Interview
WAMG Interview: Josh Samuel Frank – Author of GIRAFFES ON HORSEBACK SALAD, the Marx Brothers/Salvador Dali Unmade Film
Josh Samuel Frank will be speaking Monday November 11th at 1pm at Jewish Community Center’s Staenberg Family Complex in Creve Coeur (2 Millstone Blvd) as part of this year’s 2019 St. Louis Jewish Book Festival. Ticket information can be found HERE
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. But author Josh Frank found it, and, 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. It is the story of two unlikely friends, a Jewish super star film icon, and Spanish painter, and the movie that could have been.
Author Josh Samuel Frank took the time to speak with We Are Movie Geeks about this project.
Interview conducted by Tom Stockman October 28th, 2019
Tom Stockman: This book GIRAFFES ON HORSEBACK SALAD sounds like an absolutely fascinating project. Did you come into this project as a fan of the Marx brothers?
Josh Samuel Frank: My book career started with my interest in lost histories and telling lost histories of artist who inspired me when I was growing up. It started with my book on the band The Pixies. My books since have been like this highway with on and off ramps, connected in one way or another, like a journey. This is where my journey has led me, after my third book, in which I incorporated a lot more illustrations, I approach my books is sort of like these movies that you could read. One of my white whales was always finding a project to do about the Marx Brothers. I thought a good start would to look at some of the great movies that were actually never filmed. That was a perfect template for what I have been working toward, how to tell a movie in a book. The catalyst for my project was to find a great unmade movie and make it. I looked at all these list of “the best movies ,ever made“ that I found online , and this movie GIRAFFES ON HORSEBACK SALAD is on all of them It was not only an unfilmed Marx brothers movie but it was written by Salvador Dali. I’m a huge fan of surrealism and absurdity and was really fascinated with that.
TS: So that was right up your alley. Why was that considered a lost screenplay and how did you go about finding it?
JSF: It was thought that the script was long lost. When you would find information about it online, it was always this one paragraph excerpt. There was this assumption that there was more at one point but no one had ever seen it. I spent two years trying to find more before anything could move forward. The only way I was going to be able to do this book is if I could find enough material for me to adapt. What I discovered was that Dali had never written a full screen play, but unlike what was previously believed, there was more. The big break in my pop-culture case was when I discovered that a museum in Paris had purchased a large lot of Dali’s ratings. This was over 30 years ago. The paragraph that is often cited came from that lot. When I got in touch with the museum, I talked them into sending me PDFs of Dali hand-written notes with the outline of the film.
TS: Was it in English?
JSF: No, it was in French, But there was 80 pages of it. I couldn’t read them because they were in French but that’s when I realized this could be enough to adapt into the book that I wanted to do. My delusion of grandeur idea was that I could complete Dali’s Marx Brothers movie with him, sort of co-write it with him. Fortunately, I had a contact in Paris who was able to translate it for me. While I waited for him to do that, I worried that it might be a big disappointment, that he would send it back and that only maybe two pages had material and it wouldn’t be enough. Or maybe that 80 pages of Dali-speak might just transferred to perhaps four ideas. But when I got the translation there was a good 50 pages of ideas having to do with the movie and it was absolutely enough to create the scenario for the whole idea. I took all of that writing and spent about six months with it until I got to a final script.
TS: But the genesis of this whole project was a friendship between Salvador Dali and Harpo Marx. Why do you think those two men bonded so well?
JSF: One of the exciting things working on this book was that I learned some things about these two incredible artists that had not been previously confirmed or explored. I feel that the book, other than just being fun and surreal and entertaining, sheds a lot of light on both Dali and Harpo as people in ways that we hadn’t seen in previous writings about them. Dali was obsessed with the Marx Brothers especially Harpo because he felt like they were the living incarnation of surrealism.
TS: Dali would’ve been relatively young in 1937.
JSF: Yes, in hindsight, we think of the Dali who was older and so sure of himself. But in his 30s, he had just as many insecurities as an artist as anyone of us, it was actually quite relatable. Through the book I felt like I was able to share this insight into the fact that someone as grand and untouchable as Dali was in a very unsure place in his career, even though he was already famous. There was a struggle going on inside him and when he met Harpo, it was at the height of that. His short but important time with Harpo was a turning point for the next chapter in his career. Even though the movie didn’t happen, I think that you can see how that journey transformed him to the next phase of his career and helped him gain confidence. There were giraffes in GIRAFFES ON HORSEBACK SALAD and even though there was no such movie, the giraffes became one of the most well-known symbols of his work. He used the image of burning giraffes for decades to come. Many of the ideas from GIRAFFES ON HORSEBACK SALAD became staples in his art. People really don’t tie it back to that time, but they very much came from that time. I feel that says a lot about how important that period was for him And Harpo was truly honored that this famed artist was such a big fan.
TS: Now Harpo and Dali wanted to make this film GIRAFFES ON HORSEBACK SALAD, but what about the other Marx Brothers? Did Chico and Groucho read the script,? What did they think of this idea?
JSF: They weren’t classical artist like Harpo was. Harpo was an artist in his personality and his soul. He painted as well, and that was one reason he was so honored with Dali’s attention Harpo and Dali really didn’t care how marketable the film was or how well it would do at the box office. They were coming at it from a classical artist sense, but for Chico and Groucho, it was more business and from that point of view, it was a terrible idea. There was no money to be made with it. People would probably not get it. Given what the Marx Brothers meant to society at that time, there simply wasn’t a place for it. My book events are not the typical book readings and signings. It’s more like a show, like a journey coming from a theatrical background, and the subject matter, I wanted to be more whimsical than just a podium reading from the chapter of the book. One of the things that is a big part of that presentation is that I talk about how important it is to recognize the difference between how the Marx brothers were viewed in the 20’s and 30’s and how they are viewed now. Their resurrection in the 1970s came from the sort of hip art community. The Marx brothers were very subversive. They had timelessness to them and they were surreal. Back in the 30’s they were zany and funny.
TS: They were ahead of their time.
JSF: They were, so it made sense back then and the other brothers and the studio knew that this movie wouldn’t play which just goes to show you how ahead Dali was, because what he wanted to do in the 30’s would fit in perfectly now.
TS: I know that Dali designed some dream sequences for Hitchcock’s SPELLBOUND, but were there other Hollywood projects that Dali was interested in getting involved in?
JSF: He really wanted to. I think one of his biggest regrets was that he didn’t become the most important person in Hollywood. He wanted that. Even at the end of his life he was bitter that Hollywood didn’t embrace him like he was embraced everywhere else. He definitely wanted to make his big Hollywood movie. Some historians have wondered if maybe the point of writing GIRAFFES ON HORSEBACK SALAD was that it would never be made, but after working on this book I feel very strongly that was not the case.
TS: Do you think Dali and Harpo had a certain director in mind for this film?
JSF: Yes. I think the studio would have wanted to get one of the Marx Brothers regular directors but Dali wanted Cecil B. DeMille to direct it. He wanted it to be a big extravaganza. He had very big dreams for this. He wanted Cole Porter to do the soundtrack. We went on and actually completed the soundtrack.
TS: Yes, I was wondering that. Who wrote the songs? Were they inspired by the Marx Brothers?
JSF: When I wrote the book, I added in a big musical numbers to it because Marx Brothers movie always had to have songs. It had to have a love song, it had to have funny song. I reached out to an old friend of mine in Austin, who has now since moved to Japan. He was a jazz musician and composer. He knew Cole Porter backwards and forwards and I put it to him to see if he wanted to compose music for this project. He did such an exceptional job on it, going far beyond the call of duty. He got a full orchestra and a chorus and recorded it in a top studio and I found a top-notch record label to release it. The soundtrack was released a couple of months after the book came out.
TS: What was comedian Tim Heidecker’s role in this project?
JSF: I needed someone who could really help me nail the Marx Brothers banter. I thought finding the best modern day satirist would be a really good anchor for that. I reached out to him and he was just weird and crazy enough to decide that it was worth a little bit of his time. He get it as close as it might have been to a real Marx Brothers project.
TS: Tell me about Spanish artist Manuela Pertega and how she got involved in this project.
JSF: She’s a genius. I found her and wanted to go for complete authenticity on how to make it the most believable vision of what could’ve been. I found her portfolio online and she had not done anything major, but had done a number of illustrations for art magazines in Barcelona Spain and I wanted to find someone from Spain, where Dali was from. She jumped on board with me and she is now my full-time collaborator.
TS: Did you have a chance to speak with Harpo’s son Bill about this project?
JSF: Yes, I went out to his home a number of time and showed him some early sample pages and got his overwhelming approval. He’s just so happy with how it turned out. The greatest compliment I ever had was when Bill Marx told me he loved the book. In some ways he’s the last living Marx brother. He has the soul of Harpo and he’s kept the spirit of his father alive.
TS: Do you think there’s ever a chance that the screenplay may end up being filmed in some way?
JSF: Well we have created it as something of a ready-to-go project. If the right production company was really excited by it, It could really happen.
TS: I could see someone like Terry Gilliam directing it, or possibly as an animated feature.
JSF: Yes, I look forward to that day.
TS: Good luck with GIRAFFES ON HORSEBACK SALAD and we’ll see you at The St. Louis Jewish Book Festival.
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