Michael Phillips: ‘A projectile, hurled into the future.’ Why silent film star Buster Keaton is the subject of 2 new books and speaks directly to our own nervous times
At some point in my childhood, there it was: My first Buster Keaton.
Was he on WGN? PBS? One of the two, probably. In the days before streaming, Blockbuster Video and VCRs, growing up in Racine, Wisconsin, meant being able to get the Chicago TV stations as well as the Milwaukee ones for free.
The film, 18 minutes of eloquent comic velocity, was “Cops,” which turns 100 years old in March. At one point the unwitting, unnamed character played by Keaton tosses an anarchist’s bomb in the direction of a horde of Los Angeles police officers, sparking a chase and the bit I loved most, performed by my new favorite screen star.
A ladder, precarious, leans up against a fence. The cops, having left a massive policemen’s parade behind, race after Keaton, who scurries up out of reach, scooches and somersaults this way and that, riding the ladder like a teeter-totter. It’s a few seconds of screen time, accomplished in long takes and
