Keaton Fragments

[Gary Johnson]

With the new Keaton Blu-Ray editions being released N-Ville has been discussing the various versions that had previously been released by Kino and Lobster. Then there was this link http://rjbuffalo.com/missing_buster.html where they broke down most of Keaton's silents.

Have any of you collectors out there ever gotten together and compared notes over your prints of Keaton's work? Are slight anomalies between, say...everyone's copy of COPS the norm?

[Ed Watz]

I once spoke with Rohauer about the different versions of SHERLOCK JUNIOR that I'd seen over the years - which shots were missing from one version, which titles were included that I hadn't seen before, etcetera. He laughed and said, "I did that to confuse the people who dupe my films to sell them. For me this identifies where the pirates get the source material, it's like fingerprints." Then he leaned over to his business partner, Kris Chester, and quipped, "Should I tell him about how many versions of STEAMBOAT BILL we made from the different negatives?" Chester shrugged and just rolled his eyes, puffing on a cigarette.

That was Rohauer - yep, he saved a great deal of Keaton's work, but he also screwed around with Buster's films - and allowed at least one nitrate camera negative that I know of (Harry Langdon's THE CHASER) to decompose without taking steps to preserve complete 35mm elements on that title.

[Gary Johnson]

Nice fella...