My bad. On my Clowns Making Films — Part Three post I identified a movie Steve Copeland sent me as having been made by Steve and his Kelly Miller circus partner, Ryan Combs.
Nay, not so: "The clown with me, Trick Kelly, is a different friend than the one with whom I perform on Kelly Miller. Trick is a Clown College graduate, and he and his wife make excellent yak clown wigs (including the ones my partner Ryan Combs and I wear, and the ones seen in this video)."
To make amends, and because I would have surely included this film in that earlier post had I known about it at the time, I present Steve's Morning, a nifty movie starring Copeland & Combs, chock full of physical comedy choreography and sharp camera work.
Everyone makes movies these days so why not clowns? Recent efforts I've come across range from filmed clown gags to full-blown attempts to recreate silent film comedies. You saw several of these in this recent post; at least you did if you know what's good for you! Those were all pieces presented this fall at the NY Clown-Theatre Festival. Here are some more that have come to my attention over the past couple of years, though I wouldn't be surprised if this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Before undertaking such a project, there are a lot of choices you'd have to make. Is it silent or sound? If silent, why? Modern or retro? Color or black & white? Do the comic characters dress and speak more or less naturalistically, or are they heavily stylized? Do we see them as "clowns" or as "normal people" whose behavior just happens to be highly eccentric? Do they live in 1911 or 2011? — or in some twilight zone?
The movies we showed in the festival and the movies in this post all have different answers to these questions, so judge for yourself!
The Blind Date
Let's start with the movie that sticks closest to original silent comedy style, Patrick McCarthy's Chaplin tribute film, The Blind Date. According to Ben Model, who supplied the link, "it was shown at the Chaplin conference last year, where David Robinson saw it and invited Patrick and his film to Pordenone this year." [Robinson is the author of the definitive bio, Chaplin: His Life and Art.]
In case you're wondering, the idea of imitating Chaplin goes way back to the heyday of his popularity, back before 1920, when an international Chaplin craze led to many a Chaplin imitation contest. Chaplin himself once entered one of these as a joke — and lost!
Wally on the Run
Next up is a short piece by veteran American circus clowns Trick Kelly and Steve Copeland, former Ringling performers who have worked with the one-ring Kelly Miller Circus for the past four years. That show, by the way, has received rave reviews as a very strong traditional one-ring circus, and I'm still kicking myself for having missed it last summer. In this piece, made for a music video contest for a Steve Martin banjo album, they bring the circus clown outdoors, in full makeup and costume, making good use of the camera so that the choreography nicely fills the larger setting.
There's a funny video interview with the duo here, and you can visit Steve's life-on-the-road bloghere.
Rebound! Happy Hour is or was a physical comedy trio comprised of Ambrose Martos, Mark Gindick, and Matthew Morgan. I've seen their stage show twice, and it has some pretty robust physical clowning. Rebound! is a zany film that transports their wacky characters from the stage to their own special urban playground.
See three more Happy Hour movies by going hereand clicking on Video.
How to Quiet a Screaming Child Drew Richardson, aka Drew the Dramatic Fool, is a solo theatre clown who has also made a continuing series of silent films. In fact, he bills himself as the "first person in the 21st century to make new short silent movies for mainstream movie theaters." Although these are solo pieces, usually filmed indoors, the cinematography and music lend them a vintage silent movie quality. In this one, Drew uses visual effects to play against himself. If that seems too modern to you, check out the use of the same effect by that brilliant Hollywood VFX artist, Buster Keaton, in The Playhouse (1921) and other movies!
• More silent movies starring Drew here.
• Purchase a DVD of twelve silent shorts by Drew here.
• A silent movie with students from Gallaudet University, directed by Drew.
• A silent movie Drew made with Joe's Movement Emporium Theatre Tech Program
The Big Lock Out Bello Nock has a well-deserved reputation as a top-notch daredevil circus clown, but did you know he also makes silent films? Well, sorta-kinda. Back in 2007, Colorado businessmen Mark Marguiles and Kerry Berman decided that there weren't enough wholesome movies for families to watch, so they looked to the heyday of silent film comedy for inspiration. Feeling that Bello Nock was a perfect match for the project — "he was born eighty years too late," says Mark — and eager to get Bello's formidable comedic talents before a broader (movie theatre) public, they managed to pry Bello away from the circus ring long enough to feature him in a series of four short silent movies.
Unfortunately, distribution did not live up to expectations and the company, Family Flickers, has since been dissolved, though Mark says they'd be interested in reviving the effort if the sponsorship were there. Personally I find it amazing that in this day and age, when we all watch videos of different lengths and styles on the internet, that commercial movie houses still adhere to the same rigid format of having the same feature film run repeatedly throughout the day. What if every feature were preceded by a short film? Wouldn't that introduce variety and encourage all sorts of talent? Seems like a no brainer to me.
End of rant. Thanks once again to Ben Model for turning me on to this, and of course to Mark, Kerry, and Bello for their production efforts and for sharing The Big Lock Out with us!
12 Steps to Making a Slapstick Film
I'm sure at least half of you are starting to entertain the idea of making your own slapstick movie. If so, here's all you'll ever need to know (heh-heh), courtesy of the Bristol Silents Slapstick Festival, by way of Jonathan Lyons.
Somehow I think there'll be a part four to this one of these days....
Last month I posted a preview of the Clowns on Filmevening at the NYC Clown-Theatre Festival, perhaps a shameless piece of self-promotion since I was co-hosting the event with Audrey Crabtree. I wrote that the work that evening would be great, since Audrey (festival co-director ) had told me so and I believed her, though honestly I hadn't seen most of the films before stepping on stage. Of course my hidden agenda was to try to fill the voluminous Brick Theater to the rafters. If you've never been there, think Radio City Music Hall. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)
As luck would have it, we actually did sell out, the movies were truly excellent, and the audience had a helluva fun time. Plus we bribed them with free prizes.
I can't replicate the evening for you since for that special night all of the filmmakers were in the audience and three of the movies were accompanied by live performance. And need I mention the charm, wit and acrobatic partnerings of the aforementioned co-hosts? However, I can now show you more than I could in that previous post, because three of the movies have since been put online. So... "let's go to the videotape."
Behind the Nose
Another confession. This one was already on YouTube but I didn't mention that in my previous post so I could lure unsuspecting patrons to the live screening and separate them from $15 of their accumulated wealth. Also, I knew it would be a hoot for everyone to watch this short film sitting in an audience of fellow clowns, all of whom struggle with the popular perception of clowning prevalent in America and, in this case, in Canada. Funny stuff, but still sadly true. The movie is the work of those fantastically spunky Toronto clowns, Morro & Jasp, who an hour earlier had just finished performing live their latest show, Morro & Jasp Gone Wild.
Isaac Littlejohn Eddy
Isaac is not only a performer in the New York edition of Blue Man Group, but he also has the coolest name of us all — though Zea is a close second! Isaac is at least a double threat, a performer but also a cartoonist / animator whose work has been seen in the New Yorker and Time Magazine. His festival piece was an updated version of the poor guy trying to choose between the advice of his good angel on one shoulder, his demon on the other, with Isaac performing live as the tormented soul while his would-be spiritual advisors appeared onscreen in the form of 2D animation. A very well-received piece, but Isaac says it's still a work-in-progress and he wants to use it in future live performances, so he's not posting it online just yet. You can, however, see plenty of his other work simply by clicking here.
Zea Barker
Zea, aka Bony Lil, is yet another performer-animator dynamo, the star and mastermind behind two films about "the extreme opposite ends of the creative process." The first is Distraction, everything that prevents us from getting rolling, and the second is Creation, that happy time when all the juices are flowing. Both movies are silent, in black & white, and come with soundtracks, but at the festival they were presented accompanied by two live musicians plus Zea and her director, Michael Pope, doing sound effects on a variety of ingenious devices. Highly original pieces that display strong talent and a heckuva lot of work.
Distraction
Creation
You can see more video, animation and art work at Zea's web site and you can view her performance reel here.
A Day's Messing
Jeff Seal's A Day's Messing is unusual in that it is a modern-day silent film that stylistically emulates the films of the 1920s. This is easier said than done, but in this case the experiment works quite well indeed. Story, cinematography, and physical comedy are all right on target, and its world premiere at the festival received enthusiastic and sustained applause from the live audience. Now that it's been posted on Vimeo, you too can watch it. Enjoy!
This post is not mere shameless self-promotion, at least not entirely. This Friday night (Sept. 16th) at 10 p.m., Audrey Crabtree and I will be co-hosting a presentation of short clown films at the NY Clown-Theatre Festival at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And you should come, because we'll be lonely without you, plus it's going to be pretty exciting. Here's why...
This is not just one of those screenings where you sit and politely watch movies in the dark. No way. One movie comes with a live band and another with live performance by Isaac Littlejohn Eddy of Blueman Group. And not only that, all the filmmakers will be on hand for you to meet. In fact, Morro and Jasp are doing a live show at 8 p.m. which is totally different from their movie. I saw them last year, they are downright funny, and their content is quite fresh for clowns — last year's show was about puberty — so come for a double-header.
As if that weren't enough, Audrey and I are concocting some surprises for you. All I can say, and this is strictly off the record, is that there will be prizes awarded and you, and I do mean the you who is reading this post at this very moment, have an excellent chance of winning.
Here are a couple of sneak-preview trailers for you.
And here's a short trailer for Jeff Seal's silent movie, A Day's Messing which, miraculously, is that rare commodity, a successful modern-day silent film short.
For more information, go to bricktheater.com and click and scroll until you find this in a version large enough to actually read:
We last left Pierre Etaix (post 99) with the happy news of the legal triumph that restored his rights to his own films, paving the way for their reappearance in film festivals and, ultimately, their DVD debut. Now that I'm back on the case, I thought I should try to find out how much of that has actually come to pass since my May 19th post. Here's the scoop:
• A restored version of Etaix's LeGrand Amourwas shown at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
• Restoration of the entire Etaix ouevre was completed this July by the Technicolor Foundation and the Groupama Gan Foundation. Click here for details.
• At least four of his films are being screened this week at the Cinémathèque Québécois in Montreal. Click here for an article from the Montreal Gazette.
• A September DVD release of the collected works, Intégral Pierre Etaix, was said to be forthcoming from Carlotta, but their web site was only promoting live screenings and video on demand, and the VOD was only available in France • So I wrote Carlotta and this morning heard back from them that it is Arte, not Carlotta, that is releasing the entire collection — and it's due out next week! Click here to link to Arte's Etaix page. As of today, they are not yet taking orders, but the release date is set for November 2nd. So, yes, I will get my order in and try to post a review to your favorite physical comedy blog as soon as I can work my way through the nine hours (!) of material.
Meanwhile, here are a few tidbits for you:
• A new article by Frank Wren on the re-emergence of Etaix, with some interesting connections to Chinese cinema.
• There's now an Etaix Facebook page. Search for Intégrale PIERRE ÉTAIX.
• And here's a podcast of an interview (in French) with Etaix. Just click here to go the podcast.
One day after posting my In Search of Pierre Etaix piece, I was at Jeff Seal's "Dead Herring" Williamsburgh loft, attending a fundraiser (image, right) for Jeff's own quite exciting silent film comedy project, A Day's Messing. The star attraction was Ben Model, the deservedly celebrated silent film accompanist, playing live piano to a nifty 1912 short, new to me, Robinet Cycliste, andtoChaplin's The Rink (1916) and Keaton's Neighbors (1920). (In my next life, I want to play piano like Ben does.)
While we waited for the sun to go down over the Williamsburgh Bridge, I had a chance to chat with Ben, and I was of course telling him the latest news on Etaix. It turns out that Ben had seen a 16mm copy of Etaix's short Happy Anniversary for sale and snatched it up. He has since digitized it and generously uploaded it to YouTube. Here it is, in two parts:
You can visit Ben's web site here and his blog here.
Postscript (pun intended):
So....... congratulations to me (he said modestly) on reaching post 100 on this blog. If nothing else, it justifies labeling my posts 023, 024, etc.; in fact, that served as inspiration to reach 100. Along the way, I sometimes wondered what post 100 would be, hoping it would somehow prove brilliant and marvelously repersentative of the blog. Forget the brilliant part, but I very much like that this one spans work from 1912, 1916, 1920, 1965, and 2010 — all linked by Ben's piano chops. Good enough!
The year was 1973 and I was a student at Ringling's Clown College where, as part of the training, dean Bill Ballantine screened comedy films. Yes, this was the Dark Ages, still several years before the first VHS tapes and a full two decades before DVDs. I fondly remember sitting with the likes of Penn Jillette, Michael Davis, and Mike Bongar, devouring the works of W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, and other classics. One delightful oddity that caught my attention was a modern-day silent film comedy, Yoyo (1965), directed by and starring the French renaissance man, Pierre Etaix. Although Jacques Tati — another French master of the modern silent film — was to complete his last feature film the next year (Parade, 1974), neither he nor Etaix were exactly household names in the United States.
Fast-forward to 2010, a mere 37 years later, and through correspondence with writer Frank Bren — more on whom later — I learned that Etaix was alive and well and on the comeback trail. Now a young 81, he had recently mounted and starred in a stage production in Bordeaux — Miousik Papillon — that he hoped to bring to Paris, and was involved in an intense legal and public relations battle to regain rights to his films, which he had sold to a company that then decided not to release them. That's right, nearly four decades later and still no theatrical releases, no VHS tapes, no DVDs. [You can read a London Guardian article about this long battle by clicking here.]
Clearly something had to be done. A web publicity campaign was launched, petitions circulated, donations solicited. Major film artists lent their support. Here's a clever promo video (in French) in which Etaix does some sleight-of-hand with five coins that disappear just like his movies did. Ultimately all he and co-creator Jean-Claude Carrière can do is pray to St. Anthony of Padua.
Hmm... since I was going to be in Paris for two weeks, perhaps I could connect with the Etaix campaign, maybe even with the old master himself, at least for an interview. In Search of Pierre Etaix. I had a mission! It was almost like being a real journalist.
So I signed the petition. I even made a donation. And I wrote to the friend of Etaix who was running the campaign. And no one answered. Being a crack investigative reporter, I took the next step. I wrote again, and I waited. I drank some Bordeaux, munched on my pain au levain and roquefort, and when that didn't work, I showed great determination, consuming yet more wine, bread and cheese. And meanwhile waited some more. And then I had to leave Paris. Bummère, as they say along the banks of the Seine.
I thought this was the end of the story, but back in New York just a few days later I was greeted by a barrage of late-breaking Etaix news. There had been a victory in the film rights battle! Not only would the movies be released this summer, but Le Grand Amour was to be screened May 19th at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Here's the Cannes press release:
The Cannes Classics programming of LeGrand Amour by Pierre Etaix is a major event. It was only recently, after a long legal battle, that the director succeeded in recovering the rights to his own films. Eight films by Pierre Etaix have now been restored and prepared for re-release. In Competition at Cannes in 1969, Le Grand Amour, which was the first colour film by Jacques Tati’s collaborator and assistant director, has been selected to open this special retrospective. A comic and poetic film, where Pierre (played by Pierre Etaix), though happily married, falls in love with his pretty young secretary and starts dreaming, Le Grand Amourwill be screened this evening in the presence of the director.
So even if my personal Etaix quest was a failure, here he is about to be rediscovered by the wider world, and at least I can help spread the word. To prime the pump, here's some stuff you might want to know about this creative clown genius: • He won an Academy Award in 1963 for his short, Heureux anniversaire. • His writing partner was and is the prolific and talented Jean-Claude Carrière, who won much acclaim for his work with film director Luis Bunuel and stage director Peter Brook. • He worked as an illustrator and created designs and gags for Jacques Tati, serving as an assistant director on Mon Oncle. • He made five features between 1962 and 1971:The Suitor (1962),Yoyo (1964), So Long as You're Healthy (1966), The Great Love (1969), and Land of Milk and Honey (1971). • He was cast by Jerry Lewis in his unreleased film The Day the Clown Cried. Lewis said of Etaix: "Twice in my life I understood what genius was. The first time was looking at the definition in the dictionary. The second was encountering Pierre Etaix." •He returned to cabaret and circus performing in the the 70s and was married to the celebrated French circus clown Annie Fratellini, grand-daughter of the legendary Paul Fratellini; Annie played Etaix's wife in Le Grand Amour and in the circus was the auguste to his whiteface clown. • Together they founded the first French national circus school, l’Ecole Nationale du Cirque Annie Fratellini, which pioneered the growth of circus as an art form in France and the emergence of "nouveau cirque."
But all of this is just an introduction to the following excellent 2008 retrospective on Etaix's career by the aforementioned Australian writer, Frank Bren. This is a "work in progress" from Mr. Bren's forthcoming book, which currently has the working title, ETAIX — adventures in cinema. It is reprinted here from Film Ink magazine with the generous permission of Film Ink and Mr. Bren. Frank Bren: Pierre Etaix—France's Forgotten Comic Genius
The first movie comedy I saw starred Danny Kaye. I might have been 6 or 7 and I laughed so hard that I still remember thinking, gee, I didn't know anything could make you laugh that hard. My first Jacques Tati movie was Playtime. I was 19 and in Europe for the first time and, despite a show biz childhood, I had seen little if any silent film comedy. I was amazed. I remember thinking, zut alors, I didn't know you could do that! It was as if I had discovered a new art form.
Although Playtime lost a lot of money, Tati's legacy is in very good shape. His stature has grown, his movies are finding a new international audience on DVD, and this summer he is the subject of a retrospective in France housed at the Cinemathèque Française (through August 2nd), but with events outside of Paris as well. Here's a very short promo for the Tati exposition:
Authorized Digression: Did you see Tati's trademark pipe in that short animation? Well, believe it or not, they had to remove it from the print posters in the Paris métro:
Yep, I find that amazingly stupid (and I'm fairly anti-tobacco). What's next, Chaplin's cane? But what do you think? I think it's about time this blog had a Raging Controversy! Don't be shy — cast your vote in the poll (Raging Controversy #1) in the sidebar to the right.
There are a ton of Tati clips on YouTube, but you might want to avoid them. Better to see the whole movie to really get the whole picture. Tati weaves a complete tapestry with each movie, and what makes him unique is the overall world he creates, far more than just the isolated gag. [See the André Bazin article link below.] Furthermore, his cinematographic style and his sense of detail are best appreciated on the widest screen available; he even shot Playtime in 70 mm. Monsieur Hulot's Holiday and Playtime are good starting points, though others will certainly argue for Mon Oncle, which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film of 1958.
What is singular about Tati is his ability to find physical comedy in everyday life. He is the master of observational visual humor; one critic labeled him "an entomologist of the material world." Despite some big gags such as the fireworks scene in Hulot's Holiday, most of his stuff is subtle and quirky. Often the main event happens off-camera, and our imagination is left to fill in the blank. "I want the film to start when you leave the theatre," Tait explained.
Although he has a great eye for social interaction, we know very little about Tati's characters, his alter ego Hulot included, and there is nothing that you could call a plot. People come together, they interact. Hulot, usually too old-fashioned for this modern world, struggles mightily with his environment, with the world of things, but nevertheless exudes a contagious joie de vivre, most appreciated by the very young and the very old. Before long the characters go their merry ways with tales to tell and fond memories of that odd man. End of story.
Tati is not the only director to attempt to revitalize the silent film form after The Jazz Singer (1927) precipitated its fall from public favor. To my mind, however, he may be the only one who truly succeeds, and he does so by finding his own style rather than by imitating the classics. I believe it was the Czech clown Bolek Polivka who said something to the effect that if you're going to be silent, there needs to be a reason. Rather than choose silence, Tati relegates actual dialogue to background chatter. Environmental sounds and human speech are part of a broader soundscape that works seamlessly with the visual humor. Buster Keaton, who commented that "Tati started where we left off," is said to have been so impressed that he asked Tati about working on new soundtracks for Keaton's silent films.
Just as it's hard to capture the essence of Tati in a YouTube clip, one might also wonder what a museum exhibit can add to the actual films. At least I wondered that. Here's what the expo has to offer in Paris:
• A museum exhibit at the Cinemathèque with props, costumes, and dozens of screens with clips from the movies and from his life.
Good job here. Tons of costumes and props, some original, some reconstructed. Models of sets. Dozens of monitors showing not just clips but also some nice thematic compilations of Tati's work juxtaposed with that of other directors.
A life-sized reconstruction of the set for Mon Oncle.
I didn't get to see this, but you can see a video of it going up here.
A screening of a fully restored "director's cut" version of Monsieur Hulot's Holiday.
This was wonderful. The movie is 87 minutes long, but it felt like 50. If this comes to a movie theatre near you, don't miss it! Like I said, a large screen does make a difference.
A commemorative book, Jacques Tati : Deux temps, trois mouvements.
I bought it, I like it, but not necessarily a must-have. Tons of images and documents and about 75 pages of short pieces on Tati, mostly by other artists. You can buy it here from the French Amazon.com
______________
Finally, I know I said that YouTube wasn't necessarily a good way to get to know Tati, but here are a few unusual clips you might miss. The first is said to be Tati's first screen appearance (he speaks!) dating from 1935:
The next is Tati dancing, again from an early short, The School for Postmen(1947). You can see the whole movie here. (In two parts.)
And you can even sing "the Jacques Tati":
Update: Alert reader Jonathan Lyons has alerted me to another Tati song, Jacques Tati by the El Caminos. It's available on iTunes, but I also found it here.
Other Perspectives:
David Kehr on Playtime:
Jacques Tati's Playtime is perhaps the only epic achievement of the modernist cinema, a film that not only accomplishes the standard modernist goals of breaking away from closed classical narration and discovering a new, open form of story-telling, but also uses that form to produce an image of an entire society. After building a solid international audience through the 1950s with his comedies Jour de fête, Mr. Hulot's Holiday, and Mon Oncle, Tati spent ten years on the planning and execution of what was to be his masterpiece, selling the rights to all his old films to raise the money he needed to construct the immense glass and steel set—nicknamed "Tativille"—that was his vision of modern Paris. The film—two hours and 35 minutes long, in 70mm and stereophonic sound—opened in France in 1967, and was an instant failure. It was quickly reduced, under Tati's supervision, to a 108-minute version, and further reduced, to 93 minutes and 35 monaural, when it was released in the United States in 1972. Even in its truncated form, it remains a film of tremendous scope, density, and inventiveness.
Playtime is what its title suggests—an idyll for the audience, in which Tati asks us to relax and enjoy ourselves in the open space his film creates, a space cleared of the plot-line tyranny of "what happens next?," of enforced audience identification with star performers, and of the rhetorical tricks of mise-en-scène and montage meant to keep the audience in the grip of pre-ordained emotions. Tati leaves us free to invent our own movie from the multitude of material he offers.
One of the ways in which Tati creates the free space of Playtime is by completely disregarding conventional notions of comic timing and cutting. There is no emphasis in the montage to tell us when to laugh, no separation in the mise-en-scène of the gag from the world around it. Instead of using his camera to break down a comic situation—to analyze it into individual shots and isolated movement—he uses deep-focus images to preserve the physical wholeness of the event and long takes to preserve its temporal integrity. Other gags and bits of business are placed in the foreground and background; small patterns, of gestures echoed and shapes reduplicated, ripple across the surface of the image. We can't look at Playtime as we look at an ordinary film, which is to say, passively, through the eyes of the director. We have to roam the image—search it, work it, play with it.
With its universe of Mies van der Rohe boxes, Playtime is often described as a satire on the horrors of modern architecture. But the glass and steel of Playtime is also a metaphor for all rigid structures, from the sterile environments that divide city dwellers to the inflexible patterns of thought that divide and compartmentalize experience, separating comedy from drama, work from play. The architecture of Playtime is also an image for the rhetorical structures of classical filmmaking: the hard, straight lines are the lines of plot, and the plate glass windows are the shots that divide the world into digested, inert fragments. At one point in Playtime, M. Hulot stands on a balcony looking down on a network of office cubicles, seeing and hearing a beehive of human activity. As an escalator slowly carries him to the ground floor, the camera maintains his point of view, and the change in perspective gradually eclipses the human figures and turns the sound to silence. It is one of the most profound images of death ever seen in a film, yet it is a death caused by nothing more than a change in camera placement. Tati's implication is that life can be restored to the empty urban desert simply by putting the camera in the right position, by finding the philosophical overview that integrates all of life's contradictory emotions, events, and movements into a seamless whole. His film is proof that such a point of view is possible.
...that you can click on any blog image to see it full size?
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An Introduction...
[So this is what I wrote six years ago; more or less true!]
Ring around a rosie, a pocket full of posies Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down
Welcome to the All Fall Down blog, an exploration of all aspects of physical comedy, from the historical to the latest work in the field, from the one-man show to the digital composite, from the conceptual to the nuts & bolts how-to. Be prepared for a broad definition of physical comedy (mine!) and a wide variety of approaches. Physical comedy is a visual art form, so there’ll be tons of pictures and videos, but also some substantial writing and research, including scripts and probably even some books.
This blog is a result of me wanting to follow through on lots of unfinished research from the past 25 years. It’s made possible by a full-year sabbatical leave from Bloomfield College that will take me through August 2010. It’s also made more practical by the ease of Web 2.0 tools for managing and distributing content. I had envisioned a web site similar to this blog more than a decade ago, but never got too far with it because it was simply a lot more work. Now, no more excuses!
Just as this blog will be sharing lots of goodies with you free of charge, I hope you will share your knowledge and ideas with me. Feel free to comment on any of it, or to write me directly with your suggestions. Admittedly I don’t see this as a free-for-all forum on the subject of physical comedy. It’s my blog, I’m the filter, and it won’t be all things to all people. That being said, I hope it will bring together insights, information, and people, and encourage others to make their own singular contributions to the field.
I hope to be adding substantial and varied material to the blog on a regular basis, so check back often and be sure to check out previous posts. And finally, a thanks to all of you, past present, and future whose work contributes to our knowledge — and our fun. We are truly standing on the shoulders of giants.
— John Towsen New York CIty May, 2009
My Physical Comedy Qualifications
So if you don’t blink, you can see me doing a pratfall on the original 1957 CBS production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella(starring Julie Andrews, directed by Ralph Nelson, stage managed by Joseph Papp).
If that doesn't say it all, then click here for the full bio.
My Favorite Posts Okay, there are literally thousands of physical comedy blogs out there, but only one physical comedy blogopedia. Why list my favorite posts? Because I want to draw attention to my best research and writing, to posts that make the strongest connections between old and new, between theory and practice, between ha-ha funny and broader global issues. If I die tomorrow, which is impossible because it's already the day after tomorrow in Australia, these are the ones I would like read aloud at my funeral, with high-rez projection of all videos. (Is it bad luck to write that?) Also, please mention that I never voted for a Republican. —jt
Here are some useful and fun blogs and web sites that touch on the whole field of physical comedy, rather than just sites by performers about themselves (not that there's anything wrong with that). Click away!
For the latest posts from these blogs, see below. (Blogs only; not web sites.) These are automatically sequenced by Google in order of most current posts. The blog at the top of the list is the blog with the most recent post. Since the whole idea is to keep you (and me) up to date on current posts in the field, blogs that have not been posting regularly have been dropped from the list; if you've been dropped but are now posting regularly, just let me know.
Los otros hombres que ríen
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En nuestro camino para conocer a Gwynplaine hemos encontrado algunas otras
versiones de la célebre novela de Víctor Hugo. La primera película
inspirada p...
Caroline Loyo
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R.I.P Dougie Ashton
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ICHOF inductee Dougie Ashton passed away on August 25th at the age of 96.
Please enjoy this rare audio interview with him from 1973 when he was
touring wit...
The Apache Dance
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I had heard of the “Apache dance”, but didn’t know much about it, until I
ran across this youtube video: It’s a humorous setting for a dance that
isn’t mea...
Canal Payasas
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Con todas las grandes payasas que conozco y admiro, había tardado mucho en
realizar esta lista. Seguramente porque a muchas las tengo incluidas en
otros....
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