The first clue that the Curtis bio (as we shall now call it) is going to be more than your standard march through the usual Keaton tales is the front cover, featuring one of Keaton’s George Hurell portraits from the early ’30s. And, it would be ready to go in February 2022, sooner than I expected!Īnd now, having carefully waded my way through its 800 pages (yes, this is a substantial tome!) I can say that Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life was not only worth waiting for, but it’s the kind of book that Buster fans needed–indeed that anyone interested in film history needed. It was going to be An Event, you might say, the first truly major biography on Buster in years. And not only that, but it was going to be a very long, detailed, and thoroughly professional biography by James Curtis, author of acclaimed books such as Spencer Tracey: A Biography and William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come.
These are the movies any cineaste worth their salted popcorn must see – ideally on a VHS tape with tracking issues, but streaming is fine, too.It was late last year when I first heard the welcome news that a new Buster Keaton biography was on the way. In retrospect, if it wasn’t the absolutely greatest movie decade, the ‘80s may have been the most unique, and these 50 films represent the best of the era. It was also the era that loosened the jar, so to speak, on the indie explosion of the ’90s and when international cinema began to reach more eyes than ever before. Yes, it represented the birth of the mega blockbuster, but it was also a time when the most popular movies were also among the best and most groundbreaking. Looking back now, it’s easier to see how influential and important the period was to filmmaking. Coming out of the ’70s, which introduced a new level of realism and gritty authenticity to mainstream Hollywood, filmmaking in the ‘80s got bigger, louder and, some might say, superficial.īut time has been kind to the era. One of the words most commonly associated with the popular culture of the 1980s is ‘plastic’ – and for a long time, that phrase extended to the movies.
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