Dan
Kamin (bio):
Dan performs worldwide for theaters,
colleges and symphony orchestras. On
film, he created the physical comedy
sequences for Chaplin and Benny
and Joon, and trained Robert Downey,
Jr. and Johnny Depp for their acclaimed
starring performances. He also created
Martian movement for Tim Burton’s Mars
Attacks! and played the wooden Indian
come to life in the cult classic Creepshow
2.
- Dan Kamin - Comedy in Motion
Your gift is hard to define,
Dan. If I had to pigeon-hole you, I
would probably call you a performance
artist—maybe a physical performance
artist—but I think what you do is more
complicated than that. It seems to require
more finesse than most performance artists
I can think of. Can you define what
you do and how you got started doing
it?
That’s such a kind way of saying I’m
incomprehensible!
I first started performing as a boy
magician. I got hooked on magic after
seeing the movie Houdini with Tony Curtis,
and before long I was earning spare
money doing magic shows at kids’ birthday
parties. This was primarily because
I couldn’t get the job I really wanted,
which was to be a bagboy at the local
supermarket. Those guys had cars, and
girlfriends.
Clearly, the silent comedians
must have influenced you greatly in developing
your art. Can you talk about how you came
in contact specifically with Charlie Chaplin’s
work and the way in which it continues
to influence you in your work today?
I had no intention of making a career
as a magician, because I couldn’t imagine
a life in smoky nightclubs performing
for inebriated audiences. To escape the
lure of performing, I attended Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh to study
industrial design. While there I happened
into a Charlie Chaplin film shown by the
campus film society, The Gold Rush.
To say I was blown away is putting it
mildly. I thought it was the best film
I’d ever seen. I still think that. I walked
out of that film into a new life.
But what life? Little as I knew about
movies, I understood that silent films
were a dead art form. Then I saw a man
named Jewel Walker do a mime show on
the campus. Jewel could do incredible
optical illusions with movement, as
well as hilarious comedy without speaking.
I instantly knew that that’s where Chaplin’s
art had gone, and I began hounding Jewel,
who taught in the drama department of
our campus, to show me how the tricks
work. I soon realized that mime wasn’t
just about tricks, but about characters,
stories, and comedy. After awhile I
wanted to see if I could make people
laugh without words, and to see if I
had any stories to tell.
This was the late 1960s, and I rode
the wave of popularity of mime. Of course,
the wave crashed in the late 1970s when
everybody started to hate mimes. That’s
what mime always does—gets popular as
a discrete form (like silent films)
and then disappears, to return in a
new guise. For example, the current
manifestation of the art is the mega-spectacle
Cirque du Soleil—what would you call
it, after all, other than the illegitimate
child of P.T. Barnum and Marcel Marceau?
But by the time the public turned against
white-faced mime I was already talking
in many of my shows, and doing what
you’re referring to as some of my less-classifiable
work. I essentially have a magician’s
approach to theatre, which is to say
I like to catch people off guard and
fool them with theatrical pranks. For
example, I’ll often masquerade as a
keynote speaker for unsuspecting groups,
such as being a stress-management expert
for a group of geriatric social workers.
At first I’m everyone’s worse nightmare
of a speaker, boring, disorganized,
increasingly ill-at-ease. And before
long my stress-management tips start
to backfire, until literally everything
falls apart, including the lectern and
my suit, leaving me in big polka dot
boxer shorts.
I also do many shows these days with symphony
orchestras, turning concerts into kid-friendly
performance events by showing up as someone
who isn’t supposed to be there, then interacting
with the conductor, the musicians, and
the music. When the music plays, of course,
all the mime training comes into play.
I do a solo program called Comedy
in Motion where I basically do everything
I know how to do to entertain people,
even some of my old magic. And I particularly
enjoy doing a special Chaplin evening
I’ve developed, Funny Bones-The Comic
Body Language of Charlie Chaplin,
which is like a class in comedy, with
lots of audience participation, performance,
film clips and a complete short, accompanied
live if possible.
Something else we all know
about you is that you worked closely with
Johnny Depp in Benny and Joon on the Oceania
roll sequence and Robert Downey, Jr. in
Attenborough’s Chaplin. How do you think
your facility with Chaplin’s art allowed
you to be the perfect choice for these
tasks?
Well, first of all, had I not written
a book about Chaplin I never would have
made a single movie. Robert Downey, Jr. got a copy of my book, which is about
Chaplin’s performing technique, and realized
that it was like a training manual for
him. He called me in Pittsburgh and said,
“I think you may be the only person in
the world who can help me pull this off.”
He flew to Pittsburgh and we immediately
went to work, and he got me hired. Word
got out during production that Robert
was giving a remarkable performance, and
people in Hollywood knew that someone
must be working with him, because even
then he was known within the industry
as a talented but undisciplined party
boy. On the strength of that I was contacted
about other projects, including Benny
and Joon with Johnny Depp. I ended
up creating the comedy scenes for both
movies, simply because movie physical
comedy is basically a lost art now. I
borrowed the roll dance for both films,
and have incorporated a variation into
my own show, since I worked so damn hard
to learn it!
If not for my study of Chaplin, and
my attempts over the years to put what
I learned into practice on stage and
in industrial films, I wouldn’t have
known where to begin. It was like a
dream come true, to come full circle
and add physical comedy to movies. And
of course, it was a great honor to be
able to contribute to bringing Chaplin’s
story to a new audience via the Downey
film. Although the film has serious
flaws, many people enjoyed Robert’s
portrayal.
Besides your performance art,
you’re quite famous for the ONLY book
to date that deals in any way with Charlie’s
particular physicality on film, Charlie
Chaplin’s One-Man-Show. I know you are
currently working on an updated edition
of the book. How did you come to write
it in the first place and how will the
new edition be changed from the original?
A few years after I began performing
mime myself, I realized I was noticing
some very odd things about the films,
such as the fact that Chaplin’s face
was whiter than those of the characters
around him, and that his moustache was,
in effect, a bulls-eye, drawing the
eye. Because of my visual art background,
I realized that these were things that
helped him stand out on the crowded
movie screens of 1914 and 1915. They
were part of the craft underlying his
art. Since no author had ever examined
Chaplin’s art from a performer’s point
of view, or done a detailed analysis
of his mime-based acting technique,
I felt that it was my responsibility
to do so. It was also a way to avoid
boring my friends with my incessant
talk about Chaplin as I worked out my
ideas. Alas, my attempt to get it out
of my system failed, and after all these
years I’m still boring my friends about
Chaplin. I have high hopes, however,
that the revised edition will enable
me to break free from this horrendous
addiction once and for all. 
The book’s already been through two
editions, a hardcover and a paperback.
When Scarecrow Press, the original publisher,
told me they wanted to do a new edition,
I thought, great, once over lightly.
Hah. For one thing, it’s a lot easier
to examine films on DVD than with 8mm
and 16mm films, or by taking notes in
dark movie theatres. At the time I wrote
the book I hadn’t even managed to track
down a number of the early films. The
opportunity to do a new edition has
enabled me to correct many factual errors
in the description of certain scenes.
In addition, I’ve been writing consistently
since the book came out, including many
articles about Chaplin. The practice
has improved my writing craft, which
is handy, since it’s pretty tricky to
write about movement in a way that doesn’t
make the reader want to throw the book
across the room.
My professional experiences have also
deepened my understanding of Chaplin’s
work. I’ve had the opportunity to direct
classic comedies and put my ideas into
practice in Hollywood. Plus, so much
material on Chaplin has come out in
the past two decades, like the pioneering
works by David Robinson and Kevin Brownlow,
that we know more than ever before about
him. My book’s not a bio, but some of
this wealth of material has caused me
to reevaluate my views, as has my ongoing
dialogue with fellow Chaplin buffs.
As a result, my analysis of a number
of the films is deeper—at least, I hope
so.
The book has changed so much that I’m
discussing with Scarecrow the possibility
of renaming it. Perhaps Son of One?
Finally, much
like many of us, you are a discerning
collector of Chaplin items. Can you talk
a bit about why you collect and tell us
about one or two items of which you are
especially proud?
I’m particularly fascinated with early
writing about Chaplin, and artists’ images
on posters, sheet music and magazine covers.
This material is so evocative, for it
gives clues to what people found so appealing
when he first appeared on the scene, before
he had made any of the films now considered
to be classics. I love Film Fun
magazine, which began publishing in July,
1915, and used Chaplin on the covers again
and again until the early 20s, when they
got a makeover and became a girlie magazine
(using the same title). In 1919 they used
Chaplin on nine of their twelve covers,
four of which use him to editorialize
about the coming 
of Prohibition (they clearly hated
the notion). I love this kind of stuff.
I have a piece of British sheet music
called “Charlie Chaplin’s Frolics” from
1915 (you can see it in Chaplin/Genesis
of a Clown) with a nice montage
of cartoon drawings that pretty much
sums up his early appeal—Charlie as
lover, bungler, dapper man-about-town.
Much early sheet music—both the covers
and the lyrics—focused on those big
feet, which people seemed to find so
hilarious.
Thanks to eBay and the Internet I’ve
found books and other pieces I’d never
thought I’d come across, such as two
early British softcover books from 1915,
The Charlie Chaplin Fun Book
and The Charlie Chaplin Scream Book,
both filled with revealing poems and
cartoons. Gifford’s Comic Art of
Charlie Chaplin reproduces many
of the pages—but it’s very cool to have
the originals. I’ve never tracked down
a copy of The Charlie Chaplin Book
(the Street and Smith paperback of stories
from the Essanays), but I live in hope.
I did find a fascinating 1917 English
variant, The Chronicles of Charlie
Chaplin, by Draycott Dell. Dell
skillfully weaves the Essanays together
into a kind of novel of Charlie’s adventures.
It’s fascinating how seldom these early
writers, artists and reviewers accurately
describe Chaplin’s comedy, although
they all get a part of the picture.
But the work is elusive, for its fundamental
power lies beyond the power of words
to describe, and beyond the ability
of still images to convey. Yet for so
many it has proven irresistible to try.
I’m proud to count myself among those
who have made the attempt.
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