Worth Considering
Buster Keaton’s “Special Effects
A few weeks ago, I shared a video of Buster Keaton’s greatest stunts.
Readers wrote to ask: How much of that was real?
Turns out, there weren’t any “safety nets” in place. Stunts that looked dangerous really were dangerous. (Garry Moore once asked Keaton how he took all those falls, only for him to open his jacket to reveal a thoroughly bruised body.) And as for “special effects,” Keaton relied on camera angles, timing, and a technique called “undercranking” (which slowed the film speed and, for example, made a car appear to be moving faster than it actually was).
Keaton famously had one rule: Never fake a gag. Which isn’t to say that he never used a stunt double. He was forced to do it while he was signed with MGM (from 1928-1933) and towards the end of his career/life due to diminishing health. But everything I’ve read about the “The Great Stone Face” has only made me appreciate him more. He will forever be, as Orson Welles put it, “the greatest of all the clowns in the history of cinema.”