Buster Keaton: Working out the details

BUSTER KEATON RIDES AGAIN (1965) is a black and white documentary about silent screen legend Buster Keaton. Today, it would probably be called THE MAKING OF THE RAILRODDER, since it was filmed while Keaton was working on the color short by that name directed by Gerald Potterton. But it is not really a film about how THE RAILRODDER was was made, but how an active comic mind works.

The premise of THE RAILRODDER is simple: Keaton travels across Canada in a railway handcar. In BUSTER KEATON RIDES AGAIN we see Keaton and director Potterrton working out several "railroad" gags, and although THE RAILRODDER is credited to Potterton as writer and director, BUSTER KEATON RIDES AGAIN makes it clear that Keaton himself had a big hand in the making of the short. Time and again, we see Keaton working out the details and timing of specific gags, expressing disappointment and frustration when things don't work out, and explaining the difference between one element of a gag and another.

Keaton's comedy was the most scientifically methodical of all the great silent comedians, and in one scene in which he describes the plot of the Laurel and Hardy short LEAVE 'EM LAUGHING (1928), we can see the admiration and near envy he had for Laurel and Hardy, who could work from the simplest of premises. Laurel, whose mind was as sharp and active as Keaton's, believed in improvisation on the set, whereas Keaton seemed to want every minute detail worked out. In the documentary, we see Keaton alternately fascinated and perturbed by the smallest details of anything - the play by play minutia of a baseball game, the tuning of a guitar, the intimate strategies of a friendly bridge game. There are intriguing glimpses of gags that are perfectly timed - Keaton seemingly stopping and starting a moving train by pulling it and pushing it with his hand - and gags that don't quite come off - Keaton's handcar narrowly missing an oncoming locomotive.

The heart of BUSTER KEATON RIDES AGAIN is a scene where Potterton thinks of one gag Keaton could do over a large bridge span, while Keaton thinks of a different one. Keaton's idea of combining gags is rejected by the director, and Keaton fumes about it for an entire day. The director believes Keaton's gag - riding over the high bridge while tangled up in an oversized map - is too dangerous. Keaton calls his gag "child's play... I've done worse things in my sleep." In the end, Keaton gets his way.

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