Steve Martin & Robin Williams Riff on Math, Physics, Einstein & Picasso in a Smart Comedy Routine

in Comedy, Math, Physics | June 8th, 2018

Back in 2002, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty math­e­mat­ics pro­fes­sor Robert Osser­man chat­ted with come­di­an and ban­jo play­er extra­or­di­naire Steve Mar­tin in San Francisco’s Herb­st The­atre. The event was called “Fun­ny Num­bers” and it was intend­ed to deliv­er an off-kil­ter dis­cus­sion on math. Boy did it deliv­er.

The first half of the dis­cus­sion was loose and relaxed. Mar­tin talked about his writ­ing, ban­jos and his child­hood inter­est in math. “In high school, I used to be able to make mag­ic squares,” said Mar­tin. “I like any­thing kind of ‘jumbly.’ I like ana­grams. What else do I like? I like sex.”

Then Robin Williams, that man­ic ball of ener­gy, showed up. As you can see from the five videos through­out this post, the night quick­ly spi­raled into com­ic mad­ness.

They riffed on the Osbournes, Hen­ry Kissinger, num­ber the­o­ry, and physics. “Schrödinger, pick up your cat,” barks Williams at the end of a par­tic­u­lar­ly inspired tear. “He’s alive. He’s dead. What a pet!”

When Mar­tin and Williams read pas­sages from Martin’s hit play, Picas­so at the Lapin Agile Williams read his part at dif­fer­ent points as if he were Mar­lon Bran­do, Peter Lorre and Elmer Fudd. At anoth­er time, Williams and Mar­tin riffed on the num­ber zero. Williams, for once act­ing as the straight man, asked Osser­man, “I have one quick ques­tion, up to the Cru­sades, the num­ber zero did­n’t exist, right? In West­ern civ­i­liza­tion.” To which Mar­tin bel­lowed, “That is a lie! How dare you imply that the num­ber zero…oh, I think he’s right.”

The videos are weird­ly glitchy, though the audio is just fine. And the com­e­dy is com­plete­ly hilar­i­ous and sur­pris­ing­ly thought pro­vok­ing.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Sep­tem­ber, 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Mar­tin Writes Song for Hymn-Deprived Athe­ists

Watch Steve Mar­tin Make His First TV Appear­ance: The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour (1968)

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

Ein­stein Explains His Famous For­mu­la, E=mc², in Orig­i­nal Audio

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Ozzy Osbourne’s Guitarist Zakk Wylde Plays Black Sabbath on a Hello Kitty Guitar

in Comedy, Music | June 8th, 2018

When Sanrio—that mega­lith­ic mak­er of kawaii icon Hel­lo Kitty—partnered with gui­tar com­pa­nies to make pas­tel-col­ored six-strings bear­ing the mouth­less kitten’s face, many a big-time musi­cian found the osten­si­bly kid’s‑oriented instru­ments irre­sistible. Hel­lo Kit­ty gui­tars were “pos­si­bly the apex of Sanrio’s cross-media syn­er­gy-blitz,” wrote David McNamee in a cranky 2009 piece at The Guardian, “that has seen them slap the cold, vacant stare of their brand-lead­ing cash cow… on to every con­ceiv­able kind of con­sumer mer­chan­dise includ­ing vibra­tors (sor­ry, mas­sagers), assault rifles, tam­pons, con­doms, uri­nal cakes, cars, com­put­ers, booze and pet cos­tumes.”

The chirpy Lisa Loeb took to Hel­lo Kit­ty gui­tars as part of a per­son­al brand makeover, which doesn’t much sur­prise since she even­tu­al­ly moved to writ­ing chil­dren’s music. But “a scan of YouTube,” McNamee goes on, “reveals that Hel­lo Kitty’s core audi­ence is actu­al­ly bald­ing, mid­dle-aged men, shred­ding out cov­ers of Yng­wie Malm­steen and Rush.”

I’m not sure how accu­rate this state­ment is in mar­ket research terms, but I can tes­ti­fy to know­ing at least two mid­dle-aged men who swear by pink Hel­lo Kit­ty Stra­to­cast­ers.

Go ahead, laugh it up, but you prob­a­bly wouldn’t do so in front of cer­tain San­rio shred­ders, like for­mer Ozzy Osbourne and cur­rent Black Label Soci­ety gui­tarist Zakk Wylde, who has made a side gig—as we not­ed in yes­ter­day’s post—play­ing cov­ers of heavy rock tunes on tiny, cutesy Hel­lo Kit­ty acoustic gui­tars. See for your­self in his Hel­lo Kit­ty take on Black Sabbath’s “N.I.B.” at the top and a ver­sion of his own orig­i­nal “Autumn Changes” fur­ther up. Would you laugh at seri­ous­ly ver­sa­tile Mar­i­lyn Man­son gui­tarist John 5 and his Hel­lo Kit­ty gui­tar? Maybe, but reserve your judg­ment until after you’ve seen him start his “new career” in Hel­lo Kit­ty gui­tar mar­ket­ing above.

Ris­ing to the chal­lenge, Mark Tremon­ti and Eric Fried­man decid­ed to take on Metallica’s “Wel­come Home (San­i­tar­i­um)” on a Hel­lo Kit­ty gui­tar and ukulele, “refus­ing to skip the track’s var­i­ous solos,” points out Loud­wire. It’s ”a true jam on tru­ly crap­py instru­ments that the boys some­how made work.” What, exact­ly, is the appeal of these Hel­lo Kit­ty ses­sions to peo­ple who aren’t, pre­sum­ably, the usu­al Hel­lo Kit­ty tween demo­graph­ic?

Maybe it’s just some good clean fun from peo­ple who might seem to take them­selves a lit­tle too seri­ous­ly some­times. When rock stars show a sense of humor, it makes them more relat­able, right? Hey, even the Bea­t­les made their bones with musi­cal com­e­dy, so why shouldn’t Evanescence’s Amy Lee give us a mov­ing, can­dlelit ren­di­tion of Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Fol­low You into the Dark,” as played on a Hel­lo Kit­ty key­board?

See all of these videos and more—including Bumblefoot’s soul­ful Hel­lo Kit­ty met­al clas­sics cov­ers and a pot­ty-mouthed Mike Port­noy bash­ing away on a Hel­lo Kit­ty drumk­it—at Loudwire’s YouTube chan­nel.

via Gui­tar World

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A One-Man Pink Floyd Band Cre­ates Note-Per­fect Cov­ers of “Echoes,” “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Moth­er” & Oth­er Clas­sics: Watch 19-Year-Old Wun­derkind Ewan Cun­ning­ham in Action

Calm Down & Study with Relax­ing Piano, Jazz & Harp Cov­ers of Music from Hayao Miyaza­ki Films

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Peter Sellers Gives a Quick Demonstration of British Accents

in Comedy | May 3rd, 2018

A while ago we brought you a hilar­i­ous series of record­ings of the British comedic actor Peter Sell­ers read­ing The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in four dif­fer­ent accents. Today we have a brief clip from a tele­phone call by Sell­ers on the set of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb (in which Sell­ers played three dif­fer­ent roles). Here he demon­strates the nuances of a few of the many accents around Great Britain. From cock­ney to upper class and from Lon­don to Edin­burgh, it’s clas­sic Sell­ers all the way.

If this whets your appetite, don’t miss the items in the Relat­eds below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in 4 Dif­fer­ent Accents: Dr. Strangelove, Cock­ney, Irish & Upper Crust

Peter Sell­ers Recites The Bea­t­les’ “A Hard Day’s Night” in the Style of Shakespeare’s Richard III

Peter Sell­ers Presents The Com­plete Guide To Accents of The British Isles

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Charlie Chaplin Films a Scene Inside a Lion’s Cage in 200 Takes

in Comedy, Film | May 1st, 2018

Char­lie Chap­lin was an actor and film­mak­er com­mit­ted to his craft–a per­fec­tion­ist, in short. When direct­ing City Lights (1931), Chap­lin demand­ed as many as 342 takes of a fair­ly straight­for­ward three-minute scene. That’s what it took to get it right.

Above, we find an ear­li­er exam­ple of the film­mak­er’s atten­tion to detail … and his appetite for risk. In the 1928 film, The Cir­cus, Chap­lin took more than 200 takes to com­plete the Lion’s Cage scene shown above. Many of those takes, the offi­cial Char­lie Chap­lin web­site reminds us, took place inside the lion’s cage itself. As the scene unfolds, the ten­sion builds and Chap­lin puts in a per­for­mance that helped him secure his first Acad­e­my Award.

Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

Watch Char­lie Chap­lin Demand 342 Takes of One Scene from City Lights

When Char­lie Chap­lin Entered a Chap­lin Look-Alike Con­test and Came in 20th Place

Char­lie Chap­lin Gets Strapped into a Dystopi­an “Rube Gold­berg Machine,” a Fright­ful Com­men­tary on Mod­ern Cap­i­tal­ism

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Pre-Flight Safety Demonstration Gets Performed as a Modern Dance: A Creative Video from a Taiwanese Airline

in Comedy, Dance, Life, Travel | March 23rd, 2018

Tai­wanese air­line EVA Air’s pre-flight safe­ty video is a gen­uine odd­i­ty in a field lit­tered with cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tions.

Ten years ago, air­lines were straight­for­ward about com­ply­ing with the Inter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion, the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, and oth­er gov­ern­ing bod­ies’ require­ments.  These instruc­tions were seri­ous busi­ness. Chil­dren and oth­er first time trav­el­ers paid strict atten­tion to infor­ma­tion about tray tables, exits, and inflat­able life vests that jad­ed fre­quent fly­ers ignored, con­fi­dent that most take offs and land­ings tend to go accord­ing to plan, and the over­whelm­ing num­ber of planes tend stay in the air for the dura­tion of one’s flight.

What about the ones that don’t though? There are times when a too-cool-for-school busi­ness trav­el­er seat­ed next to an emer­gency exit could spell dis­as­ter for every­one onboard.

Vir­gin America’s 2007 ani­mat­ed safe­ty video, below, was the first to recap­ture pas­sen­gers’ atten­tion, with a blasé nar­ra­tive style that poked fun at the stan­dard tropes:

For the .0001% of you who have nev­er oper­at­ed a seat­belt before, it works like this…

The cocky tone was dialed down for more crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion, like how to assist the child in the seat next to you when the yel­low oxy­gen masks drop from the over­head com­part­ment. (Imag­ine the may­hem if indie ani­ma­tor Bill Plymp­ton had been in the pilot’s seat for this one…)

The irrev­er­ent approach was a hit. The FAA took note, encour­ag­ing cre­ativ­i­ty in a 2010 Advi­so­ry Cir­cu­lar:

Every air­line pas­sen­ger should be moti­vat­ed to focus on the safe­ty infor­ma­tion in the pas­sen­ger brief­ing; how­ev­er, moti­vat­ing peo­ple, even when their own per­son­al safe­ty is involved, is not easy. One way to increase pas­sen­ger moti­va­tion is to make the safe­ty infor­ma­tion brief­in­gs and cards as inter­est­ing and attrac­tive as pos­si­ble.

For a while EVA Air, an inno­va­tor whose fleet includes sev­er­al Hel­lo Kit­ty Jets, played it safe by stick­ing to crowd pleas­ing schtick. Its 2012 CGI safe­ty demo video, below, must’ve played par­tic­u­lar­ly well with the Hel­lo Kit­ty demo­graph­ic.

…looks a bit 2012, no?

A few months ago, EVA took things in a direc­tion few indus­try pro­fes­sion­als could’ve pre­dict­ed: mod­ern dance, per­formed with utmost sin­cer­i­ty.

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Bulareyaung Pagarla­va, a mem­ber of Taiwan’s indige­nous Pai­wan com­mu­ni­ty, and a small crew of dancers spent three months trans­lat­ing the famil­iar direc­tives into a vocab­u­lary of sym­bol­ic ges­tures. See the results at the top of the post.

You’ll find none of the stock char­ac­ters who pop­u­late oth­er air­lines’ videos here—no sneaky smok­ers, no con­cerned moms, no sleepy busi­ness­peo­ple. There’s bare­ly a sug­ges­tion of a cab­in.

Unfet­tered by seats or over­head bins, the bright­ly clad, bare­foot dancers leap and roll as they inter­act with 3D pro­jec­tions, behav­ior that would cer­tain­ly sum­mon a flight atten­dant if per­formed on an actu­al plane.

Does it work?

The answer may depend on whether or not the plane on which you’re trav­el­ing takes a sud­den nose dive.

In “No Jok­ing,” an essay about air­port secu­ri­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa pro­fes­sor Mark B. Salter writes that it is “dif­fi­cult to moti­vate pas­sen­gers to con­tem­plate their own mor­tal­i­ty.” The fash­ion for jok­i­ness in safe­ty videos “nat­u­ral­izes areas of anx­i­ety,” a men­tal trick of which Freud was well aware.

What then are we to make of the EVA Air dancer at the 4:35 minute mark, who appears to be falling back­ward through the night sky?

Would you show a jet’s worth of trav­el­ers the mod­ern dance equiv­a­lent of Air­plane 1975, Fear­less, or Snakes on a Plane before they taxi down the run­way?

Mer­ci­ful­ly, the nar­ra­tor steps in to remind pas­sen­gers that smok­ing is pro­hib­it­ed, before the dig­i­tal­ly pro­ject­ed dark waters can swal­low the writhing soloist up.

There’s also some ques­tion as to whether the video ade­quate­ly address­es the ques­tion of tray table oper­a­tion.

Read­ers, what do you think? Does this new video make you feel secure about tak­ing flight?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sta­tis­tics Explained Through Mod­ern Dance: A New Way of Teach­ing a Tough Sub­ject

Artist Nina Katchadouri­an Cre­ates Flem­ish Style Self-Por­traits in Air­plane Lava­to­ry

NASA Puts 400+ His­toric Exper­i­men­tal Flight Videos on YouTube

Col­or­ful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Small­er and Trav­el Times Quick­er

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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David Lynch Teaches Typing: A New Interactive Comedy Game

in Comedy, Computer Science, Film, Games, How to Learn for Free, Technology, Television | March 2nd, 2018

Typ­ing pro­grams demand some patience on the part of the stu­dent, and David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is no excep­tion.

You’ve got 90 sec­onds to get accli­mat­ed to the crud­dy flop­py disc-era graph­ics and the cacoph­o­nous voice of your instruc­tor, a dead ringer for FBI Deputy Direc­tor Gor­don Cole, the hard-of-hear­ing char­ac­ter direc­tor David Lynch played on his sem­i­nal ear­ly 90s series, Twin Peaks.

Things perk up about a minute and a half in, when stu­dents are instruct­ed to place their left ring fin­gers in an undu­lat­ing bug to the left of their key­boards.

That sec­ond “in”? Not a typo (though you’ll notice plen­ty of no doubt inten­tion­al boo-boos in the teacher’s pre-pro­grammed respons­es…)

The bug in ques­tion may well put you in mind of the mys­te­ri­ous baby in Lynch’s first fea­ture length film, 1977’s Eraser­head.

On the oth­er hand, it might not.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is actu­al­ly a short inter­ac­tive com­e­dy game, and many of the mil­len­ni­al review­ers cov­er­ing that beat have had to play catch-up in order to catch the many nods to the director’s work con­tained there­in.

One of our favorites is the Apple-esque name of the program’s retro com­put­er, and we’ll wager that fre­quent Lynch col­lab­o­ra­tor, actor Kyle MacLach­lan, would agree.

Anoth­er ref­er­ence that has thus far elud­ed online gam­ing enthu­si­asts in their 20s is Mavis Bea­con Teach­es Typ­ing. Take a peek below at what the vir­tu­al typ­ing tutor’s graph­ics looked like around the time the orig­i­nal Twin Peaks aired to dis­cov­er the cre­ators of David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing’s oth­er inspi­ra­tion.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is avail­able for free down­load here. If you’re anx­ious that doing so might open you up to a tech­ni­cal bug of night­mar­ish pro­por­tions, stick with watch­ing the play through at the top of the page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

“The Art of David Lynch”— How Rene Magritte, Edward Hop­per & Fran­cis Bacon Influ­enced David Lynch’s Cin­e­mat­ic Vision

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her March 20 in New York City for the sec­ond edi­tion of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, a low bud­get vari­ety show born of a 1920 man­u­al for Girl Scout Camp Direc­tors. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Judd Apatow Teaches the Craft of Comedy: A New Online Course from MasterClass

in Comedy, Online Courses | March 2nd, 2018

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

School just got fun. And fun­ny. Days after announc­ing that New York­er author Mal­colm Glad­well will teach his first online course on writ­ing, Mas­ter­Class revealed that Judd Apa­tow, the direc­tor of umpteen fun­ny films (The 40-Year-Old Vir­gin, Knocked Up, This Is 40, etc.), will present his own course on com­e­dy, offer­ings lessons on how to “cre­ate hilar­i­ous sto­ry­lines, write great stand-up, and direct come­dies that leave audi­ences laugh­ing.”

In 32 video lessons, stu­dents will learn how to: find comedic inspi­ra­tion; mine your life for mate­r­i­al; out­line and struc­ture sto­ries for film and TV; write stand-up mate­r­i­al; write com­ic dia­logue; pitch projects to stu­dios and net­works; work with actors; and nav­i­gate the enter­tain­ment indus­try. Now open for enroll­ment, the course will offi­cial­ly get start­ed this spring. Any­one look­ing to study com­e­dy can also imme­di­ate­ly get start­ed with an exist­ing com­e­dy course taught by Steve Mar­tin.

Each Mas­ter­Class course costs $90. But, for $180, you can get an annu­al pass to every course in the Mas­ter­Class cat­a­logue.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Steve Mar­tin Make His First TV Appear­ance: The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour (1968)

Bill Hicks’ 12 Prin­ci­ples of Com­e­dy

Steve Mar­tin & Robin Williams Riff on Math, Physics, Ein­stein & Picas­so in a Heady Com­e­dy Rou­tine (2002)

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A Supercut of Buster Keaton’s Most Amazing Stunts

in Comedy, Film, Writing | January 8th, 2018

Joseph Frank Keaton was born into show­biz. His father was a come­di­an. His moth­er, a soubrette. He emerged into the world dur­ing a one night engage­ment in Kansas City. His father’s busi­ness part­ner, escape artist Har­ry Hou­di­ni, inad­ver­tent­ly renamed him Buster, approv­ing of the way the rub­bery lit­tle Keaton weath­ered an acci­den­tal tum­ble down a flight of stairs.

As Keaton recalls in the inter­view accom­pa­ny­ing silent movie fan Don McHoull’s edit of some of his most amaz­ing stunts, above:

My old man was an eccen­tric com­ic and as soon as I could take care of myself at all on my feet, he had slapped shoes on me and big bag­gy pants. And he’d just start doing gags with me and espe­cial­ly kickin’ me clean across the stage or tak­ing me by the back of the neck and throw­ing me. By the time I got up to around sev­en or eight years old, we were called The Rough­est Act That Was Ever in the His­to­ry of the Stage. 

By the time of his first film role in the 1917 Roscoe “Fat­ty” Arbuck­le vehi­cle, The Butch­er Boy, Keaton was a sea­soned clown, with plen­ty of expe­ri­ence string­ing phys­i­cal gags into an enter­tain­ing nar­ra­tive whole.

Like his silent peers, Harold Lloyd and Char­lie Chap­lin, Keaton was an idea man, who saw no need for a script. Armed with a firm con­cept of how the film should begin and end, he rolled cam­eras with­out much idea of how the mid­dle would turn out, fine tun­ing his phys­i­cal set pieces on the fly, scrap­ping the ones that didn’t work and embrac­ing the hap­py acci­dents.

Could such an approach work for today’s come­di­ans? In lat­er inter­views, Keaton was gen­er­ous toward oth­er com­e­dy pro­fes­sion­als who got their laughs via meth­ods he steered clear of, from Bob Hope’s wordi­ness to direc­tor Bil­ly Wilder’s deft han­dling of Some Like It Hot’s far­ci­cal cross-dress­ing. His was nev­er a one-size-fits-all phi­los­o­phy.

Per­haps it’s more help­ful to think of his approach as an anti­dote to cre­ative block and timid­i­ty. We’ve cob­bled togeth­er some of his advice, below, in the hope that it might prove use­ful to sto­ry­tellers of all stripes.

Buster Keaton’s 5 Rules of Com­ic Sto­ry­telling

Make a strong start - grab the audi­ence with a dynam­ic, easy to grasp premise, like the one in 1920’s One Week, which finds a new­ly­wed Buster strug­gling to assem­ble a house from a do-it-your­self kit.

Decide how you want things to fin­ish up - for Keaton, this usu­al­ly involved get­ting the girl, though he learned to keep a pok­er face after a pre­view audi­ence booed the broad grin he tried out in one of Arbuckle’s shorts. Once you know where your story’s going, trust that the mid­dle will take care of itself.

If it’s not work­ing, cut it — Keaton may not have had a script, but he invest­ed a lot of thought into the phys­i­cal set pieces of his films. If it didn’t work as well as he hoped in exe­cu­tion, he cut it loose. If some serendip­i­tous sna­fu turned out to be fun­nier than the intend­ed gag, he put that in instead.

Play it like it mat­ters to you. As many a begin­ning improv stu­dent finds out, if you let your own mate­r­i­al crack you up, the audi­ence is rarely inclined to laugh along. Why set­tle for low stakes and dif­fi­dence, when high stakes and com­mit­ment are so much fun­nier?

Action over words Whether deal­ing with dia­logue or expo­si­tion, Keaton strove to min­i­mize the inter­ti­tles in his silent work. Show, don’t tell.

Films excerpt­ed at top:

Three Ages
Cops
Day Dreams
Sher­lock Jr.
One Week
Hard Luck
Neigh­bors
The Gen­er­al
Steam­boat Bill, Jr.
Sev­en Chances
Our Hos­pi­tal­i­ty
The Bell

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Buster Keaton: The Won­der­ful Gags of the Found­ing Father of Visu­al Com­e­dy

Some of Buster Keaton’s Great, Death-Defy­ing Stunts Cap­tured in Ani­mat­ed Gifs

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist Direc­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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