Why THE FAR SIDE is a masterclass in storytelling
1,561,906
Published 2019-12-26
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0:00 Pixar and Storytelling
1:22 How Gary Larson tells a story
2:42 The Far Side facts and figures
3:22 The level of detail in The Far Side
4:04 Telling a story with one image and a punchline
5:09 What is The Far Side about?
7:11 Gary Larson and naturalism
7:40 Controversy over The Far Side
8:10 The legacy of The Far Side
9:00 Conclusion
SOURCES
The Complete Far Side, Gary Larson, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1278p
Gary Larson and The Far Side, Kerry D. Cooper, University Press of Mississippi
The Pleasures of Stupidity: Gary Larson as Baudelairean Caricaturist, David Carrier, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1/2 (Fall—Winter 1998-1999), pp. 62-70
The Savage Mind of Gary Larson, Lucy Rollin, Studies in Popular Culture
Vol. 12, No. 1 (1989), pp. 75-86
Toy Story, John Lasseter, Pixar Studios, 1995
Interview of Gary Larson by Lynn Sherr, ABC’s 20/20, 8 January 1987
On the Far Side: • On The Far Side
The Simpsons Season 9 Episode 5 - Treehouse of Horror VIII
The Thagomizer: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer
StrigiphilusGarylarsoni: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigiphilus_garylarsoni
Norm & Cliff explain The Far Side to Woody, Cheers, S09E04, 1990
MUSIC
Andra Långgatan, pär: soundcloud.com/p-r-hagstr-m/andra-langgatan
A House of Glass, pär: soundcloud.com/p-r-hagstr-m/a-house-of-glass
Valiant, Luar: soundcloud.com/luarbeats/valiant?in=luarbeats/sets…
All Comments (21)
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A reporter interviewed Gary’s mother and asked “When did you first notice his odd sense of humor?” Without skipping a beat she answered “When I woke him for his second day of kindergarten. He said “What? Again?”😂😂
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One favourite I’ve never forgotten, a beggar on the street asking passers by if they have a ‘spare armadillo?’ Walking towards him along the street a guy with two armadillos, thinking to himself, ‘dang, how am I gonna get past this guy’. So funny, cracks me up.
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The Far Side was and is brilliant, and still think of it almost daily when I’m feeding my dogs, how excited they are. Every single time. “Oh boy!…it’s dog food AGAIN!”
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Larson was a huge hit in the scientific community. Literally everyone had one pinned somewhere in the office or the lab even years after he stopped doing them.
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I love the one where an alien trips on the stairs as he descends from his spaceship, while humans look on. Another alien, looking out from the door of the ship says, “So much for instilling them with a sense of awe.”
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I loved me some Far Side and had all the books as a young person. The one that never failed to make me hoot and cackle was the image of two spiders who've just finished spinning a web at the bottom of a playground slide. One says to the other, "If we pull this off, we'll eat like kings."
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It's amazing how just reading the verbal descriptions of many Far Side cartoons, without ever having seen them, makes me laugh out loud!
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Interesting fact, as part of my outpatient rehabilitation after severe nervous system/brain injury I was told to spend at minimum 1 hour per day reading humorous things, I asked if I could read a book of Farside comics, and it was not only approved, but highly recommended!
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To this very day, every time I push on a door that says pull I always proclaim to whomever I'm with, "I went to the school for the gifted". Thanks, Gary!
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Far side never never never gets old .
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There are sermons I have forgotten. There are songs I have forgotten. There are promises I have forgotten. There are Far Side cartoons that seem stuck in my head forever. Like the one where in his retirement years the Lone Ranger is reading an old Indian dictionary that defines the word kee-mo-sa-bee - it says the rear end of a horse. I still laugh every time I think of it.
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My favorite one is a guy in an orchestra who is supposed to have two cymbals to crash together but he only has one. There’s a thought bubble that appears above his head that says “This time I won’t screw up. I won’t I won’t I won’t I won’t…” but then the caption at the bottom reads “Roger screws up.”
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The duck sitting under a tree on a small deserted island with “QUACK” written out in stones. Gets me every time.
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I liked the Far Side cartoon of two sabretooth tigers walking away from a club and bearskin on the ground. One is licking his chops. The other says, "I've heard all kinds of sounds from these things, but 'yabba dabba doo' was a new one on me."
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It is no coincidence that the office doors of the most intelligent university professors often have Gary Larson cartoons taped to them.
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Just reading descriptions of Larson's work in the comments here is making me laugh almost as hard as seeing the cartoons themselves, which goes to show that although the pictures are funny, it's the conceptual core that matters. Gary Larson is a master of ideas.
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One of my favs..........Two cavemen next to a huge mammoth they felled with a single tiny arrow to its rump. One says to the other......"Maybe we should write that spot down"
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My favorite is one that shows 2 gigantic polar bears hovering over an igloo. One says to the other, "Oh, I love these. Crunchy outside with a chewy center."
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I'm in stitches just reading everyone's lists of favorites - one of mine is the ice flow packed with penguins and right in the middle is an enormous polar bear with a little penguin mask covering his nose. Caption: "Now Edgar is missing. Something's going on around here!" The fact that Polar Bears and Penguins don't share the same hemisphere just makes it funnier knowing that Gary Larson is well aware of that fact!
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The giant eye filling the cars mirror. “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear”. Greatest Far Side ever
