Each year the Buster Keaton Celebration is held in multiple locations throughout the United States, but to keep the Keaton legacy going an effort must be made to preserve it.
Kevin Brownlow and David Shepard, historians and film preservationists, along with moderator Hooman Mehran discussed the steps they have taken and will take to keep his films alive.
Mehran mentioned Raymond Rohauer, a man whose name was clearly a sore subject for the men. Rohauer was an American film collector and distributor.
According to Brownlow, Rohauer might have been a key player in preserving silent films, but the movies he would distribute were “duped.”
Both Brownlow and Shepard had to restore countless feet of silent film footage because of the poor quality of film they received after its time with Rohauer.
According to Brownlow, he and Shepard were heavily quoted in an article written in the Sunday Times by John Baxter about Rohauer tampering with Keaton’s films.
“After the article, Rohauer would never talk to me again because he thought I wrote the article under the name of John Baxter,” Brownlow said.
Brownlow was fortunate enough to have a sit-down interview with Keaton before his death for a documentary he worked on in the 1960s.
“I decided Keaton deserved a decent documentary,” Brownlow said.
Brownlow went to Keaton’s home expecting to see the stone faced man he had always read about. He expected Keaton to be soft spoken and turned the volume on the recorder as high as it would go. When Keaton came out he spoke so loud that it blew out the volume and “the only film that couldn’t be used in my documentary was mine,” Brownlow said.
Shepard never met Keaton, but he has been working on collecting Keaton films for the Blu-ray DVD set that will be released in Europe later this year.
Panel focus on preserving Buster legacy
