View Buster Keaton Tribute
I can’t say when it happened but it did. We were both won over. Over the months, after introducing Jane to Keaton’s “The General” which she enjoyed immensely, laughing heartedly at Keaton’s athleticism and overall kineticism, we began to explore his other films. By the way, no one in movie history could run as fast as he through traffic; in fact, he is filmdom’s eminent runner. In fact, this essay was roughly drafted about a week before I write my general blog, for it was pressing on me. Here I don’t intend to load these paragraphs with citations but I only want to assemble a kind of montage about Keaton after having seen several of his films over the months. Allow me to quilt what I know into this afghan. I already know what I want to say in general terms but here I will just assess what I make of that deadpan face, the Stone Face, and porkpie hat.
Interestingly enough, in 1957 I saw his film biography starring Donald O’Connor and Anne Blythe, I believe; it was not memorable but I first knew of him then. What is biographically interesting is that he received enough money for that flim which at last made him financially secure and enabled him to buy a home for his bride at the time; she was his last wife and they spent 25 years together before he died. In fact, she collaborated on a biography of him and as he aged worked with others to bring about the fame he so deservedly earned. In fact, “The General” is now listed on the list of the world’s greatest movies. His earlier wife, Natalie Talmadge, was so much of a harridan that in spite she changed the names of his two sons to her name; now that is hatred.
I know that some critics have said that Keaton was at war with the inanimate world. Perhaps. Somehow and in some way, I associate him to the period after the Civil War. In my mind it is the period of Mathew Brady’s daguerrotypes, deeply etched black and white. In short, I see Keaton as industrial, mechanical, devoid of the cyberspace we inhabit now. He used to have a train set run outside throughout the grounds of his large Spanish mansion before Natalie glommed it; he made industral toys to humor that mechanical mind of his. And what was edifying was his series of comments in an interview in which he said when he first saw a movie camera he, in essence, “attacked” it, disemboweling its metal innards to see how it worked. He wanted to know everything about his art; he was a truly committed artist; his actors and crews truly lived the movie they were on. Like Edison, he was hands on.
When he later met the suits, such as Thalberg and Mayer, at MGM, he rued the contract he signed, for they were into production rather than art, the artist as lackey rather than innovator. When he was later fired by Mayer, mostly for his drinking, he received a one sentence pink slip from him (whore fires genius). The early producers of movies were junk men, from the ghetto streets, hard and tough, with little vision. Not a thing has changed since; Welles repeated this horror and Thalberg destroyed Erich von Stroheim’s “Greed,” another world great film. It rarely changes.
In short, Keaton’s masterpieces and best shorts were made during the silent period and before he signed his contract with MGM which, in later years, he felt had damaged his career and himself (spot on). The first sound movie he was in was “Free and Easy,” I believe, shot in the very early thirties and a MGM production. We get glimpses of the old master here but it has silly stuff in it and an embarrassing puppet routine at the end which tears your heart out. He was now a performer in MGM movies and not the innovative director. He began to drink and went at that for about five years. Trivia here: he was put into a straight jacket and taken to a sanitarium (John Barrymore was MGM’s other drunkard) for his drinking had gone that bad; however, he notes that Harry Houdini, years before, had taught him to escape a straight jacket — think of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” It was Houdini who had seen him in vaudeville where he was called “The Human Mop,” as his father threw him about the stage, and called him “Buster” after seeing him take a fall down a flight of steps. You can’t make this stuff up, reader. How many Jujy Fruit have you eaten so far?
For the rest of his filmic career he created film routines for Abbott and Costello who he disliked for they were not as professional as he would have wanted them to be; he wrote for the Marx Brothers who needed directors for each one of them in order to find them for a scene; and for Red Skelton who he had admiration for. In fact, many routines in Skelton’s movies are shot for shot replays of early Keaton movies. He had to eat; Welles made wine commercials. What is charming about him is that in an interview he has little bitterness but mostly regret at the unprofessionalism he had experienced with these other talents. What he really says to an interviewer is that we slept movies, ate movies, always on time, never late, spending all day working out a scene. He was so comfortable in his genius that he says the team would get a beginning and then work hard on the ending, but what came in between he would fashion as any genius would from the tools at hand, as confident as Picasso in cafes drawing sketches on tablecloths for his admirers to sell. The consummate artist, he bridled at having MGM have him write out every pratfall, every line to be spoken, gesture and grimace, much like those numbered paintings in the 50s in which you colored in pictures;it constipated and constricted him and it shows in the movies he was in during the thirties.
Artists threaten every business and businessman, for their values are antithetical; businessmen “make,” like shit in a bowl, and artists create, make fly. Why is this culture so enthralled with business is a weighty question I may return back to, but for now, more of the artist.
I have a gestalt in my mind about Keaton; he did not appeal to the pathos or sympathy or empathy on the part of his audience, at least not to me; that was Chaplin’s art. Keaton was in his world, houses falling down upon him, winds blowing him aloft as he grabbed on to a tree, being thrown overboard into the sea, adrift, helpless, running through streets chased by herds of human beings, duress, stress, animation, flight and quickness, all beset him. I think what is humorous is how he made-do, how he coped as he was threatened; how he applied his human strengths and acrobatic skills, spills, falls and tumbling to manage, to hold firm in a world run riot mechanically. You cannot say he was not active in the world, although he did not choose necessarily to be so harried but once assaulted by crowds or flying junk and metal or houses or frameworks or events he worked his way through, often acrobatically so, as if he were to do Hamlet he might be physically trampled and thus destroyed. I argue that Keaton’s work, for me, is an immense metaphor for how we deal with everyday life — making a mess of it in a messy, disparate existence. Who of us dies whole?
Keaton does not have adventures, I believe, as much as the laws of Newton assault him randomly, such as existence distracts all of us each and every day; he is affected by physics, dynamics, torques, push and pull; the world befalls him. Maybe this is why Beckett used him in a film about one of his works, I think it was called “Movie.” Beckett saw something in Keaton about facing this world that he admired. Keaton was not a thinker but he was a doer and actor of a high order; he was a genius who did not know it, the best kind, the sweetest kind, the best to relish him.
On Buster Keaton
View Buster Keaton Tribute
I can’t say when it happened but it did. We were both won over. Over the months, after introducing Jane to Keaton’s “The General” which she enjoyed immensely, laughing heartedly at Keaton’s athleticism and overall kineticism, we began to explore his other films. By the way, no one in movie history could run as fast as he through traffic; in fact, he is filmdom’s eminent runner. In fact, this essay was roughly drafted about a week before I write my general blog, for it was pressing on me. Here I don’t intend to load these paragraphs with citations but I only want to assemble a kind of montage about Keaton after having seen several of his films over the months. Allow me to quilt what I know into this afghan. I already know what I want to say in general terms but here I will just assess what I make of that deadpan face, the Stone Face, and porkpie hat.
Interestingly enough, in 1957 I saw his film biography starring Donald O’Connor and Anne Blythe, I believe; it was not memorable but I first knew of him then. What is biographically interesting is that he received enough money for that flim which at last made him financially secure and enabled him to buy a home for his bride at the time; she was his last wife and they spent 25 years together before he died. In fact, she collaborated on a biography of him and as he aged worked with others to bring about the fame he so deservedly earned. In fact, “The General” is now listed on the list of the world’s greatest movies. His earlier wife, Natalie Talmadge, was so much of a harridan that in spite she changed the names of his two sons to her name; now that is hatred.
I know that some critics have said that Keaton was at war with the inanimate world. Perhaps. Somehow and in some way, I associate him to the period after the Civil War. In my mind it is the period of Mathew Brady’s daguerrotypes, deeply etched black and white. In short, I see Keaton as industrial, mechanical, devoid of the cyberspace we inhabit now. He used to have a train set run outside throughout the grounds of his large Spanish mansion before Natalie glommed it; he made industral toys to humor that mechanical mind of his. And what was edifying was his series of comments in an interview in which he said when he first saw a movie camera he, in essence, “attacked” it, disemboweling its metal innards to see how it worked. He wanted to know everything about his art; he was a truly committed artist; his actors and crews truly lived the movie they were on. Like Edison, he was hands on.
When he later met the suits, such as Thalberg and Mayer, at MGM, he rued the contract he signed, for they were into production rather than art, the artist as lackey rather than innovator. When he was later fired by Mayer, mostly for his drinking, he received a one sentence pink slip from him (whore fires genius). The early producers of movies were junk men, from the ghetto streets, hard and tough, with little vision. Not a thing has changed since; Welles repeated this horror and Thalberg destroyed Erich von Stroheim’s “Greed,” another world great film. It rarely changes.
In short, Keaton’s masterpieces and best shorts were made during the silent period and before he signed his contract with MGM which, in later years, he felt had damaged his career and himself (spot on). The first sound movie he was in was “Free and Easy,” I believe, shot in the very early thirties and a MGM production. We get glimpses of the old master here but it has silly stuff in it and an embarrassing puppet routine at the end which tears your heart out. He was now a performer in MGM movies and not the innovative director. He began to drink and went at that for about five years. Trivia here: he was put into a straight jacket and taken to a sanitarium (John Barrymore was MGM’s other drunkard) for his drinking had gone that bad; however, he notes that Harry Houdini, years before, had taught him to escape a straight jacket — think of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” It was Houdini who had seen him in vaudeville where he was called “The Human Mop,” as his father threw him about the stage, and called him “Buster” after seeing him take a fall down a flight of steps. You can’t make this stuff up, reader. How many Jujy Fruit have you eaten so far?
For the rest of his filmic career he created film routines for Abbott and Costello who he disliked for they were not as professional as he would have wanted them to be; he wrote for the Marx Brothers who needed directors for each one of them in order to find them for a scene; and for Red Skelton who he had admiration for. In fact, many routines in Skelton’s movies are shot for shot replays of early Keaton movies. He had to eat; Welles made wine commercials. What is charming about him is that in an interview he has little bitterness but mostly regret at the unprofessionalism he had experienced with these other talents. What he really says to an interviewer is that we slept movies, ate movies, always on time, never late, spending all day working out a scene. He was so comfortable in his genius that he says the team would get a beginning and then work hard on the ending, but what came in between he would fashion as any genius would from the tools at hand, as confident as Picasso in cafes drawing sketches on tablecloths for his admirers to sell. The consummate artist, he bridled at having MGM have him write out every pratfall, every line to be spoken, gesture and grimace, much like those numbered paintings in the 50s in which you colored in pictures;it constipated and constricted him and it shows in the movies he was in during the thirties.
Artists threaten every business and businessman, for their values are antithetical; businessmen “make,” like shit in a bowl, and artists create, make fly. Why is this culture so enthralled with business is a weighty question I may return back to, but for now, more of the artist.
I have a gestalt in my mind about Keaton; he did not appeal to the pathos or sympathy or empathy on the part of his audience, at least not to me; that was Chaplin’s art. Keaton was in his world, houses falling down upon him, winds blowing him aloft as he grabbed on to a tree, being thrown overboard into the sea, adrift, helpless, running through streets chased by herds of human beings, duress, stress, animation, flight and quickness, all beset him. I think what is humorous is how he made-do, how he coped as he was threatened; how he applied his human strengths and acrobatic skills, spills, falls and tumbling to manage, to hold firm in a world run riot mechanically. You cannot say he was not active in the world, although he did not choose necessarily to be so harried but once assaulted by crowds or flying junk and metal or houses or frameworks or events he worked his way through, often acrobatically so, as if he were to do Hamlet he might be physically trampled and thus destroyed. I argue that Keaton’s work, for me, is an immense metaphor for how we deal with everyday life — making a mess of it in a messy, disparate existence. Who of us dies whole?
Keaton does not have adventures, I believe, as much as the laws of Newton assault him randomly, such as existence distracts all of us each and every day; he is affected by physics, dynamics, torques, push and pull; the world befalls him. Maybe this is why Beckett used him in a film about one of his works, I think it was called “Movie.” Beckett saw something in Keaton about facing this world that he admired. Keaton was not a thinker but he was a doer and actor of a high order; he was a genius who did not know it, the best kind, the sweetest kind, the best to relish him.