Harold Lloyd

Sunday, November 22nd, we have our monthly silent show featuring a live musical accompaniment by Cliff Retallick.

And we have a night dedicated to the great comedian Harold Lloyd.

We have Hot Water from 1924, which is a feature alongside Lloyd Short and Eastern Westerner.

this is just going to be an absolute blast.

So I'm hoping that we can uh, bring that energy next month.

Cause hot water is a sort of perfect lead in to Thanksgiving because it, uh, features a great segment with a Turkey.

I'm not sure if you guys seen this one, but it features some of Harold Lloyd's most famous set pieces and gags though, watching the whole movie together, uh, is kind of a rare opportunity because a lot of the gags in this are kind of excerpted for some of those like Harold Lloyd, World of Comedy, and other sort of like clip show type movies.

But yeah, Hot Water is a hilarious domestic life comedy, which begins with, you know...

We could argue there have been other people mentioned.

Some people think he looks like Harold Lloyd, and Jerry loved the movies.

He had a reporter friend named Walter Dennis, but it's so Jerry.

It's Jerry right down to the coin eyeglasses that he wore.

So slowly, they started moving up in them hills.

And really, the first movie star to build a place up there was silent film star Harold Lloyd, who built his famous Green Acres estate up there.

It's at the mouth of Benedict Canyon.

Green Acres, it's built on acres of grounds.

Well, there's a temptation to look at these stories and conclude that something about Benedict Canyon itself is cursed.

It isn't, right? I mean, thousands of people have lived perfectly happy and uneventful lives there.

Harold Lloyd, very famous, lived for decades at Green Acres.

Countless actors and musicians and executives and families have enjoyed the canyon without encountering murder.

Pola Negri, all those came afterwards.

But even, like, Harold Lloyd was just getting started with Lonesome Luke, and Buster Keaton was just getting started with Fatty Arbuckle.

Both of them were here.

in their very early years.

And I know he's a huge fan of the silent film era.

I've heard him gush about people like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

Great.

And I think he definitely takes influence from that here.

Because there's so many little spots where Doc slips.

Doc's hanging from the clock, which is also an allusion to Harold Lloyd in Safety Last.

And we even see it foreshadowed in his laboratory at the very beginning of the film.

You see a clock moving.

with Harold Lloyd hanging off of it in Doc Brown's laboratory, which I love.

I love the exposition that they do in that opening shot.

It tells us so much.

This one, it is...

Just this slow reveal of all this great exposition from Doc's lab, from the news report, from the newspaper in the background, from the foreshadowing with Harold Lloyd and safety last on the clock to whatever, everything that Strickland tells us.

Because Strickland tells us Doc Brown is a crackpot.

He tells us that George is, you know, is a nobody.