A review by unladylike
Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century by Dana Stevens

3.0

I first recall becoming curious about Buster Keaton thanks to one of my favorite rappers during my college years, Buck 65, who took hip-hop to its folk street-talkin' sense, telling stories from rural Canada and listing all the good old-fashioned things that were his "idea of Heaven." I still love this poem, spoken over a simple beat, but in my early twenties, I had no idea what he meant by "the theaters still have silver screens and Buster Keaton matinees." At some point I noticed he had a website that included a list of his favorite films of all time, and I hadn't heard of almost any of them, and was shocked that they were mostly from the 1920s and '30s. I grew up watching plenty of the Marx Brothers, Alfred Hitchcock, and some other classic black and white film and television, but the only stuff from the silent era I knew was The Three Stooges' early stuff that my grandparents had collections of on VHS.

I have now watched around eight Buster Keaton films - mostly shorts from his early adult career - and found the sense of awe in them that so many others have before me. But I *really* wish there were footage of his family's acts with him when he was about five, getting kicked around like a ball by his father and seemingly never getting hurt, despite the awful implications and fears of abuse involved in those performances, which this book details.