The silent film era was a peak of comedy film splendor that cannot be reproduced to this day. That era produced three great comedy stars, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, who is going to talk about this article.
Compared to Chaplin and Keaton, there may be a little less fans familiar with Lloyd today, but the absolute number is certainly quite large. In fact, in the 1920s, Lloyd was more popular than Chaplin and Keaton, and in Shanghai, China, lloyd's name was known to everyone.
Lloyd talks about the creation of body comedy, and you can't help but listen.
Translation: Magasa
Mr. Lloyd, whenever you're going to start making a movie, how do you get started? What kind of screenwriter do you have on hand? Where do your ideas generally come from? How do you translate ideas into production?
As for screenwriters, in fact, at that time we didn't call them screenwriters, they were called idea men or gag men. At that time, there was no dialogue, it was all business, comedy business, that was the first. So I had a class of writers below, three people, sometimes seven or eight. Give them a high salary, at least $800 a week.
We didn't use a script that year, we started from an idea and enriched it little by little. Gather all the creative men into a room, everyone will discuss behind closed doors, I will go in the morning or evening, they will throw the ideas they have come up with to me one by one, ask for my opinion, and I will judge one by one whether the ideas are suitable for use, whether they can be used in the film.
Then I split up the joke guys to work alone, and the two of them worked together, or in groups, and came back every day to give me an idea. Some of the proposals may not be exceptionally good, but we can pool our efforts to focus on developing it.
Are these ideas all gags? Or something else?
It's almost all jokes, but don't forget our original story. Jokes are the most important, stories are secondary.
When you start thinking about how to create a film, for example, are you looking for a series of jokes that are connected to each other, or are there any core ideas that make all the jokes develop around it?
For example, let's take a specific film as an example, just use the most famous Safey Last, which is more well received by everyone. Let me talk about how it was born.
One day I was walking down Seventh Street in Los Angeles when I saw a lot of people watching the bustle under a tall building, the Brockman Building. As soon as I asked, I learned that there was a "spider man" climbing a tall building with his bare hands, and naturally everyone wanted to see it.
I also stood and watched the meeting, and saw a young man come out, carrying an advertisement, and he quickly began to climb. When he climbed to the third and fourth floors, I couldn't bear to witness it, and my heart mentioned the throat eyes, and I quickly walked away.
I walked through a block, but I couldn't help but look back if he was still there, and I was standing around the corner, not seeing him anymore. But I still couldn't help but look out, and I couldn't believe that anyone could accomplish such a feat.
Eventually he managed to climb to the top of the building and rode a bicycle around the edge of the roof of the building. Seeing this, I decided to go back and meet the lad upstairs and give him my address, and I was at Hal Roach Studios at the time, and I asked the lad to come and see me, and his name was Bill Struthers.
As a result, he came, and we paid him a salary, planning to use him, but we hadn't actually figured out what we were going to shoot. But the idea of climbing the stairs lingered in my mind, and if an idea appealed to me, it would be equally effective for the audience.
So we began to think about how to find a motive to cause the incident of climbing the stairs. I got the writers, sat down to talk, and they gave a basic plot - a young man came from a small town to a big city, found an ordinary errand in a department store, and then wrote to his girlfriend to brag about how awesome he was, and when his girlfriend wanted to see him, he panicked, so he discussed a method with someone, went to talk to the manager, and said that he went to climb a tall building to advertise for the company.
This is the basic plot, which was later refined and modified. This process is equivalent to having a hanger first, and then hanging up the clothes one by one, and the clothes are the goods we want to sell. So we have to improve the jokes, and we can't do it right away, shoot a few paragraphs that we think about, then stop, go home and continue to think. As the filming progresses, the story will always change, pulling the whole body, in short, this is very flexible.
In fact, most of the films, we shoot the ending first, this film is also, first shoot the paragraph of climbing the stairs, after success, we have great confidence and passion to go back and shoot the front. We had a preliminary idea for the beginning, but we haven't decided on it yet.
The American football game at the end of The Freshman was also filmed first, filmed for two days, but we never found the passion and feeling we should have, so we gave up for the time being and started shooting from scratch.
The Freshman film is based on a thematic structure, the boy desperately wants to be the most popular person in college, but he screwed things up at the beginning, his father is right, he will be repaired very badly, the truth is, that is the theme, he wants to become the most popular person in the school, and then there is a series of difficulties and troubles.
You mentioned themes, do all your films have some kind of theme or similar clues?
Yes, yes, you have to have a theme, and the more useful the theme, the greater the chance of making a good film. The so-called theme is right, I will give another example, the climbing of the building in Safety Last, the friend of mine in the film, he should have climbed.
But he was in trouble, the police were looking for him, he said, there is no way to climb, unless you get rid of the police, so let me pretend to be him to climb the stairs, just need to climb one floor is enough, and then slip back from the window, we change, I climbed the rest, I was scared to death, said that there is no way to climb even one floor, but he convinced me.
I started to climb the first floor, and unfortunately the police found him, he ran into the building, the police chased after him, I climbed another floor, he asked me to climb another floor, wait for him to get rid of the police and then change back, the result I climbed another floor, he could not shake off, I kept climbing, he said every time, you climb one more floor, wait for me to get rid of the police.
That's what I'm saying is useful, and every time the audience thinks I'm going to be liberated and don't have to climb anymore, it makes the story more powerful because you hoist the audience's expectations — when will the guy come and help him out?
Trouble is one of the most important elements of comedy because it can take many variations. You look for a newspaper, and the most popular thing in the newspaper is trouble and misery, at least 75% of it, which is very conservative, and the same is true for radio or television news.
I think it's because people look back at themselves when they see bad news and think they're not in trouble, which is fine. If everything is fine in the movie, no one will come to see it. If someone wants to kill you, if they want to arrest you, and your money is gone, the audience will think, how can he solve it? Comedy is the process of conquering these obstacles.
When you and the "laughing man" think about the joke, how do you decide which one to use and discard the other? How do you tell if your audience will share your preferences?
There are a few points. I've had experience over time. This is the basic skill, but also the instinct, to judge what is really funny and what is boring. This process, in other words, is "to extract the essence". There used to be a joker man who gave me more jokes than anyone else, but I still have to say that only one in twenty of his ideas are good, and most of the others are not very good.
Later, I stopped taking pictures and introduced him to other people, and others told me that the person you introduced was very bad, and most of the ideas he gave me could not be used. Those people are wrong, they always think that every idea has to come in handy, that's impossible. The essence that can only be obtained occasionally is worth all the useless ideas. You have to have your own judgment to discover good ideas, which is what I'm good at in the comedy industry. I don't know if it was practiced or if I was born with skill, I don't know.
It should be born. I want to ask you, you went through a lot of professional training in theater, you tried a lot of comedy roles before you decided to specialize in "Glasses Man" - the guy we know best. Do you think that with organized training, everything can be learned? For example, if a student enters our university and undergoes certain training, can he become you?
This cannot be precise to that point. I think anyone who succeeds, he has to love that line of work, and then start to study, observe, and practice repeatedly to know whether he is a genius or a common man. But I do think the vast majority of people don't have comedy cells; maybe someone can go through training for a lifetime, but the only thing they find in the end is that they're on the wrong path.
Maybe some people in life are very funny, whether it is a man or a woman, usually a smile is hilarious, when the party is the pistachio of friends, so some people say, you really should go to comedy. Well, if you really put that person to act, you will find that he is helpless in front of the audience, and his jokes, which only close friends find funny, are completely ineffective for ordinary audiences. It's another story entirely.
On the contrary, a successful comedy star, whether he is a juggler troupe, a film, or a television player, no matter what medium he comes from, you look at him offstage, it is likely that he is not a funny person at all, and he does not have any desire to play humor with people in life. Maybe it's a disguise, like most people, but they do want to appear in front of people in a different way, to express themselves in a different way. Actors are always expressing themselves in different ways.
Can you sum up what is the essence of your comedy and what is the essence of your comedic image over the years?
My character is usually your boy next door, wearing a pair of glasses. His thinking was slightly different from the average person's. In most of the stories we make, he never seems to have a chance to succeed, or he faces difficulties that simply cannot be overcome.
But he always gave his all, no matter how desperate, he bravely moved forward and finally won. So he should be a character that you can enjoy, so you will pay empathy. He's a weird guy, funny, and miserable, and he's going to impress you in the end. You can make fun of him, but that's not just making fun of him, you're encouraging him. If you want to explore the nature of comedy, it never ends.
For me, I always feel that your character, more than all other comedians, reflects the image of our country, and all the characters in your films are the embodiment of the American personality, and I mean always pursue success with hope, and there is a lot of relationship between this, do you think so?
I've read a few articles that make similar observations. But as I said, I play ordinary people on the streets and alleys, passing by you every day, wearing the clothes worn by ordinary people, and his glasses may be the only feature. That's the way he sees things, it's his weakness, it's his starting point for overcoming difficulties. That's where comedy comes from. You can't think of him as a generic comedic character, and I don't want to design him as a freak — a lot of comedy stars like to do that. He's just an average boy you'll like. You will be interested in the trouble he has, because his trouble is also your trouble.
It may be these ordinary qualities that make him universal.
Of course, everything has its own approach, and in the same situation, you let ten people deal with it, and each person must be different. You'll find that one person can do a beautiful job, but others may not. For example, I think of George Gobel now, who has a very personal style, and so does Gleason
Tell me about your favorite piece?
There are three. Grandma's Boy, Safety Last and The Freshman.
I've noticed that much of your comedy is based on adventure, suspense, danger, and romantic love. This was a great success in the silent film era. Do you think the advent of sound films has made your style very difficult?
Yes, sound movies do bring some difficulties. First we have to have a clearer story, and then put the dialogue in. Before, we could think of the silent film period as pantomime, and action came first. It's impossible for the audience to read your lips, but the dialogue comes in, meaning you have to sit down and say something about life. This is not the same in the production process.
Although I didn't have any trouble joining the sound at the beginning, I thought it would be much better if I had a few good dialogue writers. In fact, comedy at the beginning of the sound film era relied too much on verbal gimmicks rather than action. Mime performances are gone, but have recently begun to resurgence.
For a long time, comedy became a contest of playful words, and a sentence had to shake the baggage. The comedy of the visual stream disappeared, so there was a return later, for example, Red Skelton used a lot of pantomime techniques, and Jack Benny was very clever to put the pantomime method into the TV show. Jackie Gleason also did a good job, and Danny Kaye, a lot of people.
I think they're all smart, and that's about to become a lost craft. They all realize that you don't really need to talk every minute, and that's not the case in real life. George Stevens, a very good director, is the best comedy director to practice this way, and his films can be long without dialogue, very real. John Ford was another one who did it. But for a long time, people thought it was necessary to keep talking.
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Edit: Xia Xia
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