Seeing Stars

Spotlights hiss, champagne cascades, and celluloid phantoms waltz across a gargantuan ballroom erected by First National: a studio-confected cosmos where the firmament itself is marquee bulbs. Buster Keaton—stone-faced meteor—navigates this astral junket, gliding past linen-draped constellations that spruik The Pilgrim, The Balloonatic, Day Dreams. Between canapé orbits and orchestra crescendos, each upcoming feature detonates as living vignette: a preacher’s collar flips into guillotine punch-line, a runaway balloon swallows tuxedoed sylphs, a daydreamer’s daisy chain of jobs becomes slapstick odyssey. Publicity becomes poetry; marketing morphs into myth. The banquet’s opulence is both cathedral and carnival, a self-devouring pageant where art advertises art, mirrors face mirrors, and Keaton’s gaze—equal parts bemused and doomed—turns the gala into an existential fun-house.