The Books: “Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat” (Edward McPherson)

Daily Book Excerpt: Entertainment Biography/Memoir:

Buster Keaton: Tempest In A Flat Hat, by Edward McPherson

I loved coming back to the house on Cape Cod on a drizzly day, and seeing Cashel curled up in a chair with his laptop on his lap, watching Buster Keaton movies. “Auntie Sheila, Buster Keaton always looks like this,” he called out to me – and I looked at him, and Cashel pulled a long solemn face. Cashel (although he is becoming a mini-mogul, so I shouldn’t make too many generalizations) wasn’t looking at those movies as a piece of nostalgic Americana, or as “movies back then” … or as museum pieces … He sat there in his chair, watching, and laughing so hard that his belly shook like a bowlful of jelly. So that, in the end, is all that really matters. Scholars can opine, critics can tell us what to look for and weigh in with judgements … but a small boy wiping tears of laughter off his face in the summer of 2007 over Buster Keaton movies is the biggest stamp of approval I can think of.

Coming out of vaudeville (a family tradition), Keaton performed with his parents as a small boy (already showing a great penchant for acrobatics and pratfalls) – before launching off on his own. Getting into movies was not a natural leap for him – he wasn’t sure what this brand new medium would be all about and how he could fit into it … which is one of those wonderful ironies of life. Keaton has become one of the greatest directors of all time, and his movies – a couple in particular – are regularly ranked as the best movies of all time … and in many ways, Keaton, more than anyone, understood the silent era – and used it to its fullest effect. He really stands alone and apart. He’s on some other weird plane – I don’t know how to describe it: truly funny, unbelievably inventive, yet with this strange keen of sadness through all of it – real sadness, not kitschy vaudeville pantomime sadness … It’s hard to pin down. And then of course there’s his athleticism. Nobody can touch him there. I mean, all those silent comedy stars were amazing athletes – they had to be – but Keaton was on another level. He had the fearlessness about him of all the top athletes (you know, the “let me pause in mid-air” type athletes) – the types who move first, think later. There are great stories about the day his crew filmed the famous house-falling-on-Buster scene and the camera man had to cover his eyes, he couldn’t look. Many of the crew felt the same way. They felt: I can’t sit here and watch a man be killed … on camera … Buster, that is effed up.

Akbar Abdi is one of Iran’s biggest current-day comedic actors (he has said, “I am the Tootsie or Mrs. Doubtfire of Iran” because one of his biggest hits The Snowman involves him dressing up in drag in order to get a Visa. The film has been banned for pretty much EVER by the Ministry of Culture – but no matter … bootleg DVDs have made sure that everyone is Iran has seen The Snowman!) Robin Wright, US writer and journalist, interviewed Abdi and asked him who his favorite actor or director was. To Abdi the answer was easy:

It’s probably Buster Keaton. For him, humanity is important. He cares about the other side of the coin. Sometimes when I’ve seen his films or biography I’ve actually broken into tears because I see a similarity between us. He was a very lonely person. And usually comedians know sadness better than others

The appeal crosses centuries, cultural lines … it’s extraordinary, I think.

James Agee’s four-part essay on silent comedy actors (“Comedy’s Greatest Era”) in Life magazine was a watershed moment – first of all, for film criticism, but also it started, single-handedly, a resurgence of interest in those “quaint” silent comedies … which, naturally, could not just be easily rented or seen at that time – in the days before private VCRs or even late-night television. Movie houses began running silent comedy festivals, the houses were packed … If you haven’t read Agee’s essay, I cannot recommend it highly enough. He profiles the work of Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton – and one more whose name escapes me … and I figured I’d post some of Agee’s eloquent words on Keaton, because he can say it all way better than I can:

Very early in [Keaton’s] movie career friends asked him why he never smiled on the screen. He didn’t realize he didn’t. He had got the dead-pan habit in variety; on the screen he had merely been so hard at work it had never occurred to him there was anything to smile about. Now he tried it just once and never again. He was by his whole style and nature so much the most deeply “silent” of the silent comedians that even a smile was as deafeningly out of key as a yell. In a way his pictures are like a transcendent juggling act in which it seems that the whole universe is in exquisite flying motion and the one point of repose is the juggler’s effortless, uninterested face.

Keaton’s face ranked almost with Lincoln’s as an early American archetype; it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was irreducibly funny; he improved matters by topping it off with a deadly horizontal hat, as flat and thin as a phonograph record. One can never forget Keaton wearing it, standing erect at the prow as his little boat is being launched. The boat goes grandly down the skids and, just as grandly, straight on to the bottom. Keaton never budges. The last you see of him, the water lifts the hat off the stoic head and it floats away.

hahahahahaha One of my favorite scenes in a movie ever.

Here is Agee again:

Much of the charm and edge of Keaton’s comedy, however, lay in the subtle leverages of expression he could work against his nominal dead pan. Trapped in the side-wheel of a ferryboat, saving himself from drowning only by walking, then desperately running, inside the accelerating wheel like a squirrel in a cage, his only real concern was, obviously, to keep his hat on. Confronted by Love, he was not as deadpan as he was cracked up to be, either; there was an odd, abrupt motion of his head which suggested a horse nipping after a sugar lump.

Keaton worked strictly for laughs, but his work came from so far inside a curious and original spirit that he achieved a great deal besides, especially in his feature-length comedies. (For plain hard laughter his nineteen short comedies — the negatives of which have been lost — were even better.) He was the only major comedian who kept sentiment almost entirely out of his work, and he brought pure physical comedy to its greatest heights. Beneath his lack of emotion he was also uninsistently sardonic; deep below that, giving a disturbing tension and grandeur to the foolishness, for those who sensed it, there was in his comedy a freezing whisper not of pathos but of melancholia. With the humor, the craftsmanship and the action there was often, besides, a fine, still and sometimes dreamlike beauty. Much of his Civil War picture The General is within hailing distance of Mathew Brady. And there is a ghostly, unforgettable moment in The Navigator when, on a deserted, softly rolling ship, all the pale doors along a deck swing open as one behind Keaton and, as one, slam shut, in a hair-raising illusion of noise.

Perhaps because “dry’ comedy is so much more rare and odd than “dry” wit, there are people who never much cared for Keaton. Those who do cannot care mildly.

I have certainly found that to be the case among film fans. People line up in Chaplin camps or Keaton camps … I myself never felt the pressure to choose, they both seem so different to me … not alike at all … but then there is the matter of personal taste, like Agee says … and those who just don’t care for him. But those who do care tend to be fanatics. Funny how that happens.

I always find his cameo in Sunset Boulevard, as one of the “waxwork” dummies who come to play poker with Norma Desmond once a week – one of the eeriest of all of the famous cameos. To know that that’s him. And there he is – STILL with that serious face – performing for an audience who might not even know who he is … inhabiting that character with a dour solemnity that is Keaton through and through … it kills me.

I haven’t spoken at all about McPherson’s book yet!! It was sent to me by a person who reads my blog – it’s a slim little book and there are moments where it feels almost like a student paper, awkward cliche-ridden prose – BUT – it is the detailed analysis of all of the films that elevates the book. That’s what you need in a book like this. Maybe sketch in Keaton’s backstage journey – his deals with studios, his quest for independence – his successes as an independent filmmaker – all of that is important, contextually … but I really like McPherson’s focus on the films themselves: the shootings thereof, the problem-solving, the successes, the not-so-successes.

Highly recommended. Perhaps it would be too simplistic for true Keaton fans – but for those of you not all that familiar with the huge body of his work, and where to even begin … this book would be a good place to start. It’s almost like a Keaton survey course … I haven’t seen all of Keaton’s films, and there is much here that has “gone on my list” … as in: MUST see that someday. I chose an excerpt that has to do with the filming of the movie called Seven Chances (you know, with the big rocks rolling down the hill).

I love this particular excerpt because it shows Keaton solving a problem. Knowing there IS a problem, first of all, and then figuring out a way to solve it.

Also, I have included the clip of Seven Chances from Youtube (THANK YOU YOUTUBE) so you can follow along … with the excerpt. His gift as an athlete is what I am really aware of, watching that clips … but there’s so much more. I love the excerpt because it shows how Keaton realized (through an audience preview) what was missing – and went about creating what needed to fill the gap … and the result is the endless avalanche of rocks – which just is so damn funny!

EXCERPT FROM Buster Keaton: Tempest In A Flat Hat, by Edward McPherson

Buster was sweating in the dark. It was the second preview of Seven Chances and, like the first, it was deathly quiet. They had a dud. From the start, Buster hadn’t liked the story. McFermott, the co-director, was gone after two weeks, sacked on budgetary grounds; he had spent unwisely in what was likely an already unsympathetic environment. Buster had shot the opening in two-strip Technicolor, hoping the novelty would improve a lackluster film. He had brought in the brilliant Snitz Edwards, a short, sulky, putty-faced comedian, to play the lawyer. He had thrown in a special effect or two; in fact, Buster’s favorite moment in the film was the ‘drive” Jimmie takes from the country club to Mary’s house. Buster gets into his 1922 Mercer Raceabout and grabs the wheel; the background dissolves from one location to the other – he then gets out. (Lessley matched Buster and the car using surveying instruments). There were even a few unexpected crashes and collisions (a minor leitmotif of Buster encountering out-of-frame obstacles). But he knew the film essentially would ride on the last act – the great bridal chase, when the buttoned-up stage comedy would finally cut loose.

Buster strides down an empty street on his way to Mary’s. Unbeknownst to him, a flock of brides follows, taking in reinforcements from side streets. A succession of progressively higher camera shots reveals the massive parade of veils behind him. At the last possible minute, Buster turns around – and takes off.

The bridal wave threatens to engulf Buster. No helpless jazz babies here: these are strong, smart gals, determined as hell. Like a force of nature, they overturn football games and flatten cornfields. They commandeer streetcars and hijack construction cranes. A bricklayer is building a wall. One by one, the passing brides remove a brick, for bashing purposes; once the pack is gone, there is no wall. The sequence is a testament to indomitable female will, in all its complex glory. (The women weep when they think they’ve killed Buster, then – seeing him alive – leap to finish the job.) Along the way, the groom is beset by bees, barbed wire, and a bull – and almost shot by duck hunters – before being driven into the hills.

In the theater, the chase was getting a few laughs – nothing too loud, but an encouraging chuckle here and there. Keaton cut an amusing figure in his leggy sprint, coattails flying, and he had put to good use the choreographic lessons of Cops. (There is even a moment when Buster falls in step with some marching patrolmen; at the sight of the brides, however, they scatter like mice.) Then, just as the film was fading out on Buster being chased down a hill and into the sunset – a lame ending, if ever there was – the audience sat up and roared. What was that? Keaton and his men repaired to the studio, and ran the finale in slow motion. Then they saw it. As Buster scampers down the slope, brides in tow, he kicks up a rock, which begins to roll. dislodging a few more rocks – as the scene fades, he has three small rocks tumbling after him. The audience laughed, thinking Mother Nature had joined the chase.

And so Gabourie went to work making 1,500 rocks out of wire frame and papier-mache. Some would be no bigger than baseballs; others would weigh over 400 pounds. The biggest were eight feet around. The crew went to the High Sierras and found a long ridge with a grade greater than 45 degrees – to ensure a fast roll. At the sound of a starter’s pistol. Gabourie would begin releasing the boulders in a pre-arranged sequence; once they were rolling, it was up to Buster to dodge them. Lesley would keep cranking, come what may.

So instead of a fade-out, the momentum builds. The bit with the bricks and the cranes was just a prelude to what is arguably the most athletic four minutes in film. High in the mountains, the hunters and the hunted part ways, as the brides go to head Buster off at the pass. Keaton speeds along the ridge, jumps a gap, and leaps from a cliff to the top of a thirty-foot-tall tree the moment it is felled by a lumberjack. He rides the tree down, gets up, and sprints off. He flies along another high ridge, which ends in a steep sandy slope. Without breaking stride, he throws himself down the slope, head high over heels, turning front flip-flops the whole way down. Towards the bottom, he somersaults through a clump of rocks – which begin to roll – before catching his feet under him and scampering full tilt down the hill. Now in a boulder field, the dodging begins. Tiny Buster – ever-nosing downhill at impossible speeds – is caught in a bona fide avalanche. He thinks he can find safety in a tree, then behind a giant rock, but gravity is relentless, like a freight train, and at the bottom of the hill are those brides! Buster grinds to a halt. Which is the worse fate? The rocks continue their assault, and Buster dances in and out of rolling death. Rocks fly over, under, to the left and right, as Buster hurdles, weaves, and hits the ground – occasionally getting clobbered. When 500 brides meet 1,500 boulders, the brides scatter, clearing the descent for Buster. On level ground, he is a horizontal blur as he broad-jumps a horse (pulling a buggy), dives under a truck, and crosses some railroad tracks (barely missing a train). He pulls up to Mary’s house, only to get his coat stuck on the front gate, which he drags off its hinges and up to the door. Buster collapses across the threshold.

The unwavering momentum, the breathless athleticism, the symphonic pacing, the impossibly sustained thrill – the sequence is a masterpiece. Words cannot do justice to the sweeping cinematography, the fully-loaded (often rolling) frame – running hills, distant horizons, clumps of brush, shadows, and boulders, and one driven, little man. Then comes the inspired ritard. Buster learns he has arrived too late; the hour has passed. Hope is crushed. The girl wants to know whether they’ll be married anyway, for richer or for poorer. Doesn’t Buster think they’ll be happy? Buster shakes his head, no. Ha! Then he explains: without the money, he’s off to jail, and he won’t share that shame. He walks outside. He looks towards the church, then rushes inside. The watch is wrong – according to the bell tower, they have seconds to spare! – thus he and Marry marry just in the nick of time.

The rockslide rescued the picture – for while not as big as The Navigator, it was a definite hit – but for most of his life, Buster would claim Seven Chances was his worst effort. (In the 1960s, he didn’t feel it even merited re-release; he was happy enough to let it remain unseen.)

The accidental brilliance of the last-minute avalanche only reaffirmed Schenck’s faith in Keaton’s freewheeling, freeform style. Nothing kills a laugh like a scientist – or a script. Bsuter and his boys were fools in the funhouse, guests by courtesy of the management, who knew jokes were best caught unawares, where you least expected. Buster kept all the funny business in his head; he never wrote any of it down – when needed, he’d just sit on the floor and give the sequence a good mental chew. Later in his life, Buster would work out gags by shuffling pennies – stand-ins for people – to the music of the radio, which helped set the tempo.

But the best comic marinade, Buster found, was baseball. Before long, a suspicious number of professional ballplayers wound up on the Keaton payroll. As of Sherlock, Jr., Byron Houck, a former pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics, was running the second camera. Around the same time, a talented slugger named Ernie Orsatti went to work as a prop man. In a few years his involvement would be only part-time; in his other, in-season job, he played outfield for the St. Louis Cardinals. (In 1928, Oratti would go straight from playing in the World Series to working on a Keaton shoot.) If the crew got stuck on a busted gag – and couldn’t find a way out of the rut – there was no use crying about it; they played ball. (Everyone, that is, but round Jean Havez, who served behind the plate as umpire). Moviemaking and ballplaying seemed very much alike; neither was a job one would take seriously.

Keaton’s best features have that boys-at-the-sandlot attitude – a sense of play, of athletic bravado, of rough-and-tumble one-upmanship. Keep filming no matter what: Buster will dust himself off, drain the water from his ears, bounce back to fight another day. You don’t get a dry run on a dangerous stunt – accidents are too likely, and injuries make for timid participants – and so you just do it in one take, counterintuitive and impossible though it may seem. These were not typical chest-beating tough guys, but guys simply having too much fun to do things any other way. They might butt heads in the thick of it – games have winners and losers, after all – but they were a team through and through. From each man’s individiual sense of ownership to the unit’s blurry, pragmatic division of labor, the Keaton Studio was a remarkable collective. As Bruckman remembered years later, “It used to be our business. We acted in scenes, set up scenery, spotted lights, moved furniture – hell, today even the set dresser with paid-up dues can’t move a lousy bouquet.”

And thus the golden age of the small, streamlined independent studio. Having a dedicated, salaried unit made for cheap, easy retakes and inserts – the essential crew was always on call – and because the studio used its own sets and equipment (as opposed to renting them), post-production tinkering was only a matter of another reel of film. Even off the lot, shooting remained relatively simple. A cop or two might be dispatched for crowd control – gratis – as would any necessary firemen. At the end of the day, Buster recalls making sure each was handed an extra’s check, usually for about $10. Railroads readily lent their services and equipment, too, as long as Ketaon left the company name on the side of the cars. The business of 1025 Lillian Way was a world unto itself – a lost world, as Bruckman points out. Soon, industry shooting schedules wouldn’t make allowances for afternoons of baseball.