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'Tracing Keaton's beginnings in vaudeville and how he eventually applied that form's traits to cinema, McPherson creates an excellent portrait of a formidable talent, also addressing the private demons that accelerated his eventual slide.' Empire 'The author, rather like his subject, has the knack of sketching a poignant moment using minimum of sentimental flannel.' Sunday Telegraph 'McPherson wins one over because of his loving fan's attention to, and lively evocation of, the core of Keaton's achievement.' Telegraph 'Graceful and charming... McPherson's account is animated by the same sort of colour and vitality as Buster's best work.' Scotsman… (meer)
Detailed and poignant biography of Buster Keaton, an early comedy genius of silent films. I like him and Harold Lloyd just as much as Charlie Chaplin! ( )
One would be hard-pressed to deny Keaton the attention of biographers. As one of a few key comedic actors who spanned vaudeville to television and as one of perhaps the best actor-directors to ever work, Keaton's impact on film and the American experience is formidable.
McPherson, who claims among his qualifications having watched lots of Keaton films in his Bronx apartment, seems a bit out of his depth. As a writer, he vacillates between wide-eyed enthusiast and would-be scholar. The enthusiasm does carry the biography, even if a few superlatives get out of hand and having McPherson fill pages with textual recreations of the films in question that drag. The work is carefully footnoted and brief and perfectly suitable as a starting point for those unfamiliar with the subject. It also isn't anything near a replacement for actually viewing the Keaton Co. era films, best collected in The Art of Buster Keaton DVD collection produced a few years ago by Kino. ( )
Just finished this in March 2007. Read it in about ten days. It is easy to fly through books when you're obsessed with the subject. Such obsession! I have already started making notes for a film - this book is good at squashing together neat clips from his life but pads the whole thing out with detailed descriptions of film after film. Spoilers too.
Thinking of one of the best biographies I've read - Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf - the resources were endless - letters and diaries and on and on, a book about not one life but many. It goes to show how a person is not just what happens to them, but all their interactions with everyone else and you need all that for a good biography. Were the resources not available for Buster?
It has made me want to read more about silent cinema, Marx brothers, Chaplin, film restoration....
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Our hero came from Nowhere -- he wasn't going Anywhere and got kicked off Somewhere.
The High Sign(1921)
All of my life I have been happiest when the folks watching me said to each other, "Look at the poor dope, wilya?"
Buster Keaton
The empty seats get you.
Buster Keaton
Not long ago a friend asked me what was the greatest pleasure I got from pending my whole life as an actor. there have been so many that I had to think about that for a moment. Then I said, "Like everyone else, I like to be with a happy crowd."
Buster Keaton
Roscoe loved all the world, and the whole world love him in those days.
I sometimes wonder if the world will ever seem as carefree and exciting a place as it did to us in Hollywood during 1919 and the early twenties. We were all young, the air in southern California was like wine. Our business was also young and growing like nothing ever seen.
Buster Keaton
But the golden age of comedy was just beginning. The whole world wanted to laugh as never before, and Hollywood had the clowns to do the job.
Buster Keaton
When we made pictures, we ate, slept, and dreamed them.
Buster Keaton
"This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show."
A familiar-looking theatergoer in The Playhouse (1921)
Love is the unchanging axis on which the World revolves.
The Three Ages (1923)
It is the audience that gives us the answer.
Buster Keaton
In the silent days we could try anything at all, and did.
Buster Keaton
Railroads are a great prop. You can do some awful wild things with railroads.
Buster Keaton
It all started with Schenck taking Lou Anger away from me.
Buster Keaton
His mind was too orderly for our harum-scarum, catch-as-catch can, gag-gabbing method. Our way of operating would have seemed hopelessly mad to him. but, believe me it was the only way. Somehow some of the frenzy and hysteria of our breathless, impromptu comedy got into our movies and made them exciting.
Buster Keaton on Irving Thalberg
Dumb show is best for screen people, if they must appear in public.
Buster Keaton
I've had a few dull moments and not too many sad and defeated ones.
Buster Keaton
Opdracht
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
For my grandparents
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
I am sitting in an auditorium, watching a woman rip the lining out of an expensive fur felt fedora and dunk it into a bucket of water. (Introduction)
Friday, October 4, 1895. In Egypt, the Nile runs unusually high; Great Britain is experiencing uncommonly cold weather after a period of uncommon warmth; somewhere in Canada, a railroad superintendent on the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Line mysteriously disappears between stops; four men fall off a rope bridge some forty feet onto a riverbed in Sing Sing, New York; two Massachusetts balloonatics are stranded aloft when their guide suddenly collapses.
Citaten
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Eleanor died in 1998, a widow and tireless champion of her husband of twenty-five years.
'Tracing Keaton's beginnings in vaudeville and how he eventually applied that form's traits to cinema, McPherson creates an excellent portrait of a formidable talent, also addressing the private demons that accelerated his eventual slide.' Empire 'The author, rather like his subject, has the knack of sketching a poignant moment using minimum of sentimental flannel.' Sunday Telegraph 'McPherson wins one over because of his loving fan's attention to, and lively evocation of, the core of Keaton's achievement.' Telegraph 'Graceful and charming... McPherson's account is animated by the same sort of colour and vitality as Buster's best work.' Scotsman
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