Fucking sick.
Buster
Keaton is the cutest man alive...
Like a beautiful, fearless, athletic, melancholic insect. Crawling into your broken heart.........
.........................
I love Buster Keaton as an object. I don’t even want to know him too well as a subject. For example, I know that Buster Keaton’s autobiography exists; I would never read that. It would destroy my perfect and unproblematic relationship with Buster Keaton. I love Buster Keaton as a silent, wordless, partially imaginary creature; I wish more people were like that so that it would be much easier to love them (the way it's easy to love dogs). But I do know some things about B.K., and based on those, I believe that as a human person that actually existed for a little while in everyday reality, he was a person with a relatively small ego, and also genuinely nice and honest, unpretentious, sort of badass in a non-pompous way and a bit tragic (and, judging from a few jokes based on "casual" racism in some his movies, "normal" like most people in the history of humankind in the sense that he didn’t really question the culture of his time... I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, though, and assuming that as an individual he wasn’t particularly racist).
My relationship with Charlie Chaplin started when I read his autobiography, so this relationship is totally different from the one with Buster, almost like the opposite of that.
Charlie did question some of the truths of his time. He even questioned Hitler when nobody else did, which is quite remarkable.
On the other hand, I'm not so sure Charlie was "genuinely nice".
Actually I think he was pretty demonic.
Thinking about silent movie stars is one of those things I start doing when I'm in a good mood. When I'm in a bad mood, I just think about everything that's wrong with the world – I mean everything, every single thing that is wrong.
I like being in a good mood.
....
Like a beautiful, fearless, athletic, melancholic insect. Crawling into your broken heart.........
.........................
I love Buster Keaton as an object. I don’t even want to know him too well as a subject. For example, I know that Buster Keaton’s autobiography exists; I would never read that. It would destroy my perfect and unproblematic relationship with Buster Keaton. I love Buster Keaton as a silent, wordless, partially imaginary creature; I wish more people were like that so that it would be much easier to love them (the way it's easy to love dogs). But I do know some things about B.K., and based on those, I believe that as a human person that actually existed for a little while in everyday reality, he was a person with a relatively small ego, and also genuinely nice and honest, unpretentious, sort of badass in a non-pompous way and a bit tragic (and, judging from a few jokes based on "casual" racism in some his movies, "normal" like most people in the history of humankind in the sense that he didn’t really question the culture of his time... I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, though, and assuming that as an individual he wasn’t particularly racist).
My relationship with Charlie Chaplin started when I read his autobiography, so this relationship is totally different from the one with Buster, almost like the opposite of that.
Charlie did question some of the truths of his time. He even questioned Hitler when nobody else did, which is quite remarkable.
On the other hand, I'm not so sure Charlie was "genuinely nice".
Actually I think he was pretty demonic.
Thinking about silent movie stars is one of those things I start doing when I'm in a good mood. When I'm in a bad mood, I just think about everything that's wrong with the world – I mean everything, every single thing that is wrong.
I like being in a good mood.
....
For a few scary months, though, silent movie stars were one of those things that I always started talking about when I was very, very drunk. It was the stage that came before the rolling-on-the-ground-behaving-like-all-hope-is-lost/Phantom-of-the-Opera-disappearing-into-the-night-forever thing kicked in. Yeah, before that part I always started talking about Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin or both.
For some reason, after that at least three people seem to think that I am "Buster". Nobody remembers the Chaplin part, even though I always thought that Charlie and I had more in common. I guess the problem is that when people think about Charlie Chaplin, they think about that fellow with the moustache, and that's just not the Charlie Chaplin I'm talking about...
 |
| (The lesser-known version of Charlie Chaplin. I still haven't figured out how that little moustache could just turn his face into some totally different person's face. Man, thinking about silent movie comedians, that's a weird and really pretentious-sounding hobby; I never consciously "chose" it. The real question is: why do I get so much enjoyment out of something like this? Why do We like the weird things We like? Why not some other weird things?) |
Another actor who seems to have a refreshingly small ego is David Suchet, the actor known for playing Hercule Poirot. I've been watching those films in the evenings, and it must take a great deal of sensitivity and intelligence, and a great sense of humour, to be able to do what Suchet did with that role.
ReplyDeleteHere's Suchet talking about Poirot:
"Well, how I do [Poirot's walk], really, is just to keep everything really below my waist and above my knees very tightly clenched. [Laughing] I'll just let you use your imagination, I'm afraid, and if you do that, you can't take very long strides. And I just practiced, practiced, and practiced until I was able to walk like that without it looking totally ridiculous. His walk should bring a smile to your face, but you should never really laugh at Poirot. You should always smile with him.
"I love him. I really do. There's something incredibly, wonderfully irritating and adorable about him. He drives me crazy as I'm sure he drives the audience crazy, as I know he drove Agatha Christie crazy with his fastidiousness and his pomposity and his ego. But he has in Christie's books, as well, an enormous twinkle and charm.
He knows how to treat a lady and ladies adore to be treated by him. He really does make a woman feel like a woman or makes a woman feel like a lady, should I say. He loves that, and there's no ulterior motive with Poirot at all. I remember an actress saying to me on the set once: 'I have suddenly discovered why women adore Poirot,' and I said, 'What? Why?' She said, 'Because I feel so safe with you.' There's no ulterior motive for Poirot because he's not after anything but interesting company. There's no goal beyond that."
And then some wise words that David Suchet has apparently uttered (according to Wikipedia):
"I very much believe in the principles of Christianity and the principles of most religions, actually—that one has to abandon oneself to a higher good."
Of course, I don't really know anything about David Suchet. Behind closed doors, he could be a monster. But probably he isn't.
Anyway, I feel like niceness is underrated. The smaller the ego, the bigger the person. That's quite often the truth.