Tag: Buster Keaton
Way back in the day, 1980 to be precise, when I was working with Joe Killian and Michael Zerphy, whenever we saw other performers do a bit we really liked, we’d say “consider it stolen!” I think the phrase originated with Joe, but he may have stolen it.
The harlequinade is the holy grail of physical comedy.
When I was setting up The (Very) Physical Comedy Institute in 2014, I heard from a prospective student who said he was a kinetic artist who had been building Rube Goldberg machines for many years and was now trying to integrate human performance into his work —thus his interest in physical comedy. It was Joseph Herscher, a New Zealander living in Brooklyn, and though I didn’t know Joseph personally, I’d actually read about his work (which has millions of hits on YouTube) and had even done a blog post on him way back in 2012.
I’m always amazed to find young physical comedians who study and work hard at their craft and yet have only minimal familiarity with the silent films of Buster Keaton.
I was going to call this post “Old-Fart Physical Comedy” but I thought I’d pull in more readers this way. Sexagenarian must have something to do with sex, right? Maybe there’ll even be pictures! No, but while you’re here…
If you excitedly ripped open your physical comedy Christmas stocking, if you quickly devoured your physical comedy Valentine’s Day chocolates, if you got all giddy over this spring’s Premio de Primavera, then you’ll be hopping like crazy over the dozen goodies the Easter Bunny just brought you. One hundred percent recycled from my private collection and from links that came by way of such usual suspects as Drew Richardson, Lee Faulkner, Greg DeSanto, and no doubt other folks who I am forgetting. As usual, click on any image to enlarge.
Chain of Fools
Silent Comedy and Its Legacies
from Nickelodeons to YouTube
by Trav S.D.
Trav S.D. —oddly enough named after his gritty home town in the middle of South Dakota’s Badlands — is a so-good-he’s-bad vaudevillian: a performer, producer, historian, popularizer, and blogger whose popular blog Travalanche is a must for the variety arts fan.
Yes, right here! I hit the jackpot this past weekend, and of course I’m sharing the wealth with you. Here’s the story….
I’ve returned from a long weekend in Chicago with ample evidence that Buster Keaton is alive and well. Or at least his ghost.
I am excited to be continuing with our series of guest posts by eccentric dancer Betsy Baytos, whose Kickstarter campaign to complete a fabulous documentary film, Funny Feet: the Art of Eccentric I hope you will join me in supporting.
As you can see from the article below, Betsy truly knows her stuff. In fact, I doubt there’s anyone else out there who comes close to matching her personal work experience in eccentric dance and in animation, combined with years of thorough historical research and tireless dedication to the project. In this installment, you will read how the comic moves of eccentric dancers were directly translated into famous animation characters. Amazing stuff! —jt
One of Buster Keaton’s most famous (and dangerous) gags was standing obliviously in the path of a falling side of a house in Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928).
Picasso once said, “good artists borrow, great artists steal.”
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Workshops & Other Events
My first book (1976)
My book Clowns has long been out of print, but you can borrow it for two weeks at a time from the Internet Archive. More information is available here.
My second book (2015)
Visual and verbal humor for the cognitively and artistically curious! Available here.
“A book to treasure!”
—Bill Irwin