Showing posts with label The Glass Character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Glass Character. Show all posts

Monday, August 31, 2015

The Glass Character: introducing Harold Lloyd!




THE GLASS CHARACTER  

A novel by Margaret Gunning

Published in April 2014 by Thistledown Press

I would like to introduce you to my third novel, The Glass Character, a story of obsessive love and ruthless ambition set in the heady days of the Jazz Age in the 1920s. This was a time when people went to the movies almost every day, living vicariously through their heroes: Valentino, Garbo, Fairbanks and Pickford. But comedians were the biggest draw, and broad slapstick the order of the day - with one very significant exception.




Standing beside Keaton and Chaplin in popularity and prowess was a slight, diffident man named Harold Lloyd. He hid his leading man good looks under white makeup and his trademark black-framed spectacles. Nearly 100 years later, an iconic image of Lloyd remains in the popular imagination: a tiny figure holding on for dear life to the hands of a huge clock while the Model Ts chuff away 20 stories below.

With his unique combination of brilliant comedy and shy good looks, Lloyd had as many female followers as Gilbert or Barrymore. Sixteen-year-old Muriel Ashford, desperate to escape a suffocating life under her cruel father's thumb, one day hops a bus into the unknown, the Hollywood of her dreams. Though the underside of her idealistic vision is nasty and fiercely competitive, she quickly lands extra work because of her Pickford-esque ability to smile and cry at the same time.



When her idol Harold Lloyd walks on the set, her life falls into a dizzy whirl of confusion, attraction, and furious pursuit. Muriel tries on and sheds one identity after another: bit actress, waitress in a speakeasy, "girl reporter", script writer - while Lloyd almost literally dances in and out of her desperately lonely world, alternately seducing her and pushing her away.

While researching this book, I repeatedly watched every Lloyd movie I could get my hands on. I was astonished at his subtlety, acting prowess and adeptness at the art of the graceful pratfall. His movies are gaining new popularity on DVD (surprisingly, with women sighing over him on message boards everywhere!). The stories wear well and retain their freshness because of the Glass Character's earnest good nature and valiant, sometimes desperate attempts to surmount impossible challenges.



Introduction: Why Harold Lloyd?

The Glass Character is a fictional account of a young girl’s experiences inHollywood from approximately 1921 to 1962, in which she develops a relationship with silent film comedian Harold Lloyd. Though I did extensive research in exploring the era in general and his life in particular, this story is not intended to be a biography of Lloyd. My main purpose was to communicate atmosphere: the excitement, exuberance and joy of these “high and dizzy” times.


Though I have the greatest respect for the memory of Harold Lloyd, who is in my mind one of the most charismatic performers in screen history, I did not wish to paint him as a two-dimensional figure or a saint. Though his behaviour is not always exemplary in this story, I tried to portray him as I came to believe he was: a human being of enormous complexity, phenomenal talent, and a basic midwestern decency that served him for a lifetime. This is not the Harold Lloyd, but a Harold Lloyd, a personal, fictional portrayal of a supremely gifted artist based on deep research and multiple (and very enjoyable) viewings of his remarkable films.




With his boyish good looks and appealing everyman persona, Lloyd was no less than the inventor of an entire film genre: the romantic comedy. These sample remarks from YouTube (all by women) indicate a charm and magnetism that reaches across generations:

I think he was and still is one of the most attractive men ever to walk the earth. I absolutely love him!

Each time I watch his movies I fall in love a little more.  He is sooooooofunny and the most handsome man ever!

Talented, funny, smart, creative and damn gorgeous!

I find him really attractive with his glasses on, and you can’t beat that half-shy, half-sly smile of his.

I don’t want to say it but he is in my fantasies. . . sigh.

I doubt if George Clooney could inspire such rhapsodic praise.





When I sat down to write, words often tumbled out at a fever pitch. Many of the scenes came to me out of sequence, as if I were shooting a movie. Inspiration had a timetable of its own and sometimes happened on holiday (can you believe I almost missed the Grand Canyon?). This had never happened to me before, and I had to take a few leaps of faith to believe I could ever piece it all together.

Plunging into his pictures to such depth, I experienced an immediacy, even an intimacy I had never known before. I was breathing in the gunpowder and the dust and the sweating horses and the she-loves-me/she-loves-me-not flowers and the white greasepaint. I could hear “roll ‘em” and “cut!” and “damn, we’ll have to do that again.” I was seeing that wonderful “half-shy, half-sly” smile of his in person. 





Though Lloyd’s work has been gloriously reborn through the medium of DVD, he is still too frequently seen as a bronze medallist after those two other legendary figures from the silent age: Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. It’s time to throw away useless comparisons and hierarchies (is Picasso “better” than Van Gogh? And how about Rembrandt – why does the poor fellow always come in third?), and appreciate Lloyd’s movies for what they are. He is so much more than the “everyman” of popular description. His Glass Character is a subtle, slightly surreal, heart-touchingly brave and boyish silent clown, and if you don’t watch out, he will take up residence in your heart, perhaps for good.

This is Harold Lloyd the way I see him. I hope you enjoy this story.




Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!


Saturday, February 14, 2015

And now a word from our sponsor









The strange things that happen




     I swear I don't know how this happened, but it's WAY weird.




Somehow-or-other, one of my normal little giffy-gifs got transformed into THIS.




And from there, it went like this. . . 




And THIS. . . go figure.









Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!



Thursday, May 29, 2014

Searching for Rich Correll, take 2




(This post originally ran more than three years ago. Since then, a lot has happened - The Glass Character finally saw print! - and a lot didn't. It is of some benefit to realize there was a time, ONLY three years ago, when I didn't think I'd connect with RC at all.  I have his phone number in LA now, which would've seemed like a miracle then. So something must have happened in the interim. But I have no idea if he has read my book, if he even received it. By the way, back in 2011, I could not find a single up-to-date photo of Rich Correll, so had to use these grainy shots from when he was a child actor. I kept them simply because I like them.)


I can remember a time when I wouldn't touch a computer, afraid it would give me one of those searing visible cracks I always get on car doors. (No one else seems to get these, kinda like people whose watches stop for no reason.)


Then I touched one, though I know not when. There was no internet then, just a Tandy computer I lovingly called Jessica, a daisy wheel printer, and a fax machine. I don't remember my first foray into the internet, or even what it was called then. The Information Highway, I think, and if you tried to use it, some techie guy would brand you a "newbie".


For a long time I was afraid of it and was sure I'd never use it and that it would be daunting and impossible to use and I would feel bloody stupid if I even tried. My kids were printing stuff out on long rolls that you tore off like chunks of toilet paper, with a sort of perforated border with holes in it on the sides. They printed out arcane secret information about the X Files and stuff like that. It was interesting, yes, but intimidating, something for the young.


I don't remember when I found out what a download was, probably last week sometime. I was thrown into the water and swam badly, still swim badly for the most part, but here I am with, drum roll please, not only a web site (which is mostly an ad for my novels) but a blog.


Then, the other day something very strange happened. One second I hated the idea of social networking, knew nothing about it and felt like it was all written in a foreign language, like Armenian or something, then the next second I was "on" Facebook.





I still don't really know how to use it, because there are no instructions. You're just supposed to know. Once more I have that queasy feeling I got to the party late, too late to ever catch up. But I didn't do it to "network". I did it to find one person.





This person, rare as an exotic deer or a species no one has ever seen before, is so elusive I can't find an updated image of him. These pictures are from his child star days, when he had an ongoing role on Leave it to Beaver. There would appear to be no reliable information for contacting him, just a few wretchedly inappropriate mailing addresses, though the Lord only knows I've tried.


The two-and-a-half people who follow this blog might know that I kvetch a lot about the fact that I've written a novel about Harold Lloyd, the silent film genius, and so far can't get anyone in Canada interested in publishing it. People all over the place are telling me to self-publish, and I don't see how that would work if you had to book your own tours, readings, etc., do all your own distribution and promotion, get it in all the stores and on the net, pay for your own ads, etc. etc. and not go bankrupt.


\


I thought when you published your book, you made money. Silly me. But there's a book crisis going on, and no one knows quite where they stand. This means everyone's suddenly an expert telling everyone else what they should do. But paper books are  becoming obsolete, which means that the retail chains will eventually close (and let's not think about those small independent stores that have tried to survive a plague of almost Biblical proportions). Most if not all of the publishing industry will exist online. But when you're between systems, it's disorienting. Writers have to scramble, create their own books, or just endure the slammed doors that eventually lead to a bad case of clinical depression.





SOOOOOO,  to get to the actual point of all this, I'm searching for Rich Correll, the Hollywood polymath who co-invented the character/global phenomenon Hannah Montana and who has been directing hit Disney programs (the kind Caitlin slavishly watches) for years. He has done, and is doing, tons of other stuff in the industry as well, but that's not the real reason I'm looking.


I want to find Rich Correll because he was like a second son to Harold Lloyd: he knew Harold Lloyd, he loved Harold Lloyd, and he just strikes me as someone who might actually be willing to help me realize this labour of the heart, or at least to understand why I did it, and why it means so agonizingly much to me.




Or not. Maybe it'll just be the usual best of luck with this I've heard every other time I've made a "contact", which as far as I am concerned means about as much as a Facebook "friend".  Hard to say. Maybe he's too busy suing the Disney Corporation for $5 million (and imagine suing Mickey Mouse! This is both quixotic and admirable.) I don't know. I just feel at this point like I need to talk to someone who loves Harold Lloyd as much as I do.


It's funny to be in this position now. Everyone seems to be saying, "Accept less." Or even "give it up, it'll never happen". I know I can do this, I know I will do this, but I'm lost in a labyrinth. For this reason, to try to find Rich Correll whom I've been tracking like a bloodhound for months, I joined Facebook and found myself, once again, a stranger in a strange land.


As usual, as with everything I have ever done, I feel like a complete outsider. Some of my "friends" have over 1,000 names on their list, when I have more like nine or ten. It's high school all over again. I sort of blunder around and put up photos, not knowing what else to do. There's a place where you can say "what's on your mind", but judging from the comments, it looks like little snippets of whimsy, not requests for help or advice. Everyone is so cheerful, all day long, all the time. No one has a family crisis or an illness or a reversal of any kind. It's all good! Great things happen to the Facebook gang, non-stop, things so enviable you might  be tempted to wonder if reality isn't being bent just a little, mainly so you'll feel  a whole lot worse about your own life.





I guess I haven't learned Facebook etiquette, its invisible set of rules. When I post comments that are serious, especially about my work, I am usually made to feel like an opportunist who should just shut up and go away. Which I'm supposed to. And which I can't. Not this time.


Over the years I've seen Rich Correll all over the place. I am certain I saw him on Leave it to Beaver, but I was seven or eight years old then and didn't have much appreciation for these things. TV shows just popped out of the screen fully-formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. But every time there was a documentary on movies it seems he'd show up, and since I did not ever see them in chronological order he would get older, then younger, then middle-aged in the strangest way.

He figured large in the brilliant Kevin Brownlow documentary The Third Genius, a rich dense Christmas pudding of a film just chock-a-block with archival interviews, people who knew Harold "when". This was one of those times he mysteriously got younger, and the reminiscences flowed so easily it was probably one of those things where you could just turn the camera on.






Rich Correll also appeared on the bonus disc in the superb Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection DVD set. At one point, after all the reminiscences, suddenly there was pure magic, more magic than Harold ever pulled off in his entire life as a master conjurer.  He brought out a battered old suitcase full of treasures: Harold Lloyd's makeup kit, full of artifacts going back to the early 1900s. Old gloves (Harold needed a prosthetic glove because half his right hand had been blown off in an accident), tubes of greasepaint, a mirror with his name lettered on it. And pairs and pairs of horn-rimmed glasses. Harold Lloyd's glasses. Though Harold referred to his alter ego as the Glass Character, these were empty frames with no glass in them.


This is why I want to talk to Rich Correll. Harold Lloyd bequeathed this battered old case of magic to him. He has it in his possession. If Harold's spirit is anywhere, it's there, and Rich Correll holds it in his hands.






Thursday, April 4, 2013

It hurts to be in love




It hurts to be in love.

There is so much about it that hurts.

People don’t admit it, don’t talk about it. But I doubt if I am alone.

By "it", I mean IT, the need, want, passion, prayer to write. Often it’s lit inside you in childhood, after falling into the disturbing wonderland of books.

When I look back on it all, my “writer’s journey” (as so many of the more sickening how-to books call it) has been rocky in the extreme. Long stretches of struggle and hard work with tiny rewards, except for getting it down on the page. Brief upflashings of what can only be called inspiration. One sweet, almost unbelievable passage when I published my first novel and received the kind of reviews a writer can only dream of (only to be followed by negligible sales and quickly turning into box office poison).





Following that, I had a void. I had an abyss. I had a time in my life when I wandered strange. I don’t know what caused it. I had no way out, no compass. All I had were a few friends to wave at me as I stumbled by.

During this interminable time, I wondered if it was “all over”. It FELT over. I poured my feelings into a journal so self-absorbed that I would never consider showing it to anyone (though someone suggested I turn it into a blog – at a time when I barely knew what a blog was).

I can’t remember, except that I do, when the spark flared. I can’t quite find the end of the ball of string. Except to say I had Turner Classics on (which I suppose reveals my age, something around blltxyx years). It was a silent movie, black and white, and someone was walking away from the camera. I could only see his back.





His back was – what shall I say, jaunty? He was in character, obviously, and this was the way he walked.

After a few seconds, I said out loud, “That’s Harold Lloyd.”

I was not sure I knew how I knew, and this reaction was to come up again and again in the next couple of years while I beavered away at the novel. Yes, the novel: The Glass Character, a fictionalized account of Harold Lloyd’s life seen through the eyes of an obsessed fan who virtually stalks him for 300 pages.





Something happened then: I fell back in love with the process. Every day I approached the computer with excitement and joy. Surely THIS was the best thing I had ever written? If not, why did I feel that way? I spent a year and a half researching and writing about Lloyd, falling so in love with him along the way that I wondered if I had lost my objectivity.

During the writing, I would not talk about the project. I was close-mouthed. I knew if I talked about it, I’d kill it. I sometimes blurted things to my husband, just so I would not go insane with it, the isolation. When it was finished, I cautiously talked about it to people who asked if I had written anything lately (hoping, in that manner of people who hope you will fail, that I would avert my eyes, shuffle my feet and say, 
“Well. . . “)

Almost to a person, when I said it was about Harold Lloyd, I got a puzzled look. One of those “I really do think you’re out of your mind and are making things up, but I’ll iron out some of the crinkles in my forehead and tone down the gimlets in my eyes in order to humour you”. Then when I explained, stumblingly, “He was the silent movie comedian who climbed up the side of a building and hung on to the hands of a huge clock”, I almost always got, “Ohhhhhhh, THAT Harold Lloyd!”

And I’m sure they didn’t know how they knew.






My dreams were high and dizzy.  There would be a movie version, surely (which I cast in my mind: never mind who, I’m not that masochistic), or at very least a decent-sized book contract. I began the heartbreaking process all over again.

Every time I talked to anyone about trying to market a manuscript, they always seemed to say, “Just get an agent.” The “just” (which I am going to blog about, as I think it’s a casual form of sadism or at least dismissal) felt like a sort of “oh, quit kvetching, it would be easy if you did this the right way”.  One, two, three, and you’re in.

Oh yes, I tried! I tried. With my typical savage perseverance and propensity for running headlong into a brick wall, I tried. I did work with an agent in the mid-2000s, and at that time she actually approached me, a dizzying development. Of course I grabbed at it, even if it didn’t work out.

This time it was different.





Agents have to make a go of it, and I can see why taking on things like books of poetry and literary fiction won’t sustain them. They’d make next to nothing and starve to death, as would their authors. That said, it was pretty heartbreaking not to be considered at all: most of them would only look at non-fiction and children’s books, preferably series.

A few at least allowed me to send a sample of my work. The one that sticks out in my mind is the agent who asked for “the first two pages”. I had to blink twice before that sank in. The answer, based on those first two pages, was no.

That’s kind of like evaluating a speech by the intake of breath before the speech even begins.



I’m not crazy enough to get into the ins and outs of approaching conventional publishers, except to say that one submissions page currently says that it is permissible (though ONLY after your manuscript is accepted for publication) to mail it to them on floppy discs.  But along with this startlingly modern, Jetsons-like form, you must also mail the printed manuscript (typed on 8 ½ x 11” white paper, double-spaced, on one side of the page only and in 12-point pica type or larger) along with it.

And all on your own dime.

Am I complaining because nothing has happened? I don’t know, maybe. Have I just killed my chances because I quoted something from a publisher's web site, nearly verbatim? (To deal with the literary world is to be on permanent eggshells.)  Is this novel not quite as good as I thought? Hard to say. Did I lose my objectivity, fall in love with Lloyd to such a degree that I could never write about him with the proper detachment?






So what DOES sell now? Fifty Shades of Grey, bad soft-core Mommy porn. Maybe I should have had Harold Lloyd tied up and whipped.

Oh, and another thing I constantly hear (along with, "Wasn't the fun of writing it enough?") is: “JUST self-publish”. Or epublish, interchangeably. It’s a fast way to jump over all the barriers that “paper” publishers erect. It’s true, this new-ish form does open a gate that often seems permanently closed and barred. But the problem is that there are no standards. None.

I’ve been a book reviewer for 30 years, and I think I have some capacity to judge. It’s the Wild West: one big tidal wave of good, bad and indifferent. And the thing is, if your work really is good and worthy to be read, how will anyone ever pick it out of the flood?





People always quote an epublished success story, a “for-instance” like Fifty Shades or the latest Stephen King, but isn’t that something like winning the lottery? After all, SOMEBODY has to win, don’t they?

But unless you were born under a brighter star than I was, I can almost guarantee you that it won’t be you.



"You had me at hello"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!



Saturday, November 13, 2010

Marganas Gape, yb Teragram!








Good anagrams almost make sense, and are more than just Scrabble-esque word jumbles. To the purist, they're scramblings of famous people's names which appropriately describe that personage, without any letters left over.

Try it. Quick. Tom Jones!

Uh. . .

Moon Jest! Hm. Does that work? Howbout. . . No jetsom (except it's spelled wrong). Or. . . What's New, Pussycat?

I can't do these very well, so I'm going to cheat and lift some from a web site, never mind which one. I steal all the time.

George Bush: He bugs Gore.
Osama bin Laden: A bad man (no lies).
The terrorist Osama bin Laden: Arab monster is no idle threat.
Elvis Aaron Presley: Seen alive? Sorry, pal!
Clint Eastwood: Old West action.
Madame Curie: Me, radium ace.

The best anagram I ever heard of, apparently thought up on the spot by Dick Cavett when looking at a theatre marquis (sp.? Who knows how to spell such a lame word, anyway?) is for Alec Guiness: Genuine Class.

Well, mine are almost like that. I mean. I have good intentions.

For the past couple of years I've been totally obsessed with Harold Lloyd, the silent screen comedian. You know, the one in the straw boater and hornrims who dangled off the hands of the huge clock above the. . . yeah, him, and by the way, he wasn't gay. (This is the first thing people ask me when I tell them about my book. I have no idea why, maybe all that white makeup, but did people call Chaplin a poof?)

I wrote a novel about Harold called The Glass Character, fell violently in love with him in the process (and I truly believe it's the best thing I've ever done), and now no one in the publishing industry wants to give me the time of day. Jesus, guys! Somebody, read this and cut me a deal before someone else gets it and you'll have to live with the regret for the rest of your life.

So I worked on Harold Lloyd anagrams. With all those backwards-looking Welsh double-ls, it was a problem.

So I came up with:

Rah, old dolly!
Hardy ol' doll
Ah, lord dolly!

Enough dollies. What got me started on this shit? I'm reading a book about the violent decades-long passion between Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, Furious Love (Sam Kashner & NancySchoenberger),which I first heard about on Dick Cavett's NY Times blog. I wondered if I could squeeze out some anagrams here. (Why? Ran out of those little Keurig coffee thingamies and needed something else addictive.)

Richard Burton came out: Brain chord rut. Well, he did waste his genius, didn't he?

But I'm most proud of this one, for Elizabeth:

The royal zeal bit.


I think I'll retire now, while I'm on a llor.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Novel #3: I need a (not-so-secret) agent




Reviews of BETTER THAN LIFE and MALLORY

"Joy - heart-swelling, button-bursting, exhilarating, uplifting, exuberant joy - is at the centre of Margaret Gunning's first novel, Better than Life. The details, the turns of phrase, the sharp observances that evoke both place and characters in a small town in Ontario at the end of the 1960s, are infused with a sense of lightness and humour that borders on the divine. Redemption overrides judgement every time in this carefully crafted novel, and Gunning manages to illuminate that which is dark and secret with that which is rich and riotous in colour. She is an author able to open up the world of a fractured but seeking people and bring them into light, healing and hope. Better Than Life is fiction at its finest."
- Edmonton Journal

"As Anderson-Dargatz did with her town of Likely and Stephen Leacock did with Mariposa, Gunning has created a fictional place that's recognizable to anyone who has ever lived in a small town. . . This delightful novel looks like a contender for the Leacock Medal. It may be just the book to bring some light into the room as the grey days of the rainy season settle in."
- Vancouver Sun

“Gunning does period ambience with a minimum of well-chosen references. Her expressive turns can spur shivers of pleasure. It’s a book that seduces quickly, then pulls you happily through an afternoon.”
- Globe and Mail

“It’s short and breezy, by times droll, intermittently serious and, ultimately, warm as toast. It could be in every shopping cart in the country.”
- Montreal Gazette

"There is a contagious energy to Gunning's prose which often -- and accurately -- delineates Mallory's intense emotional improvisation, child-like perspicacity and surprisingly mature realizations. Marketed as adult fiction, this is a book that could very easily attract a younger crowd, hungry for the extremes of experience and sensation Mallory represents.”
- Globe and Mail

“Margaret Gunning writes with uncanny grace and unflinching clarity about what it is to be a young girl forgotten by the world. She captures the heartbreak of loneliness and separateness, the fear and self-loathing of adolescent girlhood, with a gentle, sympathetic touch. And she manages to make Mallory complex and fully human in the process -- both victim and torturer, brilliant yet painfully naive, innocent yet seething with awakening sexual desire. The ominous feeling that underscores much of the novel is reminiscent of the best work of another Canadian author, Ann-Marie MacDonald, whose girl heroes seem to inhabit this same dark world.”
- Edmonton Journal

OK, maybe you needed to read these first. Maybe that's why my original post disappeared as I tried to cut-and-paste this. Maybe now you'll see why I am so frustrated.


There's a myth floating around in writers' circles that if you have one book that is favorably received, you're "in" and don't need to worry any more. So what happens if you have two? The comments above are just a small sampling of my reviews for Better than Life and Mallory, my first two novels. Mallory got no negative reviews at all, and BTL got only one. Both were very favorably reviewed in the books section of Canada's national newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Several of the reviews appeared in American publications which hadn't even been sent a copy. This just doesn't happen, and my first publisher called it "a miracle" (implying it had been a spontaneous act of God and not the result of my own skill and hard work).


Funny how miracles can come apart, almost as if they never happened. Sales of my first two books were abysmal, and I can't tell you why. I do know, after 25 years of being a reviewer, that some books generate "buzz" before they even go to press. Why? I will never know. It's an alchemy, a magic I don't seem to be able to capture.


I need someone to represent me. That much is plain. I need to make that leap. The novel I am ready to publish is called The Glass Character: a fictional retelling of the life and work of a long-ignored genius, silent screen comedian Harold Lloyd. I didn't just research this topic: I became Harold Lloyd, I saw the world through his glasses, I climbed high, hung on to the hands of the clock, and fell from a great height.


I am ready. But for what? For more head-banging, more trudging around, more slammed doors? I recently received the following rejection, no doubt carefully worded so as not to bruise my delicate feelings: "We may be turning down the next best-seller here, and I am sure it will find a good home soon, but I regret to tell you the answer is no."


People get there, they do. I see it. As a reviewer, I notice that a lot of very ordinary books of a certain genre do very well, and I mean every season. I'm probably breaking the writer's code of keeping your mouth shut no matter what hell you're going through. I should keep smiling while the best book I am ever likely to write goes nowhere.


Does my track record mean nothing? I wonder why no one in the industry can see that I made that "miracle" happen. It was my work, and I have a lot more. Here it is.


My e-mail address is magunning@shaw.ca. Perhaps it should appear in every post from now on.