Read Giraffes on Horseback Salad Salvador Dali the Marx Brothers and the Strangest Movie Never Made Josh Frank Tim Heidecker Manuela Pertega Books
Download As PDF : Giraffes on Horseback Salad Salvador Dali the Marx Brothers and the Strangest Movie Never Made Josh Frank Tim Heidecker Manuela Pertega Books
This lushly illustrated graphic novel re-creates a lost Marx Brothers script written by modern art icon Salvador Dali.
Grab some popcorn and take a seat...The curtain is about to rise on a film like no other! But first, the real-life backstory Giraffes on Horseback Salad was a Marx Brothers film written by modern art icon Salvador Dali, who’d befriended Harpo. Rejected by MGM, the script was thought lost forever. Author and lost-film buff Josh Frank unearthed the original script, and Dali’s notes and sketches for the project, tucked away in museum archives. With comedian Tim Heidecker and Spanish comics creator Manuela Pertega, he’s re-created the film as a graphic novel in all its gorgeous full-color, cinematic, surreal glory. In the story, a businessman named Jimmy (played by Harpo) is drawn to the mysterious Surrealist Woman, whose very presence changes humdrum reality into Dali-esque fantasy. With the help of Groucho and Chico, Jimmy seeks to join her fantastical world—but forces of normalcy threaten to end their romance. Includes new Marx Brothers songs and antics, plus the real-world story behind the historic collaboration.
Read Giraffes on Horseback Salad Salvador Dali the Marx Brothers and the Strangest Movie Never Made Josh Frank Tim Heidecker Manuela Pertega Books
"This book is awesome. Such a great story to find out about. Highly recommend."
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Giraffes on Horseback Salad Salvador Dali the Marx Brothers and the Strangest Movie Never Made Josh Frank Tim Heidecker Manuela Pertega Books Reviews :
Giraffes on Horseback Salad Salvador Dali the Marx Brothers and the Strangest Movie Never Made Josh Frank Tim Heidecker Manuela Pertega Books Reviews
- There are some people in the world - people who grew up after an early 1970s renaissance of interest in the Marx Brothers, but before the Internet - whose interest in the Marx Brothers bordered on pathological, but couldn't be shared by more than a select few.
I am one of those people. My Halloweens as Groucho and worn off-air VHS cassettes of The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers - complete with commercials for early-1980s hair care products - sustained me and my own brothers through our childhood and adolescence.
The author, Josh Frank, is also clearly one of those people. The picture of him, age 12, dressed as Harpo, simply confirms the early-formed, deep-rooted love that can be felt throughout this passion project.
For those of us who have grown up in the years after the movies became readily available - after everything has become available - the knowledge that the book is closed on new Marx Brothers material has always been a source of disappointment. Folks like Noah Diamond and Josh Frank have opened that book again, and Frank has done the extra work of dragging it kicking and screaming into 2019.
As you know from reading the synopsis, Giraffes on Horseback Salad was a project that Dalà worked on while visiting the Marx Brothers in 1937. MGM took one look at it, and quite rightly ran screaming in the other direction. Giraffes on Horseback Salad could never have been made as a movie. It would have been unfilmable then, and it would be unfilmable now, even with CGI trickery. Or, if it had been made, it would have been unwatchable - a pale shadow of DalÃ's fever dream.
It would never have occurred to anyone to release it as a graphic novel - even if the phrase "graphic novel" weren't still 50 years in the future. But Frank has not only discovered new, authentic Marxian material, he has presented it in a way that is distinctly modern a sui generis fusion of 1930s surrealist art, Marx Brothers movie, and - astonishingly - graphic novel, complete with almost-superhero-style origin story. Dalà was a draftsman and painter, and the graphic novel is the right way to present this work - a procession of surrealist imagery, without any of the unnecessary verisimilitude that film would impose on it.
And it works. The Marxian voices - with help from collaborator Heidecker (and others), and liberal thievery from their movies - come across loud and clear. I wish the pages were rendered by Dali, but that's not really practical, and Pertega successfully fuses surrealism and comic book whimsy. One can easily imagine an alternate version of this story from some of Neil Gaiman's collaborators - Dave McKean or Charlie Vess, for example.
It's a remarkable book. I don't know whether it will reach beyond the intersection of people interested in graphic novels, the Marx Brothers, and surrealist art, but I'm in the middle of that particular Venn diagram, and I heartily recommend it for anyone else in here with me. - The cover design of this book really gives the game away. Look at it and you’d think this was a ‘lost’ work by the Marx Brothers and Salvador Dali.
It is not.
While “the Marx Brothers†and “Salvador Dali†are prominent in white, the actual creators are much smaller and in a grey type (against black) that literally disappears if you are any distance from it. This had to be intentional.
What you actually get when you buy this book is Josh Frank and Tim Heidecker’s work, illustrated by Manuela Pertega, based on a 4 page summary taken from Dali’s notebooks in 1937, and an additional 80 pages of Dali's notes and drawings.
There is no "lost Marx Brothers' script" or "screenplay" written by Salvador Dali. (I think it is not accurate to claim there is).
Just these handwritten notes and illustrations and four typed pages that summarize the concept.
There is no dialogue, no song lyrics, and very little coherence in those four pages. “Giraffes on Horseback Salad†is a new, fictional work with pseudo-wise cracks by Groucho, all dialog and songs written by Josh Frank and Tim Heidecker.
So buyer beware.
This is a new work–an interpretation of a film comedy as a graphic novel–based on an idea/concept by Dali, for a proposed film to star the Marx Brothers.
The only participating Marx Brother was Harpo, whom Dali adored. And the concept never went beyond one pitch meeting. "It'll never play," said Julius.
Manuela Pertega’s work is competent and her coloring lush, but I personally find her likenesses to be the weakest part of her storytelling. No attempt, it seems to me, is made to render Groucho, Chico or Harpo’s faces with any fidelity to how they actually appear on film (or life).
My opinion is that an accurate description of this book would doom sales. Frank & Heidecker are not names that will sell this book, the Marx Brothers and Dali are. To me this comes across as ‘false advertising.’
If you believe that anyone living today can ‘create’ a new Marx Brother’s film, even in graphic novel format, you should be upfront that this is your ‘new’ creation.
The information about this still-born project from the late 1930s is interesting and would’ve made a great magazine article or online post.
However, if I came across a four page summary of a proposed novel by Hemingway, then wrote a 400 page book, would Quirkbooks sell my book as a newly discovered Hemingway?
“Giraffes on Horseback Salad†is a very loosely-based adaptation of a scrap of an idea by a great artist who wanted to work on a project with a screen idol of his.
Had the vast amount of invention by Frank and Heidecker been disclosed upfront, I doubt I would’ve bought it. - I researched this topic quite some time ago, and I was so excited when I saw a book being written about it. I pre-ordered this book in November, and I was elated when it arrived a couple weeks ago. I had high expectations. This book exceeded them. The artwork is significant. It’s like looking at a new Dali piece on every page. The plot line is comical, and I enjoyed the lightheartedness of the subject matter. In times like those during which we are living, I highly recommend this book as the perfect respite; it’s guaranteed to make you smile many times over.
- As a longtime fan of the brothers, especially Harpo, I absolutely loved this book. And, I would like the author to know that I have a nearly identical picture of myself in Harpo costume for Halloween!
- This book is awesome. Such a great story to find out about. Highly recommend.
- Ummmmmmmm........Great try....But think you have to be on acid to really get this.......
- I love this incredible mash-up bringing together the great artist Salvador Dali and the hilarious Marx Brothers. It's zany, fantastical and fun!
