Giraffes on Horseback Salad

When the Pandemic was rolling in my friend Peter Bochner said ‘why don’t we plan to do something – look to the future? Get out?” The plan was to go to a lecture in June sponsored by the Jewish Arts Collaborative in Newton – it was  talk by Josh Frank who has produced a graphic novel based on a near mythical unmade movie that Surrealist giant Salvador Dali planned for the Marx Bros. It was called Giraffes on Horseback Salad. Peter is my Surrealist Brother and I said ‘yes’.

Well lo and behold – I don’t think we could have imagined this – but lockdown is still going on, at least in terms of gatherings of a few dozen or so old Marx Bros fans. But the event took place on-line via Zoom and I took notes.

Josh Frank adapted an unearthed Dali story, reimagined it in graphic novel format. He hunted down the lost story and adapted it to what it could have been, with the help of Manuela Pertega as the illustrator she lives in Barcelona Spain. Frank really provided an engaging, casual narrative of this story’s journey.

Background : About 8 y ago Frank finished 3^rd book - written w Black Francis of the Boston band the Pixies. Frank was doing ‘lost histories’ – or the ‘history below the history’ …. Or, What is behind what little we know of some events or people. He wrote about the Pixies, Peter Ivers (an ill-fated musician who worked with David Lynch, Devo and many others) – “deep cut” things.

His original background is film studies, and Frank’s day job down in Austin, Texas for a few years has been owner of a chain of drive-in movies, “A good business to be in at the moment.”

After completing his previous book he went through lists of great unmade movies of all time. “Every amazing film maker has one,” he said. In all these lists, he said, one film kept showing up. It was Giraffes on Horseback Salad. Dali wanted to film it with the Marx Bros.

It was hard to find info about the unrequited  project online…but he kept coming back to the idea that he could make the first Marx bros movie in 60 years, or, put another way, finish an unmade Salvador Dali movie. He went on a quest to see if there was more than the one paragraph description that generally stood on the Web to tell what the movie would have been.

What is the Plot of Giraffes on Horseback Salad?

Dali’s notes for the film describe a surrealist woman who throws incredible parties. She can conjure her dreams into the real world. This is observed by a male character, named Jimmy, who is a businessman with incredible dreams and inventions that he makes happen thru industry. Surrealist woman, on the other hand, creates absurdism .. and brings fantasy to the world.

The story pitch: It’s about an artist coming to an understanding, trying to reconcile the world with his dreams. That is Art vs feet-on-the-ground logical thinking.

Where was Dali in his trajectory at this time.. the mid 1930s?

Dali had been thrown out of his native Spain and the coup-happy Surrealist Movement. He had created Persistence of Memory and it was a hit.. but what was next? That is where this story begins. It was 1936 and Harpo was on a press tour of Europe for Night at the Opera -- he was in Paris…and Dali had heard that he would be at particular , and he went to party specially to meet him…Dali was a fan of the Marx Bros and Harpo. They hit it off, soon started pen-palling when Harpo went back to Calif. Dali sent him a harp with barbed wire strings for Christmas. Harpo loved it.  They sat for and painted each other. Harpo was a dedicated painter, as Frank’s studies reveal.

Dali wanted to make a Marx bros movie and Harpo encouraged him. Dali did a number of painting and sketches related to the movie.

Via the Dali Foundation Frank found a copy of Dali’s Giraffes on Horseback Salad writings in Portuguese -  to show you the span of the weirdness, “Harpo” appears on Page 875. This had been in a box in the Pompadou Museum and Paris – he reached out to the Museum to see if someone could see if there was more there in the archives.. and they sent some pdfs of pages in French ….

He got 100 pages of handwritten text by Dali in French. That converted into 80 pages of Giraffes on Horseback Salad …I take it that Dali merely had occasional cues to ‘’insert Marx Bros mayhem’’, so Frank got comedian Tim Heidegger and a writing team to help with the Marx Bros. dialog.

In short, said Frank, “the story was kind of crazy.”

He got plenty of assistance with the project. “People helped because they wanted to see the movie too,” just like him. He showed the first pages to Bill Marx -- Harpo ‘s son – seeking guidance.

The big hurdle was dissecting the DNA of the whole story. What was Dali trying to say as an artist? Frank asks this question while admitting that figuring it out kind of defeats purpose of surrealism.

Of course, he wondered what it would be like if the Marx Bros actually made it. So, he brought Marx Bros’ producers Irving Thalberg into the story. The bottom line, the big snafu, comes via the words of Groucho who concludes: “It won’t play.”

Grouch and Chico were making a living – while Harpo was making a living and pursuing art, Frank indicates. Things might have been different in another era – which, for me, brings to mind some of Buster Keaton’s very late work, which could have joined a high-art Surrealist portfolio as easily as falling of a giraffe.

Harpo thought it was weird but he encouraged Dali.

Frank likes the freedom that working with an illustrator affords, and what a graphic novel offers versus film with all film’s associated expenses.

“An illustrator is like a cinemaphotographer who can make movies that couldn’t be made otherwise,” he said. “I made a multiple million-dollar movie without spending multiple millions of dollars.”

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https://www.horsebacksaladbook.com/

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