by Kelly Pickerill
Start popping the corn,
I’m about halfway through the novel Sunnyside by Glen David Gold and let me just say it’s the best book I’ve read in a while. Among the many fictional and historical characters, the novel elliptically revolves around Charlie Chaplin. I don’t know much about Chaplin, and I’d never seen more than snippets of his films, so I’ve been youtubing like crazy after reading about him brainstorming the film A Dog’s Life (he wanted to make a film that was “as good as he was”) and then getting to “witness” its premier just as America was becoming involved in “the war to end all wars.”
I’ll write more later; for now, grab your popcorn, sit back and enjoy the film (this is part one of four, for the rest see the comments), and then go here to get your autographed copy of Sunnyside.
“You’re a genius, which means you’re going to be put under glass. People will still go to your pictures, and because you’re good, they’ll still laugh, but there will always be a windowpane between you and them, because even the most ignorant foreigner will know you’re supposed to be a genius. And even if you stop making movies that are funny, but engage all the known emotions from A to Z, even if you create new emotions that people have never felt, and play them like a harpsichord, you’ll be playing on the other side of a wall that no one will ever climb.”
– Frances Marion to Charlie Chaplin in Sunnyside
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