Buster Keaton So Funny It Hurt

So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton & MGM

A Turner Classic Movies (TCM) documentary about Keaton's discontented relationship with MGM and the events that eventually led to his career downfall.

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Buster Keaton: So Funny It Hurt!

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A surprisingly shallow doc about Buster's heartbreaking sojourn at MGM, in which the great historian and filmmaker Kevin Brownlow seems more preoccupied with clever visual segues than emotional truth. There are a few neat observations though, and some extraordinary clips, including a tourist's home video of Buster shooting The Cameraman on location in New York City, Red Skelton's subsequent rendering of a now lost scene from that classic film, and footage of Keaton delivering dialogue in Spanish and Italian as his joyless, inert MGM talkies were retooled for foreign audiences.
Chaplin may have been kicked out and exiled, fitting his tramp persona, and that's certainly one kind of hell, but I think being trapped on the inside, asked to perform in what you fundamentally don't agree with over and over (in three or four languages to boot) is a worse kind of hell and Buster's resigned, withered face in that later review-- with what looked like tears in his eyes, says everything and more. That it happened to the comedian with the Great Stone Face is all the more ironic.

Often documentaries skip over and altogether stop before someone's downfall. This one shows you the trainwreck. It's painful. But necessary.

All I know is, Buster, that looked like some kind of hell.

Buster as a clown puppet in a talkie while people laugh on in ignorance is an image of abject horror and I am not and will never be fully prepared to watch that picture.
My dad wanted to know a bit more about the guy for some reason, so he recorded this short doc. Unfortunately, this brief film only covers Keaton's sad life after his heyday had already past, largely looking at the films released by him after the invention of sound. It goes into his failed marriage, naming a few of the people he had affairs with, and then lists some of his remaining successes as a gag designer and side-character actor.

The whole movie railroads through the major events of Keaton's life, but outside of a single recording they had of Keaton in his retirement, the viewer learns next to nothing about the actor or about anything influential he did. Instead, it…
Yes, I did cry. Next question.
I know I normally give film documentaries very high ratings when others don't, but I just love them so much. They're so comforting to me, and a complete joy. This was made for TCM in 2004 and is a really great look at the history of Buster Keaton after he infamously signed with MGM in 1928. After making The Cameraman for them that year with artistic control, he never got that same kind of power again. MGM was an oiled machine that required you to conform or get out of the way. Buster's way of shooting was very hectic and not planned out but that's how he worked. They were just not made for each other and unfortunately one wonders what would have happened had he not signed with them. A great documentary that's a must watch for Buster Keaton fans.
how do i get to the alternate universe where buster didn't sign with MGM and lived a full and happy life with full creative control over his films? i don't like the one we're living in now :(
on the Criterion Collection Blu-ray for "The Cameraman"
Watched at home on The Criterion Channel.
Solid if partisan summary of Keaton's failed acclimation to MGM as it slid into the sound era. I would still like to see a serious documentary about the Beach Party movies, including Keaton's involvement, because there is probably an interesting story to be told there.
Good Lord, this short TCM doc was depressing but I was fascinated by it and learned a lot. Buster Keaton was essentially completely washed up by 1932! He wrote and gave material to the Marx Brothers and Red Skelton. He was in a comedy duo with Jimmy Durante and was drunk onscreen for most of it. He was shooting movies he didn't wanna make by the end of his MGM stint three to four times! For different language dubs as he could speak French, Spanish, and German and would shoot the same movie multiple times with different speaking casts! Insanity! He resented Abbot and Costello and the Marx Brothers because they rushed things into production without planning everything out and…
Seems kind of facile. I don't know.