The following roundtable took place between Jean-Pierre Coursodon, Dan Sallitt, and Brad Stevens, and was conducted via email over March and April of 2006. The participants were asked to discuss each of the films included in this box set, and were encouraged to spend as much time in conversation about a particular film as they deemed necessary. The result is a wide-ranging discourse that takes into account Keaton’s feature films, works of cinema and literature outside the Keaton Kanon, and a host of noteworthy biographical and critical texts — even as it scrupulously examines, in roughly chronological order, the thirty-two films presented here.
JEAN-PIERRE COURSODON was born in 1935 near Paris, France, and has lived in the United States (mostly New York City) since 1965. Has been writing for film magazines since 1958, and has been the American correspondent for the French film revue Positif since 1987. He is the editor and main contributor of the two-volume English-language work American Directors (two volumes, 1983). Among his major French-language works are Vingt ans de cinéma américain (co-authored with Yves Boisset, 1961); Keaton & Co.: Les Burlesques américains du muet (1965); Laurel and Hardy (1966); W. C. Fields (1968); La Warner Bros. (1972); Buster Keaton (1973); and Trente ans de cinéma américain (two volumes, 1970) and Cinquante ans de cinéma américain (two volumes, 1991; updated one-volume edition, 1995), both co-authored with Bertrand Tavernier.
DAN SALLITT is a filmmaker and film writer living in New York City. He was the film critic for the Los Angeles Reader, and his writings have appeared in the Chicago Reader, Slate, Wide Angle, Senses of Cinema, the Nashville Scene, the Minneapolis City Pages, and other venues. His films include Honeymoon (1998) and All the Ships at Sea (2004).
BRAD STEVENS is the author of Monte Hellman: His Life and Films (2003) and Abel Ferrara: The Moral Vision (2004). He writes for several magazines, including Sight and Sound and Video Watchdog.
Table of Contents
The Arbuckle-Keaton Collaboration: Earliest Period
Arbuckle and Keaton: Going West
The End of the Arbuckle-Keaton Period
Momentum: Convict 13 & The Scarecrow
Neighbors, The Haunted House, Keaton En Français
The Playhouse & Social Convention
The Paleface, Cops, My Wife’s Relations and Connubial Encumbrances
The Blacksmith, The Frozen North, & Daydreams
The Final Three Shorts: The Electric House, The Balloonatic, & The Love Nest
