I was in Tokyo for 3½ days but spent too much of it figuring out how to get home in the middle of a hurricane. So no physical comedy report, but here's a clever sight gag I think you'll enjoy.
Clearly the guys are walking behind the van rather than hopping out, and I imagine you can rig a Polaroid-style camera to pop out a different photo, but still I'm suspicious. How, for example, did they get the camera angle for this close-up shot of the photo taken by the woman in purple? Was there a camera above the woman?? Or were the volunteer photographers actually actors? Of course it could have been legit except that they added in the close-ups of the photos just to sell the joke. Either way, I'm not complaining. Funny is funny.
A minor post this one, just a curiosity, but I was pleased to see that Wired magazine, in a discussion of the 2010 dream-catching movie, Inception, discovered a connection with Buster Keaton's innovative Sherlock, Jr. (1924) — enough of a connection that they did this short piece:
Sorry, Blogger has a problem reproducing very vertical images without blurring them, but you can read the whole article here and view their video clip below.
This one's already gone viral, but I just found out about it from colleague, poet, and fellow world traveler Martie LaBare. In fact, I'd never heard the term flair bartending until a few minutes ago! Clearly I need to get out more instead of hiding at home, sad and lonely, staring into a bottle, nobody to talk to but my imaginary blog friends...
But I digress. Watch it first — pretty sure you'll be entertained — then let's say we have a short discussion, okay?
There are seven pages (so far!) of comments on YouTube debating whether this is real or fake. I teach visual effects, so I know anything— and I do mean anything — can be faked, but my suspicion is that this is a clever mixture of serious juggling chops and sophisticated compositing skills. Translation: some of it is real, some of it vfx. The fan neatly slicing those limes into wedges — how would a single blade do that? — is the most obvious visual effect. Basically what the compositor can do is place a separate "clean plate" background image of the bar wall in a layer below the original footage, erase the original limes from the footage layer, then add lime wedges to the glasses in the foreground. I downloaded the movie and studied it frame by frame. Let's just say that the movement and timing of the lime after leaving her hand and before miraculously reappearing in the glass as a perfect wedge is highly suspect.
While most Facebook commenters opined that the napkin trick had to be fake, one viewer offered this explanation: "Here's how you do the napkin trick. David Blaine does something similar with playing cards. First you prep the napkins so they're weighted on one corner — so u know where they land first. Then prepare the bar by wetting six even spaced spots. So the paper sticks. Then practice, a lot of the napkins fall evenly." I'm no magician, but it seems plausible.
Either way, the bar is real and they're very much into this stuff. We're looking at a branch of the American chain restaurant T.G.I. Friday's ("thank God it's Friday") located in the UK in Prestwich, North Manchester. These guys are serious about performing, as witness this video from the same bar, apparently an entry into a bartending mixology competition.
It turns out flair bartending is a big enough thing that there are even annual competitions, which you can follow on YouTube. Here's just one sample:
Joan Schirle of the Dell Arte School of Physical Theatre has added this comment on the subject via my Facebook page: "Some of the Japanese chefs in the benihana-type restaurants do simliar flair stuff with knives and bottles."
And if you want to learn to show off like this, and I admit I do, there's even a series of video tutorials on YouTube courtesy of a gentleman by the name of Chris "Mango" Myers. Here's video #1:
There are 35 — count 'em, 35 — of these lessons on Chris's Bar Guide & Flair Tutor web site, so what are you waiting for?
Finally, a note of personal trivia: my first foray into publishing was editing a special "Popular Entertainments" issue of The Drama Review (March, 1974), with authors that included Hovey Burgess, Carlo Mazzone-Clementi, Marvin Carlson, and Brooks McNamara. I only bring it up here because the cover for that issue (photo by Diane L. Goodman) showed a carnival performer doing the old trick of flipping a bottle to a balance on the back of his hand.
Now if you take a second look at that bartender from our original video, you'll see he's doing the same trick.
I doubt that this seems amazing to most of you, but who back then would have predicted that circus skills would eventually spawn such phenomena as parkour, trouser diving, and flair bartending? Not me.
Here's a curiosity for you from 1909, years before the Keystone Cops and then Arbuckle, Chaplin, Keaton, et. al. ushered us into the heyday of silent film comedy. Produced by Pathé in France under the title Pickpock ne Craint pas les Entraves (pickpockets fear no barriers), it was released in the U.S. under the title Slippery Jim, with English inter-titles.
The pickpocket in question is arrested by the police, handcuffed, and locked in a cell. For the next eight minutes he repeatedly and nonchalantly proves himself to be a master escape artist thanks to his talent as a contortionist and shape shifter. It's all very clever, but it's all accomplished by camera tricks, specifically stop-action substitution.
The Catalonian director, Segundo de Chomón, had worked with that pioneering French movie magician, Georges Méliès, and the film is full of the same sort of tricks of construction — bodies being assembled from component parts — that hearken back to the days of Joseph Grimaldi.
Some of Chomón's visual effects are remarkably smooth for 1909 (e.g., splitting the cop in half), others quite amateurish (e.g., the aerial bicycle). The unnamed performer seems agile enough — watch him scamper up that water pipe — but since the "physical" comedy is faked, perhaps we should just call this "visual" comedy... or live animation! Still, it's quite watchable, and amusing enough. The original music for the film was composed by Antonio Coppola in 2008.
The Steamroller Gag
At least that's what I call it: the flattening of a living, breathing human being into a pancake. Here's the segment again from Slippery Jim, though here they're flattened by a swinging door.
This was done in live performance earlier than 1909 in a pantomime by the Byrne Brothers, and later became associated with the Ringling Brothers clown, Paul Jung, whose steamroller was powered by clowns walking inside it. Here's the description from my Clowns book (glad I remembered I wrote this!): In Jung's version, the steamroller plows into a clown street cleaner, leaving behind an oilcloth silhouette of him on the ground, flat as a pancake. The cloth victim is placed on a stretcher. A clown policeman tries to arrest the reckless driver and is in turn flattened by the powerful machine. Finally, a dwarf with a false head is struck by the steamroller; his head rolls off and is also flattened.
And here's a variation on the gag from Mel Brooks' 1976 film, Silent Movie. Brooks, Marty Feldman, and Dom DeLuise hope to convince Burt Reynolds to appear in a modern silent movie they're trying to make.
Appendix: Segundo de Chomón
From the excellent Europa Film Treasuresweb site: Directed by Segundo de Chomón, Catalan artist settled in France, this film renews the genre of the effect film, mixing successfully chase films and effects films. Chomón’s imagination is wilder than ever. Chomón makes the most of his rare technical skills in an interminable series of effect films with Julienne Mathieu his spouse for the company Pathé Frères. This Spanish man from Teruel leaves his office job to become a colorist for Georges Méliès. A good part of his career is spent at Pathé’s where he participates in the set up of a system of industrial coloring; the Pathécolor. In 1901, Chomón settles down in Barcelona. He directs numerous documentaries, has a go at animation and effects. Called back by Pathé to Paris, Chomón works as a camera operator on The Goose that laid golden eggs in particular. He directs all in all about forty films and makes an attempt at every genre. Action, laughter, imagination and much madness… As a Pathé advertisement of the day read: “If it’s funny, then we’re sure to go see it !”
This one has recently surfaced on Facebook and YouTube, but probably most of you haven't seen it yet, so let's add it to my early film collection, complete with all the background info.
First just enjoy the video...
Hopefully you got the joke! What I like about it is how it progresses from the plausible to the implausible. Quite silly, quite funny. Here's that background info, courtesy of the excellent web site, Europa Film Treasures:
Ki Ri Ki — Japanese Acrobats Production date: 1907
Irresistible film that inspired many artists (including choreographer Philippe Decouflé), this three-minute gem was shot by Segundo de Chomón (1871-1929), special effect specialist hired by Pathé to direct a series of films based on special effects and meant to compete with those of Georges Méliès. Chomón witnesses the birth of the cinematograph in 1896 during a stay in Paris. This Spanish man originating from Teruel quits his office job and starts working for Georges Méliès as a colorist. He moves on to Pathé Frères where he contributes to set up a system of industrial coloring: the Pathécolor.
In 1901, Chomón settles in Barcelona. He directs numerous documentaries, has a go at animation and effects. Called back by Pathé to Paris, Chomón works as a camera operator on Le Roi des Aulnes (The Erl-King) in particular. He directs all in all about forty films and makes an attempt at every genre. This film only existed in its black and white version. Thank to the collaboration of the Cinémathèque Française, depositary of the black and white original single-perf negative, we have been able to make three positive prints. Hélène Bromberg colored the film in the old fashion way, frame by frame, using as a color chart a 2-meter long fragment of the nitrate original, rediscovered in a private collection.
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Segundo de Chomón’s tumblers, human pyramid virtuosos, hobble along but their somersaults fall a little flat. And once the “trick” is disclosed, the capers reveal themselves to be bluff. But what skill! A buffoonery far from ridiculous. Chomón is an editor, and he masters effects and splicing marvelously. The film is back in its original splendor. It will turn you upside down.
Director: Segundo de Chomón Nationality: French Length: 2' 41" Genre: trick film Sound: silent with soundtrack Original elements: black & white Producer: Pathé Composer: Eric Le Guen Original language: French
Hey guys, imagine you lived in a city where every move you made was a death-defying Hollywood stunt. Well, if you think that might get you a little wet under the arms, then you need Rexona, the man's deodorant. That's what I learned from this funny enough commercial, Stunt City. It was filmed in Australia for a UK audience and won a Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in 2005. Directed by Ivan Zacharias; visual effects by The Mill.
If the name Georges Méliès rings a bell at all, it probably makes you think of that wacky Trip to the Moon movie from the Dawn of Film that was okay in its time, but... that time was long ago. Yes, Méliès almost single-handedly invented special effects, pioneering such techniques as stop-action substitution, dissolves, multiple exposures, and time-lapse photography, in the process creating the science-fiction film genre, but nowadays his corny sense of humor, flimsy storytelling, and overuse of the same gimmicks make the work seem dated. In fact, it was out of fashion by the time the Keystone Cops came on the scene in 1912
And yet... and yet... there is much to admire in his films. His dreamscape visuals, based on his own superb drawings, are a precursor to surrealism and all that followed, including animation ranging from Yellow Submarine to many a music video. His appearance in this blog, however, is a result of me stumbling upon an exhibition of his work, Méliès: Magicien du Cinéma, at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris earlier this summer, while visiting the Jacques Tati exposition. The Méliès exhibition turned me on to some crazy crossover between his brand of cinema, inspired by stage magic, and the world of clowning and physical comedy. Méliès' began his performance career as a magician and in 1888 bought and ran the famous Paris magic theatre, Théâtre Robert Houdin. Exhibits on filmmakers don't always have a lot of stuff to show, other than the movies themselves, but this one was stuff-eriffic, full of all sorts of magic and early film equipment, and even a large-scale model of Méliès' studio (unfortunately destroyed in 1947) in the nearby Paris suburb of Montreuil.
[Small world department: Houdin was a great French magician whose name was adapted by Ehrich Weiss, who as Harry Houdini became even more famous than his hero; years later Houdini was said to have given Joseph Keaton, Jr. his enduring nickname after the 6-month-old boy survived a fall down a flight of stairs: "that's quite a buster your son just took."]
But What Does This Have to Do with Physical Comedy? Yes, the exhibition has since closed, but here are a couple of clips with ties to physical comedy.
The first is Guillaume Tell et le Clown (1898), loosely related to the classic William Tell clown entrée, a parody of the legend of William Tell, who was said to have saved his own life and sparked a rebellion against tyrannical rule by successfully shooting an apple off his son's head with a crossbow. In the clown entrée, as performed by François and Albert Fratellini, difficulties in balancing the apple on the son's head and then the son eating the apple down to the core thwart the clown's aspirations to greatness. (This entrée was collected by Tristan Rémy in his book, Entrées Clownesques, most of which is available in English, translated by Bernard Sahlins in Clown Scenes.) Charlie Chaplin used the gag in a short 1917 war bonds charity film he made with Scottish comedian Harry Lauder. That movie was never released, but Chaplin came back to the gag again in his 1928 silent movie, The Circus.
Update: For a discussion about the why and wherefores of performing the William Tell entrée in 2009, see this post (and subsequent posts) on Jon Davison's blog.
Méliès' texte explicatif describes his version as follows: "The clown, wanting to present the scene of Willian Tell and the apple, constructs a mannequin out of various materials and places a melon on its head. When he turns and starts to walk away from it, the mannequin comes to life and slaps him. The clown, surprised, reassures himself that it's truly a mannequin, but when he turns around, he gets struck by the melon in his back. He is grabbed by the mannequin, who has come to life and throws the clown on the ground, escapes, and leaves the clown there all by himself."
The Fat & Lean Wrestling Match from 1990 is even more clever:
Méliès explained that this stop-action substitution effect, which he used so frequently (too frequently), was actually discovered by him by accident in 1897 when his film jammed and he stopped to fix it. "During this minute,'' he said, "the passersby, buses, carriages had moved on of course. When I projected the film, I saw a bus changed into a hearse, and men changed into women.'' Actually the technique had been used two years earlier at the Edison studios in The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots to create a decapitation effect. Whether or not he was familiar with this, Méliès still deserves credit for fully (too fully) exploring the potential of the technique.
Of course film made a lot more possible, but the idea for these transformations was even older. In Joseph Grimaldi's day they were called tricks of construction. Here's some of what I wrote about it in my Clowns book:
Grimaldi's Clown derived just as much fun from gadgets and machinery. Thanks to a lifetime in pantomime, Grimaldi was well versed in trickwork and was himself the designer of many effective "tricks of construction." In these transformations, something new and unexpected was created out of something quite ordinary, usually with satirical overtones, such as changing a lobster into a soldier by boiling it.... Many of these inventions found their way into the circus (and cartoons) as sight gags. Grimaldi's "New American Anticipating Machine," often seen today as the hot dog machine, is the most common example. Clown steals a dog from an unsuspecting gentleman, stuffs the pooch into the machine, cranks the handle, and pulls out a long row of sausages. When the owner returns and whistles for his dog, the sausages wag just like a real dog's tail.
Okay, done with with Physical Comedy Yep, that's the physical comedy portion of this post, at least for now, but there's more!
Although it's not all that physical, here's his fantasmagorical A Trip to the Moon (1902) for those who haven't seen it:
That voiceover narrative, from a Méliès text, was added later, but for a more modern take you might want to check out this version, using music from Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts, or this one, or this one, both of which have original electronic scores that kind of work in their own way.
Even more interesting because it's visual is the Smashing Pumpkins music video, Tonight, Tonight, which is practically a remake of A Trip to the Moon.
For a shot-by-shot analysis of the movie, check out this post from Dan North's excellent film blog, Spectacular Attractions. North also has an interesting post on episode 12 of the HBO mini-series, From the Earth to the Moon, which intercut scenes of the Apollo 17 moon landing with re-creations of the shooting of Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la Lune.
You can find links to a lot of Méliès material by typing his name into the search engine at: missinglinkclassichorror.co.uk
The Cinémathèque exhibit book, L'Oeuvre de Georges Méliès, is really excellent. Big, thorough, gorgeous, fun, perfect for the coffee table. Yes, it is in French, but it's lavishly illustrated and includes a ton of Méliès drawings. You can get it from the French Amazon by clicking on the link above.
Likewise there is now an excellent DVD collection of Méliès' films put out by the good folks at Flicker Alley, who do some real quality work in restoring and releasing old movies. I bought this, I really like it, and once I've watched all 782 minutes of it (or enough to sound like I did), I'll post a DVD Report to the blog. And do I really need to mention that the movies look 100 times better on DVD than on YouTube?
This is also a good place to once again plug one of my favorite blogs, Circo Méliès, described as "a place for the meeting of cinema, circus and variétés in the widest sense of the term." It's in Spanish, and I only speak enough Spanish to get me to the train station and buy a beer (not necessarily in that order), but I still get a lot out of this blog.
Finally, a word of warning to those who think being on top of the latest technology is a guarantee of everlasting prosperity: When Méliès fell out of favor, he couldn't pay back some big loans and went seriously broke, ending up selling toys out of a booth at the Montparnasse train station.
Okay, okay, I know that's a bummer of an ending.
To finish on a more positive note, check out the award-winning graphic novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick, in which — spoiler alert! spoiler alert! — Méliès of Gare Montparnasse ends up playing a prominent role. I just came across this last week, but I bought it and read it and highly recommend it. I promise it provides a happy ending to this post.
...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....
Here's a list of complete books available for free as pdf documents right here on this here blogopedia, arranged in chronological order; dates are publication in the original language. Clickhere for a Tech Note on these books. Click on the book title to go to that post. More books coming!
Clearly the guys are walking behind the van rather than hopping out, and I imagine you can rig a Polaroid-style camera to pop out a different photo, but still I'm suspicious. How, for example, did they get the camera angle for this close-up shot of the photo taken by the woman in purple? Was there a camera above the woman?? Or were the volunteer photographers actually actors? Of course it could have been legit except that they added in the close-ups of the photos just to sell the joke. Either way, I'm not complaining. Funny is funny.
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