Unpacking has revealed my Buster book! And my ff6 cartridge! Plus a bird print and a star chart hidden in the bg… you know this might be the most Julia photo ever taken
Oh no! Nasty book! Eleanor threw it across the room and took pleasure in kicking it whenever she walked by!
This IS the one, isn’t it? I knew there was a Buster bio that wasn’t very good but forgot which one it was. Guess that just means I need more Buster books!
If you can ignore Meade’s opinions, which are strewn throughout the book, it actually has a lot of information about Buster found no where else. I always get the impression too that she did not like her subject.
Now my question is if she didn’t like the subject of Buster Keaton, why write a book about him??
If Stuntmen from the old movies don’t have your full respect then I just don’t know what to say to you
l tried really hard not to reblog this
Yeah, it is indeed really hard not to reblog a fucking thing.
Dudes, really important note: this is not a stuntman, this is Buster Keaton, the star of all these films. He did all of his own stunts. All of them – well except one in the film “College” because he didn’t have enough time to learn how to fucking pole vault for the scene. He was practically an Olympic-grade athlete and did stunts so dangerous that his cameramen were told to keep rolling the camera unless one of two things happened: Buster yelled “cut!” or if Buster died. That was it. And he nearly died on more than one occasion and got some great shots out of it. The last gif was an accident. He was supposed to make it to the other building, but when he fell and saw the take, he realized he could use it and add more gags to the films. Oh and that makeshift escalator he’s tumbling on? In the first filming of it, he broke his ankle and his doctor said he couldn’t do more crazy stunts until it healed. So he made another short film which included a dance with vigorous hopping on his feet. He also almost drowned in one film and even broke his neck in another – and he didn’t even know it until years later when a doctor saw the healed fracture on an x-ray.
Buster Keaton was a comedic genius, a badass, and basically the unbreakable man. His movies are some of the greatest comedies of the silent era. Everyone should watch him.
Buster Keaton, ladies and gents.
I SALUTE YOU!
I absolutely ADORE Buster Keaton, and I highly recommend his films.
The General is fantastic (it’s the one with the trains), and they actually reenacted the bombing of the rail bridge. They had to set up the shot perfectly, because they actually blew it up and caused the train to go off the tracks. They could only afford the one take because trains are expensive and they didn’t have the funds to do it a second time.
Most of Keaton’s filmography is available on Netflix (at least in the US). They’re all silent, I think, but they are so, so good.
