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Giraffes on Horseback Salad

Salvador Dali, the Marx Brothers, and the Strangest Movie Never Made

Josh Frank author Tim Heidecker author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Quirk Books

Published:19th Mar '19

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Giraffes on Horseback Salad cover

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.

Details the real life backstory of the movie Giraffes on Horseback Salad, the Marx Brothers film written by modern art icon Salvador Dali.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 and 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.

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 Dalí 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 

ISBN: 9781594749230

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

224 pages