Giraffes on Horseback Salad: Salvador Dali, the Marx Brothers, and the Strangest Movie Never Made

Description

Surrealist icon Salvador Dali and iconoclast comedians The Marx Brothers planned a never-made film that merged their sensibilities in a sublime mashup of absurdity, surrealism, slapstick, and wit. But the original screenplay was lost...until now. It sounds like fan fiction, but it's true- modern art icon Salvador Dali struck up a friendship with chaotic pantomimer Harpo Marx, which led to a proposed film, Giraffes on Horseback Salad. Rejected by MGM studios, the script was thought lost forever. But author Josh Frank found it, and with comedian and writer Tim Heidecker (Tim and Eric; Tim & Eric's Zone Theory) and Spanish artist and comics creator Manuela Pertega, he's recreated the film that Dali and the Marx Brothers would have made...as a graphic novel that presents the story in all its full-color, fully cinematic, fully surreal glory. In Giraffes on Horseback Salad, normality clashes with imagination as a businessman named Jimmy (played by Harpo) is drawn to the mysterious Surrealist Woman, whose very presence changes humdrum reality into Dali-esque fantasy. With the help of Groucho and Chico, Jimmy seeks to join her fantastical world...but forces of normalcy try to end their romance and pull them down to earth. Josh Frank's expansion of the original film treatment is aided by new Marx Brothers antics created with Tim Heidecker, including comedy bits, songs, and visual gags. Bookending the recreated movie are illustrated text pages that relate real-world events leading to the project, and what happened after. A remarkable plural marriage of art, absurdity, biography, and comedy, Giraffes on Horseback Salad is a cinematic, comedic, and literary experience like no other.

Josh Frank is a writer, producer, director and composer who's worked with some of the most interesting and innovative musicians, filmmakers, producers and artists in the world, including David Lynch, Harold Ramis, and Werner Herzog. He is the author of Fool The World- The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies; In Heaven Everything Is Fine and, in collaboration with Black Francis and Steven Appleby, the illustrated novel The Good Inn. In his spare time, he built, owns, and operates the Blue Starlite Mini-Urban Drive-In Movie Theatre in Austin, Texas, the first Mini Urban Drive-in movie theater in the world. Tim Heidecker is an award-winning comedian, writer, director, actor and musician. He is one half of the comedy team of Tim & Eric, with Eric Wareheim, known for the television shows Tom Goes to the Mayor, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, the film Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie, and the popular book Tim & Eric's Zone Theory. Manuela Pertega was born in Badalona, Spain, a short distance from Figueras, birthplace of Salvador Dali. Growing up, she spent much time in Granada, home town Garcia Lorca, famed poet and close friend of Dali. Influenced by both great artists, she started creating her own stories and drawings at a young age. Manuela graduated from the University of Barcelona with a specialization in drawing and restoration/conservation. Her comics and illustrations have appeared in several small publications such as Fanzine Hey, and she's done scientific illustration for the National Encyclopedia of Health of Spain. Manuela teaches art at Badalona VII, a public art institute, and at La Taca, an art school in Montcada, Spain.

2020 Eisner Award Nominee for Best Adaptation from Another Medium Named a Best Comic & Graphic Novel of March 2019 by B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog "Don't even try to understand; just revel in the weirdness, along with the wonderful photographs and other archival material Frank includes in this book."-Maureen Corrigan, National Public Radio "It's a remarkable book."-The Washington Post "Giraffes on Horseback Salad makes a good book."-Etelka Lehoczky, National Public Radio "A really cool, funny, abstract graphic novel."-CNET "Classic cinema buffs and Dali fanatics will appreciate the care and effort taken by the authors."-Booklist "This graphic novel is utterly one of a kind...the overall page compositions are exceptional, bursting with motion, mind-bending patterns, and wildly shifting color schemes...This messy, imperfect, fearless visual buffet is almost certainly better than any film version would have been."-Publishers Weekly "The graphic novel is a fun read in its own right, and the well-told story behind the story makes it an interesting part of Hollywood's history."-San Diego Jewish World "A book that should satisfy fans of Dali or the Marx Brothers, or anyone looking for something completely outside the norm."-Foreword Reviews "A most strange yet passionately earnest graphic novel...A lavish layout, with a nice overall design and chock full of opening essays and forewords that bring the reader along on Frank's quest to find and bring Dali's half-baked project to full fruition."-Geeks Of Doom "A sense of marvel persists throughout the book."-Hyperallergic "This book is a gallery, a museum, a riotous romp of art that reverberates through personal and public history and will make your dwelling's shelves (and your mind) a little loonier."-The Austin Chronicle