Buster Keaton - Classic Comedy Shorts
One Week, Cops, and The Electric House
Featuring a live conversation with James
Curtis, author of “Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life”
With Live Piano Accompaniment by Ben Model
Live
Streaming on Tuesday, March 15th at 7:00 PM Eastern Time!
General
Admission is Pay-What-You-Want! – Click "Buy Tickets" above for price
options
Join
us for a very special live-streamed online event featuring three of legendary
comedian Buster Keaton’s
funniest and most beloved shorts, with an introduction and post-screening
conversation with James Curtis,
author of the acclaimed new biography “Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life.” It was James Agee who christened Buster Keaton “The Great Stone Face.” Keaton’s face, Agee wrote, "ranked almost with Lincoln’s as an early
American archetype; it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was
also irreducibly funny. Keaton was the only major comedian who kept sentiment
almost entirely out of his work and . . . he brought pure physical comedy to
its greatest heights.” Before the release of his world-famous features like
Our Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr. and The General,
Buster Keaton mastered his skills as an actor and director of comedy shorts.
First appearing alongside Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, producer and
studio executive Joseph M. Schenck later gave Buster his own production unit
where he created a series of two-reel comedies that cemented his place as a
pioneer of silent cinema.
The films:
One Week (1920, 19 min.) Buster and his new bride Sybil
receive a portable house (Easy to assemble! Construction takes only one week!)
as a wedding gift. Things get complicated when Buster's rival - who is vying
for Sybil's affections - swaps the numbers on the crates containing the house
parts. The result is pure comic genius… and a house unlike any you’ve ever
seen!
Cops (1922, 18 min.) Keaton delivers hilarious sight gags
and unbelievable stunts in this Kafkaesque short film about an innocent man
whose efforts to impress his girlfriend result in him being hotly pursued by
hundreds of police officers.
The Electric
House (1922, 20 min.) A
century before our current craze for “smart homes,” Keaton created this
hysterical and prophetic comedy. A mix-up during a university graduation
ceremony sees Buster being accidentally taken for an electrical engineer. He
begins work in the dean’s villa to automate various home appliances, but these
inventions soon turn wildly against their creator.
The book:
From
acclaimed cultural and film historian James Curtis—a major biography, the first in more than two
decades, of the brilliant comedian and filmmaker who elevated physical comedy
to the highest of arts and whose ingenious films remain as startling,
innovative, modern—and irresistible—today as they were when they beguiled
audiences almost a century ago. James Curtis is the author of William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come, Spencer Tracy: A Biography, and W. C. Fields: A Biography (winner of the
2004 Theatre Library Association Award, Special Jury Prize), among others. He
lives in Brea, California.
"It is brilliant—I was totally absorbed,
couldn't stop reading it and was very sorry when it ended."—Kevin Brownlow
You can order a copy Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life, signed by author James Curtis, from our friends at Theodore's Book in Oyster Bay. Click here to order your book.
Tickets are limit one (1) per order. Advance registration may be
made any time prior to the start of the event. Ticket-holders may enter the
live stream by returning to this page and signing in to their Cinema Arts
online account to bring up the “Enter Live Stream” link.
We recommend using the most updated version of
the Google Chrome browser to stream online content. This program may be
streamed on a computer, mobile device, or a smart TV with an HDMI cable
connection.
Thank you for your support of the Cinema Arts Centre at this
time. If you need assistance with any step of your ticket purchase, please
reach out to info@cinemaartscentre.org and a customer service representative
will be in touch.
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Ben Model is one of America’s leading silent film accompanists, and has been playing piano and organ for silent films at the New York MoMA since 1984 and the CAC since 2006. Since March 16th, 2020, Ben has been hosting a weekly live-streamed silent film show from his living room, “The Silent Comedy Watch Party.” Click here to visit Ben's YouTube page!
