” is a nostalgic delight for its depiction of what must have been a fun place to work, for the magazine’s amusing regular features, funny highlights from its history and favorite parodies it remembers, and the ones it leaves out that you will remember just by watching this.

Rating: unrated, some profanity, rude humor

Cast: William M. Gaines, Bryan Cranston, Howie Mandell, Jack Davis, Angelo Torres, Quentin Tarantino, Annie Gaines Ashton, Al Feldstein, Teresa Burns-Parkhurst, Gilbert Gottfried and “Weird Al” Yankovic, of course, along with Al Jaffee, Don Martin, Harvey Kurtzman, Sergio Aragonés and “The Usual Gang of Idiots.”

Credits: Directed by Alan Bernstein, scripted by Nate Adams and Alan Bernstein. A Gravitas Ventures release on Tubi, Amazon, other streamers

Running time: 1:47