Book Report: Chain of Fools

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Chain of Fools
Silent Comedy and Its Legacies
from Nickelodeons to YouTube
by Trav S.D.

Trav S.D. —oddly enough named after his gritty home town in the middle of South Dakota's Badlands — is a so-good-he's-bad vaudevillian: a performer, producer, historian, popularizer, and blogger whose popular blog Travalanche is a must for the variety arts fan.

I remember when I first came across his book, No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book that Made Vaudeville Famous. I couldn't help but think "do we really need another history of vaudeville?" Then I read the book and discovered that the author was a really good writer, a prodigious researcher, and had a fresh slant on his subject matter. When I heard he was publishing a book on silent film comedy, I couldn't help but think "do we really need another history of silent film comedy?" Then I read the book and... yep, you guessed it.

Trav S.D.

A lot of people read book reviews but don't read books, but if you're just the opposite and are already zoning out then let me cut to the chase and simply say that if you're reading this blog (on purpose) then you'll probably find Chain of Fools highly entertaining and informative.


Here's just a few of the things you will like about it:

• I highlighted something on almost every page. It's just chock full of info that was new to me and very interesting.
• He writes very lively and conversational prose, the kind I like to write but don't always succeed at. Nothing pedantic here. He searches for and almost always finds an interesting way to say what he has to say.

• He's very good at context. You really get the feeling what the work and artistic environment must have been for those creating this new medium.

• He makes a convincing case for silent film comedy as a unique art form and not just as a collection of funny performers.

• He doesn't pretend that every silent film comedy was wonderful.

• He's strong on the relationship between story and character.

• He appreciates what Paris and French culture meant to the arts and the growth of cinema.
• He makes Mack Sennett very interesting.
• He has fresh insights on many of the comedians; Harry Langdon and Lupino Lane, to name just two.


Any weaknesses, quibbles, reservations?

• It's sparsely illustrated, and the discussion of individual films will have much more value if you have them on DVD or can find them online. Since he can't assume you do, a lot of space has to be devoted to plot summaries. He handles them well, but exposition is exposition.
• His pre-cinema comedy history is sketchy and is missing some pretty clear links between the two eras.
• Physical techniques aren't discussed in any detail.
• Max Linder's feature films are given short shrift, and some of the comedians of the 40s and 50s (e.g., 3 Stooges; Abbott & Costello; Ritz Brothers; Jerry Lewis) are a little too summarily dismissed for my taste.
• There are a few errors I caught. For example, Keaton's pole vault in College is lauded, but this was actually performed by gold medalist Lee Barnes, and it was apparently the only time (at least in the silent era) when Keaton used a stunt double. That being said, there's no reason to doubt the overall accuracy of the work.

W.C. Fields in Sally of the Sawdust

Here are a few samples of his excellent writing:

I tend to think of Keaton as a verb; Chaplin as a noun.

This principle of ultimate action, of perpetual motion, was not discovered overnight, but came gradually, experimentally, in the same way Jackson Pollock arrived at drip painting or Charlie Parker came to bebop. It was a process of taking matters a little further, a little further, a little further over dozens of films until Sennett hit a new comedy dimension that looked like universal chaos.

There was very little precedent for what Sennett would now attempt. This would be the first time in history a studio head would endeavor to staff an entire company with absurd types. Sennett's comedians resembled human cartoons: fat men, bean poles, vamps, men with funny mustaches, matronly wives and mothers-in-law wielding rolling pins and umbrellas; geezers with canes and long beards, bratty children with enormous lollipops. Diminutive heroes; terrifyingly large villains.

Keaton's character may have a place in society, but he realizes that this is no guarantee of security or even tranquiity. What about the safe that may fall on your head? Or conversely, the wallet full of money that may miraculously fall into your hands. Rich or poor makes no difference. Fate makes playthings of us all. Man plans. God laughs. Keaton seems to feel no need to comfort us about this. No one emerges to make things better. The world is  cruel, capricious, barren of any special benevolence. It is this lack of faith or optimism perhaps that causes Keaton's comedies to speak more to our time than to his own, and made him a big hit with European audiences even as many Americans were scratching their heads.

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You can buy Chain of Fools here.

Cut to the Chase: The Police vs. Rémi Gaillard

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Just over 100 years ago ago, Mack Sennett hit cinema pay dirt and spawned American silent film comedy when he introduced audiences to the hapless Keystone Cops, forever the butt of the joke. Chaplin and Keaton and their fellow silent film comedians likewise mocked police incompetence and, more politically, condemned at least implicitly their treatment of the underdog. Nowadays such attitudes are rarer in film comedy, but certainly not in the work of French prankster and provocateur Rémi Gaillard, whose YouTube videos have had over a billion hits.

Here's one of his most popular compilations, showing his joy at taunting the police in segments reminiscent of those early chase scenes where the cops were doing all the chasing. "I do it for France!" Gaillard is fond of shouting. Ha!



You can see many, many more videos at his web site, and of course buy tons of anarchistic merchandise.

Chaplin: The Musical

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Thursday night I caught a preview performance of Chaplin: The Musical, a new Broadway show starring newcomer Rob McClure that was first developed at the La Jolla Playhouse under the title Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin. That first draft did not get particularly good reviews, but that was a couple of years ago.

It's been a breakthrough year for physical comedy in the mass entertainment world. First The Artist wins five Academy Awards, including best picture, best director, and best actor. And last weekend One Man, Two Guvnors concluded a pretty much sold-out run on Broadway, with James Corden's comic servant of two masters beating out Philip Seymour Hoffman's battered salesman, Willy Loman, for the Tony best actor award.

Could a trifecta be in the works?

Chaplin: The Musical opens this Monday, and while it may not sound like sure-fire Broadway fare, no one predicted those other two pieces to appeal to such a wide audience either. And the book is by Thomas Meehan, whose name I didn't know but probably should, since he's won three Tony Awards — for mega hits Hairspray, The Producers, and Annie (the latter re-opening on Broadway next month).

 Here's a promo:
 

 Of all the usual preview articles, this one from the NY Times about Rob McClure's preparations for the role is the best. It actually talks about the movement and physical comedy elements:

Here's an excerpt:

The show demands a veritable comedy decathlon of stunts, spills and specialty bits. “There’s been a bit of a Chaplin boot camp, with tightrope and roller-skating and violin lessons,” Mr. McClure said, in a tone more of exhilaration than complaint. “Every time I think, ‘Oh God, how am I going to learn all this?,’ I remember he did it. Chaplin did it all.” Mr. McClure said. “But once you put on the hat and the mustache and the cane, you can’t screw with that. You need to get that right, because anybody who cares about this coming in is looking for something very specific.”  

Mr. McClure became a detective of Chaplin’s film performances, studying them not only for how-to's but why-to's. “When I was first working on the Little Tramp shuffle, I noticed he would have these little bursts of energy, so as he’s waddling, a shoulder will pop or a knee will kick out,” Mr. McClure said. 

To go beyond mere imitation, he kept watching and eventually struck gold. A particular moment in Chaplin’s film The Circus caught Mr. McClure’s eye. “The Tramp gets turned down by a woman, and as he waddles away, the shoulder and the knee go,” Mr. McClure recalled. “I realized he’s brushing it off,” with each twitch essentially saying, “Shake it off, shake it off, Charlie.” Mr. McClure came to understand that Chaplin “had a physical vocabulary that was ultimately specific. Nothing was for silliness alone.”

You can read the whole article here.

So how was it? (you might be asking)

It was entertaining, it was solid, it was sentimental, it offered a lot for your money — assuming that like me you buy half-price tickets — and it got an enthusiastic standing ovation from Thursday night's sold-out audience. I have no idea if it will get the kind of reviews and buzz essential to a long Broadway run, but will let you know in a week or so once all of the notices are in.

For me the show's main challenge is in compressing Chaplin's long and tumultuous life into two hours of plot. With movie biopics we often end up getting a cartoon version of a genius' life that rarely penetrates the nature of that genius, and this musical is no exception. His uniqueness is simply his "talent," and it doesn't get much deeper than that. Characters are combined, events oversimplified. Chaplin's penchant for teenage girls and the political witch hunt that drove him out of the country are treated rather superficially. As history it's ultimately unsatisfying, though the results can still be entertaining. Think Barnum — a big hit that played a lot more loosely with the facts than does Chaplin. But Barnum had better songs than Chaplin, which I have a feeling will be another factor dampening the critics' enthusiasm.

The opening curtain

The choreography of Warren Carlyle (Follies; Hugh Jackman), who also directed, does a decent job  of infusing the whole show with some nice bits. As in so many Chaplin films, the onstage world is a topsy-turvy place where bottles, canes, plates, wine glasses, chairs, and roller skates all lead a precarious existence and equilibrium cannot be taken for granted.  Large-scale dance numbers that stick in my mind are the Chaplin impersonation contest, the Hall of Mirrors (from The Circus), the Mack Sennett pie fight, and the assembly line of ladies based on the factory scene in Modern Times, though I thought the first two of these could have been developed more.

And was Rob McClure up to the task of impersonating Chaplin?

Yes, very much so. He can act and he can even sing, but he's at his best when in motion. He's picked up some solid skills — though (unlike Chaplin in The Circus) he is tethered for the wirewalking segments. In terms of movement, at least to my eye McClure nails the Little Tramp character and, if anything, I kept wishing they would give him juicier comedy material to impress with. The guy deserves his own show stopper and the musical needs more belly laughs. But all in all, a kinetic and intelligent performance, and you physical comedians out there need no other reason to try to catch this show. As a whole, Chaplin: The Musical does not totally dazzle, but Mc Clure is worth the price of admission.