Buster Keaton

it's his 123rd

A scantily clad, beer-gutted Buster Keaton, later in life, surveys with pleasure (?) his Lionel train set. pic.twitter.com/ghfoDqRMVO

— 𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖊 𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞 𝕯𝖆𝖞 (@NickPinkerton) October 4, 2018

Just bought three Kino Blu-Rays of Keaton stuff: 2-disc sets containing The General and Three Ages and Steamboat Bill Jr. and College, and a 5-disc set containing all his shorts, including the early ones with Fatty Arbuckle. I watched One Week earlier today and laughed my ass off.

I just watched the Kino The General last night. I've seen that movie 5 times at least and still find it astonishing.

https://scontent.fnyc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/40477603_10156485320404000_7344300914024382464_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&oh=b8bfe6f135f7fa5e33a5f31764fbe9e6&oe=5C4B5753

Was watching the Criterion commentary for It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World yesterday. Don't think I even noticed Keaton the first time around - think the movie's sledgehammer approach to comedy had already defeated me by then - but once you notice it's him it's amazing how all that grace is still there, for the two seconds that he is onscreen.

I love ‘One Week’ - usually what I show to sceptics/young people.

yeah, when he scoots around those cars it couldn't be anyone else xp

AFI Silver's 2018 Silent Cinema Showcase will feature a number of Buster Keaton restorations. I'm making my plans; is anyone else interested in going?

This looks dreadful but I'm surprised by how lovely Keaton's speaking voice is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWEDF4FdgxQ

Keaton's MGM talkies are largely dreadful. And while I wouldn't describe his voice as "lovely," it does fit his persona and physique remarkably well.

Ok maybe not "lovely" but a lot of marble-y character - he sounds great 30 years later on Buster Keaton Rides Again, too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfQgTirVhdY&index=2&list=PL67E56794F9608FDA&t=0s

Try again...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQIJZ5zX6nw&app=desktop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQIJZ5zX6nw

In the Gilbert Gottfried podcast w/ James Karen that was recommended after JK's death last week, Karen describes Joe Keaton tossing Buster into the wings and occasionally into the audience in the family act (when BK was 5 or 6). He quoted Buster: "The old man wasn't so bad... Before he threw me into the audience he'd say, 'Better tighten up your asshole, Bus.' "

The Bogdanovich documentary opens here over Christmas. Keaton died in '66, which leaves the window open for some "Buster and I" anecdotes. I'll see it anyway.

Caught the last screening of The Great Buster. Well intentioned, but I don't think Bogdanovich does Keaton any favours. He makes this odd decision to save the 10 features--"The Keaton decade"--for the end of the film. So you get his life story up to 1921 or so, brief mention of what comes next ("But we'll get to that later"), then the story picks up as sound comes in and Keaton's career starts to fall apart. My guess is that Bogdanovich wanted to end with the period of triumph rather than the checkered rest of his life; there also may have been the assumption that anyone seeing this knows the films and the life story well already. Maybe--I have to believe some people will see The Great Buster knowing very little about Keaton, and how do you give full weight to his appearances in Sunset Boulevard and Limelight without the context of those 10 features? I also thought that maybe Bogdanovich the film critic would have all these insightful things to say about the films being saved for the end. No: he offers plot summaries and assertions ("one of his funniest scenes," etc.). The interview subjects are a mixed lot. Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Dick Van Dyke, absolutely. Werner Herzog and Tarantino--sure, why not. But the director of the Jackass films gets more screen time than any of them (or anybody else, I think). If you go for the clips, there are lots of them; if you're looking for more, be forewarned. (Big surprise: Orson Welles gets worked in towards the end.)

watched the great buster on a flight today. it was pretty wack ... as clemenza mentioned above the structure just didn't make any sense, and the people being interviewed were really hit or miss. It would have been better, i think, to have told his life story in chronological order, peppering in some notable gags and maybe interviews with those who actually knew him. it was obviously the narrators passion project, and that intensity did show through in a nice way at times. still, it was a bizarre hodge-podge tbh

BK Day next Monday on TCM. Kinda mean to show Doughboys? As is showing the Lost Horizon remake on Liv Day.

http://summer.tcm.com/

BK's MGM talkies leave much to be desired, but Doughboys is hardly the worst of the lot. How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, OTOH....

I didn't see The Great Buster when it was in theaters, and I have no intention of watching it on TCM. Bogdanovich's reputation for Golden Age brownnosing put me right off. I almost wish Jeff Tremaine, or other people doing contemporary physical comedy, had made the documentary and interviewed Bogdanovich.

As for the 1970s version of Lost Horizon, I saw on TCM.com requests--presumably from authentic watchers--that it be screened. Between the fans and the aficionados of flop films, there's an audience.

afaik I haven't seen Doughboys. I suppose it can't be worse than the Durante teamings.

I've been looking at some of the shorts with Arbuckle that I realized I'd never seen (or had forgotten): Out West, Moonshine, The Rough House, Oh Doctor1 etc. Still strange to see him pulling faces, crying, and all that. In Out West he's kinda like Deadwood's Al Swearengen.

TCM is mercifully omitting Free and Easy (the final musical number...). Although I wouldn't mind seeing Estrellados, the alternate Spanish-language version.

Adam Gopnick:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/31/what-made-buster-keatons-comedy-so-modern-biography-james-curtis-dana-stevens

Oh, is that bio out now? Thought about ordering a copy.

I leafed through Stevens' on my Sunday bookstore run; got it reserved in the library after Gottlieb's Garbo bio.

Oh, I only knew about the Curtis one.

Oh, I see. The Stevens is out, but not the Curtis until next week.

Wonder if James Karen is interviewed.

but the Roman sequences are done with even more panache than Mel Brooks’s “History of the World, Part I.”

Have you read the book about Dietrich by her daughter, Maria Riva?

https://filmforum.org/series/busters-century

Would be nice to go to see James Curtis introduce.

Autographed copies of the Dana Stevens at MoMI.

Nice article by Geoffrey O’Brien in current NYRB.

Actually I didn’t read the article yet, just the email about it which also mentions and links to several other relevant articles from yesteryear.

Have both the Curtis and Stevens books, the latter is shorter so I will try that one first.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n02/john-lahr/puzzled-puss

I read the Stevens and enjoyed it very much. A good biography interspersed with many interesting diversions about the times Buster lived and worked in. I started the Curtis but felt like I was getting pummeled with biographical minutiae and didn't get very far.

Sounds about right, thanks.

yeah i just finished the Stevens and it was good but does zigzag around quite a bit

Miniseries from Blank Check on Keaton’s movies.. starts here

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/three-ages-our-hospitality-with-dana-stevens/id981330533?i=1000612019681