6/18/2023 0 Comments Best of buster keaton movies![]() Yakima Canutt in Devil Horse (1926)įormer rodeo star Yakima Canutt never met a bronco he couldn’t bust. Wings won the first Oscar for Best Picture, and though Grace broke his neck during the shoot, he went on to form his own movie stunt troop, called The Squadron Of Death. He also wore a spring-loaded shock absorber belt extending from his backside to his armpits. ![]() His secret? Aside from crazy courage, Grace sawed wings and aircraft parts into break-away sections to soften the blow upon impact. In Wings, he hung from a rope ladder out of a cockpit and crashed several planes into barren fields and lakes. Stuntman Dick Grace called himself “a crack-up engineer.” As an Army pilot in World War I, he honed the skills that made him Hollywood’s go-to guy for aerial stunts. Buster later called the stunt one of his “greatest thrills,” then added, “I was mad at the time, or I would never have done the thing.” 2. He also saw the cameraman turn away as the shot rolled. Minutes before shooting, Keaton noticed a few crew members praying. The window was just big enough to give him two inches of clearance on either side. house front was on a hinge, and Keaton drove a nail in the ground to mark his position. Eighty years on, it still looks impossible. But he escapes unhurt because his body is perfectly framed by an open window. As he stares unblinking at the camera, the front wall of a two-story house crashes down on him. (1928)Īfter being blown around by a cyclone in this film, a dazed Buster Keaton stops in the middle of a street to catch his breath. And in an era long before CGI, these amazing feats were performed in real-time, the result of careful planning, physical skill and immense courage. Slipping on banana peels, falling from moving cars, teetering on high window ledges-audiences loved to see comedians testing the boundaries of gravity. Editor: Steven Tyler.Silent movie comedy was all about slapstick and sight gags. The International Buster Keaton Society."Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase" by Marion Meade (Da Capo Press), in Trade Paperback and eBook formats, available via Amazon and Indiebound."Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life" by James Curtis (Knopf), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio Formats, available via Amazon and Indiebound."Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century" by Dana Stevens (Atria Books), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio Formats, available via Amazon and Indiebound.He hit the floor, hit the ground, got up again." " And, of course, Keaton's house-façade gag is one of the most imitated shots in comedy, from Jackie Chan to "The Simpsons."Īccording to Bill Irwin, the theme of Keaton's life, its ups and its downs, might be resilience: "You just hit the ground and get back up again," he said. You can see Keaton stunts and gags echoed in "Mission: Impossible 6," "Inception," and "You Only Live Twice. She points out that Buster's life had a third act: "People forget that there was a definite uphill after that, where he contributed to some great comedic television, he got to do commercials and just be on set, where he was in a very happy, wonderful marriage." My great-grandfather made a living being silent, and I make a living talking all the time!" "I think that it's often focused on a lot that he had this sort of giant decline," said Keaton Talmadge, a professional voice actor – and Buster Keaton's great-granddaughter. ![]() He was starting to drink too much."īy 1933, alcoholic and miserable, he had lost his marriage, his home, and even his MGM job, But … His marriage was also falling apart separately from that. Stevens said, "It really, I think, just broke him, as a performer, and as a person. His improvisational style, his creative freedom, and his independent film career were over. In 1927, at the peak of his fame and success, Keaton made what he later called "the worst mistake of my life": He joined the moviemaking machine known as MGM Studios. Buster Keaton's most dangerous stunt (Steamboat Bill Jr., 1928) by ![]()
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