Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski "Big Eyes"
As I walked on the lot, I realize that I am stepping on history, following invisible footprints of award-winning actors, writers, and directors. My feet are small compared to the big shoes that have traveled before me.
The interview is set for 10 AM. I get to Chaplin Studios a half hour early and wait. The time passes quickly as I watch a film crew shooting a scene from some war picture. It is the best day of my life. I am privy to a world of artifice, celeloid, make believe.
Alexander and Karaszewski are late. When they finally arrive, they let me into their office, a creative space where they have worked on the films “Ed Wood,” “The People vs. Larry Flynt” and “Man on the Moon.” I am in their office surrounded by Hollywood artifacts.
As the interview begins, I get the feeling that they don't take me seriously. Why should they? I am not from a major network or media outlet just a small college radio station. Sure these men were far more successful than me, but I put all that aside because I like their film and respected their body of work.
"Big Eyes," tells the story of one of the most epic art frauds in history. In the 1960s, painter Walter Keane had reached success beyond belief, revolutionizing the commercialization of popular art with enigmatic paintings of waifs with big eyes. The bizarre and shocking truth would eventually be discovered: Walter’s works were actually created by his wife Margaret.
The Keanes, it seemed, had been living a colossal lie that had fooled the entire world
learned the stranger-than-fiction story of Margaret and Walter Keane, the top-selling painters of the 1960s. Intrigued, they began to research a story that would take ten years to finally go into production. “It’s a great piece of history that nobody knows,” says Alexander. “If it weren’t true, I wouldn’t believe it.”
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