Blank Check with Griffin & David - Battling Butler / The General with Jamelle Bouie

Episode Date: May 28, 2023

One of narrative cinema’s earliest training sequences, and one of cinema’s most famous trains - that’s right, we’re covering Buster Keaton’s 1926 films BATTLING BUTLER and THE GENERAL. Gentleman, scholar, and action movie aficionado Jamelle Bouie joins us to unpack this week’s double feature, providing some essential historical context for THE GENERAL’s unfortunate Civil War  setting. Plus, Ben starts researching how one buys a train. Guest Links:  Read Jamelle’s writing at The New York Times Listen to Unclear and Present Danger  Subscribe to Unclear and Present Danger Patreon This episode is sponsored by:  Zocdoc (zocdoc.com/check)  ExpressVPN (ExpressVPN.com/check) Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com or at teepublic.com/stores/blank-check

there were two loves in his life. His engine and... Cut to picture of Blank Check Podcast artwork. Oh, great. Perfect. There you go. You're saying we're like a... A sweetheart. A sweet lady? A little sweetheart in a little framed picture. Absolutely, Griffin. Thank you for that.

What do you do when you're looking for the quote there? There are quote pages. like on imdb there's like the the title cards right yes right um i i'm still i want i want a fucking tagline for one of these this is what i was searching for i was like this this must have had a tagline but i can't find one i when it's a fair question. I do feel like movie taglines have always existed. Oh, okay. Here's one. But some of these, it says

trade paper ad. Here's the one that seems to be semi-legit. The tale of a lad, a lass, and a locomotive. That's a fine tagline. And then there's another one that is love, locomotives, and laughs. That's what I'm looking for. But then then a lot of them are like what they list as taglines are like his first united artist picture right that's that's not really gonna you know make me run to

the theater i just thought of one what the south will ride again well. That is kind of the pitch for this movie. Oh, boy. Hello, everyone. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. No giggling, David. This is a very serious episode. Can't giggle. Ever. Dead serious. Certainly not when talking about Buster Keaton. Dead pan. We need flat pans and no laughs. No breaking.

Stone faces. Yes. We're going to talk separately and not giggle. Out of respect to the great Buster Keaton. Blank check with Griffin and Data. Good lord. This is Blank Check with Griffin and Data. Me and a Gordon Skinn android. That'll be fun.

It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, today we're talking about what is his ultimate blank check and what was basically an entire

blank check career. This whole run we're talking about is a blank check run. This is maybe his most ambitious project. And his biggest bounce at the time. That has is maybe his most ambitious project and his biggest bounce at the time that has then become his most critically sort of uh respected film yes but also challenged in ways we will talk but this was his this is this was in the top 10 of the site and sound pole for for multiple times forever this was yeah for many multiple decades the unanim or whatever this was the this became the consensus masterpiece right yes and i

think was kind of partly because it's long and probably because it has like a real story i think yeah and it's it look it is uh it is stunningly well directed yes i mean it looks it looks great it looks so good it looks so good and the the stunt work is still incredibly impressive that's the other thing i think a lot of you know there's of the like, somewhere in the 60s and 70s, there's sort of this critical reevaluation where people start going like, actually, I think Buster Keaton's the good one. When Chaplin had remained really large in the culture. And I think this was one of the movies that people were holding up as like,

look at this through a modern lens. And most of looking at it through a modern lens was, oh, he kind of made the first proper action comedy right and it plays in a modern way in that sense in a genre that continues to be humongous it moves it moves this thing's moving and just the balance of like story beats action beats comedy beats all that sort of stuff we are talking about two movies today of course but the movie we're referring to right now is the general the general uh and then then we're also talking about Battling Butler, which is just one of his movies. And I don't say that derisively, but it comes from the opposite side of Buster Keaton's personality,

which is just, let's find a really simple hook for a picture, versus The General is like all of his ambition. Yes. I do think he thought very highly of Battling Butler. We'll get into it, I think. But I think he, because it was a hit. I don't say it derisively. He was just very pro his movies that succeeded, I guess. But there was this very blue-collar, working man.

I'm not a pretentious artiste, right? He would push back against, I think especially compared to Chaplin and Lloyd, who were thought of as these very particular, controlling, self-serious artists. He was like, my job's just to make pictures and make people laugh. And then kind of every couple of movies, he'd swing for something bigger like a general. But I think he would try to keep that

ambition in check and just be like, all I need is a picture where I get in a boxing ring. That's all I need. That's my job. Yeah, I'm little, so it'll be funny. And it is funny. It's funny. It's funny. This is the thing. He was right.

You know what else is funny, though? Just this. I just think this is funny. The old-fashioned. Put him up. Put him up. Show me your dukes. You know, Marquis of Queensbury rules type boxing.

Well, and the old boxing posture where the tush is just all the way out. Right. Like you got a full diaper. Yeah. Arched back. You know, the reason why you hold your fists like that in that kind of boxing is because you're not really wearing gloves.

And so... The backs of the hands, you're saying, you need to lead with that, the backs of the fists? And you're trying to keep the other person's fists away from your face as much as possible. And that kind of helps out. Right, whereas once you got the gloves, this became sort of over your face. Right, yeah. That's interesting. Hey, look, this is the kind of helps out. Right. Whereas once you got the gloves, this became like... You can lead knuckle forward. Over your face.

Right. Yeah. That's interesting. Hey, look, this is the kind of historical context, hard facts... Boxing expert. Yes.

Like, this is a main series on the films of Buster Keaton. It's called Podcast Junior. Today we're talking the general and battling butler. And our guest returning to the show, one of our favorite people, one of the smartest people

on the planet, Jamel Bowie. How do you of our favorite people one of the smartest people on the planet Jamel Bowie he introduces one of the smartest people on the planet so I don't think it's true he wrote his own bio by the way he did write his own bio and he passed me a note card that said and he underlined that I underlined it and then I had like a switch

blade the Griffins you were doing this switch blade fisticuffs. It is always a pleasure to be on the show. You guys know that I love you and I love the show. You're the best. Glad to be here. You tweeted about watching Buster Keaton movies with your son a while ago because we planned

the show out. Oh, yeah. Very far in advance. And I immediately did the old DM slide and I said, have I told you that we have this on the books that we want to do this? And immediately knew we had to get you on for one of these to talk about two of them, because we're doing these all as double features. Now, you, General was your pick. The General Battling Butler thing was your pick. I was hoping you would pick this just because.

I mean, it's kind of like me bait. hoping you would pick this just because it's kind of it's kind of like me bait it's a little yes yes but it's also like this movie is uh i think so uh fascinatingly complicated as like a piece of american historical fiction right and within it contains so much of what is weird about how our country mythologizes itself in its popular culture uh which is the kind of stuff you like to dig into that's right uh i i assume we'll get into it later but i think the general is for as much as it does stand as an exemplary um uh piece of filmmaking is also extremely of its time yes Yes. Like it's so specifically the middle of the 1920s in the United States

that it's almost like striking how specific it is as a cultural artifact in that regard for a lot of reasons. That's what's fascinating about it is in its construction, it is maybe the most modern of his movies and the movie that is most accessible. But in its viewpoint and its construction, it is maybe the most modern of his movies and the movie that is most accessible. But in its viewpoint and its attitudes, it is so of its moment where you watch something like Sherlock Jr.

And you're like, well, this is very modern and relatable on a human behavioral level. Like, I understand the motivations behind this and everything. Right. Whereas the general just plays like... It does. Yeah. No. Yeah, you could make the general now.

You could. And it's just like... It would be the same basic concept. Yeah. Right. I mean, you might want to make some tweaks. Just if you made it now, in my opinion. What would you change?

I have a notes pass. I have a quick notes pass. I think I have a very fun laugh right now With my cult I kind of have this dying laugh I said there was no giggling allowed in this episode I'm not giggling Giggling would be different I mean if you were to remake The General

You'd kind of be like halfway to Unstoppable Yeah The best movie I mean honestly The General is easier to remake than Unstoppable. Now, there's a movie that you can't remake. No. Unstoppable has my favorite Denzel moment ever,

which is when Chris Pine tells him that he had a gun when he, like, confronted his wife's ex-boyfriend or whatever. And Denzel goes, Uh-oh! He literally says, Uh-oh! I need to re-watch that movie.

It's so good. It's also incredibly re-watchable. It's also like 95 minutes long. It's very easy to re-watch. Were we having this conversation in some recent episode about like, yeah, we were.

I forget why it came up. 98 minutes. There you go. Best final films in a career. Yeah. It's a really good swapsong. And it's like for tragic reasons,

it was not made with the intent or, you know, I think from the viewpoint of someone who thought it was their last film versus most bad final films are someone who's kind of lost their fastball and is fading out. Right. But that's one of the best final films

in anyone's career. Because it's like him being like, I am still the best at this. Right. I make these kinds of movies in a way that is best at this. Right. I make these kinds of movies in a way that is unique and like unlike the other people who make these kinds of movies and, you know, give me an

old star, give me a new star. Make them both do great stuff. It doesn't have the self-importance of certain like older, elder statesman filmmakers being like, here's the one, my final statement for the world it's also in the incredible in my opinion body of work that is chris pine's career i mean which

like with every year you're just kind of like this guy is stacking bills like he's so good yes yes he keeps making the right choice i don't mean any disrespect to the other chris makes the wrong choice you're like i get it though you know like you know i get like don't I don't mean any disrespect to the other Chris's. Even when he makes the wrong choice, you're like, I get it though. You know, I get like, don't worry darling or wrinkle in time. It's like,

well, that was an interesting filmmaker. And also, he's bad in none of these. No, he's always good. That's the thing.

When he picks a wrong project, you're like, he comes out kind of looking the best of anyone in it and it was cool that he signed up for it. He uses his like,

fame and his sort of like, leading man status in the most interesting way i mean no disrespect to the other chris's but it is absurd to me anytime this is brought up as a debate right when it's like he's running laps around the rest of them he has he seems to have like almost total clarity about what his persona is totally gets yes and knows exactly how to deploy it yes Yes. And, yeah. None of the other Chris's can, like, Chris Pratt can still barely

figure out what he's trying to do. Yes. Yeah. And there's a weird balance to Pine where it's like, he's really willing to hand himself over to, like, a director and go, like, use my persona. I have no ego. And to take, like, an off-ball role, like Wonder Woman, Dungeons & Dragons, like these kinds of movies where he go like, use my persona. I have no ego. And to take like an off ball,

like Wonder Woman, Dungeons and Dragons, like these kinds of movies where he's like, I'll be a star, but you don't need all of it to be Chris. But also some of those guys in that position, the last thing they want to do is play the normal, straightforward leading man because they're like,

I need to hide behind ticks and weirdness or whatever. Pine also is like, if that's what you want of me, I can do that. If you want the earnest version of this, I can do that. My guy's throwing fits. He looks incredible. He really does. That's true. And what do you think that is?

Do you think he just has a really good guy who finds him good stuff? I think he works with good stylists. I've told this story before on the podcast but he's he's not he's afraid he's not afraid to like go there and like be a little wild yeah wear color right like just like wear uh untraditional kinds of right so admittedly is a guy who looks good wearing anything yeah he's one of those guys where it's like he looks good with short hair long hair clean shaven but he's kind of discovered that he can pull off almost like a Diane Keaton look.

Yes. Really? Especially when he had that long hair. A male Diane Keaton look. And the flowing shirt. He went through like a something's got to give phase. I feel like around. He looked incredible.

Whenever some of those photos, I think it was like a Vogue shoot came out. I was like, Tess, my wife, have you seen how good Chris Pine looks? Incredible. Angelic. But then he also can just throw on a leather jacket and fucking Wayfarers and jeans and you're like, yeah, cool. Well, yeah, absolutely. The story I've told a thousand times before

on the podcast, Jamel, is Brendan Hines, friend of the show, past and future guest, invited me to a birthday party when I was in LA and he was like, I'm going to a birthday party with some friends if you want to come join us. And I was like, absolutely. I have no plans in LA. And he was like, I'm going to a birthday party with some friends if you want to come join us. And I was like, absolutely. I have no plans tonight.

And then he was like, cool. Chris is driving. He'll come pick us up. He'll pick you up from your hotel. And I was like, Chris Pine? And he was like, yeah. And I went, I can't go. I cannot.

Even though you probably did, even at the time, think, look, I know that guy's probably the chillest of the major stars or whatever. Brandon is one of my very good friends. Well, obviously you know Brandon. Chris is one of his good friends. I have never met him. I'm not on a first-name basis. But I've heard only the loveliest things about him.

And I was like, if I went to a party and Chris Pine was there, I would A, be starstruck, but B, I'd be like, well, I didn't know what I was getting into. I'm going to feel emasculated just because my body sucks. I look like a pilot with wet laundry or whatever. Get out of here. I have to stand in the same vicinity as him. But the idea

of getting into a car that he's driving and opening the door and walking out with him into the... I was like, I can't do any of this. I cannot do any of this. I cannot do any of this. I missed my chance. I fucked up really hard. What kind of car do you think he drives?

I couldn't deal with any of this. It's a good question. I don't know. Yeah, probably a Tesla. Maybe. Like, I like to think he's driving, like, a muscle car or something cool. He gives me, like, drives a sedan vibes.

Right, he's just, like, pulling up in, like, a really nice, like, Infiniti. But I. He's just like pulling up in like a really nice like infinity. Yeah. I also see like him having a vintage like Land Rover. Is he not proving our point here? Any car we imagine him having is cool. He could pull that off. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Family midsize sedan. Fuck, that would be cool. He pulls up in a golf cart. Vintage muscle car. All right, Pine. Fucking cool. You know Pine drives a golf cart? That's fucking cool.

He's got power wheels. And he handles in it. He has a power wheels car. All right, Pine. Fucking cool. You know Pine drives a golf cart? That's fucking cool. He's got power wheels. And he handles in it. He has a power wheels car. He has a power wheels car. Cool. That's fucking cool. All right, we should talk about Buster Keen.

Can I just say one thing? Please. You can say anything. About Chris Pratt. As long as we don't talk over each other. Yeah. Yeah, we can never do that.

Yeah, it's illegal. I'm just going to say, I think I should be brave on this podcast and say things that people aren't going to like. Brave and strong. I think he is excellent in Guardians of the Galaxy 3.

I cut all this out, so it's just, I think, that we just get back into it. You just hear that I'm agreeing, and no one ever hears what I mean. That would be funnier. No, I think Chris Pratt's given a lot of very weird, fun performances recently. I think he's clearly in some kind of crisis over what his persona is. He talks about Jesus a lot.

I don't mind people talking about Jesus if they want to, but it's not really my area of interest. Jesus is the right to me. Yeah, exactly. He is obsessed with people criticizing him in a way that is absolutely a self-perpetuating problem. Right, it's like, Chris, chill. Like,

log off. You're doing great. Right. You're successful. You have a lot of fans. I think he's so good in Guardians 3. Have you seen it yet?

Probably haven't seen it yet. I haven't seen it yet. I liked it significantly less than you did, but that was almost my immediate takeaway. Why didn't you like it? We can talk about this

off mic. Not because I don't want to, because... Oh, God. That's a movie where he's just like, I'm going to do what this requires of me, and I'm going to hand to the director. Frame one.

And you're like, right, this is why you became a movie star. Can you please not lose sight of this? He's a guy who's got a very specific strike zone, but within it, he is so effective, and he keeps on losing sight of what his movie star persona is. Whereas fucking Pine. Piney. He's got perfect control.

Piney can throw a ball at the third baseline, and the umpire would be like, strike. Clean. Clean strike. Took the words right out of my mouth. That was the exact analogy I was going to use. Well, you said strike zone. No. Pratt is phenomenal in that

he's great all right um should we talk about the oh well but buster keaton in general jamel i feel like we you know do do you have sort of a general not the general a general and by the way let's make very clear just because of recent things we've covered on this podcast for anyone who's confused this film is not a biopic of rosario Dawson's vagina. No, right. We did find out in our episode on Trance, the Danny Boyle film, that Rosario Dawson refers to her vagina as the General.

Oh, yeah. She said the General was mad one day. Public information. Yep, now she talked about it. Yes. Yep, no. This is about, well, it's about a train.

But in general, Buster Keaton. Yeah. What do you think? I am a fan. Yes. I really enjoy watching buster keaton what do you think i am a fan i really enjoy watching buster keaton films uh uh griffin mentioned that i had talked about watching buster keaton movies with my son um who was like old enough to like watch stuff now he's five now he's almost five okay and the reason i do that is because it's for a couple reasons the first is that i am on

tiktok enough that i see young people complain about black and white movies and it fills me with absolute dread it is a bummer have children the idea of having children that if i wanted to like pop on you know the manchurian candidate they'd be like i don't want to watch that because it's in black and white you gotta pop you gotta cut that off at the pass you gotta so it's that's the right tone in your household and so it's it's part of it is sort of like, let's actually just start introducing really early stuff and kind of like getting him used,

because they have no prior context, right? So just like getting him used to the idea that things can look different. And because I'm a photographer and have lots of black and white photos and prints and stuff at home, he also is sort of aware of the fact that pictures can be in black and white.

It may represent color. You want this to exist in his perception of the world. Right. Yes. That's the first reason. The second reason is that the great thing about the silent comedies is that they did provide so much of the visual language for early American animation.

And so for a kid, watching Buster keaton is extremely legible because if they've seen cartoon steps away from looney tunes or whatever they immediately get what is actually the intent of what is happening and i think there is something in buster's persona we've talked about this in the other episodes that is very much like a child and his understanding of what's going on around him right his sort of like guilelessness right without being dumb he's like slightly oblivious or his perception of things is a little bit skewed and he sort of just like enters into situations um but his comedy is also so behavioral in a way that i think like a young child can lock into they understand the language of what he's doing because it's in their understanding of learning

how to read people around them and situations and everything. It's very close to the perception of a little kid. And so that's the other reason I like to watch it with them because he can actually really enjoy them in a way that is not necessarily the case. I would like to watch some Marx Brothers with them, but that's so verbal. Yeah, you need to be like a couple years older for that i guess and the marx brothers movies are so much about uh class and like social mores and all these

like you need to understand not only like adult society but then like entrench yourself in some sort of understanding of what it was like a hundred years ago on top of that. Yeah. Yeah. There's society movies. Yeah. I like Buster Keaton. The other thing for me as for me talking about liking Buster Keaton is that

sort of like my, the way I got to Buster Keaton was through Jackie Chan, which I think is probably the case for a lot of people who are just like interested. You're like either love Jackie Chan or the kind of person who wants to learn more about the guy's influences. And you are on the record, of course, when a couple years ago during our March Madness, we let you pick a candidate. You pick Jackie Chan and you proudly disclaimed that your political stance is defund the police but fund the police story. That's right.

Defund the police but fund the police story. We have to fund. And the super cops. Yes. We have Defund the police, but fund the police story. We have to fund... And the super cops. Yes. And the... We have to. I mean, they're super cops. We've spent a lot of them. Not enough. Okay. Not enough. If you look at the animals of film history, there are a weird amount of films that are

not police stories. Sure. That's true. I don't mean stories about policemen. I mean proper entries in the police story franchise. Right. Jamel, the anti-silent black and white bias you're talking about you're seeing from people on TikTok is so fascinating to me because as many smarter people than I have pointed out and written about at length, there is something really fascinating about how TikTok has gotten closer to something approximating silent film language and especially silent comedy language. When you look at the things that go very viral and they rarely have dialogue. There are obviously a lot of TikToks that are based on talking, but so much of them are behavioral, involve onscreen captions like intertitles. Right.

Are using camera positions and performance to convey something very quickly. and performance to convey something very quickly. And it's like, they don't understand it, but the people who are on TikTok saying they don't want to watch these types of movies are actually more fluent in this language than many generations before them. Right. Yes, I think that's exactly right. That just the constraints of that medium

are essentially reinventing early techniques. But for a variety of reasons i mean some of it is just some of it is just a standard being young and not really wanting to look at old stuff yeah um uh some of it is i mean i don't know i'm not going to psychologize too much but i i there there is asking someone with no familiarity with not just black and white films but like older films that have like a different editing rhythm that have a different kind of style of direction and now i'm not even i'm not just talking about like the 20s and the 30s but like you know asking someone to watch a movie from the 50s and they don't really watch anything before 1980 and you're asking them really to sort of like learn how to watch a movie from the 50s and they don't really watch anything before 1980 and you're asking them

really to sort of like learn how to watch a movie in a different way you come across people I do often people who I think of as being sort of like intelligent and cultured and curious who try watching on the internet you're sure?

I'm talking more in real life conversations I've had with people IRL who try watching like great films from the 70s and are like it's just too slow for me you know they can't deal with like the shagginess of 70s new hollywood stuff uh they can deal with netflix shows just take a season to do anything this is my fucking thing tapping my watch i know you should beat that out too just keep doing that don't do that to be quick before or do it or do it um yeah no it's uh well silent movies especially yeah they you know they require some discipline or whatever in our phone addicted culture they do i mean that's biggest thing. You actually do have,

you cannot take your eyes away. You have to watch. You have to fully engage. Yeah, like, there's, it's like, like you can kind of watch a basketball game

looking at your phone, right? Because if you've got the sound on, you'll know when something's about to happen. They're narrating it. Yeah, and like, you'll just hear the crowd or the announcer

get a little more excited. You're like, all right. Let me look up. You can't do that with a silent movie movie i know everyone knows this and it's very obvious to say but the most you're going to hear is a piano going like like that and also like none of these have definitive scores so even if you're just going off the music it's like depends where you're watching it right depends how you're watching it you know there's no like definitive version where that's going to guide you through the story better than one or the other.

It's all subjective. None of it is the specific director's intent of how that score is being employed. It's an interesting thing. I know this is our first episode to come out in this miniseries since our first episode was released in this miniseries. Yes. And it has been really heartening to me to see how many people have been watching these for the first time. Absolutely.

And having that feeling of like... The reaction was really nice. Oh shit, that's funny. Right. Like I've just seen a lot of like... I was actually cracking up at this. In a way where they're going into this... I think a lot of this is like the framing in our culture of just like,

I'm watching this for historical purposes. I'm watching this for a sense of film history and knowledge rather than expecting to get genuine enjoyment out of this and the way it was intended for its audience at the time. Right, right. And I think that's just I know to move themselves as much as possible in the minds of an audience member, you'll find that the stuff still works. It still works. It still is affecting. It's not dated. It's different.

But it's not necessarily dated. No. No. I'll say for Battling Butler, I had a good chuckle when he falls into the lake and tips his hat to the mountain lady as she goes by I thought that was a good bit I laughed Battling Butler is chronologically

the first movie we were discussing I will also give you just a little bit of context about it we talked about this you are we talked about this on we talked about this on, I think... We talked about this a little bit on the next episode.

Okay. We've been going a little out of order. Maybe. I don't know. I don't remember. But Buster Keaton did have the rights to this story that was about a skyscraper. Yes.

That he kept trying to crack and couldn't figure out. We talked about this on Jamie's episode. I just don't remember where it falls. Yeah, I don't remember where it falls. But yes, this was sort of his great, his Waterloo project. He could never crack the skyscraper movie. Which sounds fun.

Like, it's like girder, skyscraper. Like, you know, guys up on the, you know, in the sky. The premise of this movie basically was like a giant skyscraper being built. And this guy and his love interest getting stuck at the top of this in construction skyscraper. Right. And you have it feels like it's kind of his diehard minus the terrorists.

Right. But it is like how does Buster Keaton deal with modern architecture being at heights, being on steel girders and scaffolding and all this sort of shit? And the reason it never got made was they could never figure out how to get down from the building. Yeah, he just could not, like, put a plot together. Right. They never had a draft where they came up with a good end for the movie. Yeah. The other thing he purchases around the same time he purchases this uh this skyscraper

concept is battling butler there's a british musical that had been running on the 42nd street in the selwyn theater big hit uh which had music and lyrics uh which is why those music and lyrics are credited on screen even though obviously this movie does not have contractual obligation but he saw it and was just like that's a very good simple premise that i could fit into just like right the false identity thing he liked the you know the uh the swap a sort of fancy lad has the same who is trying to prove his sort of masculinity and grit to the world finds out he has the same name as a a tough guy boxer and sort of allows the mistaken identity to happen right which leads to them then needing to prove himself in the ring which is like yeah perfect buster a tough guy boxer and sort of allows the mistaken identity to happen. Right. Which leads to them then needing to prove himself in the ring,

which is like, yeah, perfect Buster Keaton setup. Um, in the stage play, uh, the, the character Buster would eventually play,

um, does, but does this whole thing becoming the prize fighter to escape, uh, his ball and chain wife? Less, uh, kind of classic, but sympathetic right exactly uh so they switch that to uh he's trying to impress a lady right uh he's trying to escape which is

almost always the buster movie is yeah buster exists in this world everyone else sort of like judges his perceived lack of masculinity he doesn't care until he realizes if I assume the role of how men are supposed to behave in society or in this moment, in this culture, whatever sort of silo that movie is focused on, then perhaps that is the thing that wins her over. He's always sort of assuming a role,

a task. Not always, but that's often the setup. And this adds the fun mistake and identity thing on top of the what if Buster tried to be a boxer? The other problem he has with the original story is how it ends with just like, oh, you don't actually have to do it, you know? And so he's like, that would be too boring as an ending.

So we have to tack on, you know, all the other stuff. The fight in the dressing room is basically his way of being like, can we have a more fun, action-pack ending not just like you're okay it's more dramatically satisfying too yeah uh i agree and the movie was a huge hit uh we can talk about it now but basically it's one of buster keaton's favorites but that's partly because it did really well and he was really happy about that like which just seems to be how he feels about his career when he is interviewed retrospectively. And, you know, anytime people think,

he's like, yeah, well, that one did really well. But also, boxing is a weirdly cinematic sport, right? Sure, not that weird. Well, I think, let me correct myself here. I think boxing's prominence in cinema relative to its prominence in sports culture at large is kind of interesting to me but it's because it is so cinematic it is so like simple and boiled down in its dramatics in its framing and its staging and it comes down to like

two people with very clear action which is very cinematic i will say also boxing has just not been as relevant in our lives yeah Yeah, I was about to say. But it used to be so much more. Boxing used to be the sport, in part because it was so accessible. They're hitting each other. I mean, they're just huge. Who hits more than the other guy? Who hit the guy?

Who hit each other? You could say it was more democratic, right? Yeah. Anyone sufficiently strong enough could be a boxer. Right. Who hit the guy? Who hit each other? You could say it was more democratic, right? Yeah, yes. Anyone sufficiently strong enough could be a boxer. Right. And so schools, you know, Robert Ryan is in a boxing picture, the setup. And part of why he was cast is that he was a collegiate boxer. And that was like a thing that used to be very common that like high schools

colleges like sure boxing which is the thing that people did recreationally get everyone all these teenagers digressing out as well just let them run around the ring throwing punches i just feel like mike tyson at all like the the mid 90s is sort of the end of superstar boxing in a way that you know it's sort of all dwindling after that. You still have, like, Lennox Lewis, or, you know, you have a few, like,

you know, Pacquiao, Mayweather, and all that. But, like, it does get supplanted by UFC and stuff and, like, become kind. It's not like that boxing

is irrelevant. Right. But it used to be, I mean, okay, I'll put it this way. It used to be so culturally significant, like, that Ali beat Foreman

or, you know, Joe, Joe John, Joe, like, that Ali beat Foreman or... Sure. Or that, you know, Joe... Frazier. Joe John... Jack Johnson. Jack Johnson. Sure. Thank you. Yeah.

Jack Johnson wins the title and there are riots in American cities. Sure. Right. Right. Sure. That used to be the significance of boxing. That's... No, this is all true.

There is that weird, you know, like, you can't tell me that's the strongest guy, like, back then. You know, like, the weird charged... Yeah. Boxing like back then you know like the weird charged yeah boxing's weird boxing's so weird yeah still weird it is just kind of wild like the percentage of like canonical boxing movies both in terms of like like pop culture staying power critical reception box office grosses at the time you know it's just like it's a big footprint it is just also compelling it's a big footprint. It is just also compelling. It's like, why would someone do this? You know?

And the reasons are often compelling. I like that when boxers retire, they have to open a restaurant. I do, too. And they walk around going, hey, how you doing? And they show up and they go, and they take a picture with someone, you know?

They let you pretend that you're punching them. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Retired boxers are fun Or depressing Yeah, I was about to say, they're either fun Or they have suffered debilitating

They got punched in the head so much Yes It's so weird, it's so weird that's just like There's like federations that govern The punching of heads, like, you know what I mean Or tom-toms Yeah, sure, you work the body, that know what I mean? Or our tom-toms. Yeah, sure. Work the body.

That's true. I've talked about this a lot before on Mike, but my brother almost became a boxer. He had a Golden Gloves license and everything and was sort of right on the precipice of maybe trying to pursue it as a semi-professional thing. You know, within low-level featherweight. Yeah, your brother is small.

Five foot six. Small boxers are kind of cool. Yes, he was very good at it. And then the first time he had like a licensed fight where he was up against someone whose only career path in life was boxing, he was like, oh, I don't care about this that much. Yeah.

I like doing this. The field of people who this is their whole thing is a very different relationship than i have to this sport but growing up uh he he made the the desktop background on the family computer uh i guess we had different family profiles but whenever he was using the computer his background was like a slow motion shot of a guy getting punched in the jaw where it's like his whole face is coming out and my mother would just walk in and like see the computer screen and be like please don't do this please don't you're constantly showing me the most barbaric image in the world and trying to get my permission

to pursue this professionally i would i too would not when he was like 13 years old yeah you know i might i might be anxious about all right all right the beginning of babbling butler yes i do love buster keaton as a fancy boy i was gonna say he's very good at it he's really good at the fancy lad stuff his his sort of his flat pan as he calls it his blank expression his great stone face can be used very well as this sort of disaffected oblivious board aristocrat right yeah the board aristocrat thing but he he's able to do it without a sort of um unpleasant pomposity you buy it as the sort of like board aristocrat thing without him being despicable

right you know because usually a lot of comedies like this very often in the movies where he's playing someone of a low lower social class the villain his romantic rival is a guy like this played by a taller man who comes on screen you're immediately like fuck this guy and buster can play this role at the center of a movie and you're like he's foolish but i don't hate him out of hand immediately right you know you want to see him get smarter and more aware well the thing is is that once he does perk up his everything about him changes yes he it's like it's it's like the bored aristocrat thing is the air he's putting on. But his actual self is something much more playful and appealing. Which is fun.

You get to watch him sort of unlock what we want him to be. But yes, he's just, he's so good at it. He's so good at all this sort of like very minute body language behavioral stuff uh i mean we'll get to it in the general but the scene where he gets back in line and pretends to be the bartender and the shift is so slight but like this film is such a great study of of just him basically stripping away all the errors of this guy battling butler he's He's in the lap of luxury. He's told, you know, you're going to go on a camping trip.

It'll do you some good. You've got to toughen up. So he brings his butler, played by Snits Edwards, the great Snits Edwards, with what a wonderful face he has, who is in Seven Chances. He's sort of the anti-Buster Keaton

in that his face is all personality. Yes. There's too much going on in his face at all times. And I do very much enjoy just his version of camping. He has a brass bed. Yes.

He has, you know, a big fancy, you know, He's wearing his gloves and he's got his... Just the drawers. He's got a fucking icebox and a stove. He's got an icebox.

They go shooting and they just kind of look around at a bunch of pheasants and stuff and they're like, there's nothing here to shoot. Well, yeah, because he's bad at everything. He's bad. Right. That's that's such a good sequel i mean this is where you're just like he was he was so tight in his visual storytelling of that sequence where he steps out and then you

get the nature photography the close-ups of all the different animals out in the wild and you think it's just sort of like environmental establishing shots and then it cuts back to him saying there's nothing here for me to shoot. And he's like using cinematic language to you don't even realize he's setting up a joke until the punchline hits you.

But this is inversion of the usual Buster Keaton dynamic where it's often like the woman is of a higher social class than him. Right. The parents are trying

to set her up with someone of a similar social class. He's a working man who's trying to get her attention and prove himself to her in this it's he immediately falls in love with a wild mountain woman who lives in the woods with like her trapper family and he needs to prove that he's as like tough and like rough and rumble and of the land as they are. Because he doesn't get it. I think it's really funny that he meets this woman by, he cocks his gun backwards under his arm,

shoots it, and then hits her handkerchief, right? That's what he does. That's when she gets mad at him. You also get the gag of him putting out the camping chair and then it goes straight into the ground. And she's a lot of fun in this. She gets to be a real firecracker. Sally O'Ne straight into the ground. And she's a lot of fun in this. She's fun. Like, she gets to be a real, like, firecracker. Sally O'Neill is the actress.

Did she ever work with him again? Not that I can see. He rarely repeated leading ladies. But I think this is one of the ones where... I mean, General, also to its advantage, lets the female lead get in on the action more. But this is the one where she's more of, like, a challenge to him.

Right. You know? Yes, absolutely. Which is kind of fun. She's yelling at him. Well, he's such a doofus. Yes. So, yes, there's a lot of camp business.

There's a canoe bit. All good. Him trying to shoot the duck from the canoe is funny. I mean, this is like the Buster Keaton use every part of the Buffalo sort of thing of like even if the plot has to get to him taking on the identity

of the boxer it's like one of those Simpsons episodes where you're like this is about boxing like the first seven minutes they don't go to Itchy and Scratchy Land

until minute 14 but part of it is like for him it's like if I've gone to a campsite I'm gonna get every good bit i can out of fancy guy goes camping i'm in no rush to get to the plot setup why would i leave bits on the

table right you got her big dad and brother who are you know big and scary yes large scary people always a good bit always funny can we say against buster keaton yes yeah another thing that's great about snits yeah snits is shorter than him. Yes, Snits is very small. Snits is maybe the only man in Buster Keaton movies who ever makes

Buster Keaton look a little big. His leading lady is usually basically the exact same size as him. Everyone else in the world is so much bigger. He's so skinny.

Yes. And then Snits is like tiny. Yes, Snits is small. Yes. And he's like old. He's shriveled. I say this with love. Yes.

He has the date with the girl where they're at the table and the table keeps sinking into the ground. Sinking into the ground is a very underrated, easy, simple bit of practical comedy. Yeah, and just it's... Like it ends with him doing a picnic. It's funny. But the joke isn't that the table is sinking.

The joke is he refuses to accept that the table is sinking. That will not get in the way of his flirtation. Yes, okay. So the advantage of these movies is I can just cue them up and scroll through them. That's what I'm doing too, yes. Just to remember because they are silent. And then, yeah, about 20 minutes in is finally like,

so there's a guy with your name who's a prize fighter. Yeah. Here's your end. And that's, I guess, he he tries to impress right the uh big boys the big cowboy hatted boys with no i'm no i'm no shrimp i'm no coward like i am here i am the battling butler yeah and uh you know there you go i mean the butler kind of pimps him into it. Yes, and it's just really pro this. Yeah, I think he's kind of left that's his only option

as far as, like, convincing the dad and the brother. Well, there's nothing, like, anything he's trying to do in real time before their eyes fails. But he can take on a reputation that has already been established, that has a paper trail, and he thinks just sort of wear it and go, see, here's the proof,

without needing to actually prove any of that to them. I mean, he is wearing a tux in the woods. He is. Which is an insane thing to do. But it makes actual sense because he's like a boxer. There's something about that that just works. Well, and what you're saying, like, Jamel, about...

I'm sorry, what? He has a very nice tweed suit later. I thought you were saying these are very nice tweets. These are some very nice tweets. We should never, ever... That should be dropped from our vocabulary as a people.

I didn't say it. Thank God. No, but what you were saying, Jamel, about, like, boxing being this more democratic sport right it's sort of like well they already see him as a fancy man but if he's only fancy because he earned his way there through boxing right retroactively they're less judgmental and even though yeah he's small he's a lightweight fighter you know so they respect him he's in the james indian division yeah yeah yeah um yeah uh any other thoughts this training dummy on the uh beginnings okay you have a training dummy all

right yes the other thing i guess his relationship with the woman is very settled 15 minutes in she loves him yes like it's all good he's not pursuing her anymore he has to impress her yes but uh he's not he's not uh worrying about that anymore no um the training is that what happens because they go see the boxer yeah they go see the box right you see you see the battling butler she's some pretty good fighting you know yeah yeah he beats the uh what's the guy's name alabama uh something yes um absolutely alabama something Something? Yes. Absolutely. Alabama something. I don't remember. Well, it's the Alabama murderer. Yes. That's right.

The Alabama murderer. Yes. Very evocative. Yeah. So he sees Battling Butler beats the Alabama murderer. And then... Because in my head, what happens is they're on the train heading back. Pretty much.

Exactly. Right, right. And he's like, I have to tell you the truth. This is like, you know, I can't keep this up. because in my head what happens is they're on the train heading pretty much exactly right right and he's like i have to tell her the truth this is like you know i can't keep this up but then he is welcomed as the battling butler right on the train right and the actual battling butler sees this and sort of like what the fuck right who doesn't really look like him by the way that's no and i had to think about it for a sec, but you know, people are probably listening, they're listening to fights, right?

Yeah, sure. You don't really know what someone looks like apart from this like one picture of them in a stance or whatever. They have similar hair. Yeah, well like what,

was there no discussion of having Buster play both characters in some sort of feat of, you know, double acting? That's what I initially thought this was going to be.

Me too. I thought it was going to be like, oh, there's a tough Buster and a silly buster. But that would get in the way of, it's nice that the final fight is actually good, right? Yes, 100%. And I don't know how you... Comedically, he could maybe pull off something like

what's McCall at the Playhouse, right? Where he's using crazy photography and doubles to do it. But it's nice that the final fight is a real fight there's like emotional catharsis to that um i mean this is uh you know a lot of as buster went on in the general's big like proof of this is he sort of was refining what he felt were uh changing sensibilities in the audience away from them just wanting silly slapstick gags.

He got increasingly obsessed with, you need to have a real story, emotional stakes, characters you can root for, things they can triumph over. You need to be able to hang a hat on your narrative. So I think, yeah, it's like he's no longer going for... I was watching there's a really great Everyfame a painting video

about Buster Keaton and his approach to filmmaking which is a great shot chaser with the Everyfame painting Jackie Chan video which is like one of the best those are just two perfect like 10 minute distillations of how to read their movies and value what they did in their process and everything um but there's some audio interview that he uses in that video with buster keaton

talking about like as his career went on he tried to move further and further away from cartoon gags he called it which were sort of like looney tunes-esque rewriting of the universe around you for the gag has to be earned through personality through behavior yeah and something like him playing both guys i think is more of a cartoon gag sort of thing yeah that makes sense and these movies are longer and slower yes they do spend more time trying to invest you and everybody and like lay out the like rather than just do like bit bit his approach was sort of like first 15 20 minutes really set up the stakes of the thing trying to invest you in everybody and like lay out the, like rather than just do like bit, bit,

bit. His approach was sort of like first 15, 20 minutes really set up the stakes of the thing. And then you can stack the gags up. An advantage to this movie is his fancy lad persona is so funny. The first 15, 20 minutes of plot building are also funny. Right.

Cause just him doing it, going through the motions is funny. I do wonder how much of it, though, is like, Chaplin's movies at the same time are getting more and more openly emotional. Sure. Right? Right. Chaplin's movies are very beautifully emotional.

Right. Which I love. Right. But, you know, Buster was very unsentimental in his approach. He's not going to try to outdo Chaplin on that level. But I do think he was like, there needs to be a narrative rigor to my films. I can't just be doing just silly goofs.

Chaplin, of course, is also a famous boxing movie. Yes. Okay, yeah, the training dummy. Talk to me about the training dummy. I just think this dummy is so... It's a big sabudio. That's for our British listeners. I'm sorry, what? It's a big sabudio.

What is a big sabudio, David? Sabudio what is a big sabudio david sabudio is is a british board game of i guess it's a board game that's like soccer it's like you play it on a big mat with these like guys who are standing on these little semi circles we're a little weevil wobbles exactly and you sort of flick them and they like do football okay i see okay i don't know why it's called sabudio, but anyone who's from the UK knows what I'm talking about. And he's a big, because he's in a big wibble wobble.

Yeah. I think this dummy's really funny. It's very well designed. It has these flappy arms where without feeling unrealistic anytime he punches it, it just sort of moves wildly and will just always hit him

even when it doesn't feel like it should be that threatening. I think there should be a new boxer called the Alabama Murderer. Someone should claim that moniker. Yeah. What a straightforward, I'm from Alabama and I'm going to murder you. I'm murdering you in the ring. How do you think he got the name? I don't know.

I mean, back then you could kill and get away with it pretty easily, so he might have actually just murdered someone. and he did it enough times that they were like you know what yeah you're really you're really good on that it was like a legal to like it was legal to like poison or shoot somebody as long as you did in a boxing ring right exactly you just had to break into like a gym um yeah there's all just a lot of boxing stuff there's the dummy there's him sparring with the real alfred there's i don't know you know just a lot of great physical humor um he also keeps flirting with the guy's wife the guy's wife yes yeah inadvertently one of my my favorite bits is when he is trying to help her change the light bulb in her room and then the

actual battling butler is like what the hell what's going on in there and then the light bulb in her room and then the actual battling butler is like what the hell what's going on in there and then the light goes out and he's like oh my god he's sleeping with my wife yes it's very funny very funny there's this bit where he's just sort of like winding up and trying to spar with the really big guy and he keeps missing him

yeah that's really funny I also I think it's funny when when they get Married And he just says Promise me We never camp And you never come see me fight Right

He just immediately He lays out the Yeah I'm too crazy You don't want to see What an animal I am You can't The reason I'm not Yeah

There's a sort of Rocky-esque Training montage Where they like Run across a farm And run like with a car That like Gets flipped over.

Right. I mean, this is the thing. It's such a good setup for Buster because he's going to take everything so seriously. So like you know things are going to like fuck with him. You know he's going to fall down. You know he's going to get hit or whatever. But he's never going to play it goofy.

He's going to play it with the intensity of a fighter who is just not equipped for this. I'll say another good bit. This is when they're coming to, I guess, his country town. They're driving, and his butler is like, he says to him, we got to drive carefully because these are country folk. And then everyone's driving like a maniac.

I thought that was pretty funny. Well, you were mentioning he's fighting with the... Because he basically gets pawned off to be the fighter. Yes. I guess it's just basically like the actual battling butler's upset with him flirting with his wife. Who he also... There is that weird cut of her the next day with the black eye. Yeah. That's not good. No no that's not chill sure i don't like that it's a hundred year old movie don't like it yeah

don't like it but he because the battling butler has to have a rematch with the alabama murderer yes and so um he at a certain point he's like listen you're gonna fight the alabama murderer right and i'm just gonna watch to see this unfold. And that kind of takes you to like the last segment of the film. Sure. Yeah.

Right. Where they like, they watch a different fight happen and the guy gets the shit beat up. There's like an ambulance parked outside. Yeah. There's all this stuff going on.

But that's also just like such good use of Buster Stoneface of like, show us a real boxing match and then anytime you cut to him in the stands wearing a tuxedo just blank faced expression you can project all the terror onto him right of what he's gotten himself into um seeing boxing at like a real level and then his wife shows up right in a nice frilly coat um and uh when does the ruse get you know because she's like we bet all our money on you yeah oh boy oh boy butler what have you done you got yourself

in so much trouble uh and then like the butler finally just does it himself right he's just like we weren't gonna fucking like lose our title belt just to prove some point to you yeah uh that is that is an unsatisfying ending like if they didn't have the final fight that would be boring terrible well it's just kind of you know yeah it's a little sure okay well it's there's no like real triumph for buster right sort of like he you know he gets out of it and that's that's it what's his wife thing like what do what does everyone else think about that it's just sort of right it there's there's a kind of um there there's something kind of beautiful about the ending being like he actually does need to defend his honor and like apply what he's learned but it's

without the public spectacle of it right he's not doing it for fame he's learned but it's without the public spectacle of it right he's not doing it for fame he's not doing it for money he's not doing it in the same way to like earn the respect of um a public he's not defeating the alabama murderer he's doing it for himself he's doing it for himself right and he's beating a guy who, to be fair, literally just had a boxing match. So it's sort of plausible that he might get one over him. Right. It is. No, it is good. And I feel like this is the closest he comes in any of his movies to like breaking the stone face in this final dressing room fight where you actually you see real anger in him. Right. And on his face. It's quite impassioned. Yes.

Right. And then he he treats this final fight seriously like it's it's pretty exciting to watch him actually hold his own against this guy he's picking the guy up and punching him back down yeah that's how that's how angry yeah he's really angry unfortunately the guy didn't bounce back up that would have been i know yeah did he ever smile in like a later movie in his like sort of non, like, did they ever do like the Garbo laughs thing with him where they're like, yeah, we got Buster Keaton out of mothballs and he's going to smile.

I can't think of one, but that having said, I haven't seen all. Yeah. I'm not really seeing anything. That just feels like a thing. He was like, just beyond firm about. Right. He knows. Did he ever smile? I'm not really seeing anything That just feels like a thing he was like Just beyond

Firm about Did he ever smile? Like in life Maybe he just couldn't work the muscles There's a lot of stuff They weren't for it They were like a baby's muscles There's a lot of stuff JJ pulled up

In the general section of the dossier About how unbelievably shy he was. The leading lady from the general thought he was kind of like an aloof asshole on set because she was used to directors who were sort of louder and more domineering and movie stars who were more sort of gregarious. And he was just kind of all business. And she was like, does he not like me? Is he like an asshole? Like everything's really blunt. And it was like, no, it's just kind of like a job for him. He was sort of unbearably shy. He like worked with the same people most of the time because he was mostly only comfortable with the same group of people. You know, he wasn't a very social dude.

And so I do think like, I don't think he was dour, but it's not like I think he was smiling a lot in his daily life and then just turning it off when he got on camera. Some other, you know, that final fight is kind of real. Yeah.

They had boxers come in to train them. You know, they'll punch it. The hits are kind of real. It's a buster thing where you're just watching it play out in a wide shot without cuts. So you're watching, you can tell it's not fake. They're, they'll punch it. The hits are kind of real. It's a Buster thing where you're just watching it play out in a wide shot without cuts. So you're watching,

you can tell it's not fake. They're wailing on each other. Martin Scorsese says, the only person who had the right attitude about boxing in a movie for me was Buster Keaton. Hey.

I mean, that's, you know, just to, since we have talked about Jack Chen a little bit, I mean, that's sort of,

that approach to just filming action, just like keep it wide and show as much of the real thing as possible is still incredibly effective. That's why people, people i mean people love the first john wick movie for a lot of reasons but half of what made that movie so i think breathtaking for a lot of people is you would have these extended wide shots yes of just keanu fighting people right and it not really

anything like that in american action cinema um you'd have to look internationally to find action directors doing that kind of stuff. So, I mean, that fight at the end of Battling Butler, in a lot of ways, that's just how you should shoot a fight. Yes. That's how you have to do it. Right. You don't overthink it. You don't do anything stylish. You don't call attention to the filmmaking. I mean, it's also like, you know,

stylish you don't call attention to the filmmaking i mean it's also like you know uh it's the reason jackie chan movies are so famous for their blooper reels is like you know for him it's a statement it's not just i want you to laugh at like the times the take went wrong it's sort of like you've watched these takes that feel impossible how could he have gotten this on camera and the answer is i did it 150 times by messing it up a bunch right there's that have you seen that thing jackie chan my stunts yeah that documentary which is incredible that's him sort of like guiding the audience through his whole approach to stunt work and filmmaking going through some of his best sequences but he's got this great line where he says like people always say jackie good jackie good and he's like jackie not good jackie just do it a hundred times until he gets it right right you know he's like i i get it

wrong 99 times until the one take it's also that's part of the buster thing these movies took a very long time to make yes uh especially compared to the production schedules of the time like you take months on these films uh because he would you know work very hard to get it right yeah uh he did fall on his head from the practice ring uh and was taken out for a few days uh he strained ligaments in his leg and back uh he as usual he just kind of like got the shit beaten out of him making this movie was a gigantic hit made about a quarter of a million dollars which is a lot of money back then and this is a simpler cheaper movie on his sort of oscillation between uh you know i think he always tried to keep his budgets under control as much

as he could but then when his movies became more vehicle-based right the cost balloon in a way he couldn't control also like Also, the next film in general is United Artists. This is the last Metro MGM back in the day because Charles Skank has signed this big deal with United Artists. Joe Skank, not Charles. Jesus. His manager.

His producer. So that is where things will get balloon. Should we do the box office game for Battling Butler now? Yes. Great. Great. Thank you. Do you have any, uh,

a final battling Butler thoughts, Jamal? No final battling Butler thoughts. Other than that, I enjoyed it. It was a good, it was a good time. A good fun time.

We all had a nice time with the battling Butler. And now let's look at the box office game for September 18th, 1926. So you basically know what this is, right, Griff? You know these movies. I know these movies, right. Really well and all that. And this is before, I'm trying to think.

So like, IT Chapter 1 is the first September to release to make over $100 million opening weekend. Right, so it's not bad. The number would be below. No, I'm not even seeing it on this list here but that doesn't really mean much uh okay so number one at the box office is a film okay it's a film okay interesting that's looks like a drama a drama produced by famous players uh okay released by paramount pictures it's not a title you recognize no uh it stars renee adoree oh name uh i'm gonna guess this movie is called actress i'm gonna uh guess this film is called uh uh au revoir amour uh no it's not uh so it's renee adoree and thomas megan

uh there's not even anything about the Rene Adore and Thomas Meegan. There's not even anything about the plot of this movie. So that's all I got for you. It seems to be based on a play or something. It's called Tin Gods. That's a good title. Not a bad title. No.

Tin or tan? Tin. T-I-N. Tin Gods. So I don't know if they work in some kind of industry. Aluminium? I just don't know. But they're tin gods. Was industry. Aluminium? I just don't know. I mean, but they're tin gods. Was it called aluminum gods in...

It's just the Brits say aluminium and you guys say aluminum. It's the same sort of elemental substance that you're referring to. I know. I just want to accept the joke logic. It's a cartoon gag. Absolutely.

The next film has a really good title. It's a lost film. It's a lost film. It's a comedy gag Absolutely The next film has a really good title It's a lost film It's a comedy Also from famous players in Paramount It stars B.B. Daniels Directed by the great Clarence Badger I love these names You say it has a great title?

I'm gonna guess it's called Hey, Fuck You Man I gotta guess too Honk Honk I'll give you this It's called Hey, Fuck You, Man. Okay, I got a guess too. Please. Honk, honk. I'll give you this. It's a college film. Okay.

And the lead is a woman and the poster is her and she's got like a sweater tied around her neck and she seems to be holding some like cleats, you know, some kind of footwear. And she's winking. Is it like a woman in school? It's kind of like that. It's called... Mrs. Student?

It's called the campus flirt. I was close. I was close. You were kind of close. This sounds like the Marco Rabi Babylon movie. Yeah. You know, like, uh-oh. You all know B.B. Daniels.

And I'm like, sure. Well, she's going to college. We know she flirts at a bar, but what happened if she went to college? Number three is a silent feature-length drama. Well, I call it a silent film because it doesn't have any dialogue, but it was actually the first film to use the Vitaphone sound-on-disc sound system. So it had a synchronized score and sound effects okay it actually had like if you watched it today you know the same music uh it's based on

a famous epic tale a poem okay uh and it stars the legendary john barrymore one of the most famous actors uh is it is history is it a beowulf adaptation? No. But something like that? Beowulf! Is it a famous epic tale? Can you give us a century in which this epic tale was written? It's from the 19th century, so it's not like a classical epic tale. It is a romantic poem.

A long romantic poem. Is it The Wasteland? No, that would be amazing if that had been popping on Hollywood screens. It is Don Juan, Don Juan. Byron's tale. So when you say... Probably really popping off.

When you say it had like synced Vitaphone sound effects, it was just like sex noises. Kissing. Yeah. As it puts it here, John Barrymore is the hand kissing womanizer have you seen like you know 20th century or whatever like later john barrymore movies grand hotel yes like he is the most actor yes just like screaming you're just like okay buddy i get it yeah so i imagine it's quite you know you think he went big playing don juan the world's most famous quite big yes yeah all right number four okay i just love looking up these movies uh is called You think he went big playing Don Juan, the world's most famous lover? Quite big, yes. Yeah.

All right, number four. I just love looking up these movies. It's called... Well, I'm not going to tell you what it's called. It's another lost film. Silent comedy starring Gilda Gray as an erotic dancer. She was a famous actress known for popularizing a dance called the shimmy. Okay. And yeah. David just did a little shimmy in the studio

it's from maurice turner okay uh french director of some renown and uh it's called i'm gonna guess it's called the shimmy that'd be good yeah uh it's called a loma of the south seas we used to have titles in this country we got we got well we got through all the good ones in 1920s you know let's dust some of them off seriously well like how about this one silent comedy romantic comedy norma shearer is the star you probably heard of her oh yeah the divorcee herself um uh she plays a lawyer okay 20s yeah who is resented by a guy lawyer and she plays a lawyer in the 20s who is resented by a guy lawyer. And she gets acquittal for a man-chasing widow and defeats said widow in romancing the guy.

That seems to be the... It's a lot of plot. It's called... What's it called? It's called I Sue You. It's called She Can Have It it's called she can have it all she can't have it all it's called the waning sex wow so i assume sort of a joke about like oh girls rule boys drool right i mean yeah yeah i mean you know the classic 1920s woke agenda yeah exactly the mind virus the mind virus has got him yeah uh you've also got you

got ben hur which i think we talked about before the original classic still blowing up the box uh you got something called mare nostrum uh which is like i think uh you know um roman epic or something uh and this is the one i want to look up a movie called called Blarney. Ben, does that sound fun? Ben. Blarney. Blarney Stone. It's about an Irish prizefighter who gets involved with two New York girls. Hey.

Oh, okay. And he's got to pick one. It has everything we love. Girls fighting in ethnic minorities. Yeah. Exactly. Ben's been feeling very persecuted across this miniseries as he realizes how much of this era of film

was just making fun of Irish people. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's like, the Irish, are they human? Who knows? Right. By the 20s, they're sort of like, well, they're here to stay. But that doesn't mean we can't constantly mock them. I mean, there's

the picture of Little Buster dressed up as... Yes, have you seen Little Buster dressed as an Irishman when he was like five years old? No, I haven't. Have you seen those photos of like the stage act, the Keaton family, where he's got the weird like receding hairline bald wig on? Yes.

That is supposed to be an Irishman in quotes. That's what that get up is. I mean, okay, so we joke, but like in 1910s during the First World War in the States, when the Wilson administration was basically arresting dissidents. Like one thing, if you were like, happened to be a little too enthusiastic about Irish independence because we were allies with the British, that could get you thrown in jail. Wow. It's just so funny to think of a time where like America was taking this stance of like, there's type of anglo-saxon male we don't like amen one of them in a corner as we transition to the general jamal's gonna get more historian-y

please and i mean the interesting thing is that like part of the relationship of ireland to great britain is that like the irish were like quite racialized so like not necessarily understood sure as being anglo-saxon right like something else i mean right at that time yeah yeah that's what's wild to think about yes um yeah no for sure uh because it must as much as it was about a religion differences they also really though made it like racial right right it's sort of like like they are stupider for us because we've decided they are right like you know inherently yeah you you can see in sort of like the development of ireland's relationship to england like the process of racialization take place over centuries and

there's actually like there's a good there's an argument that has been made that like the the colonial relationship of ireland to the uk is basically the first instance of that kind of, like, racialized colonial relationship. That's interesting. I will say, as someone who grew up in England, it is crazy how it is still baked in. That you're, like, people are suspicious of red-headed people. You know, and they're like, that's like a dirty ginger. And you're like, why do we hate this guy? And I go home and my mom's like That's like fucking you know Irish

That's 1000 years of Irish shit Like it's like the kids Don't even think about that obviously Cause like it's not on there but like she's like That's all that is it's just like that Irish Scotch people you know With their red hair their fiery red hair Can't be trusted

And you can't be trusted Ben You have to admit it Well look we're not stereotyping here but it is a fact that Ben can't be trusted Yeah And you can't be trusted, Ben. You have to admit it. Well, look, we're not stereotyping here, but it is a fact that Ben can't be trusted. And I'll accept that. Not only do I love the Irish people, but I support Irish independence. As do I.

But you also think Ben can't be trusted. No, Ben can be trusted. He can be trusted. Ben gets the episodes posted week after week. He's the most trustworthy man I know. Good point. The show would be eight years on a hard drive if Ben didn't exist. Yes.

There would not have been one episode yet released for the public. Fucking Woodrow Wilson, man. Oh, yeah. What's the matter with that guy? When I was a kid, I think I had this. I'm sorry to do this. Do I more and more rock right now what's the matter with that guy with that guy i feel like you were just tweeting about wilson's effect on his effect on like the sort of quote unquote like hard left in society back then right he was obviously the hero of liberalism in like

the first democratic president blah blah you know like and but like when i was a kid i was like yeah that was like a good guy right he was like he believed in a social safety net and he will the league of nations edith wilson was a very influential post first lady right a lot of work to basically sort of like sustain his reputation right liberal historians in the 20th century, really, you know, beginning of the administrative state, progressive era. It's really, I mean, there have been, there have always been dissenters to this view. Right.

But it's really been the last like generation where people have taken much more seriously, not just Wilson's racism, which he was like, it's his man of his time. Wilson was a weird racist. He was for, for the time. He was like super racist for the time. Right. Like he was like it's his man of his time wilson was a weird racist he was more for the time he was like super racist for the time people like he was unusually so right at the at the uh at the paris negotiations at the end of the war like other european heads of state were like it's really weird how racist those guys were so racist like they were colonial leaders they were carving up continents so it's like it's not just his unusual

racism but like the wilson administration kind of set up a police state like people were getting thrown into jail there's one story this is i race i recently read adam hothschild's uh most recent book american midnight which is all about this period of u.s history and there's a crazy story of like three polish immigrant dudes in a shoe shop just talking. I think maybe they were German immigrants. And one of them was like, you know, Ludendorff, the German general, you know, he's a good guy. You know, Germany, they're not doing good stuff. But Ludendorff is a good guy.

A customer overheard this. He was nice to me. Sure, right. Overheard this. He certainly enjoys his social life. Yes. Overheard the authorities and all three guys got arrested and like sentenced to like 10 years in jail like they weren't just getting like thrown in the jail for six months sort of like oh you

are talking bad about the wilson or you're talking good about germany what's that what's that uh uh what's his name um fred armisen straight to jail direct to jail yes uh so and that's like that that part of wilson was um really downplayed right in sort of popular memory for a long time but then when you read about it and you really you read things like you know prior 1912 the socialist party wins like you know two million votes huge numbers is like electing congress 1912 the socialist party wins like you know two million votes huge numbers is like electing congress people electing governors and everything and then six years later barely exist right and it's like that's that's the wilson administration that's just what that is

that motherfucker yeah he sucks he sucks i want to like give that coarse face an uppercut he really had a very long face he had kind of a bustery face, very long and thin face, old Woody. And the other thing is like, I thought of him as like, oh yeah, he was this like genteel Princeton dude. And it's like, no, he was like a Southerner who had made it up to the North and like, you know, was actually not very New Jersey.

But he looks like a Skull and Bones Club motherfucker. He does. He does have that air. Yeah. He is not just, it's not just that he screened, just to Wilson's Southerness and his racism, it's not just that he screamed Just to Wilson's southerness and his racism It's not just that he screamed

Birth of a nation at the White House But he is quoted in Birth of a nation History written by Enlightening or whatever That's his big quote Wait he yelled Birth of a nation? He screamed it Birth of a nation! Until they showed it to him

In the screening room No he's quoted in the movie. Oh, wow. As sort of like, yeah. Being like, I like this. Yeah. No, no, no. Just sort of like about sort of how, you know,

reconstruction was like a horrible thing that happened to the country. A friend of mine, Colin, who's an old friend, a listener of the show, and is former academic about film history than I am, an idiot. I was taught... Is this Colin Aino i know yes i didn't know he listened yeah hey colin yeah um but uh we were talking about in the uh three ages episode how that movie is buster parodying intolerance uh dw griffith's sort of uh correction movie to birth of a nation criticism

and i was sort of making the point of like uh that that existed back then right like that people you know anytime anyone is getting mad about any piece of pop culture being quote-unquote politicized there's this sort of argument of like why can't you just let people enjoy stuff things didn't used to have to be read into and like weaponized and this kind of thing and woodrow wilson did say that in a state of the union let people enjoy things right um famously smooth brain woodrow wilson um all right the general but no but my my point was you know colin sort of was like you're right that there was pushback to it but like the pushback was the minority yeah as as proven by

the fact that like the nation was the sitting president was just like this fucking movie get your eyes on this thing and it's you know it's these things are connected because uh uh buster basically credits birth of a nation as the movie that made him see the value in filmmaking as a medium. Right, sure. Which is part of Birth of a Nation's weird fucking legacy. It's sort of like... Technically virtuous.

But not even that. It's just like film language being synthesized with a clarity and a scale for the first time to like fucking horrendous means which is so much of uh i don't know like the the weird dna of film history is like it was used so much to perpetuate narratives to uh you know as forms of propaganda or uh you know history trying to be written enlightening by by those in the positions of power or what have you. All of this tied into the general is like,

you know, Buster, I think, was tried to define himself as a political artist. You know, I don't think he ever would have made a movie. There is not a lot of politics in his work. No, and he had no ambition to make something like The Great Dictator, right? Right. Like, there was no bone in his body that was ever going to make a film that ends with a fucking eight-minute monologue that's a direct plea to the audience against fascism.

Right. I think he viewed that kind of thing as... Well, who knows? I mean... Preachy. Sure, but who knows... Who knows? ...how he would have felt in the mid-30s when you know he wasn't really

making movies anymore and things were getting hot but i don't know i have no idea i mean yes but he's he sees birth of a nation and it's sort of like setting this template of a thing to to riff upon right they also a lot of the stuff jj brought up in his research is like it was very documented that keaton had this weird fascination with the sort of reputation of the South in the early 1900s. These sort of like, what's the term I'm looking for? The lost cause sort of South? But sort of the manners of it, weirdly without him having any direct family ties to that. That's not where he grew up they were like you

know even the times that the keaton family played in the south were basically only during the worst years of the family dynamic before his mother left his father poor part of the country i mean you can probably you know give some context on that too like you know in the 19 teens 1920s the south is still pretty fucked up yes it's still very poor you have to remember that it's basically it's heavily agricultural heavily rural and you know most southerners white and black are working um sort of doing like agricultural labor for very low wages uh it's it's it's and there's like way less of any kind of social safety. Like, the country

is not really helping that much. Right, right, right. And there's something to, like... And obviously, huge systemic racism. Right. Buster is such a modern man, right? He's, like,

growing up a city boy placed into, like, a career at his youngest possible ages, surrounded by, like, drinking adults. Sure. I think there must have been something really fascinating, surrounded by, like, drinking adults. Sure. I think there must have been something really fascinating to him

about, like, what he viewed as some sort of, I don't know, a relative tranquility. Right. You know? Yeah, I mean... Like, this is a slower life. These are people of manners.

There's less of this sort of... I think there was a lot of that generally, right? And also just the nostalgia that every, every like era has for other eras like all the time of like ah things were different you know like that people can slip into this very easy and they were the biggest proponents of things used to be different because if you're growing up in cities like he was the city people are all looking forward they're like what if we built a this what if we built a what? What if we built a what? I'm saying, fill in the blank.

They're trying to build things. This book called Daring and Suffering is one thing that he's thinking about making after Bad Link Butler, but then Clyde Bruckman, who I wonder, you know, so, you know, that's a character that, obviously, that's a big Keaton contributor. He worked on a lot of Keaton movies.

It's the name of one of the great X-Files one-off episodes. You're not an X-Files guy, right? There's an episode called Clyde Bruckman? It's called Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose. And it stars Peter Boyle. He won an Emmy for it. It's a Darren Morgan written episode. In my opinion, I think it is the single best episode of television ever made.

Interesting. And a lot of people don't even think it's the best X-Files episode, but I do. Okay. And I just have to assume it has to be a Buster Keaton homage, right? That he's named that. Like Darren Morgan, who's the guy who wrote it, who is sort of a legendary um uh x-files writer must have been he seems like the kind of guy who would have loved buster keaton but so clyde bruckman is the guy who brings keaton this book called the great

locomotive chase okay that is the tale of this you know real military raid yes in georgia during the civil war where volunteers from the Union Army like commandeered this train called the General and took it to Tennessee and were just fucking shit up as they went. You know, it was like this crazy, you know, barnstorming like train raid. I don't know.

It's like, you know, an action-packed thing. And he kind of looks at that the same way he looked at the um what you might call it the battling butler premise of just like oh within this train this train is great right right we can do all kinds of things around this as it's moving and yeah yeah yes right i mean the train is great i you think i'm gonna come on this episode and be like this train stinks dude i'm like i'm like all in on this train i be like, this train stinks. Dude, I'm like all in on this train. I'm like, we should have these trains now. It's basically just a frigging fireplace that you drive.

Oh, wait. I'm sorry. You're just in on steam trains. Yeah. Because you're like, I like that they're on fire. I think that looks like a fucking blast. Yeah, sure. I mean, we're kind of hot.

David. A little balmy. Ben and I went to i don't know though i think it would be fun what did you do what fun thing did you we went to see guardians of the galaxy volume 3 and 40x yes and the trailer for pixar's elemental came up and that was my response and i said ben i think this movie looks like shit i think it looks fucking garbage and ben is sort of like looking, we're seeing the trailer in 40X,

so we're getting sprayed a lot in the face with water, right? That's not a movie to see in 40X. We're being shaken at, no, that movie is going to blow out the systems. The circuit board at 40X theaters is going to catch on fire during those screenings. But we're watching this trailer and I'm sort of sitting there like rolling my eyes and whatever.

And I'm looking at Ben and Ben's sort of tilting his head. And then he looks to me and he was like so is the premise of this movie what if fire met water? And I was like oh fuck this is a movie

I mean like fire and water opposites attract he's like oh it's like dry and wet trying to fall in love and I was like this is a Ben premise

this is what Ben would go into Pixar and pitch. Yeah, absolutely. But it does actually kind of look like dog shit. It does. It just looks bad. Like, I hate how it visually...

All right. So they bring him this story. Keaton's like, well, look, I mean, there's a lot of plot here. There's not going to be laughs. Everyone around him also kind of warns him where they're like,

are you really going to build a movie on top of the Civil War? I understand the thing that you think is funny here and in the premise and is exciting to tackle as a director, but audiences might just turn off at the idea that you are trying to put jokes into a movie based around a bunch of people dying. Not only that, about a real thing that happened in the Civil War. Not even just a generally sort of no but it's like an interesting counterpoint to think about today when like the only comedies we get are action comedies where everyone's getting

shot in the face yes and you become desensitized to it and it's all like looney tunes violence where you don't really think about people dying and at that's at this time people were like terrified at the notion of like you cannot make a a movie that purports itself to be a comedy on top of actual human suffering and tragedy. That's why Keaton takes such pride in this film. Yes. He figured the minute you give me a locomotive, this is the quote, well, the moment you give me a locomotive and things like that to play with is a rule, I'll find some way of getting laughs with it. a locomotive and things like that to play with. As a rule, I'll find some way of getting laughs with it.

But he likes that they took a real-life story, paid very careful attention to, you know, like, the sort of procedure of it, and represented it on screen, even though they changed massive, like, parts about it, but whatever. Well, here's the single biggest thing. Did you know that Disney made a movie called The Great Locomotive Chase?

I did. Have you seen it? No, I've never seen it. I didn't realize it existed until today. Buster was talking greasy about it. He said it fucking sucked. The big quote, you're queuing this up, I might as well just read it. He told the story from a northerner standpoint. While his leaning man is a northerner,

it's awfully hard for a motion picture audience for some reason to make heroes out of the Northerners. Right. So in real life... I guess it's essentially a sort of a thinking of like, well, you don't want to make fun of the losers. They already lost.

That was his attitude. That's the part of it that makes the most sense is he was like, well, if I switch the allegiances and make my character a Southerner, he becomes low status, which is inherent to the Buster persona. He needs to be the guy who's fighting against the odds, and we know how history turned out.

So if I have him on the winning side, it already throws off the power balance of the thing. Yes. But it is an odd choice. Jamel, this is where I sort of turn to you in terms of like i guess was there just not because like you could think like oh yeah a jingoistic movie about how we won the civil war like how you know the union won the civil war yeah would that not go over was there just no sympathy or no particular kind of like triumphalism about that in the 1920s or maybe not enough i guess

so it's not even okay it's also just like a horrible war. Like, that's its legacy is, beyond anything else, it's just like, it sucked. It was the worst. Right. He also, by the way, like, I want to hear your answer,

but the other quote in here that was interesting is he, you know, because Buster was just like, the number one thing I serve is the audience, and I want to make the audience laugh. That is my primary job. And he was like, I watch movies that make fun of Southerners, and they die. They die in the theater. Sure, right. the audience and i want to make the audience laugh that is my primary job and he was like i watch

movies that make fun of southerners and they die they die in the theater sure he was like some business seems comedically impossible for whatever reason so 1926 the mid-1920s is 10 years after the half century anniversary of the end of the Civil War. So 1915, it's 50 years since Appomattox. There's actually a big called Blue and Gray kind of reunion. They have them across the country. There's a big one in D.C. President Wilson goes and speaks before it.

My motherfucker, he's back! And the key thing is that the political context and cultural context is one of like sectional reconciliation. It's not so much that there's no appetite for doing stuff about the war, but the consensus position among white Americans is the war was a terrible tragedy. Brother against brother. Yeah, brother against brother. The aftermath was an even greater tragedy, Reconstruction. Sure.

And we need to put all that behind us and kind of recognize that both sides were brave, both sides fought with valor, and that's the thing we're going to honor. And 50 years on, you would still know veterans of the Civil War and your families, things like that. Was there not also a bit of a thing, a sort of abstraction that was, you know, I think constructed and manipulated of, like, what the war was over? Yeah, absolutely.

This reframing that was happening in real time. Right, right, right. Right. happening in real time right right right right so yeah it's it's it's the the the cause of the conflict is abstracted away from the specific conflicts of which slavery is sort of like the thing on which they arrest the facts are not being suppressed but the language around it is constantly sort of being massaged it's abstracted into well this was a conflict over you know whether it was possible to secede whether or not state i mean obviously we all know the language of states rights and that kind of thing but that was like less of a part here than it simply was i mean there's like a

there's an even larger context here that this is the early 20th century is the beginning of a imperial america right this is we are we have our occupation in the philippines we have the invasion of haiti we have an occupation in central america like this is when the united states is becoming a an imperial power and so part of what's happening politically is there is in order to unite the public around which when this begins in the 1890s is still the civil war still fresh in everyone's memory for the most part in order to unite the public we have to reconcile we have to come to some agreement about what the war was about and kind of in the political and cultural conflict over it so the solution to that is is you know for

lack of a better term it's like it's white supremacy it's sort of well we're all whites here and we we have a destiny to conquer the continent. We have a destiny to expand beyond our borders. And so that's what we're going to do. And we can recognize that our forefathers who fought in the war were all, you know, they were all of good faith and good nature. And this was just a tragic thing that happened. And we can put it past us. And so it makes total sense that in the context of making a film and making a comedy, it's not just that like you got to sell stuff to Southern audiences. And so you don't want to you don't want to turn them off.

But also that there's been kind of like a collective agreement among white Americans that we're going to treat the South as being noble and honorable. And so it would kind of cut against that collective agreement to then do a movie where it's the reverse. Whereas you can present the Union as being less so. Yeah. Not because there aren't Union veterans around right there's a i think oliver winder home alvar wendell home is still alive so he is a supreme court justice and he was a union soldier so you still union veterans are still very much alive and even in public life but um uh the the north i'll put it this way yeah There's this discomfort and the cultural discomfort with industrialization

and like the consequences of that culture in the United States in the 1910s and 20s. And so the industrializing North itself occupies a different cultural space than it might have a couple decades earlier, right? Like it can kind of be the bad guy. Well, right. Because of all this collective discomfort

with sort of like you know modern life right which then becomes you talk about the abstraction of the thing the philosophical battle of are we losing some sort of uh uh genteel nobility grace courtesy uh a culture of manners right and tradition and that's what abstracting the things that that was built on versus here's this bustling city life and modernism coming in and tearing up everything and making a crass society and that's winning by the way so there's a sort of like punching up versus punching down thing of well you can poke that balloon right because that is unstoppable it is it is a locomotive.

It is steamrolling ahead. Which is sort of interesting. I mean, that's kind of the interesting kind of like tension about the whole of railroads right and the expansion of railroads across the country the extent to which railroads were sort of like the driving the driving engine no pun intended of like the expansion of northern capital across the country and so like in the original story both because of actual events but just thinking thematically it makes sense that this should be the north like that makes all the more sense right right like in a locomotive getting um uh uh taken by your opponents makes all the more thematic sense like you representing this engine of progress

yeah and your enemies who represent an agrarian backward society have seized that from you. So there's this funny way in which the inversion makes sense given the politics of the era, but then it kind of just makes the themes of the story throw them out of whack.

You almost want to go like, is there something subversive to even though he's flipping the politics of the actual story to then placing the buster keaton comedic persona in the position of the person trying to help the confederacy right but the movie doesn't quite right and as you say so here's here's the other thing to kind of clue you in on sort of like the political and cultural context here the movie never refers to the confederacy the movie says the south you see a flag right that's basically it obviously there's not much

discussion of the values being fought over right no right it says the south which which can stand for honor and gentility. Right. And which are all the things that the other characters are embodying that, like, Buster Keaton wants to also embody by enlisting and becoming a soldier. In this way, we're talking about, like, the Confederate, or not the Confederate, the Southern soldier, as this movie frames it, is like the boxer in battling butler yeah exactly this type this role this costume of modern masculinity of social capital of respect that he wants to figure out how to wear but as is always the case in buster movies he doesn't quite understand what the thing he's pretending to be is you know he's barely got this grasp on it

and this movie is just like we're not even going to talk about what they actually are or what they're standing for and i should say i mean like from our perspective like the fact that they're they're not talking about it might seem like oh we're purposely avoiding it but you really have to think of it as like no one's even thinking about right like there's there's in the beginning when the train's being unloaded you see some black laborers i think it's the only time you see black people in the movie and it's not it's not like we're going to deliberately exclude black people in the narrative just like this was reconciliation among white americans like it wasn't black people were out of sight out of mind it's part part of the function of something like jim crow right was essentially to put you do what you want, they're out of sight, out of mind for the rest of us.

Well, not to open up a conversational corridor that's absolutely going to make David roll his eyes audibly. It's a horrible setup. But does this not feel like an echo of this thing we're going through right now where it's just like the insane... David put his head down on the desk. I don't want to talk about this for a while,

but I'm trying to understand the perspective of when this movie's coming out right and i feel some echo in the sort of like the like the sinister brilliance of make america great again as like a statement that says everything and means nothing at the same time where you're like the idea of what they're fighting for is like we lost sight of leave it to beaver that's what america used to be in the same way you're rewriting that's always been the dog so you come up with some like sometimes it works and sometimes fictionalized abstracted version of the past that you're fighting for and you're just sort of conveniently ignoring the reality happening right outside the boundaries of the

frame um yeah but right but it's more like it's like when does it resonate to be like You know things were better back then And it's like what was better What are you talking about And it's like well you can figure that out I feel like that like argument When it comes to toilet paper For me I'm like

Toilet paper I need that And before toilet paper it papers not look not to talk about donald trump when we can cut this out but like that is like the magic of donald trump is that sometimes such as when he'll be like you know showers don't have the kind of water pressure they used to yeah you have this sort of twin reaction of like what on earth is he talking like why would he be saying this at like a political rally right and you're also like he's not wrong though you know showers do kind of suck also like anyone who comes out toilets don't flush like these but also anyone who comes out and stands against him you're like this guy's pro shittier

water pressure it's a position that no one wants to embody you know you gotta conserve water or whatever but uh yeah anyway it's just sometimes you'll tap into something where you're like yeah things were better back when and then you're like wait a second what is the matter with me but i'm also like i'm not trying to apologize for his viewpoint right but it's this thing jj was bringing up that like all these biographers are like it was weird how much he was kind of fascinated by the south as just like a culture right like apolitically and it does sort of make sense where it's like here's this guy who was thrown into an adult world really young in a really brash really rapid really aggressive way right and then he goes to this place where everyone's like well let's just sit in a rocking chair

and talk about the good old days you know it's you can romanticize these things right i think it there's some energy that he finds romantic there, but also part of it is possibly just him feeling like he works for the audience and perhaps the South is less willing to laugh at themselves than the North is. I can make a comedy where the North is the butt of the joke. I've done it before, you know, and no one bristles. you know and no one bristles i mean the other thing is just that like that romance of the south is just like a part of american culture right like it's a birth of a nation again that's 1915 but it's based off of a book by thomas dixon called the clansmen which is 1905 i think 1906 around that time and that's like it's like a romantic it's's a romantic tale of a confederate. The Virginian, one of the first westerns as a novel, is about an ex-confederate. The romanticized loser basically, sort of like the loser. Again, this all ties into sort of industrializing America.

all this all ties into sort of industrializing america that like the country is it i mean it's already becoming rapidly industrialized at the close of the 19th century but really by the 10s and 20s it's like abundantly clear that this is where we're going this is what the country is right there are cities and there are cars and there are we've witnessed this horrible war mechanized war um across the ocean this is where we are now and so the the the confederate south represents sort of what we left behind in like a in like the most literal sense right sort of the the the destruction of the confederacy and the end of chattel slavery did destroy an entire social system yeah and in in in kind of the romantic imagination that social system was very genteel it was like gentlemen and beautiful homes and etc etc which is i should say you know that that that trope still very much exists in the present yeah um one of the things i love to point out is that firefly uh the the the joss whedon television show

um our hero mal is modeled after like a classical western hero and he specifically was a veteran in like a civil war like conflict in which he fought for like, I think it's referred, it's like a confederacy. And it's all, you know, deracinated and attenuated from its source. But the trope of the... This is an accepted dramatic archetype. Right. That works as storytelling shorthand. Right, right, right. dramatic archetype that works as storytelling shorthand. Because of how we've been conditioned

to accept these characters within the larger sort of narrative construction of our history. Firefly has so much of that going on because there's that character called Jubal Early like literally it like starts borrowing names from the time that's sort of interesting. Just to put a pin on this there's a reason why

the post-war apologist mythology around the South was called the Lost Cause. It's a romantic notion of what was lost in the defeat of the South. It's obviously a false notion, but it's all – It's just like in the culture it's just part of very much in the culture of the 1920s and so it's like it to me to me it's there's no mystery as to why buster keaton would have been fascinated by this stuff because like a lot of americans were and it would continue to go on to shape so much of our our visual mythology

right like the entire genre of the western not only not right like the entire genre of the western not only not only is the entire genre of the western built on this but then like all the inversions and subversions of the western are commenting on it as well it's sort of like it's just like that's the thing like all these advancements in sort of film language were often used for semi-fascist purposes in sort of like using it to really define an iconography a sort of a cultural legacy a sense of a history through this like incredible just like brain-worming populist medium that really can take hold of people's imaginations and emotions yeah uh anyway so the general is about the general uh yeah it's

about a uh young uh train engineer who runs a locomotive called the general which he loves very much right it's a real locomotive it still exists you can go see it it's a nice looking train we already discussed that it is a pretty sexy train are they expensive? Like what you What you want to like buy it? I mean I just think it would be cool To have your own steam engine train I think that it would be quite expensive To buy it More expensive to move it

To get it to you It's too bad Patreon got rid of Stretch goals and tiers Because we could have set it at Two million subscribers We will buy the General Yes Which is currently stationed

I think in Georgia or something. Okay. Most of this movie was shot in Oregon. This movie was shot in Oregon because he went to the original locations in Georgia, near Chattanooga, and he said it just didn't look good. The railroad tracks,

he didn't like the look of. The scenery was bad. Portland, apparently, or Oregon in general, covered in railroads, narrow-gauge railroads that he wanted to use because of all their lumber mills at the time.

So that's why he picked it. They, you know, shot all over Oregon. And they had a lot of trains available to them. He wanted to use the actual general. His requests were denied because they were like, we don't want to put this like war artifact into a comedy. Right. Everyone was like on edge about him doing this, understandably.

The gun, however, that they use is an actual gun from the Civil War. It's the first railroad gun, according to Buster Keaton. Right, which he found in his research and almost excluded it from the movie because he was like people will think this is outlandish buster keaton invention right for the sake of a gag it feels anachronistic but it is actually real uh and then uh so yes it's you know it's about this railroad man uh he loves annabelle lee and he loves the general uh the civil war has broken out right usually and so the plot begins in the buster movie he has a romantic rival who's a big guy who's fighting for the attention of the woman. Right.

In this. A Bluto. Right. In this, his Bluto is the war, basically. Right. Well, and is the train, I suppose, as well. Well, it's physically. The train is his ally, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. But it is. It's this idea of like, you have no honor if you are not fighting on the front lines. Yes, yeah. He is immediately emasculated in her eyes if he doesn't fight. Yeah. He goes, he tries to enlist.

They immediately decide, you are more valuable to us as a railroad. Right, you run a train. That's an actual thing. Why would we take you out of the system? We're going to need your support. This great bit I already alluded to where he then tries to get back in line

as a bartender and take on a different character, but it doesn't fly. And then you set up this sort of like central misunderstanding. I will say versus a lot, these are the movies we've covered. This movie sets up its plot really quickly. uh it gets to the point pretty fucking fast um but also has long

hair yes very iconic obviously yeah sort of what i thought buster keaton looked like but it's really just in this movie it's just this haircut yes but so much of the buster keaton iconography comes from this film him on the train. Yes. But there's this sort of, he's too ashamed to admit that he was rejected, which her father and brother interpret as him being lily-livered. Right. A great term. Her brother says he didn't even get in line. Correct.

Yeah. And then you create the central misunderstanding, in which she doesn't want to speak to him again because she thinks he's a coward because he's too embarrassed to tell her that he was turned away. And he's got this chip on his shoulder of wishing he would someday find the way, the opportunity, the opening to prove himself as a value to the South. And I'll say, as we keep on going on with the plot, I'll say real quick that even this characterization of, you know, the card says, Fort Sumter has been fired upon. Notice the passive voice. Very New York Times.

Sorry, you weren't from the Times. Fort Sumter. No, I'm trying to headline it. You're getting bleeped a lot in this. I'm trying to headline it. Damn, you're getting bleeped a lot in this episode. I'm trying to headline it now. Yes, yes. In the South, a fort is fired upon. A fort fired upon.

Yeah, a fort fired upon. But like everyone immediately is like, I got to go enlist. And that really is speaking to like, you know, these were honorable people. These were brave and courageous people and so it's really kind of playing in to um the the cultural message that we want to send about like our our defeated yeah um our defeated fellow citizens here and i do think there's something interesting to the fact that like because of buster's physical type right it would be very easy to have the setup of this movie be he's flat-footed. Right.

He has a weak disposition. He is being rejected from the military because he does not have the physical constitution for it or the makeup, right? But instead it is, like, you have a value in society. You actually are of greater value to us doing the thing you do that you think makes you look like less have a value in society. You actually are of greater value to us doing the thing you do that you think makes you look like less of a man. Right? And that you are afraid

makes you look like less of a man to the woman that you love. Versus you have been deemed less of a man. Right, right. By us. There's something there. Yeah. That's kind of interesting and i think how much

buster movies are always about like um you know modernism versus tradition and also just about uh perceptions on different roles of masculinity in society and him sort of pushing back against them or feeling like they're pushing back against him. So a year passes, right? We jump ahead in time. She finds out her dad's been wounded. Yes. And she travels north to go see him with the general pulling the train.

And that's when the Union spies come to steal the train, right? Like that's when the action really kicks off. She, by the way, being played by Marion Mack, Buster wanted an old fashioned girl with curly hair uh to have that sort of you know civil war era look uh marion mack was a bathing beauty you know about bathing beauties but there were these women who wore bathing suits on camera yes to look beautiful yeah and swim around not that different from instagram models uh yeah i just like the word

bathing beauty oh i love it uh and um you know uh as you said so she the actress thought buster was like sort of standoffish and weird but realized he was just kind of shy yeah um and uh yeah so exactly there's this odd story buster liked pranking people a lot the george clooney of his day uh yeah and she had gone through hair and makeup and got all made up. And then Buster did some prank where he had some of the other cast pick her up and hold her upside down. And it messed up her makeup. And he, like, because they had not bonded, he was so professional and sort of standoffish with her. Right.

She didn't take it as, like, funny jabbing. So she went up to him she punched him straight in the face in the eye got him a black eye he couldn't film for a week yes because he's a shiner but it also sounds like it kind of oh she really punched him straight in the fucking face but it also sounds like that kind of broke the tension between the two of them where then suddenly it was like oh we're equals and it is this thing i like about the movie that she's like in it with him from the second half of the film. Yes, that is true.

Right. They are really partners throughout the film. It feels like he gives her more agency in those scenes than he often does his female characters. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah. So, the union steals the, they want to steal the train. Yeah. Sure.

So, yeah. So, the union steals the... They want to steal the train. Yeah. And so, Johnny, our hero, Buster Keaton, chases after them. He gets on a bike. Yeah. A bone shaker. Uh-huh.

Always funny. Incredible name for anything. True. But it's funny that this was called a bone shaker. It looks like a bone shaker. Yeah. Big, big wheel bike. We watched this one with the boy, and he thought this was all very funny. It's very funny. He cracked up. Big, big wheel bike. We watched this one with the boy and he thought this was all very funny.

It's very funny. He cracked up. He also, he had some hand car at one point. Right, yeah. Yeah, those were also funny. Those should come back. Those are always funny

and seem like it would just be a way to get around. Like, like a, you know, an alternative way to commute. I guess they don't really exist anymore. That is sad.

I want to, I want to take my bone shaker or my fucking hand cart around Brooklyn. Yeah, there's decommissioned rail lines. You know this. People should be able to get their own hand carts. No, I just want to do it in the bicycle lane. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, Ben, I'm looking over at Ben

and on his computer screen, he just has a picture of a train. I swear he just has a window open. I found, there's steamlocomotive.com. There's damn trains available. I was just looking, and it basically looks like a GeoCities page, where it's just a black screen and a full image. Just like trains rotating. No, just one train.

Just trains. Ben just had a picture of a train. How much is a train, Ben? They don't list the price you gotta negotiate okay so you start at like ten dollars and see what happens work your way up from there right this is this thing uh we're talking jamal about like the weird uh how buster can cut through to a kid really easily right right there's something to just how small he is we talk about like his perception of the world

is very similar to Childe's, so they can relate to him, but it's also just, like, he positions himself against larger people, against large vehicles, against technology in a way that just, like, I think cuts through to a kid where they're like, well, this is how I feel in the world around me. I don't have control. Everything's sort of out to get me.

I guess it's so interesting, especially as we're living through an era where it's very difficult to get male action stars to show any kind of physical vulnerability on screen. Not even emotional vulnerability, but I am threatened by the things that are arrayed against me or they overshadow me or they're bigger than me in some way shape or form which like cruz has gotten really good at baking vulnerability into his action sequences but he still isn't

totally willing to let him look as small as he is on screen right he's gotten better at it like he'll put him in the cavil next to him yeah he will occasionally look small he will but he'll look scared which i feel like some people won't really do but like he's really started owning looking scared being in over his head like a keaton-esque approach would have been for cavill to loom over him that's the thing right you watch any keaton movie and he never lets you forget how small he is relative to everything else, and he's actually going out of his way to cast the biggest people he can around him, to create the biggest set pieces around him. Everything is putting him in a context physically. Right. Which is so huge.

And Jackie Chan is another example of, like, he was never the tallest guy, the buffest guy, the, you know, the strongest guy, any of that. And he frames it as such. Yeah, for sure. But this movie structurally is sort of like, I mean, we said unstoppable, but it's also got sort of the Fury Road thing where you're like, so basically from this moment, it's like a 30 to 40 minute chase set piece.

And then you have this brief kind of reprise where we set up the plot stakes for the second half of the movie. And then the second half of the movie and then the second half of the movie is another extended chase. Right. The first chase is that he gets on this train called the Texas and he's trying to bring soldiers with him, right? After the train.

Forgets that they're not tied. Whatever. He's just driving a locomotive by himself. Yes. And so he has to figure it out all by himself. And then you have the big chase of the Union trying to like shake him off and like doing crazy stuff. And then you have the big chase of the union trying to shake him off and doing crazy stuff. They're trying to intercept the delivery of supplies.

Yes. Anytime we cut to the union, they are all so snidely whiplash, sort of maniacally evil. It's kind of wild how uh explicitly sinister they just seem like a bunch of assholes yes um sort of similar to how they are in like um the wind and other movies about the south that i think about right they're brutes yeah they're invaders they're like uncouth often you know i mean and think think about, not to do this too much,

but think about how up until quite recently, what was the standard narrative on how the North won the Civil War? It was not that they didn't have superior generalship or superior soldiers. It was like a brute force win. We just have more people and more armaments and more supplies, and we can just wear you down they were kind of tougher in a way that was viewed as callous right grant is the butcher right just like throws people to the slaughter right or is this something you know

robert e lee and stonewall jackson these were tacticians yeah these were yeah these were it was it was a romantic loss versus a sort of ignoble victory. Now, in reality, none of this is true whatsoever. I mean, it is true that it was a horrible grinding war on both sides. Lee

was a decent tactician with terrible strategic sense, so would throw people into the grinder and not worry about the supply lines grant that i think too many people don't know was like actually sort of like a a uh a genius about thinking about movement and supplies and like so much of the success of his armies was actually less about throwing people into the grinder and more about like exhausting his enemy's supply lines and then like going in for the kill and more about like exhausting his enemy's supply lines

and then like going in for the kill because it's like the first industrial war right it's like all this stuff is getting figured out like how to do all of that right yeah how to move quickly how you have railroads how to use them right things like that um but that's in in sort of cultural memory it's like yeah the union they're a bunch of snobby whiplashes because like yeah they're just like they they don't they have no honor they're, they're a bunch of snobby whiplashes because like, yeah, they're just like, they don't, they have no honor. They're going to win, but it's going to be without honor and the South will lose, but it will be an honorable loss. Yes. Now, relating this again to Fury Road, right?

There's that thing that makes Fury Road so like incredible in its uh construction and its craft when you look at behind the scenes footage you watch like b-roll from the set and you're like oh for most of that movie the cars were stationary right when you watch like behind the scenes footage of that movie it's george miller yelling at a parked car in the middle of the desert and they're just blowing a lot of wind on them and they're acting with the intensity of like we're moving at a really fast speed but most of the time unless it's a super wide shot they were why bother moving what is you know right what is so astonishing for this movie in this movie and i think it's so much of why it gets this reputation as like keaton's ultimate technical accomplishment is he is

always filming this in a way where you have the perspective of how quickly the background is moving behind him how much the vehicles are constantly actually moving forward in real time that makes this movie just mind-boggling where you're like how do you do multiple takes of this how do you get one that works how are you filming it at these speeds what are these rigs you had where the camera where's the camera mounted you know like all this shit he's constantly just kind of showing you that he's not doing any trickery and there is the stunt in this movie

the gag that I feel like is most infamous quietly as just like this feels impossible how is there no trickery to this which is when they're trying to derail the train and they're placing the rail ties in the middle of the track. There's the one coming up.

He gets off the train, runs ahead to try to grab it. The train comes up behind him. The grill of the train basically just functions as a seat. A cow catcher. Best word in the world. Okay. Yes, the grill of the train. Right.

And it's like, without looking behind him, suddenly he lands perfectly on the cow catcher. He's holding onto this tie. The iconic image. He sees another tie coming ahead. All this is happening in one shot. And he throws it. springs off of the track and it's fine and everyone around him was like you cannot do this shot if you miss it by a centimeter or the physics of the throw actually push the tie further ahead in the track instead of off the track the train derails right you die you could kill yourself you could right you know get killed by these wooden beams or the train the fucking train right yeah the most expensive thing in this movie and you watch it you're just like how did he get one take of it working this perfectly and it feels like a mirror like the the geometry of the

arc of the throw of the tie and the way the other one springs up with like a perfect curve is just astonishing um yes i mean i guess the most famous shot in this movie is the bridge collapsing because that became just like right the most famous famous shot in cinema history in a weird way. And also was just like, this is the most expensive shot. Right. Like, how was this done? This is crazy. But like, I do think him throwing that railroad tie is the most sort of like quietly astonishing stunt. Yes. Yes, that we're talking about, is I do think this is, like, the least funny of his features. Yeah, sure.

And it's almost by design. It's more thrilling than funny. Yeah. Yeah. You don't, right, like, Buster is also less of a sort of, stinker isn't the word but when his persona is a little different in it i guess because he really is like a lovable underdog yeah he's a level under underdog there's a sense of desperation in his persona there's so much just like shit to deal with right and the stakes are quite high yeah like there's so much crap on the track i'm like this is like this

really is kind of like the Ethan Hunt template, right? Right. The entire time we've been talking, I've just been thinking about Mission Impossible as sort of like,

this is the structure of like a final Mission Impossible sequence. The whole world's at stake. He's got to save everybody. Right. And the things keep on piling up against him.

And he is very, like, high functioning. He is very capable. He does keep on figuring it out and it doesn't feel like it's by accident. Right. He's not really doing that thing capable he does keep on figuring it out and it doesn't feel like it's by accident right he's not really doing that thing that he does sometimes that jackie

chan does or whatever it's like oh by mistake i have i accidentally knocked him right yeah yeah the layering of obstacles in an almost sort of like puzzly way feels very brad bird as well yes like just sort of every every every every time he makes a gain there's a reaction that he now has to overcome because it's like it's not exactly a high octane movie because often the train is moving slowly yes and often they even stop it like they can stop the train it does have brakes like it's not unstoppable for example no movie about a train that cannot stop a train the size of the chrysler it train the size of the Chrysler building. It is the size of the Chrysler building. But the fact that, as the general's owner once said,

the fact that the train is, by and large, moving, creates this tension in these stakes, and the set pieces are so clearly designed with your understanding of what the stakes are and what the conflicts are, that it builds tension so well that when it does go for a joke, the jokes hit really hard

because it's built up so much tension that is being released by the comedy. The one I think of is like when he's off the train and it goes around to Ben and he's like, fine, I'll cut across down this hill to catch up with it. But then Annabelle reverses the train before he, you know, all the stuff like that,

which is very funny, but you're also just stressed out. You're like, Oh my God, he's working so hard to get back on this fucking train. There's also that moment right before the union guys start throwing the ties onto the tracks where he's like, just,

he feels like he made it out alive and everything's okay. And then there's a great moment of like Buster using the flat pan, his, his punim where he just sort of like has a moment of relaxation and then you see on his face him being like wait what the fuck just happened yeah and then he starts looking out his surroundings and realizing like i lost that i lost that everything's like fucking scattered to the wind um it's all of that uh works really well but he also talked about like i think this was so much of a

challenge for him where he was like the audience is moving past a sort of like crazy gag heavy comedy i need to make something that's a little bit more of a drama and i want to challenge myself to be able to go seven minutes without a joke yeah and keep people invested in what's going on and present myself as a different type of leading man that can carry a different type of story. And, you know, they had a lot of insane logistics to making it. Obviously, you can read about a lot of all the sort of crazy production stuff. We don't have to go through it all. The, like, night scene when they were, like, getting poured rain on them,

like, this sort of interlude scene where between the two train chases where he unites with her again they almost like got pneumonia because they were just like you know being doused like day after day or night after night um so that was actually it was actually raining right i mean whatever like they were using they were pouring water all over them okay all right um and uh you know i think um i'm trying you know, I think, you know, there's obviously the major thing is like there's no back projection. Right. So like every anytime anything is moving, it's moving. And he's framing it to remind you. Yeah.

Right. He doesn't want you to lose track of it. Yeah. So, yeah. So how, you know, how does he do the rail tie gag? I don't know. He just like worked. He just did it. Yeah. That's the thing with all these. don't know. He just did it.

Yeah. That's the thing. With all these, it's just like, he just did it. You know, the reason the bridge collapsing is so famous is because he refused to use models. Yeah. That cost like 40 grand or something. That was like the most famous shot ever.

I mean, the most expensive shot of the time. Yes. The whole thing with the water spout, that's like a crazy gag. He'd already like hurt himself once with a water spout guy on sherlock jr where he breaks his neck he breaks his neck and never realizes it um he like fractured his neck he's fine toughen up buster yeah buster king should toughen up yeah uh but i think like that was logistically crazy because like the way that works where they like have to misalign it and then they miss it and then they swing it.

It's hard to reset a take on railroad tracks. It's not easy to just be like, well, let's back it up to one. Yes. Yeah, I don't know. What else? What else? What else?

You have the midsection where he breaks into the house to look for food and ends up realizing. There's a surprise attack that he has to warn them about. Well, he's the spy underneath the table. Yes. Catches them there. They've kidnapped his love interest, Annabelle. And that's like suddenly he has all the information for the second half of the movie to understand how to get ahead of everybody, prove his worth. Yeah. And then, I mean, and then from there, it really does.

It just doesn't stop until the movie ends. Right. Get the general. Yeah. Over the lines. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

I think this movie is great. I get it. Yeah. I like others of his movies more. Yeah. This is the thing. It's such a profound technical accomplishment or whatever. You know, all that stuff.

I tend to like in my personal ranking of just preference and taste. And we will do a personal ranking. We will get there. But I'm like this tends to be dead center of the list for me just because it embodies less of what I like about the Buster Keaton comedies. Even if I do think it's probably the crowning achievement of his career just as a filmmaker right yeah and it was regarded as such yes as a technical artist yes yeah i mean much much much in the same way that um the closing fight of battling butler is sort of this real kind of enduring class and how to shoot a fight and make it compelling i do think that what

is so remarkable about this movie almost 100 years later is how you can kind of see like the basic principles of action filmmaking yes like being worked out yeah and still entirely apply like if you want if you if you are a budding filmmaker who wants to make action films you can watch this movie and draw real lessons about like this is how i should structure my film and that's why i think it's canonized as his masterpiece is because like you can check in with this movie every 10 years and be like the influence of this is still profound it's immediate if you see it the thing with fucking john wick and ethan hunt right now is like you can feel it more than ever right now. Because those movies sort of are trying to strip away personality.

Not that those characters don't have personality. Yelling, like, can we please get back to this? That's the whole conceit of the new Mission Impossible, really, is that look at Tom Cruise do a stunt. An impossible thing. An impossible thing for which there seems

to be no edifice there. He's just doing a thing. An impossible thing. An impossible thing for which there seems to be no edifice there. He's just doing a thing. It actually happened. And the John Wick movies are, you know, especially the sequels, are like, he can't stop moving.

There's constantly a new threat. There's something chasing him. He has to keep on figuring out his way around the new circumstances. And Keanu is so smart about, like, the longer this movie goes on, I will play the wear and tear of everything I've been up against.

So you're constantly feeling the stress of, he's now limping through this. He's tired. He's tired. But like, John Wick 2 opens with a fucking shot of Buster Keaton. Yeah.

The shot of that movie is Buster Keaton being projected against a wall. Chad Sehelsky is very, like, you know, vocal about his adoration. And it's also like, you know, vocal about his adoration.

And it's also, like, you know, Jackass is so tied to this as well. Knoxville has talked about that a lot. Where it's the same thing of just, like, just place a camera down and watch people do shit for real

and you build up the tension and you don't know how it's going to go. And it's funny if it goes well and it's funny if it goes poorly. Are they going to do another one? I don't know. He almost killed himself in the last one, right? I think he's been very clear that he's...

Like, I'm not going to do much anymore. He's out of the game, and that's why they added so many young people for four. I have to imagine they'll do some next generation thing. But, I mean, we... Jen and I saw... We went to that jackass marathon where he did the q a afterwards

and he was very much like everyone in my life has told me this is the last go around sure and there were like 10 bits he had planned after the bullfight shot for jackass forever that his doctors were like you cannot do another one no no no no yes but they were just like your picture that was your last jackass don't ever you do one more you die right um so this movie was very expensive to make the general yes uh which was part that was part of the other thing that i don't know if you know about this but uh buster keaton was also making a house building a house for himself and his wife that was also extraordinarily expensive i think it cost three300,000 to make it,

which in 1926 is a lot of money. If I've learned anything from watching Buster Keaton's work, it's that he's not terribly good at constructing a house for his wife. He's very bad at making houses. It's one of the things he's almost comedically bad at. No, I would say $300,000 in today's dollars is probably going to be something close to like $3.5 million. I would think of it as, yes, exactly.

But this was seen as like an absurd extravagance at the time they were worried they were like buster you're going over your head right on this place and then he divorces his wife and she gets the house yeah actually sort of a classic buster keenan i'm wrong it's closer to like uh it's closer to like five million dollars it's a lot of money buster yeah uh the general itself costs like 750 grand it's taking so long yes um he screens the movie for people he shaves 30 minutes out of it the film is quite long i would say it's 120 it's it's close an hour 15 maybe but like in a pretty it feels like almost like yeah a modern feature-length movie, more than some of this stuff he made. The test screenings went great.

It premiered in Tokyo, which is crazy. Yeah, isn't that wild? That was not the initial plan. The initial plan had been to premiere it in New York, but because this was a United Artists film, MGM slash Metro starts shutting them out of theaters. This is the old pre-Paramount ruling thing where studios own theaters and can be like,

you can't premiere at the Capitol Theater in New York because we own it. They have to go to Tokyo. So instead, they release it in Tokyo, which is bizarre, and then they start haphazardly rolling it out around the country. which is bizarre and then they start haphazardly rolling it out around the country um the big reason people don't like it is there is what you said griffin they're just like this isn't funny this is enough yeah this is this is too dramatic yeah i'm not laughing and rolling on the floor

i might be chuckling but like where is my buster who makes me stick to what you know with laugh right you're like the movie right before this was just wouldn't be funny to watch him box it's so simple and everyone's like you don't need to complicate this anymore um and there is some reviews that are like this is in bad taste yes like that you would do this you know about the war not the civil war specifically but i think just like anything with like people dying. Can I say I've been for these, for this series watching, splitting between because I own basically the Buster catalog in like three different versions on physical media because you have so many differences in like which distributors have the better special features, which ones have the better restorations, the better soundtracks, whatever. But I was watching the Kino version for this, the more recent Kino release, which is the Lobster film restorations.

I can't remember if it's an episode that's come out yet or not, but the two main camps of the Buster restorations are the Bologna restorations and the Lobster. Bologna and Lobster, yes. Bologna and Lobster. But so I was watching the Lobster restoration, which I think is not supposed to be as good as the Bologna restorations and the lobster. Bologna and lobster, yes. Bologna and lobster. But so I was watching the lobster restoration,

which I think is not supposed to be as good as the bologna, but the reason I want to watch the Kino version is because I noticed, and I had never walked the film this way despite seeing it several times,

there is a score by, and I'm going to fuck up his name, but Miyazaki's composer. Joe Hisashi. Joe Hisashi wrote a score for this movie i've never listened to it is it good yeah it's so good well that guy is pretty good at his job but it's interesting that the score is very serious it is like a stirring it sounds like the score for the wind rises or something sure sure it is a very dramatic score that is like

it's it's beautiful and it plays up the tension of the movie very well but it makes it even less comedic i would argue than it already is uh so watching it today i was just like man this movie doesn't have a lot of jokes in it no it's just very thrilling yeah and it's yeah and yeah i don't know um it obviously it's just more sort of one of those classic cases though of like yeah rejected at the time or you know semi-rejected yeah uh seen as a bit of a folly and then like slowly whatever discovered and celebrated he always defended it he always said it was the one he was most proud of this right this usually his flops he would be kind of negative about well i failed the one he stuck up for i I think he always felt like if the audience didn't like it,

then I failed. Right. I work for them. And this is the one he was like, I do think that was the best I ever did as a director. But it was in the top 10 of the sight and sound polls in the 70s and 80s. Like it was, you know, it was very...

Has Sherlock Jr. surpassed it in the recent polls? I'm not sure. I can find out. Or is this still his highest rated film? I don't know. Well, I'm asking you to find out. I'm trying to say things to buffer as you look it up.

Well, you're going to have to say something else. It's going to take me a second. Okay, here's what I'm going to say. Jamal, do you have any final thoughts on the general? Do I have any final thoughts on the general? Okay, so first of all, if you're going to show this to your kids,

be sure to be prepared to explain what the Civil War was. Yep. I made the mistake of forgetting about all that when I showed this to your kids be sure to be prepared to explain what the civil war was yep i made the mistake of forgetting about all that when i showed this to my kid and then i had to explain in four year old words what the civil war was although tough sure juniors now number one okay i'll say this i'll say this for any parents listening and in the context of lots of stuff happening in the country uh i would i was able to explain to my kid what slavery was and also to get him to understand

that not only was it wrong, but the people at the time knew it was wrong. He could totally grasp that. So it's like... Jamel, that's impossible. All I've heard on the news is it's not only impossible, but it's actually dangerous

to tell kids the truth. To tell kids the truth about anything. And it's selfish. Why would you you do that why would I do that why am I trying to indoctrinate no I think this movie like I said I think this movie is I don't I've not seen I've not like I've not comprehensively seen

every Buster Keaton movie but I think even if I do do that this is gonna be at the top for me because I do find it so thrilling and exciting. And although the Keaton comedies I've seen are a lot of fun, just dispositionally for me, I like this kind of movie.

Right. This is the forebear to basically your favorite genre of film. Right. Yeah. Yes. And so I think it's like a totally compelling watch. I watched it last year

and then when I keyed it up on Sunday to watch it, I was just like immediately I'm in for this for this hour and 15 minutes. It's a gripping watch. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's play the box office game. Okay. I just want to honorable mention The Chain plays a big part in this yeah yeah you also texted me a picture of a train ben i texted the group just now but that's there's there's more it's just a picture of a train type of a train i i have a circle a uh relative who was a early photographer oh mr hosley took this picture yeah so really yeah so

his name is harry hugh hosley this is called steam engine coming up the hill at keating summit where's this photo displayed right now it's uh from 1904 you can see his work at the eastman museum is that where this is really cool yeah but but this photo you just sent us is that it on display at the eastman museum no that's the copy that my dad has very cool yeah is it a tintype or is it just a straight photo did people call him triple h or not it probably would have been they didn't it probably would have been a tintype at that time at that time i believe so because when you're saying tintype it's like uh like the advancement of a dergara type right yes so it's it's that that would have been that would have been the most

affordable and easy format for taking a film because negative film of the kind that we know of doesn't show up in this kind of routine use for a little bit like a decade later i do think just saying cameraman's about a tintype photographer. This is foreshadowing for what's to come. Well, I just, because I knew Jamel was a camera buff, so I had to brag a little bit. That's a cool-ass photo.

I think it's good. Yeah, rules. We'll post it. I'm going to be in upstate New York at the end of the summer, and I'm going to have to make a trip to the Eastman Museum. It's really cool. I shot a movie in Rochester last fall in that museum. Fucking rules. It's Museum. It's really cool. I shot a movie in Rochester last fall, and that museum fucking rules. It's great. It's also cool how much that entire town

is seeped in this history of photography. Well, they have all these sepia screenings, or nitrates, or whatever, right? Yes. You know, all that stuff. Yes, yes. Okay, number one. Come on, let's see the box office game.

Oh, right, come on. February, 9th of February, 19 one. Come on, let's see the box office game. Oh, right, come on, let's see the box office game. February 1927. Okay. The General's opening at number five. Okay. Number one is a famous hit vehicle. No, okay, yeah.

As I was digging into the research, I was reading the reviews of this movie that were critiquing it. We're like, why can't Buster take a lesson from the number one movie the hit that everyone wants to see which is and i was like i'm gonna have this unfair advantage where now i know this title because i read all these negative reviews of the general saying he should have made it more like this film and i already forgot the name of it it's called blank and and blank is the structure of this title blank and blank i don't know what you're talking about.

I must say. Then what the fuck am I talking about? I don't know what you're reading. But also like movie releases and number ones. It was so different back then. They were saying this movie had been number one for like months. What's the number one movie in America at this point? I am telling you that the number one is a massive star vehicle for

one of the biggest stars of the time, Clara Bow. Okay. Clara Bow? I'm not actually sure. It's not it. It's it. It is it. Yes. massive star vehicle for one of the biggest stars of the time clara bow okay clara bow i'm not actually sure it's not it it's it it is it yes the original it girl it the term it girl exists because of this movie in which she plays a character called pennywise the clown and she torments a group of young maine children this movie is called it and she was this hip modern woman yeah and everyone was this hip modern woman. Yeah. And everyone was like, she's the It girl.

This is like the new cool archetype in pop culture. And so that the next moment that someone presents themselves as like the new Clara Bow, they became the new It girl. That's really interesting. Isn't it?

Because it didn't come up in the New York mag feature at all. What? They just did a whole thing about it girls it doesn't matter uh it's really good yes i read it i read it um yes uh clara bow's it uh in uh yeah and like um bill haters in it and uh fucking yeah and jessica you know a lot of jokes i could make here. But Clarabelle, obviously. Margot Robbie's character in Babylon, very obviously inspired by Clarabelle. So, Clarabelle is ruling the box office.

Now, number two is a great rival of Buster Keaton's. Is it Chaplin or Lloyd? It's a Lloyd, a Harold Lloyd film considered one of his best. Speedy? No. Safety Last? No. That's a great one, obviously.

The Freshman came up in another box office i don't know this movie it's got a good poster he's sort of hanging from a trapeze interesting uh and he looks and maybe it's not because this looks like it's a western but he's hanging from some it's not grandma's boy is it no it's not grandma's boy it's called the kid brother oh i've never seen it. You know, it's a Western. It's a good title. Yeah, pretty good title. Sounds like he's some kind of kid brother in it.

Yeah. All right. Number three is another title I know very well. It's a Raoul Walsh film. I think it's been made, I think it was made into a talkie in the 50s. Okay. Yes, yes. Is this Flesh and the Devil?

No. Is that in the top five? It is in the top five the weeks. Yes. Is this Flesh and the Devil? No. Is that in the top five? It is in the top five the week before. Okay. That is the movie I saw coming up in the reviews of this.

That was number one. It was in the top five the week before. Right. And what I got wrong is they delayed the release of this

for several months because Flesh and the Devil was like fucking ET just like owning the box office for months and months. That is maybe so i guess they finally released it as it started to drop off sure that is maybe the most famous john gilbert movie that or the merry widow or whatever um no this is a ralph walsh film it is a war film interesting uh it's uh set during world war one mm-hmm uh stars have been low and it's called what's it called guns away what price glory

another good title i was gonna guess gold uh it was it's called gold um and then okay number five at the box office is the general sorry number four at the box office is a lon chaney film okay lon chaney yeah lon chaney yeah what were you correcting no i just was checking to say here's lon lon chaney l-o-n not lawn like like a lawnmower. L-O-N. Okay. Not really a movie. A movie so unknown that it does not have a Wikipedia page. Let's see if I can find any version of it. Is it called The Unknown? No, I just was dropping something.

I think there is a lost Lon Chaney film called The Unknown because I made a mistake in a previous episode that people always correct me where I attribute a different movie to be called The Unknown. Well, I don't a previous episode that people always correct me where I attribute a different movie to be called The Unknown. Well, I don't know anything about that. I'll never let this down. But it's a Lon Chaney film. It's another World War I movie. What do you think? It's called

or it's a war movie. Guns away! It's called Tell It to the Marines. Kind of an intense title. Yeah. A silent film about a Marine recruit. Also, don't fucking tell me what to do movie title. Well, you know what? They're telling you. So, those are the top five.

And you've also got a movie called Blonder Brunette. We'll never know. A movie called Old Ironsides. Now, that might be about... It's a Michael Ironside prequel. Well, I guess it's about a boat. But, you know,

it wasn't fucking... Didn't we talk about someone who was called... It doesn't matter. Paradise for Two, McAdams's about a boat. But, you know, it wasn't fucking... Didn't we talk about someone who was called Oliver? It doesn't matter. Paradise for Two, McAdams Flats. Okay. Altars of Desire. There you go.

Killer box office. Pretty good. Yeah. So that's that, and we are done talking about these movies. But let's also say this ends Buster Keaton's independence, basically, right? He's followed Skank over now to the studios, as Skank himself has moved over to the studios. And this is his big play within that ballgame.

And this movie is seen as such an out-of-control production, as him sort of falling into self-indulgence, underperforms, and it's like the end of the line buster. You gotta figure out how to play within the system now. You gotta play everyone else's game. You gotta get more strategic and responsible about how you make these movies.

And that leads to him going over to MGM. Yes. Well, not yet, though. He has two more movies that he makes for UA, and then MGM. Yes. But this is... It's the beginning of the end, for sure, of the independent productions. Yes. Well, not yet, though. He has two more movies that he makes for UA. And then MJ. It's the beginning of the end, for sure.

Of the independent productions. But no, next week we will talk about College and Steamboat Bill Jr. I like Steamboat Bill Jr. Steamboat Bill Jr. is good. College is good? College is the one that has the most blackface?

Yes. I think I knew that. Yeah. So, you know, be prepared for that, listeners, obviously, when dealing with movies of this era. You know what's odd

in watching these films? Sometimes it will sneak up on you. Yes, yes. And it's always not fun. Yeah. He will have gags that are based around the reveal of someone being black.

He very often does this gag of like, uh, Steamboat Bill Jr. Has one at the beginning where his father is waiting for him to arrive by a train. And you see a guy who from behind looks like Buster Keaton and has the hat. And then he turns around and the guy is black. And the joke is clearly,

well, this is a very easy way to communicate that it's not the right guy. Right. And that is like played by an actual african-american actor yes and then he will just have supporting roles occasionally played by someone in blackface in some of his movies to no narrative end to no comedic end but most of them are devoid of the thing that college has which is like an extended sequence that is playing in menstrual. Right. Yeah. Should I, maybe I should have been on that episode. Cause I can,

I can do a whole riff about, I mean, this is Keaton is working in what might have been one of the most racist decades in American history. Yeah. Just like straight up. Because it's pre-depression. It's post-World War I.

America's kind of high on its own supply in a way. High on its own supply. It's sort of the, it's the heightworld war one america's kind of high on its own supply in a way high on its own supply it's sort of the it's the height of early imperial america it's business is booming it's the height of american nativism we have the 1924 immigration bill that basically like ends immigration to the u.s for the next 40 years it's like they're every every like every other week there's some new pogrom against black people in the country. It's like, it is, no exaggeration, maybe the most racist decade in American history. Like the Tulsa Massacre is 1921. Tulsa Massacre is 1921. Rosewood Massacre is 1922.

Discuss on the show. Yeah. Ku Klux Klan has a couple million members. It is the thing that is like you get on edge right when you see like an actor show up in blackface in one of these movies and then so often it is to no end whatsoever that is kind of a relief because you're bracing yourself for some like horrendous fucking joke yeah but it makes it all the odder when it doesn't happen in a way uh especially because he would then hire african-american actors in other

parts um but we'll talk about a bad decade as you sure bad decade yes 1920s suck it's always been when i was in high school you're never gonna see vh1 do i love the 20s because no one liked them but like there is a i don't know when i was in high school they're like people like love doing you know great gatsby themed stuff. In college, people did it too. And I never really understood. I was like, this decade was terrible. Bad time.

Bad decade. People were depressed. People weren't like, I think we're killing it. And then in retrospect, looking back on it, in the moment, people were like, this kind of sucks. Everything's kind of bad right now. I think a black historian, it's called sort of informally 1900 to this time, being nadir of the African-American experience. And I think that was coined in the 20s. Yeah.

We're calling it. We don't need perspective. No hindsight necessary. We know what this is. We're in the worst pocket right now. I mean, the 30s are terrible too, but like the fashion's better and there's Art Deco. So like you got that going for it. There's a Democrat in the White House.

You got all Frankie D. Yeah. He's tearing shit up. Yeah. All right. We're done. I got to pee. Oh, congratulations.

Thank you. Jamel, thank you so much for once again gracing us with your time and your thoughts. Oh, it's my pleasure uh pleasure is always ours uh people should uh just keep up with everything you're doing oh yeah i guess i do have stuff to plug yes yeah i mean in my column in newsletter for the new york times but i have a podcast myself with my friend john gans called unclear and present danger it's about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade basically watch movies like the fugitive and then talk about their politics and cultural relevance our most recent episode as of this

recording is on it's not we just we just we just we just watched trueies. We haven't recorded that yet. Okay. But what is it? This is coming out in two weeks, this episode, basically? Yeah, this episode is coming out May 28th. I went through my spiel and then I neglected to see what was the last thing we did. Hey, I can't relate. It's only a thing that we do basically every episode. But you guys are in the mid-90s now. Yeah, we're in the mid-90s.

You're moving sort of chronologically. We're moving chronologically. Our last movie was Canadian Bacon. Oh my God, that movie is so weird. Yeah. So weird. Good conversation. But that's the podcast, so you should listen to it.

We have a Patreon where we do Cold War stuff. We're doing some highbrow Costa Gavras thrillers. Oh, yeah. Zed. Yeah. I'm sorry, what movie? Zed. We're doing some highbrow Costa Gavras thrillers. Oh, yeah. Do this. Zed. Yeah. Yeah. What?

I'm sorry. What movie? Zed. Oh, you mean Z? Zed. Aluminium? Yeah. I take no side in the pronunciation wars.

Yes. Yes. The true most tragic wars. GIF. Brother against brother. Yes. Syllable against syllable. GIF. Brother against brother. Syllable against syllable. No winners. Innocence lost.

But everyone, yes, should listen on Clear and Present Danger. And thank you all for listening to this. Yeah. You should go to the general and save some time. Or how does the jingle go? For a great low rate, you can get online. Ben, I really have to pee. Go to the general and save some time. Or how does the jingle go? For a great low rate, you can get online,

go to the general and save some time. Ben, stop doing an insurance ad on my podcast right now. You're telling me Rosario Dawson's vagina can save me time? You know what? I'm just going to pee.

I'm just going to do it. That's fine. Go. It feels like it would take time. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you, Terry Barty.

Go to the general and save some time. Yeah, yeah. For our social media and helping to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you, Tori Barty. Yeah, yeah. For our social media and helping to produce the show. Thank you to AJ McKee and Alex Barron for our editing. Pat Reynolds, Joe Bowen for our artwork. Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. JJ Birch for our research.

Tune in next week for, as we said, College and Steamboat Bill Jr. Over on Patreon. You got the schedule up, Ben? Yeah. Coming up on Patreon, we're getting close to the end of our run of the original Planet of the Apes.

On June 1st is Conquest. My favorite. That movie rules so hard. It is so so hard. Yes. It is so thrilling. Yes. And captivating. Yeah.

Oh, God, I love that movie. I'll just say this. I think it is dead to rights the best Planet of the Apes movie. It's not even close for me. If you're watching the director's cut, which you have to watch, David starts the episode and is like, this is some stupid fucking Griffin contrarian take. And about an hour and

he's like i i think you might be right because people they're like if that was that good then how is its reputation not better than the original and that's my question because everyone should fucking watch this and i have this reconcourse is the fourth one correct right yeah yeah though it's man rodney mcdowell gives one of the most incredible performances of that decade Man. Roddy McDowall gives one of the most incredible performances of that decade. That, I, you know,

I remember I watched that because I bought the box set and this was making my way through. And I was just like, what's this one? No one ever talks about the fourth one. And I really like the third one, but the third one's funny

because it's like this sort of almost like slice of life comedy and then it gets super bleak at the end. Four is unrelentingly bleak beginning to end. And like it's the, some of the shots during the ape uprising

are just so evocative. Yes. It's like it's like everyone involved in that movie is like we have no money. Yes. We have no resources.

We're still going to do literally as much as we possibly can. It is one of the most astounding resources versus impact movies. Yeah. Even if you are not signed up for our Patreon I highly recommend Sounding resources versus impact movies.

Yeah. Even if you are not signed up for our Patreon, I highly recommend just watching it. It's a film I endorse as much as almost any movie. Apes series, pound for pound, best sci-fi franchise. Hard to agree. It's the reason I have wanted two years for Talk About Them. And that's what we're doing now over on Patreon. And by the way, as we try to remind people, we unlock every Patreon episode after two years. So right now, the early 2021 stuff is being unlocked and Patreon has its new free membership program.

If you want to sign up for that, you'll get the notifications when those episodes become unlocked. to sign up for that and you'll get the notifications when those episodes become unlocked uh you can listen to them in the patreon browser or download the patreon app and at some point in the future there will also be the ability to get a private rss feed for the free membership yeah i presented that right you did that was all right fantastic you could uh you could listen along to us watch Toy Story. Yeah, that's what's happening right now. Another deep Griffin. I'm very normal in those episodes. Very low key. There's no reason why I would be super amped up

March and April 2020. Or no, this is 20... Yes, right? It's 2020. So it's three years we unlock them. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, that's what it is. So it's three years we unlock them. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, that's what it is.

I'm sorry. I was wrong before. But yes, early lockdown, me going insane talking about the Toy Story movies. And you can find links to that and all other sorts of nerdy shit at blankcheckpod.com.

And as always, David's gone. David just left. David just left. David just straight up. Well, he said he had a thing. But I am reporting the facts. That's true.