Next we come to the bronchial buster, or the man (it is usually a man) who, being in the throes of a terrific throat and tube trou...ble chooses that night for theater-going.... He will soon learn to pick his pauses with finesse. It does no good to cough while there is a great deal of noise going on on the stage. No one can hear. The time is just as the star is about to do a little low speaking to her dying lover or when the hero, alone in his garret, goes silently over to the fireplace and tears up the letter. There for a good rousing bark, my hearty, followed by a series of short sharp ones like those of a coxswain! If possible the appearance of apoplexy should be simulated.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Listen, Buster you and your quick-change acts aren't going to hang orange blossoms all over me just because you feel the cold weat...her coming on. No thank you. I'll go back where I can be honest without getting kicked around for it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Look, Buster. Don't you get over-stimulated with me. I'm the little gal that flew all the way from New York to this lousy place, t...his dark continent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is difficult to compare Chaplin's and Keaton's gifts. Chaplin's fertile period lasted 38 years (some say even longer); Keaton's... lasted about ten. Chaplin's art depended upon a minute perfection and precision; Keaton's relied on speed and a tumult of imaginative, farfetched ideas. Although Chaplin the director was more an intellect than Keaton the director, Charlie the character was less an intellect than Buster the character. Although women were important metaphorically in Chaplin's films, sexual attraction and masculine virility were far more dominant in Keaton's pictures. The Chaplin films were smaller--centering on small facial gestures and objects; the Keaton films were larger--centering on human figures against a vast physical environment and huge, complicated objects. The Chaplin films moved slowly and quietly; the Keaton films with great pace and vigor. And yet Charlie was the character who laughed, smiled, and cried, whereas Buster was the one who rarely moved a facial muscle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Much has already been written of the uncanny ways in which Chaplin and Keaton seem to divide so much of the world, so precisely, b...etween them. Charlie the sentimentalist and Buster the ironist, the dancer and the acrobat, the critic of capitalist society and the deviser of happy-ending Edens outside of society--all these distinctions are well-known and important. But the most richly creative difference between these geniuses is in their language--not the language in their films (how wonderful it is that they are forever silent) but the language that their films make real. For Chaplin the space of the world is always and insidiously dangerous, perhaps even murderous. For Keaton, that same space is, breathtakingly, his toy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »