Word: keaton
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...Griffith's Biograph studios in New York. Sennett and Mabel Normand carry on their Keystone Kops love affair; Harold Lloyd simulates climbing the side of a building on a facade laid flat on the floor; Fatty Arbuckle takes a blueberry pie in the face; and Buster Keaton gives Charlie Chaplin costume advice for a tramplike character he hopes will make people laugh...
...scorn for public taste seems distinctly 20th century. Beckett won't acknowledge the camera, and defies close-up. His wrinkles are far more impressive than W.H. Auden's; Beckett's struggle to cover the bone, Auden's are ornamental. It's a neat twist to find Beckett and Buster Keaton together in one photo (Keaton played the protagonist in Beckett's Film)--Keaton the supreme silent comedian, Beckett (equally a master of comedy) minimizing theatre toward a condition of silence...
...gets away with it because his only distinctive talent is that he tells jokes extremely well. (Though he's a dreadful actor, embarassing when he's not laughing at something or other.) This is where he's been so lucky with Diane Keaton, who's a decent enough actress, and the Diane Keaton role is the soul-unburdening one-this cranks the show up to the touch of seriousness which is needed to vindicate Woody's Indomitable Comic Spirit, so that Time Mag can duly call him America's Comic Genius...
...Diane Keaton has to get stoned before sex in Annie Hall; this is just a joke (like her family). With Woody Allen, the same situation would be defused (but taken seriously) by a reference to his maternal ogre, a castrating Semite battleaxe. And he's notably coy about showing sex scenes, for all the doughy portent about 'relationships' in his films...
...character," says Director Robert Benton. "We tape-recorded our talks and took endless notes on his language. Everything was carefully worked out." If Kramer is brash, egocentric and often obnoxious, so too is Hoffman. If Kramer is tender, loving and often vulnerable, then Hoffman is as well. Like Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, he has turned the screen into a mirror, a magical looking glass into his own head and heart...