Birthday tribute to Buster Keaton

Steamboat Bill Jr.




Including one of his most dangerous stunts, during the hurricane sequence when the wall falls down around him, that was a 2 ton wall and he would've been killed if he had been standing two inches more to any side of where the window would fall around him. Originally it was going to be a flood but the guy he was working with said no, too many people died in floods, people would be upset, they wouldn't find it funny, but afterwards Buster called the weather bureau and confirmed what he suspected, that far more people die in hurricanes than floods, oh well...it was a $40,000 mistake and he didn't think his associate would laugh at that.

Three Ages




Buster jokes in his autobiography that Henry Ford didn't speak to him for 10 years after what he did to a car in this movie, but he added given that Henry Ford never spoke to him before that either, that it didn't matter much.

Some of this stuff is hilarious.

Tony Marino wrote:Some of this stuff is hilarious.

My mother helped me go in on a deluxe collection of his movies and shorts, and every single night we laughed ourselves sick watching them, as well as the volumes of he and Fatty Arbuckle. Though I think it's a shame for all his genius in how he built all the gadgets and how the models and sets worked, and for how funny it all was, that he still seems to be overshadowed by Charlie Chaplin, who is great, but I think Buster is better because he aims straight for the funny bone.

What's funny is my mother is not a fan of silent movies by far, she doesn't like when it's just music and nobody's talking...but, she really likes Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin she does not care for. She says the music is a large part of what makes or breaks them and in Buster's films the music is very upbeat and always changing whereas in Charlie's films it often seems to be the same and sometimes downright melancholic. Which I think is right, as I said before, Buster aimed right for the funny bone whereas Chaplin also tried to appeal to the audience's tear ducts as well.

Love Buster Keaton! Supernova, you're a book fiend ~ did you ever read his autobiography? It's really good!

Yes I read that over the summer, along with The Look of Buster Keaton, and I've been waiting for the library to get in a book called Conversations with Buster Keaton, when he was interviewed. His autobiography, My Wonderful World of Slapstick, I LOVED that book, he has a way of making everything he went through (most anyway) sound hilarious, and I loved reading about how good it was in 1919-1920 with Roscoe Arbuckle, how much fun they had then before it all went sour.