(1930; director: James Parrott)
Looking back, I’ve spent my whole life stumbling and fumbling. I’m still alive and have all of my limbs so I guess that I haven’t done too badly, but my sharpest memories of the past are of the mistakes. The pratfalls. The goof-ups. Slipping on a banana peel and crashing into the fine china (in the figurative sense).
I’m not complaining though, because I think most of us are like that. As I write this, we just went through November elections in the USA and we’ve been watching some of the most powerful people on Earth stumble and fumble for months. No one is above it.
Stumbling and fumbling is life. Just be careful and don’t kill anyone or yourself. Don’t screw around near open flames. Say no to addictive drugs. Don’t run with scissors. Practice safe stumbling and fumbling.
Make peace with your capacity to stumble and fumble and watch your sense of humor about yourself emerge. Watch your ability to roll with life’s many punches emerge.
You might also acquire an appreciation for the genius of Laurel and Hardy, cinema’s greatest stumblers and fumblers.
We’re coming up on a hundred years since these early shorts had Depression-era audiences rolling in the aisles, but as I sit in my living room in my underwear here in the 21st century going through the 10-disc Essential Collection DVD set, I find myself relating fiercely to this madness.
The first gag in Hog Wild is relatable stuff here in 2024.
Oliver Hardy is at home yelling and making a scene because he can’t find his hat. Meanwhile, he’s wearing it on his big fat head the whole time.
I’ve done that same shit with my cellphone. I still remember the time when I was talking on my phone, holding it up to my head, while also searching my living room FOR my phone. This went on for a minute, maybe two, until it finally dawned on me that I am an idiot.
After that’s resolved, a new misadventure begins.
The radio in Ollie’s home hasn’t worked in months. They can’t get any reception. His frowny-face wife barks at him that he needs to mount an antenna on their roof and he needs to do it RIGHT NOW.
So he does and he gets his trusting, spaced-out friend Stan Laurel to help.
All hell breaks loose, of course. Nothing goes right and while I can’t say that I’ve ever tumbled off of any roofs or destroyed any chimneys or had a shower of bricks land on my head, I do watch Stan and Ollie make another fine mess and I feel like I’ve been there. I’ve stumbled and fumbled exactly like this before, in my own way.
These gags are beautiful and precise. This is expert stumbling and fumbling and the makers of it couldn’t screw up. They had to get everything right.
See the crazy throwaway gag in which a distracted Stan Laurel drives his car into the middle of a busy intersection and narrowly misses two serious collisions by a split second. It’s all one shot, no special effects, dangerous as fuck. They could NOT stumble and fumble through that. It had to be perfect. And it was.
The lesson here is that, yes, you will stumble and fumble, but you should also give a shit. It could save you from a serious crash.
Hog Wild is notable on the DVD set as the first film on it to have a commentary track. In fact, it has two.
Laurel and Hardy experts Richard W. Bann and Rich Correll (co-creator of Hannah Montana!) spend the first commentary track of this twenty-minute film getting into the trivia and lore. It almost functions more like an introduction to Hog Wild.
The script was only three-and-a-half pages long. They filmed French and Spanish-language versions simultaneously. They’d shoot a scene in English and then shoot it again right away in another language. Most of those non-English alternate versions are now lost. The production went by several different titles and they went with the one that made the least sense. Hog Wild? There are no hogs or pigs here. Why didn’t they go with another proposed title, Haywire? That would have been perfect!
On their second commentary track, Bann and Correll react to the film and its stunts and tricks and cutting and locations. They speculate that Jack Benny may have picked up on Oliver Hardy’s trick of looking at the camera sometimes. They point how out the house is clearly a “prop house”, made for shooting movies in and nothing practical beyond that. They highlight their favorite lines. They laugh at the gags.
Bann and Correll end it by saying they’re going to watch the movie yet a third time because it’s so good. There is no third commentary track, but we don’t need one. It’s time for your own commentary, your own thoughts.
Mine are filled with stumbling and fumbling.