{"id":13985,"date":"2012-02-17T18:31:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-18T02:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2012\/02\/17\/13985.html"},"modified":"2012-02-17T18:31:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-18T02:31:00","slug":"the-artist-as-fanfic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2012\/02\/17\/the-artist-as-fanfic\/","title":{"rendered":"The Artist as fanfic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>After watching <cite>The Artist<\/cite> a couple weeks back, I went looking at reviews, and found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deep-focus.com\/dfweblog\/2011\/11\/the_artist.html\">one<\/a>&mdash;generally negative, but with some positive parts&mdash;that included this line:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><cite>The Artist<\/cite> plays less like an original take on the early sound era than it does as fan fiction set in the world of <cite>Singin&#8217; in the Rain<\/cite>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Hee! Cute. And it's remarkably close to something I was thinking during the movie&mdash;it didn't occur to me to call it fanfic, but I did wonder for a moment whether it was set in the world of <cite>Singin' in the Rain<\/cite> (and specifically whether we were going to see an explicit mention of <cite>The Dancing Cavalier<\/cite>).<\/p>\n<p>The other thing I did after watching the movie was make a list of people who I think George Valentin was intended as an homage to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n  <li>William Powell, or rather Powell as Nick Charles, for the mustache and the dog (who I kept wanting to call Asta) and the drinking.<\/li>\n  <li>Clark Gable for the mustache and the fans' swooniness.<\/li>\n  <li>Gene Kelly (and especially Kelly as Don Lockwood) for the movie star grin and the dancing and the various homages to <cite>Singin' in the Rain<\/cite>.<\/li>\n  <li>Douglas Fairbanks (maybe both Junior and Senior) and maybe Errol Flynn for swashbuckling.<\/li>\n  <li>Rudolph Valentino for the name.<\/li>\n  <li>Fred Astaire in one particular dance number.<\/li>\n  <li>One reviewer says Charlie Chaplin; I can vaguely see that.<\/li>\n  <li>Another reviewer mentions John Gilbert, who I had never heard of, but yeah, seems to fit. And oh my, <a href=\"http:\/\/home.hiwaay.net\/~oliver\/gilbert.htm\">that's quite a photo<\/a>.<\/li>\n  <li>The actor himself apparently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/features\/silence-is-golden-the-artist-is-set-to-make-an-oscarworthy-star-of-brnice-bejo-6273519.html\">referred to<\/a> &ldquo;Douglas Fairbanks' playfulness, Gene Kelly's smiles, Clark Gable's moustache, and [Italian actor] Vittorio Gassman's body language. And a bit of Jean-Paul Belmondo.&rdquo;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course there's more to the character than just homage\/melange; still, I was impressed by the combination of all those actors\/characters.<\/p>\n<p>(Peppy Miller was also, in part, an homage to\/amalgam of various film stars (&ldquo;Marlene Dietrich, Clara Bow, Janet Gaynor and musical star Eleanor Powell&rdquo; says the abovelinked <cite>Independent<\/cite> article), but I'm less familiar with them and so didn't notice as much. I was thinking, superficially, more a mix of Debbie Reynolds as Kathy Selden in <cite>Singin' in the Rain<\/cite> and perhaps a bit of Judy Holliday as Gladys Glover in <cite>It Should Happen to You<\/cite>, though on further thought, Miller isn't really anything like Glover.)<\/p>\n<p>(Wrote this as an email at the time, decided to repurpose it as a blog entry.)<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After watching The Artist a couple weeks back, I went looking at reviews, and found one&mdash;generally negative, but with some&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}