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FLASHBACK
1 July 2006
I had one of the weirdest experiences of my life last night. I was reading, straight through for the first time, Walter
Kerr's 1975 book "The Silent Clowns" and came across the following:
"An exceptionally perceptive young critic, writing under a pseudonym in the 'New York Times', has gone back to the
films that were made before he was born and returned with a report:
"'Pure visual comedy has been dead for forty years in the cinema, although people often talk about it as if it were
still here, at least as a standard. And it certainly isn't. Visual comedy, in the hands of its greatest practitioners, Chaplin
and Keaton, was closer to the poetry of dreams than to humor. Chaplin was funnier than Keaton because his movies were visually
less perfect. Chaplin himself was the sole transformer of the images in his films; his presence was their primary beauty.
There was always a little visual dullness there to put an edge on a laugh. He made great movies simply by stepping into the
frame often enough . . .
"'Keaton, on the other hand, made a few perfect visual movies, whose corny themes became actual filmed myths. He
realized, from shot to shot, dreamlike entities from the American and universal subconscious, with a subtlety and power equaled
in American films only by Griffith and Welles. Dreams, like the movies of the great silent comedians, are like humor stripped
of its formulas and restraints, but at their best and deepest they are not funny.'"
I had a queasy feeling reading these words, a sense of profound discombobulation, because Kerr was quoting me -- from
an article about "Play It Again, Sam" published in the "Arts & Leisure" section of the "Times"
in 1972, when I was 22 years old. Because it was an ephemeral piece of literature, preserved on yellowing newsprint in a
box somewhere among my possessions, and because 34 years have passed since I wrote it, I couldn't quite connect myself to
what I was reading.
The moment was dreamlike. I had owned the Kerr book for at least 20 years, and had dipped into it occasionally, but only
last week decided to read it from cover to cover -- and there were words I only half remembered writing, the utterances of
a 22 year-old stranger, quoted by a man I never met and who has been dead for a decade. In 34 years I'd never gotten a word
of feedback on the article, except from friends -- not surprising, of course, since it was published under a pseudonym as
an occasional piece in a newspaper -- yet suddenly here was this nod from beyond the grave. It's true that Kerr quoted what
I wrote to set up a counter-argument -- that Keaton at his "best and deepest" WAS funny -- but still, he quoted
me respectfully, as though I'd offered a point that challenged him to respond.
I was surreally startled and deeply moved that Kerr had rescued my words from oblivion and made them a part of the record
of his book -- very sad that it was no longer possible to contact him and thank him for his courtesy. Instead, the ghostly
22 year-old shook the hand of Kerr's ghost, and I shivered.
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