Packaging and Booklet for "American Slapstick v.2"

[David B Pearson]

Was anybody thinking?

DBP

[Agnes McFadden]

Yes, David Kalat was .

I believe that the booklet was intended to accompany the DVD set. It was planned for a release earlier in the year through Facets.

When Facets delayed, then the deal fell through, VCI picked up the pressing and distribution of the set, but they were not able to accomodate the booklet.
David was kind enough to make it available on-line for us. I printed it out and put it with the box set as if they had come together in the shrink wrap.

These are hard times, and we are lucky to have the set. Fortunately, David found a way to get us the booklet after VCI chose not to include it.


If I made any mistakes here, someone please correct me.


Agnes McFadden

[Richard M Roberts]

Yes, David Kalat was .

I believe that the booklet was intended to accompany the DVD set. It was planned for a release earlier in the year through Facets.

When Facets delayed, then the deal fell through, VCI picked up the pressing and distribution of the set, but they were not able to accomodate the booklet.
David was kind enough to make it available on-line for us. I printed it out and put it with the box set as if they had come together in the shrink wrap.

These are hard times, and we are lucky to have the set. Fortunately, David found a way to get us the booklet after VCI chose not to include it.


If I made any mistakes here, someone please correct me.


Agnes McFadden

Ahmmm, Agnes, I think David's talking about the AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 2 set, not BECOMING CHARLEY CHASE.

It's okay, it's early.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[David B Pearson]

Yes, David Kalat was .

I believe that the booklet was intended to accompany the DVD set. It was planned for a release earlier in the year through Facets.

When Facets delayed, then the deal fell through, VCI picked up the pressing and distribution of the set, but they were not able to accomodate the booklet.
David was kind enough to make it available on-line for us. I printed it out and put it with the box set as if they had come together in the shrink wrap.

These are hard times, and we are lucky to have the set. Fortunately, David found a way to get us the booklet after VCI chose not to include it.


If I made any mistakes here, someone please correct me.


Agnes McFadden

Ahmmm, Agnes, I think David's talking about the AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 2 set, not BECOMING CHARLEY CHASE.

It's okay, it's early.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

Exactly Richard. I've bought BECOMING CHARLEY CHASE on the basis of you review, and on the high standards of David Kalat's previous efforts -- at least in the area of where digital transfer of silent film is concerned. Or in the rare finds involved either.

And I do not question the digital content in the AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 2 set. Lots of interesting and good stuff there.

However, I really got to question the thinking behind the AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 2 box and booklet.

I repeat... was ANYBODY thinking? Or at least paying attention?

Let's look at it point-by-point. First, the box:

1) The title AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 2. What does that mean? Is this a documentary series? If it is, does one need AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 1 for these discs to make sense?

2) The title AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 2 is written in a typeface that is freakin hard to read. which is sad because one would think the one thing on the box that should be readable is the title of the product. That this was dumb is self-evident in that the designer of the box abandoned it when repeating the title on the sleeve panel, opting instead for a blander, but at least legible, title.

3) Why on earth is Snub Pollard featured on the cover of this??? Why not Harold Lloyd? Lloyd stars in five shorts in this set, more than any other comedian. Further, Lloyd has five times the market value of Snub Pollard. Correction: make that five THOUSAND times the value. Indeed, titling the set AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 2: THE EARLY FILMS OF HAROLD LLOYD & FRIENDS would have given people at least a clue as to what they were purchasing. Instead, no mention of Harold on the cover. Indeed, no mention of Snub either. Looks like one just needs to know it's Snub on one's own.

4) A quite nice color-tinted image of Lloyd is on the back cover... but of course it's the wrong Lloyd. Now, if there is one comedian with even less of a public identification than Snub Pollard, it is Lloyd V. Hamilton... so not identifying the poor slob as being Ham is even more bewildering.

5) The text on the back cover that follows are a collection of generalized statements about silent film comedy that manages the neat trick of not admitting which film comedians are on the set, what films they are in, or even that this is a set of mostly comedy short films! Adding insult upon injury, Syd Chaplin's feature "Charlie's Aunt" is so completely buried that a potential buyer wouldn't have the slightest clue it was lurking inside the set.

6) The back cover concludes with a long list of credits and thanks yous... although the dumbfounded potential buyer looking at the box might consider such thanks quite dubious, and the producers seemed quite ashamed to come clean about what's inside this Forrest Gump Chocolate Box.

With a jacket presentation that would give all but the most stalwart silent comedy mafioso pause, let us assume that there are those curious enough to slap down the cash to buy AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 2 anyway, just for the perverse desire to see what's inside the damned thing, so they get the set, and open the box for the booklet inside.

7) The booklet has the same cover image as the box, with the same gawd-awful font as on the jacket, and with same lack of basic information. Page two has more thank yous (for what, we still do not know). Page three features the image of a fellow wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a boater named Harold Lloyd, although the booklet gives not the slightest aid to alerting the buyer to this fact.

8) On page four, David Kalat gives a pleasant "prologue" to the set, arguing some very strong points in improving education of the general public about silent comedy, without revealing a single item of what the buyer had just bought. Instead Kalat mentions the names of six of the most important comedians of the era... most of whom do not appear on this product.

9) On pages 5-14, Steve Massa at last begins to lift the fog by providing excellent thumbnail sketches of the comedians on these DVDs. Unfortunately, Steve doesn't tell us in which film titles (on THESE DVDs) that the comedians are in. Steve DOES provide us with excellent examples of each comic's work, but they are mostly NOT the ones on THIS series. One is left with the question: "Okay, these guys are in this, but what the HELL are they in???"

10) Inside back cover has the normal extended thank you credits. I normally have no problem with this whatsoever as there are a lot of people doing a lot of hard work to make any professional product possible. But silly me, I have this crazy idea that it might have been good, prior to this page, to actually let the PEOPLE who -- at this point -- already BOUGHT the damned DVDs, KNOW what they paid for!

11) At last, on the FINAL page of the booklet, we find the titles of the films, how long they are, and the date of their release. But we do not discover WHICH comedians -- that Steve Massa had just spent ten pages outlining for us -- are in WHICH of these well hidden titles. Instead, the buyer gets the enormous thrill of getting yet another set of thank you credits, mostly to the three men most heavily credited on the page just previous to this one!

The cumulative effect of all this is damning. That "Luke Joins the Navy" starred Harold Lloyd seems to pale in significance to awe-inspiring fact that Bruce Lawton supplied the source material. That Billy West is brilliant in "The Hobo" is not nearly as important as Dave Stevenson having a print of it. And David Kalat having a copy of "Kid Speed" on 16 or 35 seems FAR more important than Larry Semon's performance. (Well, in the latter case, that might be true). The credits end up looking like something Buster Keaton would have fun with.

Worse, all this undercuts the entire purpose of the project -- to present wonderful, funny films by very good comedians who do not deserve to be forgotten. The DVDs in AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 2 serves these comedians well. The DVD jacket and booklet do not. And one sees the latter two first... and second.

Obviously 99% of Kalat's efforts went into making the DVDs as fine as possible. That 1% print icing is the Catch 22.

[Gary Johnson]

Good Lord! I think David has a lot of time on his hands....

You spent more time on this booklet than I did reviewing disc 2 of Chases's shorts.

Gary J.

[David B Pearson]

Good Lord! I think David has a lot of time on his hands....

You spent more time on this booklet than I did reviewing disc 2 of Chases's shorts.

Gary J.

I take print presentation seriously.

:-)

[Gary Johnson]

I see that but I would be much more interested in hearing
your views on the actual comedies included in the disc.

And that goes for everyone else on board.
Any reviews or analysis of "American Slapstick 2"?

Gary J.

[Richard M Roberts]

I see that but I would be much more interested in hearing
your views on the actual comedies included in the disc.

And that goes for everyone else on board.
Any reviews or analysis of "American Slapstick 2"?

Gary J.

Now, Now, David made some salient points, I have to admit that I wasn't thrilled with the cover art on that set, as much as I like Ralph Steadman lettering, I couldn't read what it said either. And he wasn't very nasty about it.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Steve Massa]

David makes a number of good points. I really think the booklet needed a list of the films with detailed credits and cast.

Steve

[David Kalat]

I'm coming late to this party, but David Pearson has put a lot of time and thought into making some valid critiques, and I'm more than happy to defend my choices. To answer the big question, "Was anybody thinking?", the fact is every one of these elements was the direct result of some serious consideration. Now, you may not agree with my conclusions--I assume you won't agree, even, but I can explain the logic.

1) The title AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 2. What does that mean?

AMERICAN SLAPSTICK was intended to be a brand name for a series of releases. AMERICAN SLAPSTICK VOLUME 1 was a 3 disc set published through Image in 2006, and is still available. I had crude, unformed plans for AMERICAN SLAPSTICK VOLUME 3 but given sales, I wouldn't be holding my breath for it if I was you.

2) The title AMERICAN SLAPSTICK 2 is written in a typeface that is freakin hard to read.

My graphic designer, David Landis, included that handcut lettering on the first draft of the cover and I fought for it ever since. Facets didn't want me to use it and argued for a change--but my feeling is that the difficulty one might have in reading it never really manifests itself as a problem. Virtually no stores carry this, nor did we ever expect many to. Most users will find it by searching through Amazon, in which case the web browser prints the title very neatly even if we didn't have a title on the cover at all, or may find it by browsing the shelves at a store, in which case the spine (or top sticker) is what they'd read--and as you noted, we didn't use the crazy lettering on the spine. Why crazy letters at all? I wanted something that felt old, and handmade, but which didn't play into too many cliches of silent films. There are silent film typefonts that get used all the time, but this lettering conveyed the anarchy and chaos of the contents of this set, in my opinion.

3) Why on earth is Snub Pollard featured on the cover of this??? Why not Harold Lloyd?

In this forum here, I am speaking to an audience of silent comedy aficionados for whom anyone on the cover would be recognized. But I also hoped to reach a wider audience of non-specialists, whom I assumed would not recognize anybody. In other words, I take for granted that the average consumer of this set does not know who Snub is and doesn't recognize him--that's not the point. What I wanted was a face that screamed "silent comedy," and Snub's walrus moustache does that. Harold's there, right behind him, but small and probably unrecognizable.

Back in 2006, for the first set, Image demanded that Charlie Chaplin be on the cover. I tried to fight that, because I felt it was dishonest to put Chaplin on a set of stuff in which he appeared in maybe 15 minutes out of 280. But I lost that fight.

At Facets, with more creative control over the product, I did consider highlighting Lloyd, but I was worried once again that there was something vaguely dishonest about overemphasizing him. This is intended to be a comedy sampler. Your reference to chocolates is apt--if all you want is plain milk chocolate, go buy a milk chocolate bar. This one's got nuts and nougat and coconut. So I put nuts on the box.

4) A quite nice color-tinted image of Lloyd is on the back cover... but of course it's the wrong Lloyd. Now, if there is one comedian with even less of a public identification than Snub Pollard, it is Lloyd V. Hamilton... so not identifying the poor slob as being Ham is even more bewildering.

Again, the images chosen were not chosen to be representative of the specific contents, but of the general flavor of what to expect. If you know who Ham is, great--but I did a screening here in Chicago for an audience who wouldn't have known that name and wouldn't have cared--they came to this to be introduced to these comedians, which happens inside the set.

5) The text on the back cover that follows are a collection of generalized statements about silent film comedy that manages the neat trick of not admitting which film comedians are on the set, what films they are in, or even that this is a set of mostly comedy short films! Adding insult upon injury, Syd Chaplin's feature "Charlie's Aunt" is so completely buried that a potential buyer wouldn't have the slightest clue it was lurking inside the set.

Similar to my comments above, I wrote this blurb to be an enticement to potential buyers for whom the specifics of the contents would not be meaningful--I assumed that the kinds of specialist fans reading this post would be able to find the contents listed at Amazon or such places, and would let that guide their buying decisions. My principal goal--and I'll concede it as naive--was to win non-specialists to the case.

This whole thing was based on my experience with David Shepard's SLAPSTICK ENCYCLOPEDIA. Prior to that DVD set, my knowledge of the genre was limited to the major star comedians. When I looked at the contents of that set, I was bewildered--I didn't know who these people were or what to expect. But I trusted Mr. Shepard to guide me right, and in watching the discs I learned a lot, and fell in love.

I hoped to capture some of that same magic--to package the set in a way that would be geared to newcomers, and then arrange the contents in such a way that the films and comics could explain themselves.

6) The back cover concludes with a long list of credits and thanks yous... although the dumbfounded potential buyer looking at the box might consider such thanks quite dubious, and the producers seemed quite ashamed to come clean about what's inside this Forrest Gump Chocolate Box.

Getting access to these films meant cashing in various favors and exploiting the generosity of many people and institutions--thanking them publicly was both the right thing to do, and in some cases contractually warranted. Once you account for the stuff that had to be on the back cover for one reason or another and a reasonably interesting blurb, there just wasn't space to list all the titles.


7) The booklet has the same cover image as the box, with the same gawd-awful font as on the jacket, and with same lack of basic information. Page two has more thank yous (for what, we still do not know).

This was dictated by Facets' company policy on layout for the booklets.


8) On page four, David Kalat gives a pleasant "prologue" to the set, arguing some very strong points in improving education of the general public about silent comedy, without revealing a single item of what the buyer had just bought. Instead Kalat mentions the names of six of the most important comedians of the era... most of whom do not appear on this product.

This is true. What can I say?

9) On pages 5-14, Steve Massa at last begins to lift the fog by providing excellent thumbnail sketches of the comedians on these DVDs. Unfortunately, Steve doesn't tell us in which film titles (on THESE DVDs) that the comedians are in. Steve DOES provide us with excellent examples of each comic's work, but they are mostly NOT the ones on THIS series. One is left with the question: "Okay, these guys are in this, but what the HELL are they in???"

Don't blame Steve, or any of the wonderful folk who contributed essays. I overbooked essayists and ended up with too much text to fit into the booklet, and edited the essays to make them fit. I made the editorial decision that if you've just seen a film with Billy Bevan and want to know more about who he was, the most important text should be about his career as a whole, not this particular film--because I make no claims that these films represent the most important work by these comedians, so a good bio wouldn't necessarily emphasize "Be Reasonable," for example.

10) Inside back cover has the normal extended thank you credits. I normally have no problem with this whatsoever as there are a lot of people doing a lot of hard work to make any professional product possible. But silly me, I have this crazy idea that it might have been good, prior to this page, to actually let the PEOPLE who -- at this point -- already BOUGHT the damned DVDs, KNOW what they paid for!

A fair point. As I said, my intention was to let the films speak for themselves and to have the booklet only supplement that experience, not guide it. The onscreen menus and narration was intended as the guide--I would hope that someone could watch the sets and never touch the booklet and still be entertained and illuminated.

In hindsight, it is demonstrably clear that the si-com fans are the only ones who did buy this--so my logic falls on its face over and over. But hindsight is always 20/20, and I don't regret TRYING to reach a more mainstream audience. This stuff is funny--it doesn't have to be locked away in a vault labeled "nostalgia" and attended to only by the existing brethren of converts.

I remember being 12 years old and finding Walter Kerr's book on a library shelf. I'd seen some Chaplin and Keaton films sporadically and without context--I'm not sure at that age if I even could tell the two apart. But I was curious, and I read the book--and it opened whole new worlds for me.

But that was a BOOK. A book about movies. Shouldn't the movies themselves be even more powerful? What if instead of getting that book at age 12, I'd instead gotten something like this DVD set and got to explore it for myself--I'd have liked some, hated some... I still do. Someday I'll build a time machine and go back in time and murder Larry Semon :) But as I packaged this set, I tried to put myself back in that 12 year old mindset and remember, as best as I could, what it was about that book on a library shelf that caught my eye, and try to mirror that in this.

It didn't work for everybody. It didn't work for you.

11) At last, on the FINAL page of the booklet, we find the titles of the films, how long they are, and the date of their release. But we do not discover WHICH comedians -- that Steve Massa had just spent ten pages outlining for us -- are in WHICH of these well hidden titles. Instead, the buyer gets the enormous thrill of getting yet another set of thank you credits, mostly to the three men most heavily credited on the page just previous to this one!

Fair point. If I had it to do over again, I can't really defend that decision. As you can see from the digital version of the BECOMING CHARLEY CHASE booklet, I did take a different tack with it on the analogue of this page there.

But for the record--I love David Landis' cover art and crazy letters. If I had it to do over again, and someone showed me a mathematical proof that if I changed that for a nice picture of Harold lloyd and clean letters that I'd increase sales by 25%... I'd still stick that goofy Snub grin. What's the point of making DVDs if you can't do 'em the way you want?