Since the 1960s numerous substances (ranging from marijuana and poppers to LSD and Ecstasy) have been labeled as gateway drugs while alcohol, dogma, disinformation, and propaganda have avoided similar classification. Remember Clinton Derangement Syndrome? The Washington Post recently published a poignant article by an anonymous author entitled "What Happened After My 13-Year-Old Son Joined the Alt-Right."
According to former advertising executive turned TV pundit, Donny Deutsch, a new malaise is sweeping the country: "Post-Mueller Depression." Writing in Salon.com, veteran journalist Lucian K. Truscott IV states:
"I’m sitting here trying to remember all of the shit he’s done since taking office, and I’m failing. I have paid as much attention as one human being possibly could pay to Trump and his crimes and his lies, and I can’t keep up. Sitting right here next to me on my desk is a stack of 13 reporter's notebooks in which I have written down notes about the lies Trump has told and the crimes he has committed, and all of those notes just run together in a river of shit."Veteran conservative political columnist George Will notes that:
"Impeachment will not result in Trump’s removal. Consider today’s supine behavior of most congressional Republicans, which stirs fragrant memories of the vigorous obedience of many members of the U.S. Communist Party to Stalin in the late 1930s."
In his recent column in The Washington Post entitled "New Documents on the Census Confirm: Trump’s Raison d’etre is White Power," Dana Milbank offers a startling perspective.
“'The very idea of being American has from the start been defined negatively by who could be classified as not-American,' writes my friend Eric Liu in his important new book, Become America: Civic Sermons on Love, Responsibility, and Democracy. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the right to vote 'was about earning a badge that a black person (and, for a long stretch, a Chinese person) could never earn: the badge of citizen, first-class.' Now we see a new variant with Latinos and Muslims."
"People assume Trump’s Make America Great Again notion is about a return to the halcyon 1950s. 'But it turns out we had the decade wrong,' Liu writes. 'It was in the 1920s -- after mass immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe -- that the [Ku Klux] Klan came back strong, that nativists took over the United States government, and that a nakedly racist system of immigration quotas and exclusion became the law.'”A quick look through the literature of the American musical theatre reveals what nostalgia which is genuinely sentimental (as opposed to being weaponized as a political tactic) sounds like. Consider the following four songs from the Broadway catalog:
If Eric Liu is correct in his theory that the toxicity of our current political climate can track its roots to the 1920s, that's a clear indication that we should look at the Roaring Twenties and the hottest new messaging tool before the advent of the "talkies." True to form, the 2019 San Francisco Silent Film Festival's opening and closing screenings were devoted to films by one of the biggest and most beloved stars of the silent film era: Buster Keaton.
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Born on October 4, 1895 in Piqua, Kansas, Keaton grew up in a family of vaudevillians. Together with the great Harry Houdini, Keaton's father owned the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company (a traveling show which, following performances, sold patent medicine to the audience). A three-year-old Buster made his debut as a child actor in Wilmington, Delaware in 1899. According to Wikipedia:"The young Keaton would goad his father by disobeying him, and the elder Keaton would respond by throwing him against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. A suitcase handle was sewn into Keaton's clothing to aid with the constant tossing. The act evolved as Keaton learned to take trick falls safely; he was rarely injured or bruised on stage. This knockabout style of comedy led to accusations of child abuse and, occasionally, arrest. However, Buster Keaton was always able to show the authorities that he had no bruises or broken bones. He was eventually billed as The Little Boy Who Can't Be Damaged, with the overall act being advertised as The Roughest Act That Was Ever in the History of the Stage. Decades later, Keaton said that he was never hurt by his father and that the falls and physical comedy were a matter of proper technical execution. In 1914, Keaton told the Detroit News: 'The secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat.'"
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| A photo of The Three Keatons taken in about 1900 |
Today's pervasive use of CGI for special effects has made computer-generated stunts so realistic that audiences don't always realize how many stunts are performed in front of a green screen. However, during the silent film era, few stars were as fearless and unflappable as Buster Keaton. Whether running, jumping, swimming, or chasing cars, buses, and trains, Keaton's lean athleticism offered a solid foundation upon which he could improvise tricks. The actor earned his nickname "Old Stone Face" primarily because of his ability to keep his focus while performing pratfalls.
James Agee once wrote that “Keaton's expression was an awe-inspiring sort of patience and power to endure proper to granite, but uncanny in flesh and blood. 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.”
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| Buster Keaton started out in vaudeville |
Much of Keaton's success resulted from brainstorming with a close-knit gang of friends and colleagues. Prior to signing a contract with MGM (against the advice of Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd), he had never worked with a real script. As the actor explained:
"We just got to talking about a story and laying out all the material we could think of, and then got it all put together. Anytime something unexpected happened and we liked it, we were liable to spend days shooting in and around that. Brilliant though he was, Irving Thalberg could not accept the way a comedian like me built his stories. His mind was too orderly for our harum-scarum, catch-as-catch-can, gag-grabbing 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-building got into our movies and made them exciting."
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| Buster Keaton in drag in Our Hospitality (1923) |
“Our Hospitality was Keaton’s second feature-length film but the first in which he was able to choose the cast, the subject matter, and the setting. A member of Keaton’s crew came up with the idea of satirizing the Hatfield-McCoy feud, a famous bloody struggle between two families that raged along the border of West Virginia and Kentucky in the late 19th century. For a railroad sequence at the beginning of the film, Keaton (a railroad enthusiast) jumped at the chance to build a recreation of the railway in use at that time. The railroad sequence in Our Hospitality anticipates Keaton’s most acclaimed film, 1927’s The General. Deviating slightly from historical authenticity, Keaton chose Englishman George Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’ instead of DeWitt Clinton’s earliest American locomotive, because he thought the ‘Rocket’ looked funnier. The historical reconstructions in Our Hospitality were so accurate that the Smithsonian Institution asked Keaton to donate the ‘dandy horse’ bicycle, which he had built specially for the film.”
Watch the above 9-1/2 minute-long film clip twice. Just relax and enjoy it during the first viewing. But, the second time around, try to count the number of sight gags contained in less than 10 minutes of film time. Keep in mind that, for the famous waterfall scene near the end of the film, Keaton performed the following stunt himself. He did not use a stunt double.
While the train sequence seen above is a highlight of Our Hospitality, it is a mere prelude to Keaton's subsequent shenanigans. After receiving news of his father's passing, Willie McKay (Keaton) journeys south to claim the family estate as his own. His seatmate is a pretty young woman named Virginia (Natalie Talmadge). Unbeknownst to Willie, Virginia's last name is Canfield. Because Virginia's father and two brothers still harbor a seething hatred for the McKay clan, once his cover is blown, Willie's night as a guest in the Canfields' home turns into a bizarre battle for his survival.
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| Buster Keaton in Our Hospitality (1923) |
Filmed in and around Truckee, California, Our Hospitality is the only film to feature three generations of Keatons (Buster, his father, and his infant son). Using a restored print courtesy of Serge Bromberg's Paris-based Lobster Films, the festival's screening at the Castro Theatre was accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. The following YouTube video contains the entire film (although the print's condition is not as good as the one screened during the festival).
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The San Francisco Silent Film Festival first partnered with the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra (which is under the direction of three-time Emmy nominee and Berklee Professor of Film Scoring, Sheldon Mirowitz) in 2015, with a score composed by Mirowitz's students for F.W. Murnau's 1924 masterpiece, The Last Laugh. Mirowitz and his students from the Berklee College of Music in Boston returned to the Castro Theatre in 2016 with a magnificent film score for 1925's Varieté that could easily hold its own against scores composed by Erich Korngold and John Williams (Kino Lorber signed a contract to record their score for Varieté to accompany the release of the restored print on DVD). On opening night of the 2017 San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the BSFO accompanied a screening of Harold Lloyd's 1925 classic, The Freshman.This year, SFSFF sourced its opening night musicians locally, with musical accompaniment by Timothy Brock, who conducted his own score with students of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The event featured a 4K restoration of 1928's The Cameraman, which includes one exquisite moment in which Keaton demonstrates his acute sensitivity to timing. After running across town to meet a young woman, as she walks down the street Keaton comes racing up from behind and rapidly decelerates as he slips his arm through hers and matches her much slower pace. It is a breathtaking piece of business.
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| Poster art for 1928's The Cameraman |
Part of appreciating Keaton's skill comes with repeated viewings of his films. The actor's stamina and athleticism are key factors in his success (in addition to his uncanny ability to portray an underdog triumphing over unbelievable challenges). The first time one watches a Keaton feature, the sight gags and chase scenes follow in such rapid succession that it is all a person can do to stop laughing long enough to catch their breath.
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| Buster Keaton in 1928's The Cameraman |
Repeat viewings, however, allow one to pay closer attention to the comedic setup for a gag, the daring execution of a stunt (whether Keaton is trying to photograph the action in a Chinatown gang war or dodging streetcars as he tries to cross an intersection), and Keaton's remarkable ability to make his exertion seem effortless. Though The Cameraman has a running time of only 75 minutes, you'll be amazed at the brilliance of its physical comedy and how much action it contains. An added benefit is that it will make you feel a whole lot happier than when the film began.
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