Dalí made the attempt many decades ago, drafting a screenplay for the Marx Brothers that promised to blend his signature brand of surrealism with the Marx's brand of absurdism (with Harpo as the protagonist, given that Harpo and Dalí were buds). It never got off the ground, with producers shooting the project down and Groucho famously stating, "It won't play"—his way of saying that the script wasn't funny enough. So the script, the notes, and the sketches remained lost until the 1990s—by then, serious attempts were made to piece the thing together to see what this film might have actually looked like if it was allowed to happen. In 2019, Josh Frank teamed with Tim Heidecker (of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!) and artist Manuela Pertega to realize this project as a graphic novel. Hence, Giraffes on Horseback Salad became a tangible story for the first time in history.
The story is about as bonkers as its title. It follows an aristocrat named Jimmy (who would have been played by Harpo Marx) who swoons over the enigmatic "Surrealist Woman," who famously seems to destroy reality everywhere she goes and turn everything into sheer nonsense. Jimmy's girlfriend naturally disapproves, and she sets out to take down the Surrealist Woman at all costs. But not before the city falls into an all-out street war between rationality and irrationality. All this nonsense culminates in a farce of a trial. Throughout these grand struggles, Jimmy ultimately struggles between embracing the inner nonsense of himself (goofy horn and all), or remaining loyal to reason and social order.
It's easy to see why this wouldn't play as a film, especially from the 1930s. At the very least, this is a bizarre mis-match of brands. I've recently grown fond of Dalí's work, and many signature elements of his appear in the book either visually or as "gags," some of which he had penned himself back in the day (this includes such weird things as giraffes on fire with gas masks, people having rotisserie chickens tied to their heads, or Harpo grating statues with a harp as if they were made of cheese and feeding it to a monkey). Some of this is rather grotesque (especially when interpreted in Pertega's art, where things seems to drip or melt off the panels), and I'm not sure that the more garish elements mesh that well with Marx Bros humor. Not to mention, I seriously question how anything in this book could have been made in the 1930s, when the advents of special effects and CGI were absent.
I appreciate the effort of translating this insane project into a graphic novel, since it allows us to see the ambitious visual spectacle and read the proposed story simultaneously. It's not a perfect translation though—and it probably never will be since nobody can truly recreate whatever thought patterns Dalí or Harpo Marx had back in the day. I applaud Pertega for sticking close to Dalí's style, and the artwork might be the book's best feature. It is a colorful and bizarre menagerie of color and detail that I can't stop gazing at and admiring. Heidecker and Frank also deserve credit for keeping the snappy dialogue true to the Marx Bros' style of humor (especially Groucho's dialogue, which is appropriately fast and witty). All that being said, I do find it a little head-scratching that the book presents itself as a "film", in the sense that it uses screen headings within the panels, some action notes, musical numbers, and even the first page is a notice to the "audience" as if the book is a literal show. I might be over-thinking this aspect, but it might take me out of the book a little since it constantly reminds me that this was supposed to be a movie at one point. This book even has a soundtrack available. Regardless, the graphic novel format has certain limitations that hamper some aspects of the story—it's especially hard to reconcile how the actual artwork (some of which is even used to frame the panel) works in motion.
The actual story reminds me a lot of Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis (an all-time favorite of mine), particularly because both stories feature a woman character who somehow disrupts social order. Giraffes on Horseback Salad adds the extra layer of nonsense-vs-reality, going so far as internalizing some of this within the protagonist. It's especially admirable that the book highlights the two sides by illustrating the "real world" as black-and-white and the surrealist elements in full color (similar to how 1939's The Wizard of Oz did). The book aims to give Jimmy an internal Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde struggle between his normal self and his nonsense self, all of which is brought about by the Surrealist Woman. This is a conflict I find compelling personally, because I often find myself at odds between the gravitas the real world demands and the absurdism of my imagination. Naturally, I find the Surrealist Woman and all the scenes surrounding her the most fascinating, and I even appreciate the brief flashback that suggests how she chose to embrace surrealism. All that being said, some things about this story could have used some fleshing out—Jimmy's struggles and his arc doesn't take the front stage like it should, and it doesn't help that it's often sidelined by Groucho (as usual I guess) and the many side gags. The love story between Jimmy and the Surrealist Woman is one of those where they just sorta fall in love with no clear chemistry or reason—you know, typical Hollywood baloney. The opening hook is probably the least-interesting scene of the book, although it has a brief joke that strikes me as Kafkaesque. Plotting is good in the sense that it steps us through Jimmy's mundane life before totally upending it, but the middle portions appear utterly random (and that might not even be a valid criticism in a book about nonsense). What might be the most disappointing (at least to Marx Bros fans) is that Jimmy's inner-Harpo doesn't really emerge all that often, and it comes across as a mis-characterization.
It's far from a perfect piece of work, and if MGM actually made this film in the 30s, it would have flopped hard. As a comedy, the book may elicit a few chuckles, but it's not really a traditional comedy in any sense (in this case, through the lenses of absurdism or vaudeville, it's still pretty weird). As a budding fan of surrealist art, however, I find much to admire about the project and I'm very enamoured by the artwork, the characters, and the underlying themes. Ultimately, I see this more as one of Dalí's vanity projects, and I'm okay with that—it's different, and it's interesting to contemplate the possibilities. I'm pretty sure the story even goes so far to mirror Dalí's own relationship with Gala, especially given the "alternate ending" in the last few pages.
If nothing else, this is a handsome-looking book with a nice hard cover and a small wealth of behind-the-scenes text to chronicle the story's history and how the writers pieced this together. The story of the story might be more interesting to most folks. For me though, the actual content strikes a chord and I admire many things about it. If they fleshed this out a little more, it could probably be a fantastic cartoon someday (and as proven with Disney's Destino, this is probably the best middle ground to realize the project's vision in full). As it is though, I like the book just fine and will gladly order five with a side of lobsters.
8/10
