MACK SENNETT: GENIUS

Unbelievable! Finally...FINALLY...TCM is doing a whole month (four Thursday nights) of Mack Sennett films.  This is a major event since Sennett may have single-handedly invented slapstick film comedy, and had an immense influence on other genres as well. Now we get to see the evolution of his ideas.

I imagine that readers with a dramatic bias would prefer to study Hitchcock or John Ford rather than Sennett. That would be a mistake. Sennett was the leading theoritician of film comedy and comedy is the very heart of the film medium.

By way of an example, here's (above) Chaplin and Marie Dressler, two discoveries of Mack Sennett. I'm guessing the film is Tillies Punctured Romance but I might be wrong. Notice how the comedic set-up makes a more vivid impression than the one found in most photos of drama.

See what I mean (above)? Filmed drama simply doesn't have the pictorial juice that comedy does.

The film medium favors comedy. Who knows? Maybe someday we'll have holographic films and the medium will favor drama or documentary...maybe. All I know is that right now it favors humor. Maybe that's why successful dramas like Raiders of the Lost Arc and horror films like Drag Me to Hell are half comedies.

I don't mean to say that comedy is useful just because it's funny...it's also a simplifying and organizing principal in a story. If you want a laugh you're forced to use a certain kind of pacing and a certain kind of camera placement and a certain kind of lighting. As soon as a filmmaker commits to humor half his filmic problems are solved. Where do you put the camera? In the spot that gets the biggest laugh, of course.

I'll be real interested to see how Sennett's techniques evolved. Here (above) he's got editing and story compression down to a science, but he hasn't totally figured out the principal of laughter release. When you build up an audience's good will you need a trigger to release the laugh.  This is where he toys with the idea of a slapstick trigger in what would later become The Keystone Cops. Good old Sennett...always thinking.

The Sennett films run every Thursday night during the month of September. In the Pacific time zone TCM's night begins at 5PM. Times for your zone can be had on the TCM site:

http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/495622%7C0/Mack-Sennett-Thursdays-in-
September.html

BTW: Many, many thanks to Mike Fontanelli for telling me about the Sennett festival. I had no idea it was coming.

LIDOS PIZZA

There it is...Lido Pizza, affectionately called "Lido's" by the customers. John K discovered this gem of a restaurant years ago, and it's since become an animation hangout. Half the animation people in The Valley get their pizza here. And no wonder...Lido's makes it stringy and gooey, just the way cartoonists like it.

Maybe the restaurant is so good because it's built near sacred ground. The Bedford Falls set from "It's a Wonderful Life" was built in nearby Balboa Park.

Maybe the restaurant is simply scared to lower its standards. Mickey Cohen the famous Los Angeles gangster had a house near Lido's. That's Cohen (above) on the right. The area is full of history.

But I digress....

Katie and Milt kindly invited my wife and I to Lido's this afternoon and we did some serious chowing down.

That's Milt showing his appreciation for the cartoony pizza strings. I wish I could show you the womenfolk, but they refused to be photographed.

  

While the wives talked Milt and I kicked around ideas for a Basil Wolverton-type pizza eating sketch. Boy, Milt sure likes Pizza. He even talks to it.  

While we were talking I glanced over Milt's shoulder and was amazed to find familiar faces there.

Good Lord! It was cartoonist Mike Kazallah and his wife Tracy!!!! Tracy wouldn't let me take her picture. None of the women present could be persuaded to act in this story.

Cartoonist Mark Schirmeister was there, too.

I went over to say hello and was dismayed to see that I was interrupting an intense literary discussion.

MIKE: "I'm familiar with that book: "Delicate Riders of the Storm." It has a frail, almost tentative structure. but the eyeless fish, the gods of the rain...they're pure cliches."

MARK: "But don't you agree that it marks an advance in relationship? One observes rather quickly that something is right with it, and one is thus able to get one's bearings."

MIKE: "Aaaaaaah, but are those bearings the result of fresh perception? I find them immersed in the mystical communion of the romantic, which leads too often to disintegration."

MARK: "Hmmmm.....okay, I see what you're getting at. You're forcing an altered perception of the detail. The old points would be regained after the breakdown, the quality of the perception being then affected by the past experience of the breakdown. That's very clever. "

Yikes! I could see I was getting in the way, so I said good bye and rejoined Milt.

I don't think Milt even realized that I'd gone. He was still talking to his pizza.

Well, a good time was had by all. Lidos never disappoints.

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Sorry for the rambling structure of this post. I'm just too full of this afternoon's pizza to think clearly. 

THE BEST ELVIS IMPRESSION EVER!

Boy, Elvis.....what a guy!




If you're an Elvis fan then let me lay this on you...this...the best...THE BEST...Elvis impression ever! It's Jim Carey way back in 1983 in his first appearance on The Tonight Show. Geez, what a talent Carey was! What a talent Elvis was!!!!!!

My dream for the animation industry is that we would develop a few animators who could animate this kind of funny dance...maybe even make something funnier than Carey did here, though that's a tall order.

BTW: I notice that Jim Carey wears a version of the famous Theory Corner "Wrinkle Jacket" here. Good for Jim! He's a man of taste!

Also BTW: In 1983 Jim had his own TV show called "The Duck Factory." I'm told by a friend of one of the key writers on that show that I was one of the inspirations for the character. I don't know if that's true or not, but it would be great if it was.

WHY THE FRENCH DON'T LIKE AMERICANS

I think it's fair to say that Parisians of my generation aren't overly fond of Americans. That's too bad, but it doesn't bother me because the truth is that Parisians don't really like anybody. They don't even like other Parisians. Look at the aloof way they behave to each other on the Metro. In that respect they're like New Yorkers. They have to have a reason to like you.

Oddly enough, if you ask Parisians why they don't like Americans there's half a chance they'll say it's because we're rude. One thing they don't like is the way we treat waiters. Yes, you read it right...the way WE treat waiters!!!!

On entering a store or restaurant Parisians always say "Bonjour, monsieur," or "Bonjour, madame" to the first salepeople they lay eyes on. They frequently say goodbye when leaving. No American does that. Where's our manners, the French wonder? They think we were brought up in a barn.

They also don't like the way we eat. From their point of view we wolf food down like there was no tomorrow. Parisians eat slow, cutting the food first then using the knife to steady the food while they carefully spear it with a fork. Even bananas are eaten this way. You never put down the knife til you're finished eating.

Last but not least...I'll just say it without equivocation...they think we pee too much. Not only that, we always expect to use the bathrooms of others, which they'd prefer to keep private. Parisians learn to hold it in from an early age. The older generation used to maintain public pissotierres, which was great, at least for men, but the new generation removed them. You can use a bathroom in a restaurant, but only if you've bought something substantial first. The consensus is that people of breeding don't use other peoples' bathrooms with frequency.

Interesting, huh?

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BTW: Some of what I've said here was written up in a book, "The Sweet Life in Paris" by Lebovitz

TWO INTERESTING WORKSPACES

The workspace above would be close to ideal for somebody like me. That's because I like a workspace that's only that...a place where work is done. No couch, no pictures on the wall except pictures I've done myself. 

Unfortunately this is another artist's space. My own is cluttered with every distraction imaginable. 

I do get tempted by other artists' spaces, though. Here's (above) Ronald Searle's. I like the way the room is darkened and his art materials are in a kind of lit-up stage in front of him. It's pretty crowded, though.

I imagine the desk continues out of frame on the right, or maybe he has multiple desks.

I'm conflicted about whether to add things like books, computer, music collection, etc. All these are useful, but if you're easily distracted like me.........

THE WEIRD FILE

Aaaaargh!!!! I got home late and I'm just too sleepy to post anything of substance. Hmmmm...I've gotta post something. Maybe there's something I could use in the "weird file." Let's see...no, not that one...not that one either......mmmmm okay, maybe this one ....yeah and this one, too.

Gee, I was saving this (above) for a special post. Oh, well....

Here's a Picasso-type chair (above) but I don't think Picasso did it. It doesn't look very comfortable, does it?

That's me (above) surrounded by my beatnik friends.

Above, a boy and girl. Who's the boy? Raymond Navarro?

WHAT HAPPENED TO FUNNY ROCK & ROLL?

EDDIE (VO): "Hey, Milt! Good to see ya! How are ya doing?"

MILT: "Doing!? I'm in Heaven! I just came from a used record store where I got a vinyl of the old Coasters song, 'Down in Mexico.' "

EDDIE (VO): "Oh, right...you're really into 50s pop, bubblegum and all that!"

MILT: "Bubblegum!? No way! No, I like the kind of thing blacks were doing in the 50s. You know, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, The Coasters, Screamin' Jay Hawkins...funny stuff like that."

EDDIE (VO): "How about Elvis? He was funny!"

MILT: "Yeah, he was a little funny. I like his song, 'Hard headed Woman.' That first line cracks me up: 'Hard headed Woman/ Head like a rock/ Makes a man go crazy/ All around the block.' No wait a minute, that's not it. Aw, I'd have to look it up."

EDDIE (VO): "What about The Beatles and the Stones? Mick Jagger had funny lips!"

MILT: "Weeeeell, funny lips can only take you so far. After the Beatles everything got too political, too...druggy. I don't like music that you have to get stoned to listen to."

EDDIE (VO): "Maybe you're on to something. There was a lot of funny music in the 50s and early sixties, then in the mid sixties it suddenly went away."

MILT: "Yeah, funny music like The Coasters', 'Smokey Joe's Cafe!' A customer comes into Smokey Joe's and Smokey's girl starts flirting with him. Smokey lays down the law...'Stop lookin' at my woman/You better eat up all your beans boy, and get on out!' Wow, there's so much gritty atmosphere and humor in a song like that."

EDDIE (VO): "What happened to funny music? Why did things change?"

MILT: "Interesting question! I remember reading something about it at the time."

MILT: "The radio stations got cold feet. Even though the funny records were selling well, they thought of those songs as one joke wonders. They thought the public would eventually get tired of them, and they were looking for an excuse to bail." 

EDDIE (VO): "Holy Mackerel! That sounds plausible. Imagine a whole art form going down in flames because of the timidity of a few Nervous Nellies. "

MILT: "That's okay. I got my 45 of 'Down in Mexico,' so I'm happy!"