Dave Douglas on WBGO - Reimagining Silent Film with Keystone - IMN

Dave Douglas on WBGO - Reimagining Silent Film with Keystone

Wednesday June 04, 2008

WBGO, June 4, 2008 – Before movies featured synchronized sound, California’s Keystone Studios made comedic film shorts. Originally, theatergoers would watch these movies to the sound of the house Wurlitzer organ.

Fast forward to now. You’re watching the same silent film, but this time, the live accompaniment comes from a jazz ensemble with a turntablist. Chances are, that band is Keystone, and the leader is trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas.

“When I started this band, the idea was to take these silent black-and-white films from the teens and re-imagine the score,” Douglas says. “I thought that the images could be served better by something a little more 21st-century, if you will.”

Re-Animating Buster Keaton

In 2005, Keystone’s first release showed that silent film characters could move to modern, groove-based instrumental music. The comedy stars — a bouncy Buster Keaton, a frenetic Fatty Arbuckle, even the bathing beauty Mabel Norman — all danced to a different beat. Douglas wrote music that did not match the movies scene-by-scene. Instead, he complemented them in a musical way.

“I had no idea what the plot was,” says Douglas. “They improvised quite a bit, and then they would put the film together at the end. They weren’t as concerned with a rigorous linear narrative concept. And jazz is a lot like that.”

Keystone recently released Moonshine, a live recording during a tour stop in Ireland. The name comes from a 1918 Keystone film fragment, starring Keaton and Arbuckle.

“They went out West, and they made these little vignettes,” Douglas says. “I don’t know if they had a full script in mind, but they shot all these different scenes of themselves falling off cliffs, assembling armies, and rescuing girls. The quality of the filmmaking is very rich for me, and that’s what inspires me as a musician to get up and write some new music for that.”

Listen to, and read excerpts from, the entire interview/piece here

I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (live)	7:32	Dave Douglas
Fats (live)	3:36	Dave Douglas

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