Citation Needed - Buster Keaton

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

Joseph Frank Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966),[1] known professionally as Buster Keaton, was an American actor, comedian, film director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer.[2] He is best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".[3][4] Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked without interruption" on a series of films that make him "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies".[4]   Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

I just didn't think the show was gonna get so dark. Really? I thought it was kind of dark from the beginning. Yeah, to me, the vibe was always gonna be like the aftermath of endgame, right? Yeah, well, great, but what's it leading up to? House of M? They're not gonna do House of M. That's just X-Men.

Oh, hey, Noah. Hey, do you think WandaVision is leading up to House of M? I just, what? Why are we whispering? I told Eli that today's episode is on Buster Keaton. So he's doing his before episode, shenanigans silent. Oh, that's what that is.

I was having a seizure. What? I mean, hey, Noah, he knows it's an audio medium, right? Nobody can see him doing that. Well, I honestly have no idea what he doesn't, doesn't know at this point, bro. Dinner, no, that's fair. Remember when he told our waitress

that he would write a sketch where she would win a million dollars? I do. I do, that was weird. Like he thought he could actually do it. I mean, he did write my penis off my body as part of the show. Well, that's true, he did. Yeah. Okay, so, do we just let him finish?

Or would, I'm not sure. Yeah, I figured the musical kick in as soon as we get to a punchline. Yeah, probably. I miss my penis. There it is. Go ahead, thanks. He, thank you for that.

I do, though, like, for real. Hello, and welcome to Citation Needed. Podcasts where you choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we are experts. Because this is the internet. That's how it works now. I'm Cecil and I'll be your food delivery guy tonight. But that way people who ordered it.

First up, the guy opens the door to a teach level cloud of smoke and a dude who opens the door in his underwear, no one, Tom. Oops, teach, fucking lightweight. I open the door to a chong-wagon texture. All right, that's fair. Cislon says right on the order that they recommend the different items. All right, on the order.

Also joining up 15% to give a damn. What is 15% time zero? Anyway, also joining us tonight, a guy who shouts very specific delivery instructions from his mail slot and a guy who's food the line cook definitely tipped already, Keith and Eli. Are you kidding me with the amount of thores at this point the kitchen tip? No, you went with which one was about me. Am I the

I do the man's life? Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm super stolen weird stuff through the mail slot because I can't talk to the guy. So delivery driver's just a gig job, you know, like podcasting. This isn't my passion. I really love audio and video editing and higher ed and getting passed over for your promotion. I don't want to talk about it. It's okay, but anyway, if you would like to learn how to tip your gig workers, be sure to stick around until the end of the show. With that out of the way, Tom, tell us what person place thing concept phenomenon or event we'll be talking about today.

Today, we will be talking about Buster Keaton. Ooh. Okay. So Noah, you are ready to tip toe very carefully around our fatty, our buckle shaped landmine, I guess. Yeah. They will look at you for me. It's a very large landmine.

Yeah. It should be easy to see them come. Okay. So Noah, tell us about Buster Keaton. Okay, so Buster Keaton was the greatest silent era film star of bar none. Well, I mean, there were several who would have disagreed at the time, but they kept quiet about it. Oh, you damn right, David.

See, a sure Harold Lloyd was great and Charlie Watts' name was fine, but the timeless nature Keaton's movie, Charlie Watts' name is unrivaled in the history of film. Everybody already knows about him. God damn it. I'm not doing a fucking essay on him. And he wasn't just a brilliant physical comedian. Keaton is also widely recognized for his genius as a director. Roger Ebert called him, quote, the best actor director in the history of the movies,

end quote. And in 1996, entertainment weekly ranked him the seventh greatest director of all time with a margin of error of six. He's also the closest thing I have to a personal hero. And he's the only celebrity who's grave I've ever visited. Jesus. Yeah, this is going to be a gushing fanboy episode throughout. We've all written gushing fanboy assays Noah.

I wrote one about the battle. Aging Core, Tom wrote about the Everlay Club. He wrote about con men and you I did one about a poop in a jar. So I think we're all okay. You know, never let's you down see so a literal jar of human. Okay. A little jar of human shit. Who's gushing?

Joseph Frank Keaton was born to a Faudville family in Kansas in 1895 and legend has it that on the night of his birth, a tornado swept through town and destroyed the house he'd been born in earlier that day. Of course, that didn't actually happen and we can just verify that because we know his birthday. But it's a story Buster told throughout his life, so I figured I'd add it in here. And for the record, I'm gonna be using legend hazard

to insert a lot of known bullshit into this essay. Legend has it. No, no, no. No, no. I just like the idea of young Buster Keaton, like the tornado hits the house, it comes crashing down and baby Buster Keaton's just standing there while an open window falls around him.

Oh, dude, in the most extreme version of the story, he actually is lifted up by the tornado and thrown, but he's fine. No, he's in the tornado and he's on the front of a train as it's spinning around. Now he was originally named after his dad. He was actually Joseph Keaton the sixth, but legend has it that he got his nickname Buster from none other than Harry Houdini. His dad owned a traveling show with Houdini called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company and yes, they sold bullshit medicine after the show.

So at some point while they're traveling in 18 month old Joey come stumbling his way down a flight of stairs, stands up at the end, shakes it off and goes about his business. After seeing that, what? Who Dini? Yeah. Who Dini has said to a remark, why he's a regular buster. And while we can't say for certain that's bullshit because they don't keep record of toddlers

falling downstairs the way they do with weather or they didn't have to. Well, they do it the hospital. No, they do that at the hospitals. Not in 1895. They didn't tell me those kids. There's a record of that. Oh, Jesus Christ. Jesus. Um, but the fact that the more often buster told the story, the more famous the person who gave him that nickname, God, and that's a strong indicator that maybe this has got some bullshit potential. Still good old days when your reaction to a toddler falling down a flight of stairs was to give him a nickname, right? So cute. Yeah. Oh, that's our kid.

Starey. Stairs and stairs now. Yeah, never says a word best baby ever. Great. Starey. of a great story face. Yeah. All right. So one more bullshit story and then I'll move on to something actually happened. During their travels. You like you want some more accuracy in the stories is that what you're boon about. What less accuracy? Exactly. Exactly. He's booing the latter half of that intro. I think. So okay. So during their travels, Buster's family sometimes stayed with a farmer and Michigan. And we're talking 1905 or so, which means that you're

shitting in an outhouse. But the farmer's outhouse was convenient to the road. It's in the middle of nowhere. So people are constantly showing up and using his outhouse without permission. And farmer would complain about how people would leave a mass and use a bullish toilet paper. So little Buster, who had a reputation as both a tinkerer and a prankster, devised a system to fix the problem. Legend has it that he set up a series of pulleys such that the farmer, if you ever noticed somebody

going into his outhouse could pull the chain a couple of seconds later and then all four walls would collapse. He really had to like bust out the fucking the blueprints in the days before the whoopie question, man. All right. The falling wall thing is pretty, man. I was hoping he'd make a trap door open in the ceiling of the outhouse and you'd get the shit dropped on your head at that point. Oh, you would see magical. You'd be like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, All right. So Buster's career as an entertainer began at the age of three. And that is not one of the according to legend thing. That's a four realsie's thing. His parents were vaudeville comedians that did a slapstick act. So as soon as he was big enough to fall over they incorporated him into the show. And you know how slapstick isn't funny when it's a three year old. I do not know that. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. Hey, bro, neither did 1898.

So the crux of the act is that his parents would put little handles on Buster. They would sew little suitcase handle. What's out of his outfits? And then he would pick him up by the handle and chuck him off stage into a sheet that will, like, you know, more or less harmlessly catching. That's objectively funny than and now. I don't understand. Absolutely right.

I love that they added handles. They were like, okay, we're talking about the stage pretty good now, but how can we? I'm gonna check the levy. You get a little more torque if we had a handle. Also, this is objectively better than American handles your luggage too. All right, so you might be thinking to yourself, who the fuck wants to watch a kid get tossed dangerously around and knocked over and shit?

Keith. It's the most important thing to do. I'm just saying, like I just... Yeah, I wrote it before he made that confession, but it turns out. No, it was he thened everyone else alive. I feel like that. Make America great again. Oh, no. All right. So the actually abuse that his parents were willing to put him through became the

chief selling point for their act. I'm pretty soon his parents were building Buster as the little boy who can't be damn it. No, that's not. No, yes. No, yes. And the act itself has the roughest act that was ever in the history of the state. Like, so on porn home. Yeah, I was going to say that's like a glory hold this claim. All right. So, but the long and short of it, outside, I wrote that before you made the glory. Yeah, it's true. with the long and short of it outside, I wrote that before you made the go. But the long and short of it though, is that Buster grew up knowing how to take a fall and it turned out that was going to help him out both professionally and personally.

Yeah, join us for child abuse, the musical, or as it would later be called the Mickey Mouse Club show. Yeah, choir practice for God. Same thing. Hashtag free Brittany. That was for you, Eli. That joke. Thank you. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people.

I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people.

I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people.

I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. I'm not going to be a lot of people. Well, the answer to that one's yes. From time to time it did, but since Buster could always show the cops that he wasn't actually hurt very often, they kept letting his dad do it. Of course, the physical abuse wasn't the only problem with lifestyle. There was also the issue of Buster not going to school, which it turned out was illegal. Oh, no, not if you could pretend it's virtual. Right. No, exactly. Yeah.

And figured that out yet. So eventually, the state of New York forced him to go to school, though by all accounts, he just attended for like part of a day whenever they'd make a fuss about it. As a result, he didn't learn to read and write until late in his childhood. Of course, to be fair, the falling down practice would prove much more important to his career.

And not learning to read or write, definitely helped move him towards the, I'll probably be fine career path. That's the future. It's a mutual thing. Okay, but I think after making his early fame falling down a flight of stairs, perhaps reading and writing, we're always going to be like aspirational. Go to hell like shit. All right.

So by the time it was 18, Buster was a rising star in the Vodville world, but that meant that pretty soon the sun was upstaging. The father who was surprised, surprised a violent drunk. Huh. Now eventually he decided that his dad's alcoholism was holding him back. So the age of 21, Buster and his mother moved to New York from wherever the hell they were at that point and they revamped their act to work without it.

See people, this is why you don't bring your work home with you. Okay. He's like, Mom, I'm going to need you to in an alcoholic rage, throw me into this. Can you just toss me? She's like, boo, just seem motivated by alcoholic rage, not funny. Cancel culture gone too far. All right. So after a brief and unaventful stint in World War I, wait, excuse me, an uneventful stint in World War I. Well, I mean, this is a guy who grew up being thrown around to stage by the stand.

It was one of my first films. Yeah, he's in the trenches. Bob's go off, he's like, man, man, man. He's got to go. He's got to go over the wall. They just grabbed the handle and throw him in the trenches. Bob's go off, he's like, man. Yeah, man. He's got to go. He's got to go over the wall. They just grabbed the handle and throw him in the him over. Guys, mustard gas. I need a sheet.

I need a sheet for the mustard gas. He's in no manhandling. That's very good. Very good. Very good. Oh, wow. All right. Okay, so go on after his uneventful war.

Yeah, so after the uneventful war, Buster winds up meeting a man who is going to change his life. The year is 1917 and Roscoe Fadi Arbuckle was one of the biggest names of the burgeoning medium of business. I will get there. We'll get there. He was also one of the biggest people in that burgeoning medium to doodway 13 pounds at birth.

That's damn near twice the average and didn't get thinner as he got older. But despite his size, he was a remarkably agile guy and it made him really popular first in Vodville and then as one of Hollywood's first superstars. Now eventually, fatty our buckle would go on to be accused of rape and manslaughter. He'd fuck up a whole citation needed episode and he would become industry poison. And I should point out that every history I've ever read seems pretty sure he wasn't guilty, but all the histories I've read were also written pre-me too. So we don't know what happened. What we do know is that F fatty was ultimately

acquitted, along with a prodigious apology by the jury for all the shit he went through along the way. So the feeling at the time was certainly that it was a false act. You say, we have a pretty good idea of what happened though. I would say, we'll be guests. Okay. But given what we know about Hollywood, like I don't know if that tells us my, yeah. If we, if we buried that essay in a Pat Cemetery, would it come back as a good version of itself, you think is John under contract with Joseph M. Shank, who is one of the most influential producers in the early film industry.

And because of their shared past in Vodville, the first time Buster and Fadi met, Fadi was like, hey man, you wanna do this scene with me in this film I'm making? And they did. And it's goddamn hilarious. It's more or less improvised. And it's this bit where Buster's buying molasses

from Fadi. You can find it on YouTube. The movie is called Butcher Boy Busters in it for three and a half minutes and in that three and a half minutes You can immediately tell that this dude is a star who absolutely understands the medium. Okay, and also Butcher Boy the silent film Absolutely not to be confused with the 1997 film of the same name About an abused young boy with an alcoholic father. You know what?

Totally fighting. Confusers. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, it's right. Right. You know what? Fatty now.

I mean, it's. Yeah. It's fine. Yeah. It's depressing to now. Now, in all, Buster would go on to appear in 14 of our buckles shorts. And the two became close friends, but their professional collaboration ended in 1921, which is when the aforementioned rape accusation

broke in the news. Now, at that point, Buster was out a comedy partner and Fatties boss was out of comedy star. So, Shink gave Buster his own production unit, Buster Keaton Productions, and set him to work. This would settle off one of the most exceptional decades in the career of any director in the history of film. Okay, so while I pour another layer of concrete over that fatty arbuckle essay,

we'll let you raise that out with a little apropole of nothing. There he is, Buster Keep. Oh, uh, hey, Faddy. How's it going, Buster? You ready to make another movie? Yeah, about that. In this one, Faddy, he gets a job, right? He gets a job and a Korean pie effect.

Yeah, sorry, sorry, Faddy. It's just one little thing. So he, he, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, little thing. So he, he, wait, he this, he works way up in the cross section. Oh, one day he sees this Dame, right? She works down in the cream section and he meets her, my fallen off the railing, onto her. Okay, given the current climate, that doesn't seem like a great idea, but then Fattie, Fattie, he's like, oh no, I squished her right in the cream.

So he runs around, getting all his friends to say that she was already creamy when he found her like that. I feel like this isn't, I feel like this isn't about the movie. But he's still gonna cream on his hands, see? Cream that never comes off, no matter how hard he scrubs, no matter how often he sees cream wherever he goes. It follows him. Uncomfortable, very uncomfortable. He hits his head on a door. What do you think? Yeah, I think I'm gonna do my own thing probably just pass

All right best of the only movie you're gonna be able to make is dropping a house on yourself and trying to stay alive So what do you say want to join me in the killer cream pie? I think I'm gonna go with the house thing. Okay, man. I Murdered a lady. Yup, got it. Okay, audience, we are returning. I want you to look very closely into this pen I took from Tommy Lee Jones and men in black. There we go. Fattie who? Anyway, Noah you were talking about Buster Keaton, right?

Buster Keaton, a different fucking guy, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so consider and when we're recording this I should start by reminding people that movie theaters were these big rooms we used to sit in remember We would all sit in them think we would watch superheroes make things explode. It was loud Back at the Donna cinema. It was a much different experience So consider what they were replacing right by enlarge. This was Vaudville theaters A vaudeville gets its name from a French theatrical style, but it wound up being Almost nothing like that ultimately.

But it was like this very generic general audience variety show stuff, often heavy on physical comedy, like juggling, acrobatics, a lot of music. But there would also be poem recitals, one act plays, magicians, lecturers, strongmen, dancers, and they would all do these short acts so that if you didn't like what you were watching, at the moment, you just had to wait a few minutes for some... Boo, boo, throw, baby, poetry's dumb, throw baby. Yeah, today we call that TikTok, everybody. TikTok.

Yeah, right. No, late 19th century TikTok, exactly. So when movie theaters first started to become hours long destinations, they kind of mimicked the Vaudville variety show style to a certain degree. You didn't go to see a two hour movie, rather you went to see a feature film that was gonna be like 45 to 60 minutes or so, but that would be preceded by several shorter films,

like newsreels, action cereals, cartoons, and most notably for this story, comedy shorts. And generally speaking, you could watch all of that quicker than you could watch fucking Patty Jenkins, shit the bed with Wonder to one and 84. Oh, if only Wonder Woman 84 had been about Wonder Woman having bad Thai food and shitting the bad no illusions. Right.

A better movie. Right. Okay, so Buster got to start doing these comedy shorts, which were often the highlight of the night at the theater, right? And when you watch the features of the time, you'll see why. Dramatic stuff didn't work nearly as well under the constraints of silent film, especially early. And dramatic actors took a while to figure out how to make the transition from the stage.

You get a lot of these like over large flourishes clearly designed to show emotion to somebody 24 rows back, but it's a fucking close up, right? So it's often as not the feature was just a way to make going to watch Buster Keaton get kicked in the nuts sound like it was an intellectual pursuit. Welcome back to America's funniest silent video. But eventually we realized it's all about the porn and not the articles. So now we have the pinnacle of Buster Keaton's art form. Jackass. Yeah. Cecil, yeah, Heath, I'm not speaking to him anymore. I'll call him and tell him that later on the phone. Yeah.

Okay. Yes, I'm a text. I would watch Buster Keaton beating the shit. I'm not sure it's boys. Oh, that'd be so good. Oh. Now, if you've never seen a Buster, Keaton, short, I strongly recommend you correct that. You can find most of his stuff are free on YouTube, and even though it's like nearly

a hundred years old or over a hundred years old, in some instances, the comedy by and large stands up. Personally, I'd recommend you start with one week, which is over a hundred years old, and it's first short that he started, and also the electric house neighbors or the balloon atick, all great flex. Now, what you'll notice immediately is that the racist portrayal of Native Americans, if you start with balloon to tick. The next thing you're going to notice is that Buster didn't just have a great mind for

comedy and a great eye for cinematography. He was also insanely athletic and talented. His movies are just chocked full of impressive and often extremely dangerous stunt work. And gags that include crazy levels of coordination and physical dexterity. There is no modern parallel to the shit that he did, but the closest we've ever been in my lifetime, I would say was like Jackie Chan in his heyday. Glimps into the future with the new short, the electric house and catch bus to keep in his two new comic shorts, booping indoors and the wife who wall pants.

Oh, it's so funny that the ideas they had of what an electrified house. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The fucking buster trying to go down the up escalator in that house is going to the funniest things in the history of motion. Uh, so good. He broke his leg doing that. Oh, anyway. So eventually the popularity of his shorts

coupled with a success of feature films by Charlie Chaplin he quickly moved on to multi-real flex. And while the difference between the modern audience expectations and the film techniques of the day are way more apparent in these longer movies, several of his features are still really accessible even if you're not a big fan of old movies. A stuff like the navigator, Sherlock Jr. and Steamboat Bill Jr. will crack up a modern

audience from time to time. And the general, which many people consider to be his magnum opus, it's not Steamboat Bill Jr. is better. It was rate. So it was Sherlock Jr. Actually, I like to get controversial from time to time on the show. Some guys waddling caning his way over to his record player where he listens to our podcast. You gone too far.

You gone too far. Smashing a wax cylinder with a giant sledgehammer. But anyway, but the general was rated by the American Film Institute among the 20 greatest movies ever made. So, but the general was rated by the American Film Institute among the 20 greatest movies ever made. Yeah. That being said, the American Film Institute says the greatest movie ever made is Citizen Kane.

No. It's terrible. It's unbelievable. It is unwatchable. He throws zero babies in that one. So I could see why you couldn't get into it. I get why. There's sort, whatever.

That's not. Well, Citizen Kane, that's a movie that tries to make you feel bad when rich people feel sad. It's not getting a lot of traction in 2020. I was saying that's not. No, what is everybody like about Citizen Kane? It's like, it had new techniques. Yeah, exactly. That's important from a technical perspective, but it's it, it absolutely does not use

those techniques and make a good movie around it, right? Palestine. That's what they did. Eventually, yeah, they made up a good movies with those techniques. Sure. Yeah. They just didn't do it at the same time. Yeah, I'm sure you had a bunch of new techniques. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, I did. You can. Yeah, and they managed to leave that one off. Okay. But so at the time of its release, though, the general wasn't exactly hailed as the masterpiece that we now recognize it to be. First of all, the movie takes place during the Civil War and Buster's heroic character

as fighting for the South. Now, he said that that was because otherwise, he'd be picking on the loser, but so fucking what? Right. That's totally allowed when the losers are fucking loose. Right. That's right. I'm still difficult. That was not the problem at fucking loose. Right. That's right. Almost the difficult.

That was not the problem at the time though. The big issue in 1926 was that it was just too heavy for a comedy and also it made jokes about soldiers dying. Now, those gags are nowhere near problematic by today's sensibilities, but at the time it was very much taboo. Come on, the dead Confederate bodies were landing on sheets off stage. I mean, come on now. It was good enough for a three-year-old.

All right, so the general was also crazy, expensive to film. The movie's most famous scene involves a wooden bridge collapsing under the weight of a train. And they used a real train for that scene. They didn't use a miniature. What? Yeah. There's people moving around in the foreground and everything.

Amazing. Yeah. And what's more, it was a period piece. So they used this old ass train. So they built an entire bridge just so they could blow up an antique train. But that was not the most expensive aspect of the movie. Buster insisted on using the type of train that they would have had back in the 1860s, which meant that his train was chucking out burning embers the whole time.

Yeah, what is happening? Right, so old trains were just throwing a hot shit into forest all the time. Oh yeah, yeah, they know they ran on wood and shit. How do we still have forests? weren't those trains going for a while? Yeah, so but well, they knew how to handle it a little better back in the day, not so much here, because one of those embers caught the forest that they were in on fire and his production company ended up on the hook for the putting that shit out bill.

Yeah, well, Oregon needs to swiffer up those leaves. That's very helpful, right? That's on them, right? Yeah, mostly. And the real unanswered question is what gender was the trait? Oh, no! I'm going to do the reveal. I don't even know.

All right, so at the time, United Artists was distributing his movies. And after the general's middling box office return, they put Buster on a leash. So they gave him a full-time production manager who monitored his expenses. Yeah, and he was furious when he took a look at the first. He's like, what? No expense line item for forest fires. This is bullshit. Right?

I can't even do my job. Yeah, well, that's the thing is they vetoed most of his more outlandish ideas. And now we would make two more features with UA, which in my opinion actually are his worst and his best films. But by all accounts, he hated making them and he felt creatively stifled by UA's new policies. At the same time, MGM was off from a fucking Scrooge McDuck vault to sign a deal with them. So in 1928, he signed with Metro Goldwyn Meyer, a decision he would later call the worst

one of his life. Yeah, you can't swim in coins. It's just hard. I've been there. I've been there. Yeah, that's a good thing. You can't dive in. That's for sure. So, another decision that comes.

There's a lot of people who have tried that. We're like, that looks so fun. Scruzeman, ow! Ow! That was just a floor! It's so hard! It's so hard! It's so hard!

No, it's a delay! My normal floor is wood, which is demonstrary softer than now. All right. So, but another decision that competed for worst of his life was his first wife. Buster married Natalie Townmage in 1921, just as his career was starting to take off. Natalie's family was damn near Hollywood royalty. Her sister's Norma and Constance were both silent era stars and honestly it's obvious why I challenged anyone

alive to watch DW Griffith's intolerance without falling in love with Constance. Tell much. I also challenged anybody to sit through that three hour self-pitying piece of shit at all, but that's beside the point. Anyway, point is the marriage wasn't a happy one. A buster was cheating on her from pretty much the oo sound

and I do and she, and she reportedly got back and I'm by spending about one third of his salary per month on her wardrobe. Nadiar buckle. I like that. Yeah. He's just like, oh, not sure why my marriage is failing. Anyway, you want to suck my dick or what?

Hey, look, of course it's an open bar. It's a wedding or something. Oh, my mother-in-law, you really have a look. In your own business. Oh, yeah, actually real close. Yeah, he's my hero professionally people, professionally. So by 1926, Buster and his wife were sleeping in separate bedrooms. Yeah, because his 1926, Buster and his wife were sleeping separate bedrooms.

Yeah, because his bedroom was already full. Yeah. No room. The only wrong with separate bedrooms is just more comfortable. People have your own bed. Obviously. Might be. Um, chime in it. All right. So like, but at the same time that his personal life's falling apart, critics are panning as latest film, despite it being legitimately one of the greatest movies ever made. In fact, if you go by A.F. I.S. list,

it was the greatest movie ever made at the time because the other 17 that rank above it hadn't been made yet. So, uh, uh, Geaton decides to try his hand at alcoholism and it turns out he was a genius. He's throwing himself off the stage like Ed Norton's. Oh, oh, oh, Okay, you know what? You know what?

Dad at a point. This is fun. I am enjoying this. So okay. So it was at this point that he did a couple of his most dangerous and most famous stunts. He made a career out of hurting himself, of course. It up to and including breaking his neck during a scene in Sherlock Jr. that made the final cut. It's in the movie. You can watch him break his neck. But if you've only ever seen Buster

Keaton once in your life, the clip you will have seen is his most famous and most dangerous stunt. It comes from the hurricane scene in Steamboat, Bill Jr. It's the classic gag on a monumental scale where he runs out of the house and then the facade of a two story house falls away. But he emerges on skate because he's standing exactly where the open attic window is. Now this is a stunt with the way that they did it at the time where he misses his mark by more than six inches in any direction and he has like a couple of seconds to run to it. He would get crushed. couple of seconds to run to it.

He would get crushed. He would almost certainly die. Jesus. So later on in interviews, they'd ask, were you scared when you did this? And he would say, I was black out drunk. I have no idea if I was scared. I'm not.

Oh, that's how he does the stunts for our podcast. Everybody. Yeah, I drink. What the fuck signed off on this stunt? Like, oh, yeah, I drink. Who the fuck signed off on this stunt? Like, oh, yeah, Buster. Oh, he's a star, cash cow, huge talent, major asset. Oh yeah, tomorrow we're gonna drop a house on him see if he lives.

Yeah, well, so that was the thing though, right? So as soon as he signed with MGM, he wasn't allowed to do dangerous shit like that anymore. Got to sign with MGM. The studio was determined to protect their investment right the other guys don't care about you buster. Yes It's funnier when you just fall though So but the studio was determined to protect their investments so they use stuntmen for all the tough stuff

And he used to say amen stuntmen don't get laughs, right? That was his entire bit So before long the booze and the depression was showing up in his work. The first couple of movies he made with MGM were fine, I guess, but then they put them on a breakneck schedule and he turned that shit, he started like 11 movies between March of 1930 and February of 1933. Just churning them out. And it was then that he took up his stage name, Nicholas Cage.

Yeah. Harry, who did he gave him that name, actually. So these movies obviously had a took us three months to write, film, and edit that kind of feel to him. And that being said, though, their low production cost and fast turnaround made them some of the most financially successful movies that he ever made. Probably better than the seven police academy movies they made over 10 years, too. Almost certainly. So in 1932 Natalie left him taking with her his two sons and legend has it his entire

fortune. A year after that he'd started his final feature a movie with Jimmy Durant called What No Beer, which is about Tom's origin story. There's always been beer. I don't know. I've never seen it. And by all accounts, neither did Buster. Despite the movie's success, he hated everything about it.

And with his MGM contract, the saddest part, he left Hollywood all together. Ooh, an entertainer who left to go do normy stuff. Let me guess, it went awesome. Yeah, okay. So for the next couple of decades, he bumbled around, make an educational films, writing gags for other comics and generally being a really depressing character. But in the late 40s, he found his way onto this new medium of television. So he did a guest spot on a popular

CBS variety show, which generated enough interest that CBS offered him his own show in 1950. He ended up hosting a couple of other shows over the next few years. He became a television mainstay through the 50s and 60s. And because of his popularity through those appearances, interest in his old silent films rekindled and several of them were re-released in theaters. He also racked up a series of endorsement contracts that would make any modern athlete, jealous. He was at different times the pitch band for Philip 66, RCA Budweiser Ford Milky Way, Colgate Alka Celtser, and Seven Up among others. It's like a really dark short story there about an alcoholic, a DUI, a terrible hangover, and then a really refreshing soda.

like a DUI, a terrible hangover, and then a really refreshing soda. Yes. Yes. Oh, boom. Okay, so Buster died in 1966, 26 years into his third marriage and his first happy one. He's probably the only man in history that had a successful career in Vaudeville,

silent film, talkies, and television. His comedy is still hilarious 100 years later and director's still studying his use of space and camera movement today. And when they don't, it fucking shows. Later in his life, when interviewers would point out the profound impact that his genius had on the history of film,

he would respond with characteristic humility that nobody could be a genius while they were wearing a pork pie hat and slap shoes. And if he had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, no, what would it be? Buster Keaton is the cannabis of 1920's film stars. Okay. I remember the voice. I was born ready for this one.

All right. All right. Noah, we learned that Buster Keaton got some pushback about his treatment of the bad guys in the Civil War in that movie he did. Speaking artistically, what's the funniest way for a movie to kill people who support the Confederate flag? D, all the above. Yes, can be D, it's gonna be all the above.

Thank you for saving me the trouble. Correct. All right, Noah. Buster Keaton, star of Silent Films, is best remembered for this famous one liner. I love that one. Good shit. All right Noah, what would have been a great stage name for Buster's baby tossing dad? Hey, he's lobs B. James Hurl Jones. Yes, that's crazy.

Yeater, dinklin Flinger Bell Or E just chuck Eli that's the best pun in you have ever done in your goddamn life, sir. Thank you or E just chucked. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha but you're the winner. So I'm gonna, I would really love to hear a heat asya, it's been too long. Oh, sounds good. Sounds good. All right. Well for Noah Heath, Eli and Tom, I'm Cecil. Thank you for hanging out with us today, we'll be back next week and by then, Heath

will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, by Noah's book on Amazon, outbreak, a crisis of faith, and listen to where other stuff you know where it is. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod, or leave a five star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citation pod dot com. And remember folks, there is no fatty arbuckle essay. Never resist.

And then and then you listen in Charlie Chaplin, then Fatti is like, what am I gonna do with this here champagne bottle? Yeah, sorry Fatti, I think I'm gonna pass. But you haven't heard the punchline yet. Is it that you murdered a lady? Yes. Okay.