I'm Pete Wright.

And I'm Andy Nelson.

Welcome to the next reel when the movie ends.

Our conversation begins.

Seven chances is over.

Who bets next?

I wanna start with Buster Keaton because I have a huge love for Buster Keaton, and I don't know what your experience with Buster Keaton is.

So before we really get in, I'm just curious to know what you've seen of his, what your experience is with him as an actor.

I mean, other than, you know, funny thing happened on the way to the forum.

I I have seen things like the general, like quintessential works in the Keaton catalog.

I'd seen this.

I'd seen Sherlock junior.

I'd seen I I mean, a handful, not nearly enough probably.

And after watching this just reminded me how much I like Buster Keaton.

I would say I am not a I don't I haven't yet celebrated the whole catalog, so I'm not encyclopedic on my understanding of Buster Keaton.

I find I I always appreciate montages of Buster Keaton's work because I'm always thinking, man, I need to go watch that movie and that movie and that movie and that movie, and I just haven't seen enough of them.

But I've seen a handful of them enough to know that I appreciate and and do very much like mister Keaton.

Is that fair?

I think that's fair.

And I'm I actually am surprised that you had seen this one because this isn't usually one that pops up as ones that people had seen.

It's got a very, very famous sequence, but the film itself, a lot of people, as a whole, really hadn't seen.

It's usually the general and the cameraman.

And, you know, there's there's a certain number.

Like, the navigator is one that people bring up as I have

not seen the navigator.

So as one Those people are clearly wrong.

Yeah.

So Sherlock junior.

So there's a certain number that that generally are are brought up.

Also, a number of his shorts.

Like, you know, the one week is a famous short of his.

Like, you know but I think a a lot of times, Keaton ends up being known for sequences and moments.

Yes.

Like, the house falling House.

And the window.

That's the big one, right, with a bullet.

Yeah.

Well, that that and, a number of things from the general.

Like, there there are certain things that you'll see, like, with him on the train and stuff.

And and so I think that that becomes kind of defining who he is in so many ways.

And I think people end up losing a connection with what he's really bringing to to the world of silent film.

Right?

And and this is he's very much a silent film star.

Like, when everything shifted to sound, he was one of the people who kind of struggled to kind of make that change.

You know?

But, like, of the, I would say, three primary comedians in the silent era, him, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin, I think he's up there.

And the fact that, you know, he was raised in kind of a a a performing family and was performing his own stuff from a very young age, and performs his own stunts in all of these films.

Like, we're seeing him.

I mean, it's entirely possible.

There are some really wide shots of, like, somebody jumping onto the top of a tree that then falls to the ground.

Is that Buster Keaton?

We cut just like once we kind of see him at the edge, and then we cut to a really wide shot to see the whole thing happen.

Is that him?

Or is he actually, you know, because he is the star of the film, you don't want him hurt.

Is he bringing in a stunt man?

I don't know.

But he does perform a lot of his own stunts.

Though, Andy, wouldn't it surprise you not at all to know that the rules that defines protecting principal actors in a film were defined by the stupidity of what guys like Buster Keaton actually did, that wouldn't surprise me a lick.

Like, it's because it was really him on top of the tree falling down that some attorney and somewhere said, you know what?

We we should probably not let them do that.

They're not gonna be able to do press for the show late for the film later.

So let's lock that down.

Well, inevitably, it

had to be because somebody actually got hurt and delayed the film for like weeks Yeah.

From actual production.

That ends up being what happens.

And we've talked about that a number of times on this, like in when we did our member bonus episode with Ben Hur, horses were getting using the the the trip line and getting injured, potentially hundred, hundred fifty horses ended up getting injured and killed over the course of that production.

And this is the period Hollywood is learning and trying these things and figuring it out.

And later, by the 1939, they have a rule in place saying, guess what?

You can't do that anymore.

And yeah.

So I think you're right.

There it's very possible that we're still in that era where they're just doing things, and they don't have those policies in place yet that protect the stars from doing stupid things.

Yeah.

I mean, I've seen I've seen Day of the Locust.

I know that there are these producers who are saying, who cares if the stage is a little wobbly?

Just put those people up on it.

You know, let's get the shot, and then all these people get hurt.

I if I had a dime for every time somebody said, hey.

I've seen day of the locust.

I would have a dime right now.

Look.

I I find that this this movie is is incredible just because of what it calls to the the sort of spiritual successor of Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan in the seventies, eighties, nineties.

Like, the he they move in very similar ways.

They fall in similar ways.

Like, there's just a certain elegance to the physical comedy that you can see in in these wonderful data points in actors that that we still have, And that was really joyful watching this movie.

Like, I just I had a blast.

And he is also a precursor, sort of an antecedent to Tom Cruise with all the running.

I mean, there's a lot of running.

A lot of serious track running.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is this is the running film, like hardcore running.

This could be called the running man.

It could be called the running man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's he's really running a lot.

And and, yeah, I think that's an important element to remember with Buster Keaton because he never was quite as popular as some of those other comedians I mentioned, but I mean, he did have some very successful films and a successful career during this time.

And we talked about kind of like he was one of the, Sunset Boulevard, the, waxworks that they would sit around with.

These people who had been famous in the silent era just like Norma Desmond, who now were just sitting around playing bridge with her.

It was kind of a meta moment to have him there because of that.

But, like, he introduced so much to the world of of stunts and, like, how to do these pratfalls.

And, you know, I I would argue, I guess, I would say how to safely do them.

I'm sure he still got hurt a number of times, but still, he learned how to kind of do these falls and hits and everything else that he's doing so that he could con continue filming because that's kind of the business.

And I think that really did inspire.

You can like you said, you can really see that in so many of not just these great performers who would do amazing stuff themselves like those two actors that you mentioned, but also the world of stunts.

And you you can see how there's this this path going from what he was doing to how other stunt performers would later learn how to safely perform these things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For sure.

The the other thing about Keaton that just in reading up on the film, now my understanding is this film was an assignment for him.

Like, it wasn't his a a deeply personal project, you know, certainly like the general.

Like, he's this was a thing that he was doing for the studio.

And I think it is to be celebrated just how seriously it appears he took this film.

Right?

That he was able to transform this thing that is otherwise a pretty long stretch of repeat sequence comedy asking this these women to marry him.

It in some, you know, maybe some aged methods, he turns it into a piece of of terrific performance art.

Not performance art, but stunt performance art in the running, in the boulder sequences, like the these things are elevated because of the attention that he paid to this even though it wasn't it wasn't something that he really needed or wanted to do himself.

And I think that's he is a a a principled filmmaker in that regard.

I think it it's it it really shows.

It's also wonderfully timed at, what, fifty seven, fifty eight minutes.

Like, there is a complete story in here that is fun and satisfying.

And at the end, I am not hungry.

Yeah.

It gives all all the bits and pieces that we need to kind of get through this story.

As you said, yeah.

So this is based on a play Roy Cooper McGrew's play, Seven Chances.

And Joseph Schenck, the producer, he ended up buying the the rights to it, or or I should say the executive.

Right?

He's the the head of the studio.

He bought the rights to it thinking that, hey.

This could be a great project for Buster Keaton or the Talmadge sisters, Norma Constance and Natalie.

And I believe he was married to, Norma Talmadge at the time, or was he yeah.

He was still married to her.

I could remember when they divorced.

He hired the Broadway, the stage director, John McDermott, to direct it.

And because as you said, Keaton, this was just kind of a a project for hire, he owed Shank money and had a debt.

And so he agreed to act in it much to his chagrin because he thought the play was a sappy farce.

He didn't like it at all.

And he started working on it.

And then a week after production started, the director McDermott quit and said he told Keaton, you're the star and producer, and your version will be the only one finally used.

You're wasting thousands of dollars having me on the picture.

And then Shankh agreed that Keaton could direct the film.

And what's interesting is like, he couldn't figure out how to end it.

And he was just gonna end it like with the race like still going.

Like, he was running down a hill with all the women following him, and he was just gonna fade to black.

And that was the end.

With all of these women, it'll be like the race that never ends.

And he couldn't figure out how to end it, but then as he was running downhill, he tripped on some boulders that kind of rolled after him, and he had to get out of their way.

And that ended up being the moment that got the biggest laughs in a in a preview screening.

And so that gave him the idea to do all the boulders.

They made all these paper mache boulders and everything and and had that final sequence added.

And it's interesting because it all also means that he realized that he needed to actually have his hero marry the woman.

Right?

And so so we actually get the marriage too.

It's an interesting story.

Right?

It's one of these kind of one joke sort of tales that we have.

It's exactly what it is.

Yeah.

It's like Yes.

You he finds out at the beginning.

He's a partner the setup is he's a partner of a brokerage firm that is about to collapse because, I I guess, his partner had made a bad deal, and it wasn't their fault.

But

Well, right.

But at one point, it was they were it says they might go to jail.

So

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wasn't really Yeah.

I wasn't really sure exactly.

The setup is we have a couple of financial criminals.

At

that time, though, he finds out that his grandfather has passed away.

And in his will, it says, you will inherit $7,000,000 only if you're married by 7PM on your 20 birthday.

And then the gag is that happens to be today.

So he basically the day's already started, and now before 07:00, he has to figure out who he's gonna marry.

He goes to his sweetheart, Mary, who he thinks will marry him, but because he's an idiot, and the way that he just talks like an idiot, she's like, oh, the only reason you wanna marry me is to get all this money?

And she gets pissed at him and and breaks up.

And so that sets us off on this whole quest for him to figure out who to marry.

His partner and the lawyer are trying to help so they can figure all this out.

He's on his own trying to figure it out.

That's the setup.

And we get a gag of him proposing to many, many women, not just seven, but ends up being many over the course of the story.

Yes.

Now how do you think this played as a play?

I was wondering about that.

Was it just, like, at the country club?

Yeah.

And was it just seven women?

Right.

And just going and talking to these seven women?

It feels like as a play, that one note, that one joke premise would be over in about twenty minutes, and and we'd be done.

Yeah.

It feels like a one act.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If that.

Right?

This it it's part of a it's part of a an improv show.

And I have little faith that that the the original without the boulders, without the the bazillion women running down the street, you know, would be much fun.

Because there you're right.

There's not a lot to it.

There's just not a lot to it.

What what elevates the thing is that once the joke is done, it becomes physical comedy for the rest of the the film, and Buster Keaton is so dry.

It's one of the things that I noticed about him that we don't get in any of the other silence that we've watched this this run is that he is an under performer time and time again because it's the stunts that that show off what you know, the story.

And most of these silent movie actors are they overperform for the story.

Right?

They overperform their face.

They overperform their body.

Everything is overperformed to really hammer home the story that you cannot hear.

And Buster Keaton does not do that, and I found that a really interesting interesting set of choices that allow the comedy to shine through.

It's like he's his own straight man.

Well, and that's like, that was his trademark.

Right?

Like, he was such a, always stoic in his performance, and always had that kind of deadpan expression that his nickname was the great stone face.

Like, everybody like, that was the thing that people love about him so much is that that he doesn't have a reaction.

It's just it's just kind of he or or he'll met almost meta look into the camera.

It's not quite at the camera, but he definitely kind of like, he'll turn his face, and just that stone face is the reaction.

And it plays really well to so many of these moments.

Well, it reminds me of Michael Caine's he did the the thing on how to act in movies.

Right?

And how to how to act with camera.

And I just couldn't help but thinking but think about his speech, which is just, you know, as a as a film and television actor, you act small because the camera picks up big.

And so as a performer, you're looking for nuance.

You're looking for subtlety.

You're looking for you know, you're looking to let your to let the movie play around you.

Let your eyes do the work.

And I I sort of feel like that's a that's a result of some of Buster Keaton's choices too.

Right?

There's there is a lot of modern film performance that feels like it can trace back to the the the old stone face.

Yeah.

There's definitely an element of of that to the story.

And it's interesting because he started on the stage.

Right?

Like, he was performing with his family on the stage.

We see that he clearly understands how the camera works and what the camera sees and and how to react to the camera, how to do his stunts for the camera.

Like, all of those little moments, like, is so careful with his timing.

Like, when he gets he grabs onto the end of the crane, the crane hook at the end.

And I'm sure there's a proper name for that thing, but the hook at the end of the cable.

Lot of anxiety

around that sequence.

But he he grabs it, and it lifts just as all the women come running in.

And his timing with just how he lifts his legs just to avoid their grabbing hands is just timed perfectly.

And I think that's the sort of stuff that he does so well.

And I think when you're doing stunts, you have to have such a knack for timing anyway because potentially, it could, affect your life or your limbs.

Right?

You could greatly injure yourself if your timing is off.

And so I think all of that is just speaks to the nature of of how he understands how the camera works, what it sees, how to perform in just the right way to capture the the moment.

Yeah.

He has a a, I I guess, a pretty consistent production team, particularly his his cinematographers, the folks who were working with him.

Like, he's it's it seems like by this point, he's he's got people with him that that will make Buster Keaton movies.

Is that fair?

I think that that's they're they're definitely we're kind of in the stable.

I think you'd find that with a number of these different people where they would kind of work together.

And I think especially with camera where it's such a careful time during the silent era where they were hand cranking these cameras, and they had to, like, have the right rhythm to kind of keep the the speed for the different effects and or the the the movement and everything to look natural.

So I don't know much of Elgin Leslie or Byron Hooke, but it seems like they were frequent partners.

Well, Elgin Leslie, Buster Keaton called him the human metronome because he could change speeds as needed depending on the sequence.

And, you know, we get a lot of those things in some of these Buster Keaton movies where they're under cranking or over cranking, and he was very good at doing that.

As for Byron Hauk?

Hauk?

Is it Hauk?

I don't know.

Hauk Hook.

He actually it's interesting because he was actually a professional baseball player.

That's how he started his career playing for the athletics, and then at the time was the Brooklyn Tip Tops and the St.

Louis Browns.

So he played for, four years, and then he became a cinematographer.

Don't hear that anymore.

You know, it's an interesting shift from from one completely different field to another.

I find that fascinating.

But, yeah, he ended up working with Buster Keaton, Fady Arbuckle, a number of these people.

Fatty Arbuckle.

I gotta say Roy Cooper McGrew, Joseph Shank, Elgin Leslie, I they all are names of guys who just tied a damsel to a railroad track.

Like, these names are incredible.

They're also, like, names from a 100 years ago.

Yeah.

Like Yeah.

Incredible.

Yeah.

Right.

It's such a fascinating film.

I the the setup plays well.

Like, it's a fun goofy comedy setup with the grandfather, and I love the way that the lawyer reads that out.

Snits as Edwards.

That's another one.

Snits as Edwards.

He was there.

He's he's the actor who plays the lawyer.

Also, this is very common in Buster Keaton films, but he gets a name.

He's James Jimmy Shannon.

Everyone else is how they relate to him.

His partner, his sweetheart, his lawyer, her mother, the hired hand, the clergyman hatchet girl.

I think that's very funny that that you see that in these films.

But anyway, his lawyer, the way that he reads the letter, I think is played for great laughs where it's like, win $7,000,000.

Jimmy and his partner are celebrating.

And then he's like, if you know, he kind of keeps pausing and saying, and then there's this this clause that you have to follow.

And he he does that really well.

I I enjoyed I enjoyed the play of the letter reading that we had.

Well, and I think we have to also take a step back because one of the great sequences in the movie before all of the massive running sequences is the lawyer trying to deliver the will to the partners.

Right?

He keeps he follows them.

He keeps getting kicked out of the country club and finally delivers the letter when they're seated at a table, and he slams it up against the window to make them read it.

And I loved that sequence.

I loved the entire just sort of mechanic of getting Snits to their trio into their trio to make it a trio.

I thought it was really funny.

Yeah.

That played really well.

Like, when he finally goes to the window and he holds the paper up against him And ducks.

And he ducks.

Yeah.

That was great.

He was it was it was so funny.

It played well, that whole bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

As if there's another somebody chasing those two guys with a document.

Right?

Like, I didn't I didn't think about it till just now.

Like, why does he duck?

Well, because they recognize him, but not in the paper?

What is the ducking for?

That's very funny.

You wanted to jump back to that.

I wanna jump back one more time because we didn't even talk about, like, this is yet another film that kicks off with Technicolor.

Like, we've got some more Technicolor play Good point.

Experimentation in this film.

The entire opening sequence was done in color, which is great to see.

This is where we actually kind of see the love story between Jimmy and his sweetheart, Mary, played by Ruth Dwyer.

And it's played over four seasons, and it's really fun because over the course of it, we see her puppy grow from big to full grown.

And each one, it ends with he still wanted to tell her he loved her, and he doesn't.

Like, he he still wants to.

And so this is the kind of the perpetual problem that this guy has is he loves Mary, but he's afraid to say it.

And things keep progressing and changing around around them, yet he still hasn't gotten up the nerve as we see by the time he finally does because of this.

And it's accidental when he finally proposes to her.

This is one of the things about the movie that is that is also a bit of a splinter, and I know I have to let it go.

So I'm just gonna say it and be done.

That it's one of those movie I think you already alluded to it.

One of those movies that if they would just have a little bit less of an idiotic conversation out loud, the movie would be over, and you wouldn't have to deal with the cringey, you know, why aren't they together right now sequence.

She would say yes.

She would say yes if you were just able to get over yourself a little bit.

Of course, we wouldn't have, you know, the the running man sequence, you know, if he was a smarter guy, but it is frustrating.

It's like if you would just stop for just a handful of seconds and have this conversation.

Yeah.

I mean, she says yes.

Like, she already agreed.

And then he screws the whole thing up because he just keeps talking and opening his mouth and making a mess of things.

Just shut up, man.

Yeah.

Although it is funny.

It does make you think though.

If you went and proposed to your wife after having just found out now you two love each other.

You've known each other forever.

But if your proposal happened after you just found out that you were gonna inherit $7,000,000, and that's $19.25 dollars, so a $100,000,000.

I don't know what it A huge chunk of money, and your wife found out that you proposed right after that because there was a caveat that you had to be married by 07:00 that night.

No matter how much you loved each other, would there still be a suspicion in her heart that the only reason it happened is because of the money?

Okay.

Look.

How would you alright.

How would you do it?

Just let's just riff.

How would you propose to your now wife before if if there was money involved?

What would you say?

That's the question.

Like, that makes it really hard because they're gonna always wonder, is it only because the money that they're doing this?

I don't think it's that hard.

I think the conversation is look.

Honey, honey cakes.

I think that's what you called her.

Honey cakes.

I know, you know, I love you, and you love me, and things are progressing as they should.

And I just this is just an issue of timing.

I happen to have an opportunity to make good for both of us if we were to do this today.

Now we know we're gonna do it someday.

But if we do it today, there's a perk.

Would you like to hear more?

Well, right.

And then but that's all I can leave for proposal.

Yeah.

Would you yeah.

Would you like to hear more?

Is kind of like you're getting her yeah.

You're getting

her into an MLM.

Like, it's a multilevel marketing.

Yeah.

You only have to invest the rest of your life.

It's really funny.

And honestly, what he says what he says later is like, I don't even care about the money.

Like, I I think she overhears it, at some point where she she's like, you know, I don't even care.

I just wanted to get married to her, and now everything's falling apart.

Like, that's the sort of thing that I think you'd have to say in there.

You'd have to say, look, I don't care if we get married tonight, like by 07:00.

But if we do, we get all that money.

But it's just tricky because it does create this extra layer to why now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

I know.

I mean, I hear it.

Yeah.

It wouldn't be it wouldn't be a slapstick kinda crazy comedy if if they if he was a smooth talker and actually knew how to talk to his bride to be.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

Well, and it's only because of her mother.

Right.

She's right.

And his idiot partner sets things in motion.

We didn't we haven't yet said that the the big issue is not that he couldn't get one of the women in the restaurant or the country club, whatever, to marry him.

It's that his idiot partner put the story in the newspaper.

And that sets things off to a degree.

That that builds the last half hour of the movie.

Yeah.

Like, it's it's possibly the the worst idea someone could have of just say, hey, this guy is gonna inherit $7,000,000 if he's married by 07:00.

If you're interested and you can get your bridal bridal outfit together in time, meet at the church at 05:00.

It's like, what is he expecting?

Like, that's what's so funny.

And that what is even funnier is all the women who show up, like, it's all just like they've thrown a pair of knickers on their head to make it look like a veil.

It's very, very funny.

So the second half of the movie is is where I think you really see what I gather is the Buster Keatonness.

Right?

The sense of directorial perfection, the architectural perfection that he brings to these major sequences.

Because there are crane shots in this movie, like moving camera, high level shots that show the city overrun.

It feels like World War z.

Right?

It it is overrun with brides.

And, again, you brought up timing.

The precision timing of where these brides are coming from, what alley they're coming from, how big their numbers are, how they from the very beginning when they're walking behind him and he doesn't know that they're there to the point where he realizes it and the running begins, the precision sort of militaristic approach to getting the crazy crowd running after him and using the the architecture of the city to to make it funny is incredible.

That's that's why you watch this movie.

Right?

That's why these standout sequences are always used in all of the Keaton montages, because it really is incredible.

It's mind boggling, like, how constructed the whole thing is and how well constructed it is.

And it all starts in the church when he wakes up on the front pew.

And while he slept on the pew, sad because he thought he'd failed, the church has filled up with hundreds of women.

And then the chase begins when they realize who he is, and they're pulling him, and he has to escape out the church.

And the run begins, and Keaton had said, you know, they had hired 500 women for this.

I don't know if that's just kind of a number he threw out just to kind of, you know

It sure looks like

wound it.

But but it's certainly well, it's a lot.

I mean, jeez.

It's so many women just chasing after.

And and it's very funny to see, like, these chase sequences and all of them that now they're angry at him because it seems like, you know, he's, isn't really serious about this.

And so they're all kind of like wanting to tear him apart, it seems.

And he's getting lifted by cranes, and he's hopping on trolley cars, and and in in cars, and all sorts of stuff to to get away from them.

And it's amazing how long it goes.

Like, that's the thing the thing that that kind of surprises you is that this chase is like half the film.

Like, are watching him running from this group of 500 women for a very long time through rivers.

Like, he's he's swimming across a river.

He's running up and down hills through sand dunes.

He jumps onto a tree that then is getting chopped down and it brings him to the ground.

And and then again, finally to that hill with all the boulders that somehow manages to not kill all the women below, but they all get away.

But that kind of that's that's the whole chase.

It's just

it it's amazing how much there is because it just is it just keeps building in insanity.

It does.

And I think maybe watching it with today's eyes and also being a little bit anti ankle pain, watching that boulder sequence is traumatizing.

Like, it is what he does to I mean, I know they're paper mache boulders.

I get it.

But that hill is real.

And

A 200 pound paper mache boulder is still 200 pounds.

He's got pounds of boulder.

With them that hurt his leg.

It's just like Indiana Jones.

Like, you're running from that thing because it still is 200.

It's still very large.

Yeah.

No.

I I it it's incredible to to watch the escapades, just the physicality, of what he what he's able to do, and just how able he is at doing things like falling down, tripping, making it look real, throwing himself out windows.

Just the bare the mere act of him throwing himself out the church window and his role is an order of magnitude more competent than I can imagine of myself, which makes the movie really fun.

Yeah.

That's I mean, a lot of lot of training to get all of this stuff right.

It's I mean, it's wild how far they go with some of this stuff and just how he seems like he is made of just some sturdy, sturdy stuff in order to handle some of the things that he does to his body.

Like, there's a a moment when he I think it's when he hits the sand dunes.

It's like he trips and does like a triple somersault.

He he lands and and rolls and lands and and does it again, and he keeps somersaulting with like big it's not just a I'm rolling on the ground somersault.

It's like a flip up in the air, and then roll, and flip up in the air, and roll, and flip up in the air, and roll all the way down this hill.

And I'm like, how do you not break your neck doing something like that?

It's it's, insane what he's pulling off there.

Yeah.

But that's why it's so good.

That's why it's such so entertaining to watch, and and he knows this.

He understands what people are interested in as far as seeing these crazy things that he will do on screen, and and hence, we get so much of it here.

It's the Tom Cruise effect.

That's Yeah.

That's very Tom Cruise,

arguably less funny than Buster Keaton, but capable, and this is why we watch.

This is why we watch him hanging off of planes.

That's the Buster Keaton would be hanging off of airplanes.

It makes you wonder if there was a time where Buster Keaton broke his ankle doing a jump and then kept running.

Oh my god.

Can you even imagine?

Yeah.

Entirely possible.

Buster Keaton.

There was a gag early in the film that I don't think I didn't get.

And I actually had to go and look at, like, what it meant because it was something of its time.

Before he goes to the church, he's still in the the moment where he's just proposing to any woman he finds, women on the street.

He starts at the club with all the women at the club.

He comes to a theater.

There's a vaudeville theater.

It says like now showing, and it's a picture of a woman dancing or something like that.

And he's like, oh, and he asks the the guy at the door, can I just go in real quick?

And he's like, you're gonna have to give me some money.

And he gives the guy some money.

He goes in, and this is a gag that happens a number of times throughout this film, where he does something, and then after he's kind of left the frame, somebody moves something and reveals information that we didn't have, and now it turns into funny because what they've moved reveals something that makes us laugh.

In this case, it says, now showing Julian Eltinge is what the name is underneath where the sign had moved.

I didn't know this, but I guess that was a very famous drag performer at the time.

And so yeah.

And then he comes hurrying out, grabs his money back from the from the doorman, and takes off.

There are moments like this, and and I think it's funny that I think this may be the first film that we're running into of this series that's actually present day 1925.

I think all the others have been period pieces.

So it's like we're actually getting, like, current references of the time in this story.

Yeah.

I assumed that it was a drag related thing.

Yeah.

You assume.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I I did not, I did not research further.

I'm glad to know that's confirmed, that I wasn't missing a massive cultural thing that I should have known.

Yeah.

I guess Eltinge was just a very, very famous female impersonator of the era.

And so everyone at the time who watched the movie would immediately know who that is.

Yeah.

It's like the Arsenio Hall gag in Aladdin, something like that, where people have seen a woo hoo hoo, that whole thing.

You know?

Right.

Right.

So Yeah.

There were there were a number of those times.

There were some that that a I mean, that doesn't age great.

He's walking behind a woman and thinks he's going to ask her and catches up to her and turns and finds she's black and roll kinda rolls his eyes weird and and waves off.

Does not age well, those kinds of sequences.

Same thing with a woman reading, like, the Jewish newspaper.

Yes.

Right.

Right.

This this sort of casual comedic racism does not does not age well in spite of all the other stuff that you you it it reminds you you're watching a 100 year old movie where we were a 100 year different people as as humanity.

It's not great.

Well, we also have the hired hand.

This is Mary's hired hand, her family's hired hand, who is black, but is actually a white guy.

The actor's name is Jules Cowles.

He is a white guy in blackface, and and it plays poorly.

Every time that that comes up.

It's definitely happened in Keaton's films.

I mean, he's worn blackface in some of his shorts and stuff.

So, again, it's the era, and these are things that don't hold up as well through today's eyes that you're like, ugh, man.

Did we have to do that?

You have another black actor later in the film.

We do.

It does fine.

Like, why couldn't this guy have been just a

black actor?

It's really rough.

It's it it that in particular, not just the blackface, but the giant shoes and the way he walks.

It's right out of a horrifically racist political cartoon of the era.

Right?

It looks like it was it's the one character that looks like it was taken right off the the page, right, of a hastily drawn sketch, a racist sketch, you know, played for comedy.

It's it's rough.

Really, really rough.

And, you know, that's just one of those things that, unfortunately, you have to deal with when you go back and look at these because it's like, well, that's a bummer.

But but there are some other things that I think Keaton plays with, which is kind of fun.

There is a really fascinating match dissolve that Keaton does when he leaves the country club, and he's gonna drive over to Mary's and propose to her.

He walks out of the country club, hops in his car.

You've got a shot of a full shot of the car.

He hops into the car.

He sits behind the steering wheel, and then we dissolve to a match shot of him now with the car in front of Mary's house.

We never see him driving.

It's just an interesting way to get it move us from one place to the other of doing it just he hops in, match dissolved.

Now he's at Mary's.

He goes in, has the failed attempt at proposing to her, and then he leaves, and he comes back and sits in the car again.

Another match dissolved back to the country club.

Like, what a fun, weird little addition of just camera play that he was trying out here.

Yeah.

It makes me wonder.

It's such such an easy shortcut to changing locations.

I loved it.

I really loved it.

And it's it's, you know, it's one of those things that if you're if you're not tracking the movie, you start tracking the movie because it's now done something sort of impossible right in front of your eyes to move you through space and time, and I find that generous filmmaking.

I think it's a it's a really useful way to to cut time and remind me where we are.

And, yeah, I thought that was really, really clever.

And just think about how hard that is to capture in 1925.

Right?

I mean, today, you could be a little bit loose on your framing because you can reframe in Premiere or Final Cut, and you can crop and tilt and get alignment just right.

But this stuff was in camera and precise and very I mean, it was perfect.

It was perfect.

Yeah.

You see him try he, like, he does this quite a bit.

Like, is it the cameraman?

Or I think it might be Sherlock Junior.

One of the other ones where he does quite a bit of this.

I think it's Sherlock Junior where he's he puts himself kind of into this dream state where he's dreaming.

He's like this great detective.

And he kind of goes into this movie, and it keeps match cutting as he's going from scene to scene of, and it's all him getting the image perfect so that they could figure out where he is.

He's right here.

Okay.

Now we've gotta get you right here in this position.

So when we cut, now you're in a in the new place.

It's a lot of work.

And, yeah, like you said, it's all in camera trickery that they're coming up with and figuring out how to do it.

And this is also the era where they don't have, they don't have a a video village of a recording of what you're filming.

So they have to, like, print the film, and then I don't know what they do.

Like, do they take that frame and blow it up and put it in front of the lens.

And so the cameraman is seeing it, and then pulling it out of the way, and putting it in, pulling out of the way to get things.

Like, I don't know how they were doing it.

I don't how they do it.

Quite a bit of work to accomplish those things back in the day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's that's the thing that that wows me the most on some of these sequences is just thinking about how complex it is to capture what he was trying to capture using the tools they had at the time.

It's extraordinary.

Yeah.

That's just wild.

My last little note was, Jean Arthur pops up in here.

This is, again, before she had become a star.

She's the uncredited supporting role as Miss Smith, office receptionist at the switchboard reading the romance novel.

That's Jane Arthur.

So, not her film debut, but still in that era before she, became really big.

What what was the other movie?

Was it an Eddie Murphy movie that was about you get an inheritance if you do such and so by a certain time?

Well, Trading Places, he does that that whole gag where if you know, oh, you're thinking of Richard Pryor in Brewster's Millions.

He he was in the remake of it.

But, yeah, that's the story where you have to get all this money, but you have to spend it all within a week or whatever.

And if you

do

Yeah.

There are conditions on how you spend it.

Yeah.

You get like it's something like you get $3,000,000.

You have to spend it all within the week, and you can't like spend it on investments and things like that.

You have to like legitimately get rid of all of the money.

And if you do that within the week, then you get, like, $30,000,000.

That's the gag with that movie.

Yeah.

I guess yeah.

I mean, I'm thinking about movies with weird conditions that have to be met in order to get to get an inheritance.

Like, well, I guess kind heart and kind hearts and cornets, you gotta murder a bunch of people.

Don't think it was written in the will that that had to happen, but no.

Yes.

He does have to go through all of that.

Little hell.

Yeah.

Which reminds me the trailer for John Patton Ford's new take on that story is out.

So Oh,

so we can actually see that.

We've been talking about that for years.

Yeah.

Right.

Exactly.

There's a thing we haven't talked about about the inheritance clause that this movie in 1925 makes really ridiculous conditions contingent on receiving an obscene amount of money.

And by doing so, minimizes the value of the inheritance itself.

Right?

It minimizes the the value of inherited money.

It makes it for these guys, they were gonna go to jail if they don't pay off their debts.

Right?

So it's it is an economic salvation, but it's also a trap because he has to get married, and they don't get to keep themselves out of jail presumably, if they're not married.

Totally arbitrary.

It it really stupidly commodifies marriage.

Right?

It's it's like you can marry anybody.

We don't care who it is.

Just get married because that is ideological purity, and that's worth monetizing in in the way that we're we're monetizing, you know, the inheritance.

And I guess it's a, I mean, it's a it's a class certainly a a class play.

Right?

We're saying that, you know, this is something that is unique to the privileged to be able to make these kinds of requests to our offspring, to our descendants, and it's not very romantic.

That's that's what I have

to say about that.

Like, the money has kind of made it aromantic.

Well, again, that's why I asked earlier, like, how would you propose?

Because it really it puts a whole different spin on the actual proposal.

And it's I think that you're right.

There's a kind of a grossness.

But I I I'm imagining that that was part of the farcical nature of the play to begin with.

That these rich people have the the, like, the boredom and the and the, the pushiness to say, I can make these demands because I have this money.

And if you want this money, then you're gonna do what I want you to do.

And even though I'm dead, you're gonna have to get it done if you wanna see a set of it.

So.

Yeah.

And I I think that's I I I do believe that that's part of the farce.

Like, I believe they're making the joke because it's ridiculous, not because, you know, Buster Keaton thinks that money should be tied to ideological action.

Okay.

So so here's a question then.

Again, knowing that neither of us have ever seen this play or read it, is there a farce here?

I mean, Buster Carr Buster Keaton called it a silly farce.

So, obviously, he saw the play as kind of a farce.

But do you see the farcical nature of that proposal?

Does it play out here?

Yeah.

I think it does.

I think it does because of, I mean, it's lampooning the act of proposal by making him propose to so many women.

It's lampooning the act of inheritance by making so many women chase him.

Like, that is a farcical setup.

That's that's designed in such a way to make us live outside in this sort of farcical fairy tale version of Los Angeles.

Right?

Like, it's it's not it's we're in a different universe.

Well, and the fact that it's still like, we still like, all of that is there, and then we still get the the message that I would marry her regardless.

Like, I don't want the money.

I just wanna marry her.

Like, we're still getting that honest message.

And so I think that it still comes through.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I but I think it's important to note because we have so many stories that have made inheritance either the butt of a of a joke in film or the the root of sort of malevolent or or maladaptive family relationships.

You know, I'm thinking about things like succession, which, you know, obviously take diabolical family inheritance discussion to hold horrible new levels.

Well, even in the Dudley Moore movie, Arthur, right, isn't that something involving an inheritance?

Man.

And and that's definitely more screwball comedy, but, yeah, it's it's an inheritance premise.

That's the whole thing.

He's, stands to inherit 750,000,000 only if he marries a woman chosen by his wealthy family.

The profoundly boring Susan Johnson.

That's the whole thing.

So they give them him a stipulation.

But again, that's also to say, look, dude, you are a mess.

If you want to have any part of this family again, you gotta clean yourself up.

So I mean, there's a little bit of that nature too.

But yeah.

Right.

Anyway.

Alright.

Just last note, $7,000,000 in 1925 is a 129,600,000.0 today.

Jeez.

Yeah.

It doesn't hit you differently watching this movie with that sort of extraordinary like, it's a farce about that kind of extraordinary wealth in an era now where people with such extraordinary wealth in 2025 are looked at as suspect.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, it makes you I mean, in 1925, they might not have been looking at them suspect, but they certainly were.

I mean, again, he's a financial criminal at the start of the film.

He's a financial criminal, and we hadn't hit, like, 1929, but we were on the way.

Right.

It's like we were almost there.

Like, these types of people were the ones who ended up causing all of that.

So Yes.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

Whole other whole other level to this.

So Yeah.

Well, I love it.

I have a lot of fun watching this one.

So, I guess that's it.

Right?

I do too.

I like money.

Alright.

We'll be right back.

But first, her credits.

The next reel is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson, music by Zib Grunberg, Ziggy, Maya Belsitzman, and Matan Efraat, Oriel Novella, and Eli Catlin.

That was smooth.

Right?

That was great.

That was totally smooth.

Totally smooth.

You felt natural like you practiced a for

100 times.

Andy usually finds all the stats for the awards and numbers at d-numbers.com, boxofficemojo.com, imdb.com, and wikipedia.org.

Find the show at truestory.fm.

And if your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.

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Sequels and remakes, Andy.

How many times has this story been remade?

Do you know?

Like, in total.

Surprising, more than I thought.

I this was one I didn't think had actually been remade, but I was wrong.

Several times, we start with the three stooges in their films, Brideless Groom, which coincidentally was also written by Clyde Bruckman, and Husbands Beware.

So two films that the three Stooges did that repeat this story.

There is a French film, the suitor, les superiente.

I don't know how you say that, which was made in 1962 with Pierre Etai.

Again, I don't know how you say his name.

Last but not least, this is the one that we mentioned last week.

The bachelor, the 1999 film with Chris O'Donnell and Renee Zellweger, which I vaguely remember the trailers, and I said, doesn't look like anything I'd wanna watch.

That was another a remake of this.

Did you see that one?

No.

I don't think so.

I would remember.

Right?

This is before Chris O'Donnell ended up on whatever that TV show has been on for Yeah.

Twenty years or whatever.

Yeah.

I did.

That was yeah.

He's NCIS something something.

One of those things.

But before that, he was doing stuff like this, and I just remember it looked terrible, and it ended up getting really bad ratings.

People said it just it it didn't fit as well.

I remember reading somebody who said that the idea of, like, hundreds of women chasing after this guy in the climax of the film just felt out of place for the era, you know?

And I think if you're gonna make it the right way, you have to you have to craft it in the right tone.

Like, it really has to feel like a farce.

And I don't know.

Maybe that one just didn't feel farcical.

It felt like just they're just doing a silly rom com, and it just wasn't the whole idea.

So It's funny.

As time passes, it can it it gets increasingly difficult to do a proper farce

Yeah.

In in contemporary farce.

Yeah.

Like, it's very few people know how to do it.

Yeah.

So and last but not least, there is a group called the International Buster Keaton Society.

I love that that exists.

I kind of wanna sign up and become a member now.

Anyway, they actually recreated the seven chances bridal run-in the streets of Muskegon, Michigan at their twenty ten convention.

That tells me that they have annual conventions, which is a thrill.

Yeah.

Every they should I wonder what they do every year.

They probably do some Keaton stunt every year.

They probably have someone do it.

Yeah.

Everybody gets a house to fall in them with the open window.

Risky.

Some of it's very risky.

I'm doing a lot real time research here, Pete.

The International Buster Keaton Society, it's a nonprofit to foster and perpetuate an an appreciation and understanding of life career and films of Buster Keaton, to advocate for historical accuracy about Keaton's life and work, to encourage dissemination of information about Keaton, and to endorse preservation and restoration of Keaton's films and performances.

It's all volunteer, and yeah.

I just love that they exist.

They have a store of stuff you can get.

And let me see what they do as far as I'm trying to see if they have a list of annual meetups and stuff.

Their twenty twenty five convention no.

The '20 I guess it'd be the twenty twenty six convention is three hundred and four days, fifteen hours, forty five minutes, thirty two seconds.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's all I guess it's always in Muskegon.

Is there a

Buster Keaton connection to Muskegon that we're missing?

Is he from Muskegon?

Like, that's probably the obvious thing that we're gonna be embarrassed about.

No.

He just really liked it.

He's from Pequa, Kansas.

And nobody wants to go to Kansas?

He spent the summers of nineteen o eight to 1916 at the Actor's Colony in the Bluffton neighborhood of Muskegon along with other famous vaudevillians.

So there you go.

Okay.

There you go.

How did it do an awards season?

You know, this isn't a film that was getting PhotoPlay magazine awards

It's not tender.

Time.

Yeah.

Nothing.

1966, though, the BFI, the British Film Institute, at their awards, they gave him a special mention for their Sutherland trophy directed to, Buster Keaton.

And of course, the twenty thirteen Saturn awards, they had nominated for best DVD or Blu ray collection for the ultimate Buster Keaton Blu ray collection, but lost Universal Classic Monsters, the Essential Collection.

Universal Classic Monsters.

Yeah.

Probably no Phantom of the Opera.

They do have the 1943 crappy It's in there.

Opera.

Yeah.

I have both

of those collections, and I prefer the Buster Keaton one.

Noted.

Alright.

Well, this one, you've been on a just a roll lately with your numbers.

Surely, you have extraordinary detail on this gem from 1925.

You know, I was really expecting to have numbers for this because it is MGM, and I'm like, okay.

Eddie Mannix, give me this give me the info.

I don't know what happened here.

I don't know if this one just slipped through the cracks or what, but I have no idea how much Keaton had to make this film.

I did read that the producer paid $25,000 for the rights, and I believe he paid the original director $10,000.

So we at least know it cost more than that.

The movie opened 03/15/1925 and was a box office success, going out to earn just under 600,000 or 10,800,000.0 in today's dollars.

So we're gonna assume they made their money back, but again, really have no idea.

But nowhere near the inheritance that would have been won in the movie.

No.

Nowhere near, sadly.

Disappointing.

Well, I'm glad we watched it.

I had a blast.

It's it is a fun movie, and I will say that four k restoration, is on canopy in the library, and, it was a treat to watch, and I'd do it again.

Yeah.

It's beautifully restored.

It looks great, and it's just a fun film.

If you haven't seen Buster Keaton, if you've only seen like the big ones, this I mean, you know, I think it's a great one to still check out because of the everything going on in that last half.

It's just a lot of fun, and so I say give it a chance.

Check it out, and find yourself laughing quite a bit.

Again, it's just under an hour.

Yeah.

Easy.

Easy peasy.

And I mean, could watch it about the same amount of time it take you to watch an episode of NCIS Poughkeepsie.

Is that where it was Poughkeepsie?

I don't know.

Nobody nobody knows.

Alright.

Well, that's it for today's conversation.

Next week, we are gonna be looking at Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush.

This is another interesting one because this is one that he re released in the forties, I believe, and wrote an entire script for himself, like, as the narrator talking through the story and and changed it a little bit.

So again, we'll have to try to look for the 1925 version, but they're both out there.

They're both, you know, they're both worth watching.

Alright?

Alright.

We'll be right back for our ratings.

Alright, people, places, we're burning daylight money here.

Animals, I need those 17 ostriches released on my mark.

Stunts, you're on the collapsing scaffolding.

Remember, it needs to fall in sections, not all at once.

Alright.

My leading man.

Okay.

You're juggling the Ming vases while you're riding the unicycle, while the ostriches are chasing you.

What do you mean which direction?

All the direct they're all they're ostriches.

They don't they don't follow a script.

Props.

Props.

Start the windmill.

No.

Faster.

I need those blades moving at comedic velocity.

Wait.

Who put who put a real beehive on the set?

Props.

I need prop bees.

Prop bees.

Release the ostriches anyway.

Keep pedaling.

Drop the vases.

Now catch the vases.

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And cut.

Print that.

Somebody catch those damn birds.

Where are they going?

Letterbox, dandy.

Letterbox.com/thenextreel.

That's where you can find all of our reviews and ratings at our next reel HQ page over on Letterbox.

What are you gonna do with your stars and hearts for seven chances?

I have such a fun time with this Buster Keaton film.

It's not like one of my favorites, but it's out there.

I just I have a very easy time enjoying watching this one.

This one is four stars and a heart for me.

I'll give it four stars and a heart too, and I don't really know why.

I mean, you know, we had a great time talking about it.

It's it's I think it's probably the the the star falls around the aging racism tropes

that Yeah.

The I mean, some of the the just sort of ideological stuff that's going on in there that is just unpleasant and out of time, and and it makes it a little bit cringey to watch these things sometimes.

But but it's it's it's an exceptional performance, and that last half hour is just to die for.

It's really, really great.

Yeah.

That's some of just the most fun stuff with Keaton.

So.

Yeah.

Again, he's he's a comedian.

Well worth checking out.

If you haven't seen any of his stuff, please try some of them because it is a lot of fun.

Well, that averages out to four stars and a heart.

And, you can find that on our account at Letterboxd at the next reel.

You can find me there at Soda Greek Film.

You can find Pete there at Pete Wright.

So what do you think about seven chances?

We would love to hear your thoughts.

Hop into the Show Talk channel over in our Discord community where we will be talking about the movie this week.

When the movie ends,

Our conversation begins.

Letterbox give it, Andrew.

As Letterboxd always doeth.

A

wide wide variety of Yes.

Of points on Letterboxd this week.

Where'd you go?

And well, and also there's just a lot of people who who clearly just raked through today's eyes.

And I think that's always interesting to see because, you know, I I look at these films like I know there's problems with it, but I also recognize it's a 100 years old, and there's definitely different time of way of people were thinking.

Those things still bother me, but I'm not gonna, you know, judge the movie on that, you know, as much.

Right?

Yeah.

I didn't, I didn't pick one of those.

I went for a funny one, Four Stars in a Heart by Matt Singer, who said, given the amount of full speed sprinting Buster does in this one, it's genuinely surprising this movie's modern remake stars Chris O'Donnell and not Tom Cruise.

We endorse that comment.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Very true.

Yeah.

I I had I had originally thought about well, I mean, I I think I got one that kind of wraps it up, but which is from Henry.

It's a three star that says extremely questionable jokes and overall plot.

We love to hear that Buster thought it was garbage too and only made it to settle a debt.

But who am I to say the avalanche scene doesn't absolutely bang?

Yeah.

That's that's true.

I I do wanna follow-up with one more little bonus from Alyssa Heflin who gives it a heart and says, hat check girl, what's your at?

That is that hat check girl was fire.

I'm just saying.

She was cute.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Alright.

Thanks, letterboxed.