New Buster

Damfinos: there’s a new cut of Steamboat Bill Jr. Imagine, after all these years, different camera angles, and a cleaner & sharper print. Yay.

Also, there’s a new DVD of all the Educational Pictures pictures, or shorts, most of them with his character Elmer (I prefer the “almost supernatural figure of beauty and grace in the silents,” as the NYT’s reviewer put it, but any Buster is still Buster.)

For those of you who don’t know, Houdini is credited with naming Buster. He was visiting with the Keatons, who were a vaudeville troupe, when infant/toddler Buster fell down a flight of stairs and landed with that stone face. Houdini, looking on, said “that’s quite a buster,” & thus, Buster Keaton was born. Houdini was born here in Appleton, and the Keatons used to summer in Muskegon, Michigan, where the annual Damfino conference takes place. So apparently I’ve come to some version of the right part of the world.