4 Buster Keaton Quotes on Stunts

Buster Keaton quotes on stunts

2. The funny thing about our act is that dad gets the worst of it, although I'm the one who apparently receives the bruises . . . the secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment.

12. I said, 'how am I gonna keep from flinching?' He said, 'Look away from me. When I say turn, it'll be there.' He put my head where my feet were!

34. Buster Keaton... will be around forever, because it's unlikely that human beings will ever go out-of-date the way special effects do. Keaton running and clambering onto a moving Civil War train in The General is infinitely more exciting than Christian Slater jumping from a helicopter onto a speeding locomotive in Broken Arrow because what Keaton does is real, and the camera captures and preserves his feats for posterity. In Broken Arrow we never see Slater (or the stuntman, for that matter) leaping from the helicopter to the train. Instead there are several cuts, and we must suspend our disbelief and assume that the feat has been accomplished. Which means that it's no feat at all.

35. What Keaton did physically, is actually quite startling when you discover that he did all of his own stunts... The famous one is when the house falls. He had to stand on a mark. I'm told it was a nail - if he moved an inch to one side he would have been crushed to death.