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Lecture 10 comedy is king
- 4. MASS PRODUCTION – VERTICAL INTEGRATION Centralization of the work place - the studio.
- 5. MASS PRODUCTION – VERTICAL INTEGRATION Centralization of the work place - the studio. Separation of the conception from the execution of work - studio head, not director/writer determined projects.
- 6. MASS PRODUCTION – VERTICAL INTEGRATION Centralization of the work place - the studio. Separation of the conception from the execution of work - studio head, not director/writer determined projects. Detailed preplanning and standardization of work processes - the Hollywood formula.
- 7. MASS PRODUCTION – VERTICAL INTEGRATION Centralization of the work place - the studio. Separation of the conception from the execution of work - studio head, not director/writer determined projects. Detailed preplanning and standardization of work processes - the Hollywood formula. Detailed division of labor - the assembly line.
- 9. THE “COMMERCIAL AESTHETIC” Hollywood’s principle aim has always been to make money by entertaining audiences, entertaining being perhaps best understood as the carefully orchestrated provision of intense sensual and emotional stimulation in a safe environment. For Hollywood, Silm form and style are ultimately in the service of such stimulation and not ends in themselves. Any controversy that impinges on proSit was meticulously avoided.
- 10. Classic Hollywood Narrative Celebrity Vertical Driven Integration
- 12. Slapstick In order to transform acts of wi#ful maliciousness and intense pain into comedy, performers had to signal clearly that their actions were mere make-believe.
- 14. Critic Leonard Matlin ca#ed Harold Lloyd the affirmation of “the meek inheriting the earth. An ordinary boy next door who survived by his wits, won the girl and exemplified the ideals that formed the backbone of this country.”
- 15. “The gatekeeper was a crabby old soul who let me understand that it would be a pleasure to keep me out. As I lurked about I noticed that at noon a crowd of actors and extras dri'ed out in make-up to eat at a lunch counter across the way, passing the gatekeeper without question each way. The next morning I brought a make-up box. At noon I dodged behind a bi#board, made up, mingled with the lunch-counter press and returned with them through the gate without cha#enge.”
- 16. @Universal met Hal Roach eventual producer of Laurel and Hardy and the Our Gang comedies
- 19. “Comedy comes )om inside. It comes )om your face. It comes )om your body.” Harold Lloyd
- 22. Horatio Algers Story The Myth of the American Hero Innocence Initiation Chaos Resolution
- 23. Innocence In this stage the person is happy and feels little suffering. There is ego-centered view of the world.
- 24. Initiation This is brought by one of three events—Sexual awareness, the presence of evil in the world, or death. Regardless of which event, a person’s world is turned upside down and no longer can they see themselves as the happy person they once were.
- 25. Chaos Having awareness crammed down the psyche of a person, a journey is begun in denial to change the harsh outcome of the new awareness. Through difficult things the world seems spun out of control and having no order. Gradua#y, con)onting face to face, heart to heart, the initiate comes to understand the reality of the new awareness.
- 26. Resolution The person returns to the world where once there was little suffering with a greater awareness, a more open mind, a fu#er sense of being and participating in the community. A hero has been born.
- 27. Safety Last Identify the 4 stages of Horatio Algers myth in the film. For what is “climbing the wa#” a metaphor? What has happened to the concept of 1st impression in this movie?
Editor's Notes
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- If the supreme court treated film like it was nothing more than a product like a slab of cheese or a box of cereal, the business of filmmaking treated it like that with even greater force. Movies, in the states, became part and parcel of our mass assembly system. Our form of mass production was vertical integration – put all processes from development through exhibition under one roof.\nIn mass media, we talked about vertical integration being the inclusion of all facets under one economic umbrella - development, production, distribution, exhibition. Another way of looking at VI (in this class)- is examining the way in which the process of mass manufacturing was applied to the creative process of filmmaking.\n
- If the supreme court treated film like it was nothing more than a product like a slab of cheese or a box of cereal, the business of filmmaking treated it like that with even greater force. Movies, in the states, became part and parcel of our mass assembly system. Our form of mass production was vertical integration – put all processes from development through exhibition under one roof.\nIn mass media, we talked about vertical integration being the inclusion of all facets under one economic umbrella - development, production, distribution, exhibition. Another way of looking at VI (in this class)- is examining the way in which the process of mass manufacturing was applied to the creative process of filmmaking.\n
- If the supreme court treated film like it was nothing more than a product like a slab of cheese or a box of cereal, the business of filmmaking treated it like that with even greater force. Movies, in the states, became part and parcel of our mass assembly system. Our form of mass production was vertical integration – put all processes from development through exhibition under one roof.\nIn mass media, we talked about vertical integration being the inclusion of all facets under one economic umbrella - development, production, distribution, exhibition. Another way of looking at VI (in this class)- is examining the way in which the process of mass manufacturing was applied to the creative process of filmmaking.\n
- If the supreme court treated film like it was nothing more than a product like a slab of cheese or a box of cereal, the business of filmmaking treated it like that with even greater force. Movies, in the states, became part and parcel of our mass assembly system. Our form of mass production was vertical integration – put all processes from development through exhibition under one roof.\nIn mass media, we talked about vertical integration being the inclusion of all facets under one economic umbrella - development, production, distribution, exhibition. Another way of looking at VI (in this class)- is examining the way in which the process of mass manufacturing was applied to the creative process of filmmaking.\n
- If the supreme court treated film like it was nothing more than a product like a slab of cheese or a box of cereal, the business of filmmaking treated it like that with even greater force. Movies, in the states, became part and parcel of our mass assembly system. Our form of mass production was vertical integration – put all processes from development through exhibition under one roof.\nIn mass media, we talked about vertical integration being the inclusion of all facets under one economic umbrella - development, production, distribution, exhibition. Another way of looking at VI (in this class)- is examining the way in which the process of mass manufacturing was applied to the creative process of filmmaking.\n
- With stars like Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, and Rudolph Valentino – Ultimately proved to be more successful than Edison’s corner on technology.\n
- Our story development had to have a payoff.\n\n
- What we are really talking about is the making of classic hollywood.\nNarrative - commercial aesthetic.\nComedy would figure into this formula really well.\n
- 3 greats of the era – Chaplin - known. Chaplin was the lovable, pathos-driven, emotional Tramp; Lloyd was the eternally optimistic Horatio Alger, taking over from the peppy and ebullient Douglas Fairbanks by simply putting on glasses; and Keaton was the stoic Existentialist of them all. All of these comics, along with Mac Sennett we’ve referred to earlier all shared a type of comedy known as slapstick.\n
- The actions’ excess, their fantastic exaggeration, as well as performers’ self-conscious address of the audience, were the most obvious indicators of their professional and ritualistic nature. In some ways returning the theater of attractions\n
- Out of all the people that we look at, Harold was the one star that emerged that had the most stable family life, the least tragic beginning and ending. He was a really normal, healthy guy who made entertaining films.\nPrior to Harol\n
- Easy optimism of Harold Lloyd was major contrast to both Keaton and Chaplin. He was the Horatio Algers story. The American that triumphs.\nUnlike Keaton or Chaplin or Fairbanks or Griffith – Harold Lloyd did not come from a vaudeville or legitimate stage background\n
- He was born in Nebraska to a middle class family and he just knew he wanted to perform. He did theater in school, then moved to California. \nEarly jobs: Milk driver’s helper, Neighborhood Drug Store errand boy, Paper route, Telegraph messenger boy, Boy in Bird store, and a popcorn vendor at nearby train station. If there had been a McDonald’s… \n\n\n
- snuck onto Universal lot by slightly devious means. In his own biography, he admitted...\n
- Got on the Universal lot by watching extras at lunch.\nWhile working on the Universal lot, Harold met Hal Roach, (who would later produce the films of Laurel and Hardy and the Our Gang comedies). His initial short films were Chaplin rip-off’s. Studios and theater exhibitors liked a sure thing then just like they do now. \n
- However, it wasn’t until Harold decided to transform his screen character into someone more like himself that his career took off. Harold was the first film comedian to portray a character that looked and acted like someone sitting in the audience – an average guy, the boy-next-door, an everyman. \nHe didn’t have ill-fitting clothes, didn’t wear special makeup with mustaches or eyebrows. He wore ordinary clothes and was a regular guy.\n\nWith this “glass” character as Harold called it (glasses cost 75 cents), He could experience the humor in everyday life. And, as an average fellow, Harold’s boy-next-door could have a romance. It was the beginning of romantic comedy in films.\n\nOther comedians of the time wore makeup. He put on a straw hat and glasses - not typical for the teens.\n
- Of all the silent film comedians, Harold Lloyd was the most profitable. His films out grossed the movies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, and he made more films than both of them put together. With hits like, “The Freshman,” “The Kid Brother,” and “Speedy,” Harold Lloyd was the number one box office star two years in a row. In 1928, Variety proclaimed him the highest paid film star.\nHarold was an innovator in the movie business. He pioneered new camera techniques and was one of the first filmmaker to preview his comedies to a test audience, and then re-shoot, re-cut and preview them again. He didn’t ask questions, just sat in the back and listened to audience reaction. At a time before unions, Harold paid his crew year-round, even when they weren’t shooting a film.\n
- As opposed to Keaton’s thinking his way through a problem, Harold sort of Forrest Gumps his way through.\n
- Thrill comedy: Man in danger-looking for a release of emotion-laughter but authenticity, Thrill Films: sky scraper and high glider films. Hanging from clocks. Often labeled a stunt comedian. The stunt from Safety Last came from walking down the street. A crowd had gathered watching a guy climb the outside of a building. He walked away, but kept thinking if it drew a crowd, it might make a good movie. He went back and hired the guy climbing the wall. Shot the end of the movie, then figured out the rest of the story.\n
- In 1919, Harold almost died on set when a bomb he was holding exploded. The set-up called for him to light a cigarette with a prop bomb -- the round, black, type you might see in the cartoons. The bomb wasn’t a prop at all; it exploded in his hand. It ripped open the sixteen-foot ceiling and left Harold blind and thumb and forefinger of right hand missing. Doctors told him he would never see again. His career was over. \n
- The underlying motif is the Horatio Alger myth, the myth of the American hero, who picks himself up by his own bootstraps. We can break down the hero’s journey on a personal level dealing with four stages: \n
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- climbing the ladder of success.\nshift from concern over 1st impression to deliberate management of expectations - elaborate rouses to maintain false impression\n