• Tag Archives Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

  • “The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it.” – Roald Dahl

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    Earlier this week I was reflecting on some of my early influences. It had something to do with how I predicted Lane was going to kill himself.  That, and there’s jubilee that I keep hearing about.  I’m not sure how I started down such a twisted path to British behaviorism knowledge, but I suspect that the prime reason was Roald Dahl.

    I think I’ve mentioned before, he wrote the original, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and then “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator”. That was my starting point. After I started collecting more and more of his work, I think I picked up a lot of dark twisted humor that he managed to inject into all his writing. We took a trip to London in the early 80’s that really impacted how I understood the British. While I like to think I absorbed a lot of things, my dry sense of humor was muchly affected.

    A lot of his work was Twilight Zone/Alfred Hitchcock worthy, and they even did a series for a while with shows based on his short stories, “Tales of the Unexpected”. Reading the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was actually pretty dark. It seems like Burton tried to get some of the darkness in there, but truly dry British humor (or humour) is an art in itself. Surely there are plenty of Monty Python fans out there who can attest to the irreverent and witty Brit-slap-stick.

    After Dahl, I moved onward to Hitchcock and then onward further to horror. I don’t think, however, that the twisted makeup of my childhood DNA really could have been any more impacted by any one author more than Dahl.  Ignore what you’ve seen (even he disowned the first Willy Wonka movie, and he wrote the screenplay!) Get the books. Ask me, I’ve still got a few I could loan you.


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  • “Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple. ” Willy Wonka

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    I have to say, as I mercilessly plug a burlesque show, that the marketing scheme cooked up by vivadallasburlesque is genius. Ingenious even.

    Their upcoming show is a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory theme – here’s the flyer:

    The thing that REALLY impressed me is that they’re running a “Golden Ticket” marketing campaign.  In an era where most people use Facebook as a their sole source of advertising, the addition of the “hunt” element was really a cool idea. I almost wanted to feign sickness and start driving around town looking for these tickets. I know where a few of them are, but I bet I can’t get there before someone else does. I’ll try this weekend maybe. Frequent the places the tickets are known to be….spend some cash at these places so they know that this was effective marketing….

    Seriously, how much more fun could this be?

     

    *EDIT*

    Here’s a pic from Facebook:


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  • “A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.’This was said by gene wilder … what does it mean ?” Gene Wilder

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    Wow, is it already the 40th Anniversary of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? The original I mean, not the Burton remake.

    The first time I saw it was at my friend Justin’s house. He was one of the lucky few people that I knew in the late 70’s/early 80’s that had cable at home. For those of you keeping score, my childhood home never had cable – ever. Even up until the house was sold in the late 1990’s, there was no cable line. My father refused to have it installed because the line would have to be run through the crawlspace connecting the garage to the house. Which is strange since he wouldn’t ever have been the one installing – it would have been the cable installer’s problem. Anyway, Justin’s house at the time was different and to this day I still think has that weird decorative clear glass walls that everyone was so fond of. I still like the look, even if it was a little dated. I just google mapped it and it’s been remodeled. Shame.

    So back to the 80’s, watching the group walk into the main candy room (chocolate water fall, etc), for me, it was kind of like that moment in the Wizard of Oz where everything goes from black and white to color.  It was a fairly technicolor rainbow. TV colors were a lot more muted in those days – probably to scale back the horrendous fashion. But being the candy fiend I was, this was like my dream movie.
    Shortly after it came out, I bought craploads of Wonka candy and joined the Willy Wonka Fan club. I used to be able to say that I was a proud card-carrying member, but I lost the card. 🙁

    I’ve made myself sick before on the original everlasting Gobstoppers and I can’t remember the last time I ever had one.

    In 1997, it was the 30th Anniversary (obviously – do the math) and the studio re-released prints to the theaters. Since my ultra cool movie theater job entailed getting in free, I went to a late late showing (completely obliterated) and don’t remember much of it. Of course, it wasn’t as grand as I remembered it to be – but it was still pretty cool.

    The major upside for me having watched the original back in the 80’s was that I was turned onto the books by Roald Dahl – who wrote the original “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. There’s actually a sequel to the book that is called “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator” – taking over of course from when they burst out of the roof of the chocolate factory. Of course I’m going to complain that the book was way better than the movie, but the film does some pretty decent justice to most of the candy rooms. Roald Dahl was an extremely inventive writer. While I would never put him up against Kurt Vonnegut, it was a very similar vein.  Dahl’s writings were definitely unique. I’m thinking that I’ve read everything he’s ever written, but I need to check on that. There’s still a Dahl book or two on my bookshelf – ghostly stories I think. Kind of like Alfred Hitchcock and Twilight Zone type stuff. Very dry British humor (or humour) which of course I’m pretty partial to.

    My copies are pretty worn out.

    Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory & Great Glass Elevator


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