Camera Man: Buster Keaton by Dana Stevens

Camera Man

Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the 20th Century 
By Dana Stevens

Atria Books

Hardcover ISBN: 9781501134197

432 pages

January 2022

Amazon — Barnes and Noble — Powell's

“I think I have had the happiest and luckiest of lives. It would be ridiculous of me to complain… I count the years of defeat and grief and disappointment, and their percentage is so minute that it continually surprises and delights me.” — Buster Keaton

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more beloved figure from film history than Buster Keaton. He's wowed generations of moviegoers, some born several decades after his death in 1966, with his physical comedy and incredible stunt work. And he did it all with a straight face. Who can forget the house frame falling over Keaton in Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928), the death-defying stunts in The General (1926), Keaton running over train cars and onto a water tower in Sherlock Jr. (1924) or the epic chase scenes in Seven Chances (1925)? He did it all himself, no stuntman needed and made it look effortless. Keaton was also a pioneer in filmmaking. He thrived in the era before studios took over Hollywood. With his years of vaudeville training, he knew what audiences liked and developed that on a bigger scale for moviegoers. With the birth of cinema, he learned as he went, preferring to work independently and often writing, "choreographing" and directing his own feature films and shorts. Today Keaton's work is appreciated by many, even those who are new to classic movies. You'll hear those who are normally adamantly against watching black-and-white movies from the past being open and willing to watching Keaton perform his magic on screen.

Film critic Dana Stevens offers a look at Keaton's life and career in her book Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the 20th Century. This is a life-and-times style book rather than a traditional biography. And what I mean by that is the book offers the reader equal parts biography and cultural history which places its subject, in this case Buster Keaton, in context with the eras they lived through. You won't get a play-by-play on everything that happened in Keaton's life and career. Instead, Stevens offers a look at Keaton through a cultural history lens and readers with reap the rewards from all the historical context.

The chapters are thematic essays that follow the course of Keaton's life chronologically but each focus on a particular subject with a couple of context points. Some of these include women filmmakers, child cruelty regulations, the birth of radio, film and television, movie magazines, collegiate culture, racism, indie filmmaking vs. Hollywood studios, etc. There is also in-depth biographical information on key figures from Keaton's life and career including Keaton's three wives, Roscoe Arbuckle, Robert Sherwood, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, Charlie Chaplin and more. These context points make for some illuminating reading and really help readers understand Keaton's world.

Stevens is a fantastic writer and I kept stopping to write down a quote I liked. Here are a few:

“For Keaton, every potential home is a space of danger and transformation; no facade stays standing for long… The ephemerality of the built world reveals the foundational homelessness of Buster’s character, whose defining trait is his ability to move through chaos while remaining miraculously unperturbed.”

“The Hollywood economy was large enough that Wall Street, another institution that rose to new heights of power and cultural influence in the 1920s, had started to play a key role in the financial and creative decisions of the top movie moguls…the big banks of the East Coast, where the money side of the business was still based, got skittish about lending large sums to small studios with spotty box-office records. To get back their investment, they needed a reliable flow of commercial hits.”

“Buster Keaton was ahead of his time in many ways but when it came to the ambient cultural racism of the Jim Crow era, he was unfortunately very much a product of it.” 

"Some accounts of Keaton’s late life—the ones that want to frame him as a tragic figure permanently destroyed by Hollywood—present his time performing with the circus as some sort of comedown… in fact, he held the prize second-act slot at one of Europe’s most prestigious and innovative circuses…”

If you're a fan of Buster Keaton and love cultural history, then Camera Man is a must read. 

Note: For those who will want a more traditional biography, author James Curtis' book Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life also came out this year.

This is my first review for the 2022 Classic Film Reading Challenge. 

Thank you to Atria Books for sending me Camera Man for review!

2022 Classic Film Reading Challenge

2022 #ClassicFilmReading Challenge

May 25th to September 15 2022

Today I'm thrilled to announce the 2022 #ClassicFilmReading Challenge! Every year I host this challenge to encourage you to read and review six classic film books this summer/winter (depending on where you live. 

If you don't think you could read and review six books but could review one or two, I encourage you to still join! It's fun to participate even if you don't complete the challenge. 

If you do finish all six books then you 1) get bragging rights and 2) are automatically entered into a giveaway to win a Kino Lorber Blu-ray or DVD of your choice. Open internationally!

Throughout the challenge I'll be sharing review round-ups here on the blog and sharing reviews on Twitter (@RaquelStecher). Make sure you use the official hashtag #classicfilmreading when sharing your reviews. And feel free to share your #classicfilmreading stack to showcase what you plan to you plan to read this summer/winter.

Here is how the challenge works.

• Sign up for the challenge 
• Read a classic film book
• Write a review and post it on your Blog, Podcast, YouTube, Instagram, LibraryThing or Goodreads. Must be a public post. 
• Use hashtag #classicfilmreading on social media.
• Submit your review link (see form on the official page)
• Repeat until you have read and reviewed 6 books!
• Review 6 and be automatically entered to win a prize.

Challenge runs from May 25th until September 15th, 2022. Sign-up before July 15th.

All of the details of the challenge are on the official page including the sign up form, the book review submission form, rules, deadlines and what counts as a classic film book. 

I hope you'll join me this year!

Visit the official page for more details and to sign up!

Dervish Dust: The Life and Words of James Coburn by Robyn L. Coburn

Dervish Dust

The Life and Words of James Coburn

by Robyn L. Coburn

Potomac Books

Hardcover ISBN: 9781640124059

424 pages

December 2021

Amazon — Barnes and Noble — Powell's

“I take in all the impressions and information [about the character]. And when the time comes for action, I just let it go. It’s jazz acting. It’s like when Sarah Vaughan sings a song. She sings the lyrics, but she doesn’t sing it exactly the way it was written. It bears her style. That’s the way it is with roles. Each character has a style. Once you find out the character’s style it becomes really simple.. You don’t think about it. You just let it flow.” — James Coburn

James Coburn was one of the coolest actors to ever grace the silver screen. With his tall, lanky frame, wide grin, distinctive deep voice and personable nature, you can't help but be drawn to him. He just seemed like the sort of guy that you could hang out with and come away with a really cool story or two to share. Coburn made some great movies, and some not so great ones, and he elevated each of them with his magnetic screen presence. His career was bookended with some fantastic roles as either supporting player or the central star in films like The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1965), Our Man Flint (1966), A Fistful of Dollars (1971), The Last of Sheila (1973) and The Affliction (1997), the latter of which earned him an Academy Award. Beyond acting, Coburn dabbled in screenwriting, producing and directing. He was skeptical of television but the medium brought him great exposure and an opportunity to appear in numerous shows and made-for-tv movies. Here was a man who was devoted to his craft, eager to take on new challenges and beloved by his fellow cast members. At the end of his life, he still worked tirelessly as an actor, enjoying a new wave of enthusiasm for his work after earning his Oscar. He and his second wife Paula created the James and Paula Coburn Foundation (JPCF) "with the aim of supporting several arts and medical charities" which is still active to this day. The world lost James Coburn two decades ago but what remains is a joyful legacy.

“Coburn’s intense desire to control his own career and not be part of projects that were subject to the misapplied priorities, as he saw them, of the studio bigwigs... When possible he liked being hired early so he could influence the development of the script and characters.” — Robyn L. Coburn

Dervish Dust: The Life and Words of James Coburn by Robyn L. Coburn is an excellent biography that really captures the spirit of its subject. The author is Coburn's daughter-in-law, who is married to Coburn's son James H. Coburn IV.  The book avoids the trappings of a familial biography with its straightforward approach and honest look at Coburn's life. The focus is primarily on his acting career but there are also plenty of stories about his childhood during the Great Depression, his education, his marriage to his first wife Beverly, their two children, the subsequent bitter divorce, his many romances, his second wife Paula and his debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. Among Coburn's hobbies were studying Eastern culture and medicinal practices, collecting art, smoking marijuana, training in martial arts with his friend Bruce Lee and riding his beloved Ferraris. The Coburn portrayed in the book is a complicated man who was both good natured and highly driven.

Jennifer O'Neill and James Coburn in The Carey Treatment (1972)

James Coburn with one of his Ferraris.

According to the author, Nancy Mehagian was recording conversations with Coburn in 2002 for a potential memoir. Unfortunately, Coburn died that same year. Dervish Dust is the Coburn memoir we never got to read. The author adeptly uses those recordings to channel Coburn's voice throughout the book. It gives the biography a more intimate feel. Overall, this was a compelling and informative biography. There was lots to glean from it. My only small complaint is that I wish they had used an image of James Coburn wearing his signature grin on the cover.

If you love James Coburn as much as I do, make sure you check out Dervish Dust and let me know what you think!

A big thank you to Potomac Books for sending me a copy of Dervish Dust to review.