 Good evening, folks. Getting started here about three minutes early. It's coming up on 4 p.m. U.S. Pacific Time, January 29, 2023. We're going to see a double feature of Buster Keaton films. As you can see here on the poster, it's Sherlock Jr. and Go West from 1924 and 1925 respectively. Hi there, it's me, Keith. Here at the ThinkBolt channel on YouTube and Twitch, hopefully we won't get kicked off of YouTube with these films. That was a problem with the 1924 or 25 marathon that I did a few weeks ago. I got kicked off of YouTube rather early, even though these are public domain films. I think it was Ben Hur that did it. I think the TBS flagged it as their copyrighted restoration version, so they added some color filters. Who cares? Chris? Chris is good to see you. Welcome. Haven't seen you in a while. How are you? I'm going to be watching Buster Keaton tonight. I don't recall if you were present during the first time I showed a Buster Keaton film back in 2020. Mr. Fox Guy is here. He says Keith has been forever. It was Friday. I co-hosted a movie with you Friday, Mike. Chris says he's tired. These night shifts are killing me. Oh, you're working night shifts? I did not know that. I didn't know you were working a day job. You're still doing network consultancy? Mike says I'm trying to artificially make the weekend seem longer. Artificially seem longer. Like it's been years or something. Doing solo work as well, for sure. You've got a day job then? Is that what you're saying, Chris? But I need the cash, yeah. That's the one thing that I haven't given into yet, is getting an enormous job. Mike says, longest weekend ever. Lars and I just finished watching the best years of our lives. You know what, Mike? Just last night, I watched, there's a woman on YouTube who has a channel called Popcorn in Bed, which she watches movies. A few months ago, she recorded herself watching best years of our lives, which I'd never seen. He says, oh yeah, I know her channel. And I watched her half-hour version of it last night. It was a great movie. It was a great movie. Mike says she's delightful. Yeah, Chris, it wasn't even last week. It was two days ago. It was exactly 48 hours ago. Yeah, she was swooning all through it. I had never seen it before. I was surprised at how romantic it was. Chris, if you've not seen Best Years of Our Lives, it's a film from, what year was it, Mike? Was it the early 50s? 1946. Oh, it was right after the war ended. Good Lord. But it's known as being the first movie that ever portrayed war veterans accurately. Their return home and how difficult it was, even for those who weren't physically injured. It was the first film to be truthful about that. The guy who stars in the film, the guy whose both of his arms were blown off and he had a pair of hooks that he strapped over his arms. He was not an actor. The movie was based on his experience. I think he wrote a book. Did he write a book, Mike? Or did he write the screenplay himself? Well, whatever the case, it was his story. It was true. It was a true life story. Chris came over to Twitch. Okay. Yeah, there's always a possibility that we'll get kicked off YouTube. You always have to be prepared for that. Anyway, we're going to watch this double feature of Buster Keaton films. Sherlock Junior and Go West. These are a couple of the really funny ones. Sherlock Junior is considered one of the funniest movies ever made. And I watched the last half of Go West when I included it in one of my marathons a few weeks ago. And I was laughing out loud. Just the last half of it. But as I was saying to Chris, I don't know if you were there when I showed Steamboat Bill Jr. on the 50th Street Studio channel back in 2020, right after we first started showing live stream movies after the COVID thing started. Chris says he'd have to say that at least the normie job is just for a year to kill some dead. All right. And Chris says no, he wasn't. Okay. Well, we enjoyed it greatly. We had pretty good crowds for our movies back then. People had only just started, had just gone into isolation and we're looking for things to do. We've never had crowds that big ever since then. Sometimes we'd get 20, 30 people. And here on my channel, I'm lucky to get three, four people. Before I stopped doing the 50th Street studio things, we would get 10 or 11 people. Chris says he regrets that he never got out there to see the studio. So we were only in the studio for a hundred days. I mean, who could have predicted? Yeah. And it was cross country. Chris is saying he regrets it because he was involved in 50th Street Studio. We need to, I need to send everyone a letter about that. Anyway, this is the ThinkBolt channel. And so welcome, you two guys. Mike says he figured out the buzzing sound, the long XLR cable. It's getting interference. It was wrapped around the back of the desk, near the power outlets and the speakers. Yep. Yeah. So you're using an XLR connection. I have an XLR cable here that I never used. I listed it on Craigslist for $12 and it's like 25 feet long. I haven't gotten any bites on it yet. Yeah. Well, that's good. That's good that you got that fixed up, Mike. Who else here? Somebody else came in. Somebody came into YouTube. Welcome. I'm going to get the movie started in about three minutes, about 10 minutes after. I've been posting about my silent movie streams on a Reddit, on a subreddit called Silent Cinema. And I've been very pleased that although there hasn't been any comments, they've been getting, the people there have been giving the post thumbs up. And I consider that very positive because usually when you post in a subreddit or you're new, usually what happens is everything you post gets thumbs down and people start saying rude and angry things. But at Silent Cinema, that hasn't been happening. I consider that very positive. Yeah, Chris, I had a Shure microphone years ago and I bought this with it. But I never used the Shure microphone. Instead, I used this Zoom microphone and I have, this is an H4N and I have a couple of H1Ns that I use mostly nowadays. I never needed the Shure. Mike says he's using the Shure right now. Well, yeah. And as I was going through the boxes of stuff, I found this cable that I, as far as I know, I never used it even once. That's interesting, nodding my head and moving my hand in here made the camera go out of focus. That's funny. Well, we did have somebody watching on YouTube for about 60 seconds and they left again. That's typical. But hopefully there'll be some people from Silent Cinema come in. I never know. People come into these things and don't say anything. They don't say hello in the chat or anything. I'm not going to play any soundtrack music. That's a sure way to get into trouble with these things. Here's the TV room. And there's the donation link on screen, coffee.com. That's I always welcome donations and I need them. I need them pretty badly. Let's see if I can get my little bit more symmetrical there. Okay. Yeah. The lighting is working pretty good. I've got my two lamps cranked up as high as they can go. I moved one of them a little bit to the right so it's not right in front of me. I'm not casting a shadow behind me. Let's turn the music down a little bit and press play on the film. Sherlock Junior was released in 1924. It was shot in 1924 and released in 1924. That's how they did things back then. There's quite a bit of a back story about it, about how it was made. I was looking at the Wikipedia before I started here. Keaton first previewed the film in Long Beach, California, although audience members gasped at some of the special effects. There were very few laughs. Keaton re-edited the film to make it funnier. However, the second preview screening was more disappointing than the first and Keaton cut the film down to a very short five reels. Producer Joseph Schenk wanted Keaton to add a thousand feet of film, approximately 11 minutes, but Keaton refused. This is the story of a boy who tried it while employed as a moving picture operator in a small town theater. He was also studying to be a detective. How to be a detective? I'll turn up the music a little bit. Isn't that strange how preview audiences can get things so so wrong? Say, Mr. Detective, before you clean up any mysteries, clean up this theater. The girl in the case. Keaton played by Catherine McGuire. The first woman that he cast for this role got sick, so he had to recast. The girl's father had nothing to do, so he got a hired man to help him. Wait, the girl's father had nothing to do, so he hired a man to help him. Okay, that's a joke. Lounge lizards lost love in five parts. A dollar per box with a lot of money. Three dollars a box. Dang. Somebody posted a Depression-era restaurant sign the other day. It's a hamburger meal for 20 cents. That sounds so cheap these days, but I guarantee you if I had been alive at the time, I wouldn't have had 20 cents. We think things would be more affordable if we lived back in the day, but if I had been alive back in the day when a meal cost 20 cents, I wouldn't have been able to scrape together 20 cents. I see what he did there. The local chic played by Ward Crane. The dialogue cards give them an opportunity to post the actor's credits as they appear in the film. That's something we can't really do. What was all that? Oh, ticket stubs. Okay. Okay, everybody digs through the garbage. I lost a dollar. Did you find it? Oh, yeah, he couldn't describe it. The thing about Keaton is that he looks like, whoa, he looks like he's actually he looks like he's actually experiencing the emotions that he's acting. I lost the dollar. See, he's so believable. He's so subtle and believable. When you look at Charlie Chaplin, he looks like he's acting. Charlie Chaplin is acting, and you can tell. Buster Keaton is believable. We've got five people watching. Welcome, everybody. Five people all on Twitch. Keaton, what a face. A wallet full of money. So wait, did he pay him a dollar to dig through the garbage to let him dig through? Is that what he did? And then he found a wallet full of money. I think that's what happened. Okay, so he bought a dollar box full of candy. What is he doing? Oh, he's okay. Make this poor girl think that he spent more money. Who is this guy? Is the girl's father? Buster Keaton, he directed this film, but his plan was to have Fatty Arbuckle co-direct it with him. In fact, he hired Fatty Arbuckle to do it, and Arbuckle became very difficult to work with. And so he assigned Arbuckle to direct another film that he was producing, but he went and did that. According to Wikipedia, Fatty Arbuckle's wife, years later, claimed that Arbuckle had not only directed this film all by himself, but he had written all the gags. This was after Arbuckle's scandal when he couldn't get work. And Arbuckle had discovered Buster Keaton, so he did it as a favor. But then, like I said, Arbuckle became too difficult to work with, very angry. Is this the girl's father? Or is this another guy? Is this another suitor? Yeah, it must be another suitor. Her father was digging in the garden or something, right? He ended up with a banana as a shove-off. He's holding an appealed banana. Of course, Mike, you looked up what a dollar would be worth today. Yeah, that's her dad. Someone stole my watch. Oh, okay, detective time. Search everybody. It was a good thing that the page of that book just had those four things listed in large print there. I'll take charge of this case. Start by searching everybody. I'm the fellow who lost the watch. Buster Keaton reminds you of Bird de Benning, Mike? Yeah, I don't know who that is. Will Smith. Will Smith signed that paper. Okay, so they're thinking he stole the watch, pawned it for four dollars then, but sorry my boy, but I don't want to see you in the house again. There's a stiff breeze blowing through that set right now. Shadow your man closely. Wow. Pick up a lit cigarette off the street and start smoking it. That's oh. I'm gonna have to keep our eyes peeled for camera tricks. Keaton worked really hard on a number of special effects. Who said that people didn't know how they were done? Oh really, Mike? The girl's father is played by Buster Keaton's real-life father. I did not notice that in the material I was reading here. Okay, this is this is a classic Keaton physical gag here. Okay, the um okay as a detective he was all wet so we went back and see what he could do to his other job. Um according to Wikipedia that stunt right there, the water spilled out much harder than Keaton expected and it knocked him to the ground and bashed his neck against the the the rail there and he was uh during during those moments before he got up and ran out of the water he was out cold. He was unconscious um and uh nine years later a doctor giving him an x-ray let's see can you describe the man who pawned this watch? mustache tall guy mustache oh that's him um but nine years later a doctor who gave him an x-ray pointed out a vertebrae in his neck that was heavily calloused over because it had been broken he broke his neck during that scene and and just just kept working never uh never knew yeah that's amazing one of the reasons he was able to do these amazing stunts was because he he had this huge capacity for physical pain wow look at those projectors that must be blazing hot that must be yeah that must be furiously hot in there okay here's one of his special effects a double exposure okay he's dreaming now i didn't know this was going to turn into a dream we got six people watching now welcome everybody please say hello in the chat let me know uh how you found me where you came from if anyone comes from uh is coming from the silent cinema subreddit please say hello i'd love to hear from you and anyone who's an aficionado of these films who has anything to add please do you see down at the bottom of the screen there's a woman playing the organ every cinema had either uh either uh oh he stepped into the movie that's just a simple stage set they they built a black proscenium there oh hi ivory welcome okay he was casting a shadow on the screen there for a second and then he stepped in the movie he stepped into the movie and no more shadow okay that was slick whatever however he did that what but i was gonna say every cinema had oh there's a full orchestra down there look but every cinema back in back in the day was actually alive it was a live theater it was a local uh little theater and every every little town had uh either uh oh there's lions either a piano player an organist or uh or a full on band this is good editing okay what's he gonna fall off now uh ivory yes every every feature length silent film had had a score had an original score written for it and my understanding is that uh when audiences get to see a silent film along with its original score it's just a much richer experience oh wow i i read a story some guy wrote recently this is in the last couple of years he said he he could never stand silent films someone has stolen the pearls said he could never stand silent films he could never sit through them and then he went to uh he went to some event um he went to some event where they were showing uh we're lost he's sending with world's greatest detective sherlock jr okay sherlock jr period exclamation point did you see that um but he said they were showing a number of silent films along with a live orchestra playing playing the scores that had been written originally for the film and he said it was amazing he said it was fantastic oh explosive 13 ball why hi well it's a dream crime crushing criminologist sherlock jr uh yeah ever he's dreaming wasn't he when you came in did you did you see him sitting in the he's a projectionist he's in the projection booth he fell asleep in the projection booth did you come in after that or did you see that part what what what what don't bother to explain this is a simple case for me the falling axe the exploding bill your ball the poison poison drink they're going all out i think there's something in your drink oh it's my finger sorry like the the music that i'm playing now is completely unrelated to the film and that's how we usually see silent films in the 1800s bill your balls were made out of uh they were made out of gun cotton and it wasn't completely unknown for bill your balls to explode when um when they struck each other very hard he he's he's sunk everything but the 13 he's gonna skip over it he's gonna make the ball jump over it that had actually worked he actually did that he puffed he just whacked the bill your ball up out of the pocket i don't know if he actually made that shot i wouldn't be surprised oh of course it didn't explode of course there'll be a huge explosion and then oh he's gonna drink the look at that outfit so he took the explosive bill your ball why on the next day the mastermind had completely solved the mystery with the exception of locating the pearls and finding the thief his assistant Gillette a gem who was ever ready and a bad scrape Gillette and ever ready gem Gillette and ever ready were those three product names yeah yeah i was expecting that there's a safe door portrait of george washington what is using your hat as a decoy so this would be los angeles yeah i thought there was another person on the back bumper there what is what is going on what was that oh is he gonna dive through there and come out in the costume like a magic act whoa what the hell was that he's a detective that's a detective when he's dead i'll put you in there when he's dead and then i'll tell you where our little sweetie is this minute and she's waiting there for me whoa i mean that's a neat camera trick but do oh yeah see he's oh i've seen this next gag i've seen this before i didn't know it was i'm pretty slick okay so that's his assistant or is it yeah what is it i'm not sure who's who nobody could run like buster keaton he's just he could furiously run whoa okay how long are they gonna keep this up be careful when one of us will get hurt okay apparently they're gonna keep up this gag for the for the rest of the film um thomas murphy's stag party wow they made a sign okay that was a split screen that was a camera split screen never thought you'd make it where where does he think he's headed well it's all a dream sequence so okay wow oh my god yikes one of the things i read in the wikipedia was that uh years later buster keaton said that every cameraman in hollywood watched this movie repeatedly to try to figure out everything that he did to every trick that he did can how did he know this was explosive well it's a dream oh oh wow got all of them four wheel brakes i guess four wheel brakes was a new thing well that's a miniature that was a miniature did you did you notice that that wasn't even a car stunt that was a okay and this is a boat this isn't even a car really you see the smoke coming off those projectors if you can see that projector on the left actually steaming father sent me to tell you that we made a terrible mistake no got seven people watching now welcome everybody please say hello only one person watching on youtube uh oh yeah they can still watch on youtube mic that was uh comfortable uh oh uh oh yeah yikes wait this i want to go back for a second and look at uh look at this look at this car scene where the car the top half of the car see that's a miniature am i right look at it again yeah that's not even they built like a little land of the lost backdrop you see how the you see how the splashes aren't life size they're miniature size see the ripples and the bubbles uh ivory says i want one of those cars and i want to know how she did her hair and those curls you're looking at her hair like this surely that must be a known a known quantity anyway let's uh let's move on that was uh sherlock jr that wasn't really what i expected i i expected uh i expected to be heavy on the physical gags which it was i did not know there were going to be so many camera tricks um in that magic trick with him diving through the old lady's open suitcase that looked like a standard stage magic trick to me that that didn't look like ivory says i look at the whole era everything the clothes the cars the fabrics the hair everything yeah well let's move on to the uh the other film go west um ivory says uh chris says it was actually really impressive yeah ivory says i really liked it yeah yeah it was well done but i don't think there's that much of a mystery about how it was done it looked like a straightforward you know magic trick related to the you know cutting a lady in half kind of trick um you know ivory is homesick for a time and a place that she's never been yeah well anyway welcome everybody we're halfway through the uh buster keaton double features not even five o'clock that was only a 44 minute film and this next one is only an hour um so this is gonna be i thought we'd be here for three hours but it looks like we won't even be here two two hours but uh welcome i'm happy to see everybody watching um the donation link is here on screen coffee dot com slash think about um i need the donations it would be nice if i could make uh if i could bring in fifty dollars uh tonight that would take care of uh bills i need to pay this week um but yeah uh we just watched sherlock jr from 1924 which was funny and i was just reading on wikipedia that um it was originally much longer and after and after a couple of showings a couple of preview showings where the audiences did not laugh keaton sliced it down mercilessly and it turned out to be a dream sequence thing which like i was saying before not what i expected um irie says she can donate later that's fine uh irie says you could always show bigfoot and wild boy to fill up the time leftover well i've i've i've shown every episode of bigfoot and wild boy that i have access to right the last time i did that that mystery tape i bought off a guy on ebay it was all stuff that i already had um but i'm still uh i'm still resentful about that by the way um but yeah once we're done with these movies i won't show anything else it's not like leftover time that we need to fill but uh yeah here's the poster for tonight's uh double feature it's part of my up the copyright series i posted this on the silent cinema subreddit and somebody asked me what does up the copyright mean um and i'm curious i'm curious if anybody watching right now knows what i mean by that does anyone does anyone know what when you say up something you know what that means the guy on uh the guy on the subreddit said that the only time he saw anything like that and he must be from the uk because he said the only time he's ever seen anything like that that were uh posters that said up the ira and he um um he assumed it meant to support the ira but what do you all think uh ira says we are the rerun aficionados yeah anyway when i write up the copyright i mean it in in a sense like uh to hell with the copyright like uh like like up yours yeah it's an insult right ivory it's an archaic uh it's an archaic term that i don't i don't hear anybody use anymore i remember seeing an episode of monty python where they advertised us they had a fake commercial for a series called up the palace which uh which of course is satire which is of course is a sarcasm and you all may remember that that awful mad magazine quote unquote mad magazine movie from the early 80s called up the academy uh those are the only two instances i can think of really uh someone donated something on uh coffee i'll uh i'll take a look at it and see so i can thank the people um someone donated uh i actually don't see i actually don't see the donations let's see let me take a look oh christ donated something thank you christ yeah i see the emails aren't telling me anything yeah christ donated something oh that's a very generous donation there christ yeah it took me a while to to find it um christ says he's been missing for a few weeks so we made up for it well thank you that's uh that's very nice of you yeah so anyway when i say um yeah christ is saying it was 50 he's making sure everybody understands how much he donated but thank you thank you chris that was uh that was very nice of you um i know you can't really spare extra money and i appreciate it uh so yeah when i say up the copyright i mean up yours copyright and i'm glad i'm glad ivory understands that is yeah christ is apologizing said i didn't mean it like that and i didn't mean it to the sound is uh harsh as i sounded just now um i was just trying to say something funny cherry's here cherry just came in good to see a cherry you came in for the last half of the uh buster keaton double feature we're gonna watch go west and i watched the last half of this during uh one of my uh uh silent film marathons a few weeks ago and i was really impressed with it so uh let's go into the tv room and press play this was uh released in 1925 a year later after sherlock jr cherry sherlock jr was strange it wasn't what i expected at all it um it was heavy on the the camera tricks and uh and it was all a dream this wasn't what i expected brown eyes is playing herself okay owner of the diamond bar ranch howard truesdale his daughter cathleen mires go west young man go west harris greely that's a strange little painting some people travel through life making friends wherever they go while others just travel through life how you been cherry in a little town in indiana the social standing with a certain young man had kept him continuously on the move cherry would have seen me on friday when i co-hosted that double feature at mike's channel you still hear mike that's uh that zombie movie he showed was hilarious i'd never seen it before cherry says splendid exhausted cherry's telling me i was fantastic on friday well thank you thank you very much general merchandise what's going on here is he selling his stuff or yeah i guess he is selling his stuff i'll give you a dollar sixty five for the whole business a dollar sixty five wow big spender he keeps his tiny little nod yeah mike says we were both in a good mood with alice and haze on screen i've tried every place in town for job do you suppose there's any use asking you he's wearing like white face paint look at that that's his stuff now dollar sixty five you blew it buster good lord wait what just happened did she put that tag on his jacket i missed it yeah we both enjoyed watching alice and haze zombie alice and haze something i'd i'd never heard of before uh new york central wait what was what was that all about so he ate or was this like a day later what wait i didn't understand that oh so he's in new york so you get into a box car that says new york railroad on it and you end up in new york i don't i don't get it yeah i'm missing something here i'm missing a gag okay he still got half his sausage and bread imagine carrying around a giant sausage for days eating off it day after day pack a camel cigarettes i was standing in line at the utin sf okay he needs to go west Santa Fe but yeah imagine carrying around a hard piece of bread and i i guess this is telling us that time is going by i guess i'm overthinking it but yeah carrying a hard loaf of bread and the and a cold hard sausage and eating off of them days over the course of days must have been awful uh oh what's this potatoes that barrel wasn't even full that was some pretty good footwork okay i guess he was gonna fall out of the train now oh yikes oh this is hurting my back just looking at it oh oh no no no no no this is downright surreal like stream of consciousness whoa jack rabbits brown eyes a cow played by herself poor brown eyes is dried out so whose clothes were those why'd that guy drop okay what kind of trouble is this gonna cause yeah the Marx Brothers came later cherry the Marx Brothers never made a silent film they they came in to film any cowboys today they didn't start making films until the sound era but they were definitely doing live vaudeville during this period for sure I'm working here