Michael Phillips: An ode to failure — some classic movies were flops when they first came out
Know that phrase “the numbers don’t lie”? It’s a lie. The numbers lie constantly. With the movies, as with every creative medium in which visionaries must cross the six-way intersection of greed, exploitation, risk, reward, art and commerce, it’s a mug’s game to lie about numbers not telling the whole story about anything.
This spring, a century ago, Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock, Jr.” opened in theaters. Keaton, a huge success in vaudeville and one of a handful of silent film pioneers touched by the gods of
