Speaking at the Buster Keaton convention

On Friday night, October 2nd, the International Buster Keaton Society was generous enough to invite me to speak before their convention.

My topic was my memoir, The Birds That Fly Backwards.  While the book is not about Buster Keaton, he looms large in the narrative.  I told the Damfinos (the name we Keaton heads have chosen to call ourselves) how my father introduced me to Keaton, and how that galvanized my imagination and led to me becoming a writer and filmmaker.  

I described my father -- an ex-Marine who had fought in the bloodiest killing fields of the South Pacific.  Dad lived in the fierce grip of post traumatic stress and he inflicted that stress upon his family.  He was moody, explosive, and too often violent.

But he was also incredibly charismatic.  Because he had almost died in combat a number of times and seen friends die, Dad believed in living each moment to the hilt.  His favorite saying when daring someone to step out of their comfort zone in the wild parties he threw was: "You may never pass this way again!"

He terrified me.  But he also fascinated me and I was desperate to connect with him.

Because he was my Dad.

One time I told him I hated school because I had bright red hair and the other kids taunted me by calling me "Red."  Dad said: "Don't you know that one of the greatest comedians alive today is a man named Red Skelton?  He's a great pantomimist, revered the world over.  So the next time those kids call you 'Red,' you say to them, 'Thank you.  It's an honor to be named after a great artist like Red Skelton.'"

Soon I was watching The Red Skelton Hour every week then performing his pantomimes at my father's parties.  People roared with laughter.  And no one roared louder than Dad.  He had a laugh that was a force of nature -- a great wind of hilarity that shook the entire house and was impossible to resist.

Once when I took a particularly spectacular pratfall Dad was there to give me a hand up.  He said, "That was worthy of Buster Keaton himself."

I said: "Who's Buster Keaton?"

In the days that followed Dad recounted the basic facts of Keaton's career and explained why he revered him.  Soon his obsession became mine.  I used my paper route money to buy Keaton movies from the Blackhawk Films mail order catalogue and studied them carefully.

When I was 14 I bought a biography -- Keaton by Rudi Blesh, which remains the best bio on Buster to this day.

In it, Blesh described the development of The Three Keatons vaudeville act.  Buster was trained by his father in the complex art of slapstick clowning.  The two became so close that they could read each other's minds on stage.

But as Joe Keaton pushed 50 he became a severe alcoholic.  He began hitting Buster for real on stage because he resented how his son had stole the limelight, and Buster would have to beat his father off with a broom, while still keeping it funny.  And all the while the audiences screamed with laughter.

Blesh taught me that comedy is tragedy from a distance.  And to be great, a comedian has to draw upon deep and often painful emotional truths and twist the pain to make it comedic.  All great clowns -- from Charlie Chaplin, to Woody Allen, to Richard Pryor, Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields, Sid Caesar, Jerry Lewis, Lucille Ball, Lily Tomlin, and Carol Burnett -- understood this.

The book also struck deep because the relationship between Joe Keaton and his son so closely paralleled my relationship to my father.  And like Buster, when I came of age I usurped my father, which was painful for both of us, but something that absolutely had to happen as it does with most fathers and sons.

All of this is described in The Birds That Fly Backwards and I explained it in detail to the Damfinos.  I was floored when I got a huge ovation at the the end, and when people kept coming up to me over the next day and half to say how they were deeply moved by my presentation.

I think this is because most of the presentations at the convention over the past 30 years have focused on historic descriptions of how Keaton's movies were made.

No one had ever spoken about why Keaton's work had such a deep effect on them and why they were drawn to it.  I realized everyone in that theater could have told a story of their own that would differ in specifics but would have much in common with mine. 

We all came to Buster Keaton because he could express our pain and get us to laugh at it.  He made it bearable.  And in a convention all of the people moved by his work can form a new family.  One filled with love and fellowship and passion.

It was one of the greatest weekends of my life.  Thank you Damfinos everywhere!