conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a title for a book about Globe, Mail, Vancouver with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Glass Character'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Glass Character
  HOW I HATE THEM, HATE THEM more than life itself! Every few years, one of the studios cranks one of them out, a compilation of the "funniest moments from the silent screen": bleeding chunks torn from movies that were once hilarious and enchanting, now clanging with absurd sound effects, tinny piano music, jerky projection and a booming, insensitive narrator. This sort of manhandling destroys all the charm and superb comic timing that made these films such a pleasure to watch.
  Then came a few snippets of one of the greatest entertainers of all time, falling down and spinning around on his back and jumping back up, morosely facing the audience while the entire front of a building falls down on him from behind (with a perfectly-placed window saving him from being pounded into the ground), and launching a boat that immediately and gracefully sinks.
  We were treated to only about two and a half minutes of Keaton (since Chaplin was considered so much more important), briskly followed by the abominable Keystone Kops, a segment which went on interminably, accompanied by shrieking police-whistles and obnoxious cowbell clangs. The aptly-named Charlie Chase went by in a blur, and the infantile Harry Langdon, surely one of the strangest characters in film history, rated only a few seconds.
  I was about to leave the theatre in disgust, when the moment came that I had paid my dollar-fifty for: a desperate figure in a straw boater and a snug three-piece suit hanging off the hands of a huge clock, twenty stories above a street teeming with magnificent Model Ts. While the announcer yammered that "his daredevil skills were a thrill-packed third after comedy's two greatest geniuses", I saw the figure execute twist after twist, hand-hold after hand-hold, his body swivelling perilously through the air, then lurching in terror as the entire face of the clock popped out on a spring.
  I had not seen this footage in forty years. To me, it was not a gimmick achieved through "clever trick photography" as the announcer boomed, but the memory of an elaborately-built aerial set creating the illusion of extreme height through perspective.. Clinging to the clock hands was an acrobat so gifted he could vault straight up into the air and gain purchase, even with only one good hand.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me three more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The call left me utterly flat with exhaustion, and I called in sick the next day and lay in bed as if paralyzed. I wondered if the police had already questioned the other waitresses, the girls I had come to think of as my friends. Or, worse, Shirley, whom I hoped did not know about this (while suspecting that with her elaborate web of connections, she probably did).
  Desperate, not wanting him to know but unable to go on in this state of abject loneliness, I called the one completely unshakeable friend I had, the only one I knew I could trust with my life.
  I huddled in his arms for hours that night, trembling and babbling through uncontrollable tears. "I'm going to go to jail for the rest of my life. I'll take the fall for everyone involved in this. I knew she was young and innocent and a little bit slow. She knew nothing about men, nothing about life at all. And I did nothing to protect her."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But I couldn't eat dinner that night. I told Michael I had a migraine. I only got them in the morning, so he looked a little skeptical.
  It occurred to me that he might have seen the notice about the movie in the paper and put the pieces together. But in any case, his lack of questioning was the grace I needed to move past the barricade in my heart.
  There is nothing quite like the sensation of being on the outside of a fancy restaurant looking in, especially when it's winter. It's a kind of paradise denied. I looked through the window and saw that the restaurant was quite full, with thick smoke hanging in the air. I looked and looked, didn't see him, and felt foolish and humiliated. I wondered if he'd toy with me like that after all these years.
  Then I saw someone wave. He didn't look his age: not any age, or perhaps he was every age. Decades fell away. A silly smile insisted on having its way with my face.
  Because this is a work of fiction, I sometimes found it necessary to improvise on history. Though I did extensive research in exploring the era in general and Lloyd's life in particular, this story is not intended to be biographical. In some cases, dates have been gently moved, details tweaked, the players rearranged and certain things invented in the service of story. Even with these changes, my hope is that the spirit of this unique and remarkable screen artist comes through — the Harold Lloyd I fell in love with.