Day 5 of Slapstick 2017 – A Quick Recap of Yesterday

Day 5 of Slapstick 2017 – A Quick Recap of Yesterday

It’s the morning of the last day of the festival! Yesterday was jam-packed with exciting events at the Watershed and Colston Hall.

The day started with Chris Serle presenting a Fairbanks and Chaplin double bill. This was followed by a conversation with Roy Hudd and a screening of his ‘silent’ comedy, The Maladjusted Busker. Roy Hudd proved quite popular and remained in the cinema auditorium afterwards answering audience questions. Robin Ince had a great chat with Graeme Garden about The Goodies books that have been published, but also books that inspired him. The last event at the Watershed for the day was Neil Innes presenting a rare episode of Colour Me Pop.

The early evening saw the start of our Chaplin Double Bill. Simon Callow did a wonderful job presenting three of Charlie Chaplin’s best comedy shorts. These were accompanied by the always energetic European Silent Screen Virtuosi. The crowd was already buzzing as they left the auditorium and it was brought to an even bigger buzz as the Big R Big Band were playing big band music in the foyer complete with swing dancers!

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Saturday evening concluded with a screening of The Great Dictator. A very timely film to be screened given the current political climate! The screening was preceded by music from some great performers including Grace Petrie, Neil Innes, and Ronnie Golden. Chaplin’s rousing speech from the film was met with much deserved applause!

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There is still a day packed full of events left! Accidentally Preserved: Surviving Slapstick on 16mm has already started (our last event at the Watershed). The rest of the day will be at the Bristol Old Vic. We’ve got Barry Cryer discussing his friendship with Tommy Cooper, Jeffrey Holland in his one-man show about Stan Laurel, a revisit of The Young Ones, Colin Sell presenting his favourite British comedy clips, and Alexei Sayle sharing his top comedy moments. All tickets for these events can be booked through the Bristol Old Vic website.

Day Four at Slapstick Festival 2017 – Reliving the Gala

Day Four at Slapstick Festival 2017 – Reliving the Gala

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Last night was our annual Silent Comedy Gala hosted by the wonderful impressionist, Rory Bremner. Topical as always, his Donald Trump was spot-on! He soon had the audience chuckling with his very funny political satire (extremely appropriate considering the timing of the gala with the US Presidential Inauguration)! My personal favourite gag of him as Trump was when he mentioned the protesters would be better suited in a silent film!

The first half of the film consisted of two great shorts – The High Sign starring Buster Keaton and The Finishing Touch with Laurel and Hardy. I think that the whole audience was delighted with the new secret hand signal that we all learned from Buster. Both shorts were accompanied by the dynamic European Silent Screen Virtuosi – it’s almost as fun watching them perform as it is watching the shorts!

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The second half started with an energetic Roy Hudd doing his own impersonation of Max Miller. He sang a couple of old music hall songs and everyone enjoyed the jokes. This was a good warm-up for the main event of the evening, Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman. Always an exciting experience, the film was accompanied by the Bristol Ensemble conducted by Günter A. Buchwald. Everyone was rooting for Lloyd’s attempt at becoming the big man on campus!

This evening sees our Chaplin Double Bill and tomorrow is packed full of great events including Alexei Sayle’s Top Comedy Moments.

Slapstick Festival Day 3 – A chat with Daan van den Hurk

Slapstick Festival Day 3 – A chat with Daan van den Hurk

Wow – time is flying here at the festival! We’ve just finished our morning screenings of Paths to Paradise and Master of the House. This afternoon brings us Max Linder, Keaton, and Beckett…. all leading up to our Silent Comedy Gala this evening hosted by Rory Bremner.

This afternoon, I had the opportunity to catch up with one of our musicians and previous festival-goer, Daan van den Hurk. I wanted to speak to someone who had been to the festival previously and find out why they return year after year…. but who wouldn’t?

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Daan has attended two previous festivals as a viewer. He had found out about the festival when he attended Le Giornate del cinema muto, the annual silent film festival held annually in Pordenone, Italy. It was there that he met David Robinson, who was director of that festival until 2015. David is one of our regular guests, patron, and on the Board of Directors for the Slapstick Festival. David told him enthusiastically that he should attend our festival here in Bristol.

The previous festivals were very fun… Daan says that it is a beautiful festival. It also gives him the opportunity to catch up with David, as well as some of our other musicians. Last year’s highlight for Daan was The Kid. To see it screened in a beautiful hall on an enormous screen just gave it “something wondrous”!

One of Daan’s highlights this year has been the opportunity to accompany some of our films this year. Speaking from my perspective as an audience member, Daan brings something very special to the experience. He had enormous fun yesterday playing for Harold Lloyd’s Hot Water and couldn’t stop laughing from behind the piano!

I asked Daan what attracted him to silent film accompaniment. He had always been interested in classic films and had found out about a master class in improvised film accompaniment in Pordenone. He was pleased to find out that it is still and vibrant and vital part of the cinematic experience.

Improvisation and composition are two aspects of music in which Daan specialises. He told me he can’t think of a time where he wasn’t playing the piano. He found that much of his compositions followed a story and he enjoyed this part of composing. Improvising a score for a film is a perfect way for all these passions to come together for him!

More information about Daan can be found on his website.

Wow – time is flying here at the festival! We’ve just finished our morning screenings of Paths to Paradise and Master of the House. This afternoon brings us Max Linder, Keaton, and Beckett…. all leading up to our Silent Comedy Gala this evening hosted by Rory Bremner.

This afternoon, I had the opportunity to catch up with one of our musicians and previous festival-goer, Daan van den Hurk. I wanted to speak to someone who had been to the festival previously and find out why they return year after year…. but who wouldn’t?

Daan has attended two previous festivals as a viewer. He had found out about the festival when he attended Le Giornate del cinema muto, the annual silent film festival held annually in Pordenone, Italy. It was there that he met David Robinson, who was director of that festival until 2015. David is one of our regular guests, patron, and on the Board of Directors for the Slapstick Festival. David told him enthusiastically that he should attend our festival here in Bristol.

The previous festivals were very fun… Daan says that it is a beautiful festival. It also gives him the opportunity to catch up with David, as well as some of our other musicians. Last year’s highlight for Daan was The Kid. To see it screened in a beautiful hall on an enormous screen just gave it “something wondrous”!

One of Daan’s highlights this year has been the opportunity to accompany some of our films this year. Speaking from my perspective as an audience member, Daan brings something very special to the experience. He had enormous fun yesterday playing for Harold Lloyd’s Hot Water and couldn’t stop laughing from behind the piano!

I asked Daan what attracted him to silent film accompaniment. He had always been interested in classic films and had found out about a master class in improvised film accompaniment in Pordenone. He was pleased to find out that it is still and vibrant and vital part of the cinematic experience.

Improvisation and composition are two aspects of music in which Daan specialises. He told me he can’t think of a time where he wasn’t playing the piano. He found that much of his compositions followed a story and he enjoyed this part of composing. Improvising a score for a film is a perfect way for all these passions to come together for him!

More information about Daan can be found on his website.

Slapstick Festival 2017 – 2 Days In!

Slapstick Festival 2017 – 2 Days In!

It’s Day Two here at the Slapstick Festival – and we are in full swing!

We’ve got our welcome desk set up at the Watershed. If you are coming to one of the events, come and say hello. We’ve also got some great t-shirts, badges, magnets, and posters for sale. They’d make great souvenirs of this year’s festivities!

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Yesterday’s events included NOTFILM, Mon Oncle, Victoria Wood: Let’s Do It, and Shooting Stars. There has been some great audience feedback for yesterday.

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Lucy Porter, Pippa Evans, Andrew Kelly, and Louise Wingrove presented a very funny and touching discussion about the influence of Victoria Wood. A great moment was where instead of the audience asking questions… Lucy and Pippa asked the audience to share their favourite Victoria Wood memories. After a few shy responses, you could tell that people were eager to share!

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Shazia Mirza joined us for a screening of Shooting Stars. After a hilarious introduction, the audience was treated to a romantic thriller with some great insights into how silent films were made. Piano accompaniment was provided for the film by the very talented Daan van den Hurk. We had silent film harpist, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry, provide beautiful music for the short film that was shown as well.

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Today started with David Robinson filling in for Kevin Brownlow to present a screening of Harold Lloyd’s Hot Water. A very funny film that will make you think twice about taking a (live) turkey onto a trolley! Again, we had the wonderful piano accompaniment of Daan van den Hurk.

The audience had some lovely things to say after the screening of Le Soupirant/ The Suitor! It was a great tribute to the late Pierre Étaix, who passed away last year.

Lucy Porter started the afternoon with Why Be Good? starring Colleen Moore and this was followed up by Thomas Graal’s Best Film and the Chaplin short, The Floorwalker (both accompanied by John Sweeney on piano).

As I am writing this, the Watershed is buzzing for our sold-out event for tonight! Robin Ince and Michael Legge will be presenting The People’s Poet: A Celebration of the Stickiest Bogeys of Rik Mayall.

If you haven’t been able to join us so far – there’s still time! Check out our events on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday!

The 2017 Slapstick T-shirt: The Year Of The Custard Pie

The 2017 Slapstick T-shirt: The Year Of The Custard Pie

Slapstick patron and film historian David Robinson provides some context for our special ‘limited edition’ bonus festival t-shirt.

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George Orwell 1024×576 1

This year’s special ‘bonus’ festival T-shirt simply displays George Orwell’s commendation of the custard pie.

Orwell, Britain’s greatest assailant of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, author of 1984 and Animal Farm, defined humour as…

“…dignity sitting on a tin-tack. Whatever destroys dignity, and brings down the mighty from their seats, preferably with a bump, is funny. And the bigger they fall, the bigger the joke. It would be better fun to throw a custard pie at a bishop than at a curate”.

The fun of shying food in people’s faces has been around since the earliest manifestations of pantomime, and officially entered movies in 1909, in Mack Sennett’s Mr Flip (providing the comeuppance of an incorrigible girl molester). Since then it has proliferated both in films (remember Battle of the Century and The Great Race, though sadly Kubrick abandoned a climactic pie scene for Dr Strangelove) and in public life, with recipients as illustrious as Anita Bryant, Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates.

In 2017 the custard pie – real or figurative – has a big future. This year’s Slapstick Gala coincides almost to the minute (given the international time clock) with the inauguration of America’s 45th President – a moment which is confidently predicted to change the world. While we wait, however, the phenomenal by-product of the events has been the rallying of the great American home-screen comedians – Colbert, Noah, Myers, Baldwin and their peers – to form an oppositional Fifth Estate. Comedy has reasserted its role and force in society: the pies are baked and at hand.

May the Custard Pie defend us!

David Robinson.

~

For the unexpurgated version of Orwell’s treatise on the nature of humour, “Funny, but not Vulgar”, go to orwell.ru.

Festival t-shirts and other items of merch can be purchased during Slapstick from our volunteers on the desks at all venues. If there are any remaining t-shirts after the festival we will put them on sale online, but be warned that there are limited numbers of this year’s designs.

Simon Callow On His Passion For Charlie Chaplin

Simon Callow On His Passion For Charlie Chaplin

Slapstick Festival will be welcoming one of the country’s greatest living actors, Simon Callow, to Bristol on the 21st January to present his personal tribute to Charlie Chaplin, a man he considers to have been a major influence on his own career.

In the following excerpt from Simon’s autobiography – My Life in Pieces: An Alternative Autobiography by Simon Callow (which can be bought online here) – we get an insight into what to expect from the show, which also features screenings of three of Chaplin’s masterworks; The Vagabond (1916),  Easy Street (1917) and The Pawn Shop (1917 ) and features a live musical accompaniment by The European Silent Screen Virtuosi.

For more information about the event please visit Colston Hall’s website

Simon Callow
Simon Callow

“During my lifetime, Charlie Chaplin, that multifaceted genius, more famous in his day than Jesus or the Buddha, has been consistently under-rated, not least by actors who, for the most part, profess themselves scornful of the ostentatiousness of his technical skills, nauseated by his sentimentality, and unamused by his comedy. I have always been bewildered by this view. I was introduced to his work by a grandmother who was addicted to it. In those pre-NFT, pre-video, prehistoric days, we would go all over London to catch them. Sometimes the tiny Clifton cinema on Brixton Hill would be showing a three-reeler alongside a Tartan movie, and the cinema in Waterloo Station was a pretty good bet, too, though you never knew what you might get. Of the feature films, especially the ones in sound, there was very little sight. My dear old grandma, a woman who otherwise betrayed very little sense of humour, would shake with laughter, tears rolling down her cheeks, as she re-enacted the scene in The Gold Rush where Chaplin eats his boot. She had no particular mimetic gifts, but somehow she managed to suggest the incongruous delicacy with which the little tramp addresses his task. When I finally saw the film, it was remarkable how much of it she had been able to convey, which I take to be a great tribute to him: it had made such an extraordinary impact on her. His absolute mastery of his own physical instrument is phenomenal, his expressiveness unparalleled. When, as a very young man, he was appearing with Fred Karno in a theatre in Paris, playing the drunken toff which was his most famous role before he created The Tramp, he was summoned at the interval to a box where he was gravely informed by a stocky bearded man with peculiarly penetrating eyes, `Monsieur Chaplin, vous eles WI artiste.’ It was Debussy.

“Both in conception and execution, Chaplin was in a league of his own. The character of The Tramp is a creation of the highest brilliance. In his great book Chaplin: Last of the clowns, the American critic Parker Tyler identifies the elements — the hat, the walk, the moustache — showing where they came from and how Chaplin assembled them; what is harder to explain is why the strange child—man with his tottering, oscillating walk, his bowler hat and his bendy cane is at the same time so funny and so affecting, or how Chaplin makes of him a universal image of humankind, indestructibly optimistic regardless of the setbacks inflicted on him by a capricious destiny. Where is he from, who is he? He has no name, being known only as The Tramp, though he is scarcely what we think of today as a street person. He has distinct sartorial and social aspirations; he is gallant and fastidious, and is a defenceless victim of Cupid’s dart, endlessly falling unsuitably in love at first sight. But he comprehends nothing of the world. He fails to understand that his adorable moues and dazzling smiles hold no sway against the musclemen and plutocrats to whom the women for whom he falls are attached, nor has he the confidence to assert himself against bullies and figures of authority, or the skills to hold down a job. In love and in work, he is unceremoniously shown the door, ending up over and over again in the gutter. But he always picks himself up, brushing himself down with some elegance, as if he were his own valet, proceeding, generally in the company of someone equally ill-favoured, to the next rejection, the next infatuation, the next dashed dream. Hope springs eternal. It is the inevitable repetition of failure, and the constant witty assertion of dignity, that speaks so deeply to us.

“From the beginning, even before the arrival of The Tramp, Chaplin the writer and director was ceaselessly inventive, and his increasingly ambitious structures take the modern world on board with growing complexity. In City Lights, The Tramp is nearly overwhelmed by the sprawling vastness of the metropolis; in Modern Times, he is literally chewed up and spat out by the great heartless machines he is called on to operate. He scarcely belongs to the world in which he finds himself, but, like a cat or a drunk, he negotiates it with crazy grace, dancing away from danger as the structure disintegrates around him. Politically speaking, Chaplin was a radical populist in the mould of Dickens: instinctively identifying with the disadvantaged, naturally suspicious of the establishment, acutely conscious of the dehumanising effect of organised capital. In the America of the Fifties, this meant that he was a de facto Communist, though he was no such thing.

“It was inevitably difficult for Chaplin to maintain the reckless improvisatory brilliance of his early movies. His projects took longer and longer to gestate and indeed to shoot, with a resultant loss of brio; his reluctant embrace of sound robbed them of some of their expressiveness and led to his adoption of somewhat ponderous narrative procedures. There is scarcely a moment of his own performances within them, however, that is without some touch of genius: in The Great Dictator, Hynkel’s dance with the globe and the barber shaving a customer to Brahms’ Fifth Hungarian Dance, the murderous bigamist’s dazzling prestidigitation as he counts up his ill-gotten gains in Monsieur Verdoux. It is in such moments that the golden legacy of Chaplin’s Music Hall background is at its most evident. Elsewhere characterisation and even mise-en-scene tend to creak; the liberal humanitarian message of the films is spelt out rather too clearly, no doubt. The truth is that Chaplin’s art was perfectly suited to the early cinema, and he exploited it more brilliantly than anyone else had done: the medium and the man were made for each other. Then the medium changed, and nothing that he was able to do, despite all his wealth and power, could stop it in its evolution. The Music Hall, too, had died, leaving him stranded in a different world of expression, a point movingly made in Limelight, which should, by rights, have been his last film.

“No actor and no film-maker can fail to learn from the early, pre-sound films, which, especially when shown with live accompaniment as intended, achieve a kind of perfection and create a kind of exhilaration which later cinema has found hard to match.”

Keaton/Beckett

Keaton/Beckett

Wow! It’s been a freezing start to January in Bristol. What’s amazing about January? Hopefully, you are reading this post as a festival fan! It’s now less than two weeks until Slapstick Festival 2017! There is such a great line-up of events this year. Make sure to check out the programme!

I thought I’d take the time this week to explore two of our events that are connected: NOTFILM and When Keaton met Beckett. NOTFILM is a documentary exploring the making of the cinematic collaboration of Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett. The two famously (or infamously) collaborated on FILM, a silent chase film made in the 1960s. Ross Lipman is a film archivist who recently restored FILM, and it was this restoration that inspired him to make his own documentary about the film.

I’ve spent this evening reading a few articles about both films and wanted to share some of the more interesting facts that I’ve found. I’ve not watched either film yet, but I’m hoping to join the audience for what will be a fascinating look at this collaboration. The collaboration appeared to be a rocky one, with both Keaton and Beckett not truly understanding each other. Both events at the festival will provide insight into the work this pair put into the production of FILM. I’ll put the links to the articles at the bottom of this post.

FILM is famous for being Samuel Beckett’s only cinematic work. Buster Keaton was not originally the first choice for the role. Such names as Charlie Chaplin, Jack MacGowran, and Zero Mostel were considered. A great fact regarding this is that Buster Keaton WAS originally approached to perform in the US production of one of Beckett’s most famous plays, Waiting for Godot. Keaton turned it down. The original meeting between Keaton and Beckett regarding the film sounds like it was quite an awkward moment. Beckett was made to wait while Keaton finished an imaginary poker game. Once Beckett was invited in, Keaton only gave one word answers to any questions. Buster Keaton did not appear to be an enthusiastic host.

Leonard Maltin, the famous American film critic and historian, met Buster Keaton on the set of this film when he was 12. Apparently, he crashed the set to meet one of his silent film heroes! One other great bit of trivia is that the cinematographer for FILM, was Boris Kaufman. Kaufman was a cinematographer who worked on On the Waterfront and 12 Angry Men (to name just two). Kaufman was also the younger brother of director Dziga Vertov (Man with a Movie Camera).

NOTFILM, the documentary exploring the making of the film, will be screened at the Watershed on Wednesday the 18th at 11:30. Tickets can be purchased here.

Robin Ince (with special guests) will be presenting a screening of FILM during the event, When Keaton Met Beckett, at Arnolfini on Friday the 20th at 5:40. Tickets for this event can be purchased here.

Two events out of a festival packed full of great ones. It will be such a pleasure to see you at any of the events!

Articles:

The Guardian, NPR, The New Yorker, Moving Image Archive News, The New York Times

In Photos: Michael Crawford – Visual Comedy Legend Award Show

IN PHOTOS: MICHAEL CRAWFORD – VISUAL COMEDY LEGEND AWARD SHOW

In Photos: Michael Crawford – Visual Comedy Legend Award Show

All photos above taken by either David Gillett or Paul Lippiatt.

On Sunday 23rd October 2016 Slapstick welcomed the brilliant Michael Crawford to Bristol to receive the 2016 Aardman Slapstick “Visual Comedy Legend” Award. Although Michael understandably considers himself to be a dramatic actor these days, the award was given him for his incomparable role as Frank Spencer in the BBC’s much lauded smash hit Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, which ran for three series between 1973 and 1978.

Talking about the role of Frank Spencer during the show, Michael explained how he’d always been a fan of comedians such as Charlie ChaplinBuster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy (as well as the great sight inderal generic propranolol gags employed in the days of silent film) and he said that he saw Some Mothers as the ideal opportunity to use such humour himself.

Impressively, Michael performed all of his own stunts during the show’s run too, which of course also aligns him favourably with those great, silent comics of yesteryear.

The Visual Comedy Award show was introduced by the director of Bristol Cultural Development Partnership and Bristol Festival of Ideas, Andrew Kelly, while the in-depth onstage conversation was conducted by writer and cultural commenter Sir Christopher Frayling. The award was presented to Michael by Aardman’s Peter Lord and David Sproxton, as well as Slapstick Festival director Chris Daniels.

In Photos: Slapstick’s Slap Up Feast Of Fun

IN PHOTOS: SLAPSTICK’S SLAP UP FEAST OF FUN

In Photos: Slapstick’s Slap Up Feast Of Fun

On Thursday 29 Sep 2016 Slapstick welcomed John Cleese, Neil Innes, Rory Bremner, Barry Cryer and Ronnie Golden to Colston Hall for a night of comedy and music, hosted by Tim Vine. The evening was a huge success with laughs a plenty, as documented in this review on Bristol 247.

Slapstick photographer Paul Lippiatt was on duty for the evening – check out a selection of his photos below.

In Photos: Stand Out – Stand Up For Slapstick

In Photos: Stand Out – Stand Up For Slapstick

On Wednesday 14th September Slapstick welcomed six brilliant comedians to Colston Hall for a cracking night of top notch stand up comedy. Hosting the night was Mr. Jack Dee, who introduced a veritable slew of performers including Jason Manford, Richard Herring, Susan Calman, Pippa Evans, Tony Hawks and Richard Herring.

Slapstick photographer Paul Lippiatt was on duty for the evening – check out a selection of his photos below.