Sennett used to hire a “wild man” to sit in his gag conferences, whose whole job was to think up “wildies.” Usually he was an all but brainless, speechless man, scarcely able to communicate his idea; but he had a totally uninhibited imagination. He might say nothing for an hour; then he’d mutter “You take…” and all the relatively rational others would shut up and wait. “You take this cloud…” he would get out, sketching vague shapes in the air. Often he could get no further; but thanks to some kind of thought-transference, saner men would take this cloud and make something out of it. The wild man seems in fact to have functioned as the group’s subconscious mind, the source of all creative energy. His ideas were so weird and amorphous that Sennett could no longer remember a one of them, or even how it turned out after rational processing. But a fair equivalent might be one of the best comic sequences in a Laurel and Hardy picture. It is simple enough—simple and real, in fact, as a nightmare. Laurel and Hardy are trying to move a piano across a narrow suspension bridge. The bridge is slung over a sickening chasm, between a couple of Alps. Midway they meet a gorilla.
Firstly, dibs on the troupe name "The Wildies."
Secondly, the description of the Laurel and Hardy bit is a beautiful example of heightening an idea.
Thirdly, the wild man as described above is exactly what group mind should be.
A troupe doesn't need a wild man, it needs to be the wild man.
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