Curtis Eller's "Buster Keaton" & Silence in "talkies"

My last post included images of a project where I created imagined CD art for "Taking Up Serpents Again" by Curtis Eller's American Circus. I thought maybe I should explain who that is, for anyone who might be unfamiliar with them.

Curtis Eller is "New York City's angriest yodelling banjo player." As far as I can tell, Eller sometimes performs alone as Curtis Eller, but when accompanied, the group is called Curtis Eller's American Circus. Curtis Eller happens to have a song dedicated to Buster Keaton named, appropriately, "Buster Keaton." It's on the CD "Taking Up Serpents Again." Video and lyrics below:

"Buster Keaton" by Curtis Eller

Well, since they started in with the talkies, you can't get a moments peace
But they're talking just to hear their own voices, well at least...
That's what it seems like
'Cause there's nothing that I've heard that bears repeatin'
Won't you come back to the movies, Buster Keaton

You know it barely took a decade for those negatives to decay
But what the Hell, there was nitrate in the film stock from those days..
I guess that's the problem
But I'm not tired enough to admit that I've been beaten
Won't you come back to the movies, Buster Keaton

I wish that I was Buster Keaton when they took it all away
Gettin' drunk every night on Irish whisky
Or maybe Fatty Arbuckle when the headlines finally declared,
"Well I guess that it's just a mystery"
But I'm not gonna be like Charlie Chaplin, jumpin' on the first boat
And sail away before they have a chance to miss me
No, I'm stayin' here...here in New York City
I don't care how bad it gets

Well they keep on making pictures, but they're worthless and they're sad
And they never will make up for the silence that we had
And now we're stuck with it...
And the kids are watching T.V. while they're eatin'
Won't you come back to the movies, Buster Keaton
Won't you come back to the movies, Buster Keaton

It's a fantastic song, and it's hook, "won't you come back to the movies, Buster Keaton," reflects my thoughts exactly. That was the inspiration for the CD art I created; inserting Buster Keaton into some more modern iconic movie imagery.

Watching current movies, I often imagine how the movie would be different or improved if Buster had a hand in making it. I believe Buster could hold his own in today's movie climate, although I wouldn't go so far as to say he'd be making blockbusters or movies that were terribly commercially successful. But they would likely have been critically successful.

Consider 2007's No Country for Old Men. There was quite a lot of marvel and praise when the movie came out for how quiet the movie is, for its use of dialog only when necessary.

This isn't a revolutionary approach to film-making. Buster Keaton was saying since the invent of the talkies that people needn't talk for the sake of talking, and that a story with minimal dialog makes the spoken aspect all the more powerful and relevant. Here are excerpts from an interview with Buster when he talks about this:

When sound came, we found this out--we found this out from our own pictures--that sound didn't bother us at all. There was only one thing I wanted at all times, and insisted on: that you go ahead and talk in the most natural way, in your situations. Don't give me puns. Don't give me jokes. No wisecracks. Give that to Abbott and Costello. Give that to the Marx Brothers. Because as soon as our plot is set and everything is going smooth, I'm always going to find places in the story where dialogue is not called for. There can be two or three people in a room working at jobs--well, they work at them without talking. That's the way I want it. So you get those stretches in your picture of six, seven, eight, nine minutes where there isn't a word of dialogue. In those, we did our old routines. Then, when it was natural to talk, you talked. Then, when it was natural to talk, you talked. You didn't avoid it. But you laid out your material that way, and in many places it didn't call for dialogue....

Then, of course, when you give me a Jimmie Durante.... Well, Durante just can't keep quiet. He's going to talk no matter what happens.... They'd say, "This is funny," and I'd say, "I don't think so." "This'll be good"; I'd say, "It stinks." It didn't make any difference; we did it anyhow. I'd only argue about so far, and then let it go. And I knew better.

Consider what No Country for Old Men would look like with Buster Keaton helming it. It would be a totally different movie. Probably, the only resemblance to the original would be part of the plot's basic conflict, and the dominating silence.

Links:
Curtis Eller's website and Myspace

Interview excerpts were taken from