BOOK REVIEW BY CHRIS MICH: ANOTHER NEW WORLD – THE RESURRECTION OF BUSTER KEATON BY NICOLETTE OLIVIER

 A MINOR SPOILER BOOK REVIEW:

Photo by Chris Mich

Summertime! 

Blockbusters! (Yay!) Mosquitoes. (Boo!) Classic Film Reading! (Bring it on!)

This is my third year participating in Out of the Past blog's Summer Classic Film Reading Challenge and I couldn’t be more excited. I have a diverse set of books set up for this summer and hope you enjoy reading our reviews and maybe….just maybe…be inspired to read them, too. Our first book’s full title is Another New World – The Resurrection of Buster Keaton: The Companion Book to the film OH BUSTER, WHERE ART THOU? by Nicolette Olivier.

Let’s address the whole “companion book” thing. Olivier completed a feature-length documentary on silent film legend (and sound film, television, and theater legend) Buster Keaton. This 2023 film is a series of interviews with neighbors, friends, relatives, film historians, and fans of Buster Keaton. You can see the film, in its entirety, on YouTube.

Olivier follows her film with this book, a narrative read on the private conversations of Buster Keaton and his family and friends circa the late 1940s until his death on February 1, 1966. Now, you may wonder: how did Olivier have access to private conversations – like those between Buster and his third wife Eleanor in their bedroom? She didn’t but explains in the opening pages of her book: "...I had to suppose in conversation between these figures, I relied on my expertise as a fiction writer, coupled with extensive study of the mannerisms, speech patterns, and the life events of the Keatons, and those in their orbit, to bring them to life in a reliable, contextual way." (p. 4).

In other words, she made it up. Now, I know that sounds harsh but to research and then make up conversations puts this book in the realm of fan fiction, or worse, the gossip rags that plagued and destroyed Hollywood stars like Buster’s mentor Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. But, to Olivier’s credit, she paints a vivid portrait of Buster’s second coming as he reentered films in the 40s, 50s, and 60s and was on the ground floor of television from its local-based L.A. infancy to its coast-to-coast expansion. She also, quite questionably, gives Buster’s wife Eleanor a lot of credit for Buster Keaton’s reinventions of gags and selection of projects. In short, she often paints Buster as a little boy incapable of deciding anything or being confident.

Olivier did flip the tables occasionally on Eleanor – with Buster noting her lack of confidence. In a scene where both Eleanor and Buster have just wrapped practicing the “drunk wife to bed” routine (used previously in Buster's 1929 film Spite Marriage), Oliver’s Buster kicks off this back-and-forth banter between husband and wife performers:

"We're ready ta start timin' it ta music, we just need to pick a piece. Then we just play ta that, keep the volume low.

"I think that'll help me a lot."

"Help you? Whadda'you need help with? Yer nailin' all the moves."

" I just don't feel as confident about it as I wanna be, yet."

"Dancer," he rolled his eyes, and shook his head.

"You tryin' to insult me, Keaton?"

"No," he signaled for her to raise her other foot, "You got that dancer mentality, so you always think it wasn't as good as it coulda been, so yaw anna dance yerself ta detath tryin' to get it that way."

I love this exchange not only because Eleanor, in real life, was a dancer but because I read most of this book while attending my daughter’s dance competitions like Groove, Nextstar National Dance Competition and Turn It Up. You see, between the time when my daughter would perform and the end of competition awards sessions, there was TONS of time. My daughter would hang out backstage with her troupe and I would sit in a hotel lobby and read, read, read.

Photo by Chris Mich

Another New World mentions and covers a significant number of classic films including In the Good Old Summertime (1949), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Francis Joins the WACS (1954), The Buster Keaton Story (1957), and Film (1965). It also covers some titles already covered on Digging Star Wars including Seven Chances (1925), Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928), Spite Marriage (1929), and Singin’ in the Rain (1952).

When you get right down to it, this book is recommended for diehard Buster Keaton fans and those who are interested in seeing how the invention of television didn’t kill film but gave it a second life.

Photo by Chris Mich

This post is my first official entry into the 2024 Summer Classic Film Reading Challenge. Special thanks to Out of the Past blogger Raquel Stecher for continuing the challenge. To learn more about this summer fun endeavor, visit Raquel’s blog for more details.