★ 11/29/2021
Slate film critic Stevens debuts with a masterful mix of cultural history, biography, and film criticism to consider of the work and legacy of silent film star Buster Keaton (1895–1966). She tracks Keaton’s rise from a juvenile vaudeville performer, who as part of the Three Keatons family act skirted emerging child labor laws at the turn of the century; assesses his “solidly-constructed” two-reelers, including the classic One Week; highlights his famous roles in such films as Sherlock Jr. and Steamboat Bill, Jr.; and describes his walk-on cameos in such ’60s B-movies as Beach Blanket Bingo. His career saw him work as an MGM gagman, commercial pitchman, and a creative force, and Stevens argues that Keaton’s career arc mirrors America’s evolving cultural tastes, making a strong case that “Buster Keaton belonged to the twentieth century, and it to him.” Stevens also includes wonderful mini-biographies of Keaton’s contemporaries, among them groundbreaking silent filmmaker Mabel Normand and vaudevillian Bert Williams, who inspired Keaton’s own work. Combining the same ingredients that made Keaton’s movies indelible—an elegant narrative, humor, and pathos—Stevens’s account isn’t one to miss. Agent: Adam Eaglin, Elyse Cheney Literary Assoc. (Jan.)
"Was Buster Keaton the most influential filmmaker of the first half of the twentieth century? Dana Stevens makes a compelling case in this dazzling mix of biography, essays, and cultural history." —Esquire
"Stevens offers a series of pas de deux between Keaton and other personages of his time ... It's a new kind of history, making more of overlapping horizontal 'frames' than of direct chronological history, and Stevens does it extraordinarily well." —The New Yorker
“This biography of Buster Keaton by Slate's longtime film critic has been the Film Twitter event of this winter, and for good reason.” —Vanity Fair
“In this innovative, exciting combo of biography, history, essay, and acute cultural analysis, Dana Stevens does something I would have thought impossible—she tells the story of Buster Keaton’s life as if it were a Buster Keaton movie. This book is an exhilarating new way to view the man, his life, his art, and his genius.” —MARK HARRIS, author of Mike Nichols: A Life, Five Came Back and Pictures at a Revolution
"This book is as dazzling as a silent movie flickering before you in a dark room. Stevens has managed the rare feat conjuring a life in all its specific detail while placing it in a modern context so that it becomes newly vital. Buster Keaton leaps off the page.” —RACHEL SYME, staff writer, The New Yorker
“In her brightly written and incredibly well-researched book, Dana Stevens celebrates the enduring filmic presence of Buster Keaton—"The Great Stone Face"—even while transforming him into a guidepost and compass from which to survey the spectacular rise of American popular culture in the modern era. Camera Man offers a unique kaleidoscope of cultural history, film criticism, and fascinating stories and anecdotes, filtered through Stevens’ distinctly modern sensibility and held together, in the end, by the slight but mesmerizing figure of Keaton himself.” —JAMES SANDERS, author of Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies and co-writer of the award-winning PBS series New York: A Documentary Film
"The world has been waiting for a Buster Keaton chronicler like Dana Stevens, who unfolds the great man’s archetypal American life with uncommon wit and grace. But Camera Man offers so much more than biography, revealing its subject as the embodiment, and the instigator, of a turbulent century’s transformations. Vaudeville and Hollywood, disruptive technologies and shifting mores, the complications of race and class and gender, the collisions of art and commerce—Stevens packs it all into an electric, genre-busting book that tosses up new ideas, arguments, and aperçus on every page. It’s a literary highwire act in the spirit of Buster’s famous cinematic set-pieces: a stunt with soul.” —JODY ROSEN, author of Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle
"Buster didn't talk, but luckily Dana Stevens is here to tell us how the Great Stone Face invented a new film language. This rollicking read vivifies the era of innovation and upheaval that shaped the artist who shaped cinema for the next century and counting.” —AMY NICHOLSON, author of Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor and the forthcoming Extra Girls
"I have written three books on Buster Keaton’s work, and have barely scratched the surface of his deep and amazing talent. Stevens' book fills in a lot of gaps with a fan’s passion and a scholar’s insight. It is a fine contribution to the continuing scholarship on one of cinema’s most brilliant comedians and filmmakers. “ —JAMES L. NEIBAUR, author of Buster Keaton's Silent Shorts: 1920-1923, Arbuckle and Keaton, and The Fall of Buster Keaton
"An inspired merger of biography, film criticism and social history, this smartly-written, impressively researched book, with its worldly, intelligent grasp of the aesthetic and business sides of movies, deserves a place in every movie-lover's library." —PHILLIP LOPATE, film critic and author of The Art of the Personal Essay: an Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present
★ 01/01/2022
In this thoughtful, engaging, and moving work, Slate writer Stevens posits that Buster Keaton's life is an entry point to understanding the 20th century—and vice versa. She follows Keaton from his days as the toddler star of the Three Keatons vaudeville act, to his late-career years making cameos in movies and television. The bulk of the biography focuses on Keaton's celebrated silent film career and his rocky entry into the talkies, which was derailed by bad personal and business decisions and further complicated by his alcohol addiction. Stevens enhances the work by contextualizing Keaton's life. His abusive childhood stage experience is juxtaposed against a discussion of early 20th-century child labor laws. An examination of blackface in Keaton's work leads to a more in-depth exploration of depictions of race and humor in pop culture at the time. A section on his repeated hospitalizations from drinking binges leads to an exploration of history of the rise of Alcoholics Anonymous. Stevens's acumen and analysis further elevate this book, offering insights and entertaining extrapolations on the myriad films and entertainment figures discussed within. VERDICT More than a biography of Buster Keaton, this is a stunning, extensively researched, and eminently readable cultural history.—Terry Bosky
2021-10-26
A film critic assesses the career and times of one of the geniuses of cinema.
“Keep your eye on the kid,” Joe Keaton wrote in an ad tagline in 1901, and was he ever right. That kid, his 6-year-old son Buster, was the star of the family stage act The Three Keatons, “the child star as prop, as projectile, as the personal belonging of a father who casually employs him as a household cleaning tool.” He was also a natural performer who revolutionized cinema with his silent films of the 1920s before bad business decisions, alcoholism, and changing times brought him down. In this erratic book, Slatefilm critic Stevens describes the high and lows of Keaton’s life—his early success in Roscoe Arbuckle’s two-reel comedies, triumph with his own studio, disastrous association with MGM, three marriages—while addressing societal events of the day such as child abuse in textile mills, women’s rights, and Black culture. Yet the author doesn’t flesh out these larger events, and attempts to connect Keaton to them are often misguided. Stevens rightly bemoans the poor treatment of women in the cinema of that era, so it’s odd she doesn’t note that many lead actresses in Keaton’s great films—Sybil Seely in One Week, Kathryn McGuire in The Navigator, Marion Mack in The General—more than hold their own and are every bit the Keaton character’s equal. The author devotes eight pages to Spite Marriage, a 1929 MGM mediocrity Keaton didn’t control, but she provides far less detail about Our Hospitality, Go West, and other superior films where Keaton was in charge. Stevens devotes more space to Charlie Chaplin’s 1952 Limelight, a plodding film in which Keaton has only a small role, than some of Keaton’s directorial gems. Readers hungry for details of how Keaton made his pictures should look elsewhere.
An appreciative but wildly uneven look at a brilliant filmmaker.
06/01/2022
Stevens's enthusiasm for her subject and familiarity with her text deliver a truly immersive audio experience. Many listeners will recognize Stevens's warm, expressive voice from her co-hosting duties on the weekly pop culture podcast Culture Gabfest from Slate, where she has served as film critic since 2006. Film, however, is only the launch pad of this delightful cultural history that radiates from the life and work of actor, writer, and director Buster Keaton. Born in 1895 to a family of vaudevillians, Buster was a prodigy who began performing at age 5. His comedic timing and death-defying stunts that wowed his silent film audiences were born from the Three Keatons' act, where he had a recurring role as punching bag to his father Joe. After being tossed about for 17 years, Buster exits the vaudeville stage for the film industry. Her extensive research evident, Stevens showcases many colorful characters: actor and director Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, MGM executive Louis B. Mayer, Charlie Chaplin, actor and director Mabel Normand, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Alcoholics Anonymous founders Bill Wilson and Bob Smith. VERDICT This lively cultural history and affectionate tribute to a true film pioneer should have broad appeal.—Beth Farrell