Preston Lacy, Chris Kattan to Star in Arbuckle Film Bio August 21, 2007: Actor Preston Lacy has officially signed on to play Roscoe Arbuckle in the upcoming biopic "Life of the Party." "Saturday Night Live" alum Chris Kattan will portray Buster Keaton. Lacy is best known for his appearance in the television show "Jackass" and its follow-up film, "Jackass: The Movie." In conjunction with early production work on the film, Lacy and Kattan will be on hand in November for an evening of Arbuckle/Keaton films at L.A.'s Silent Movie Theater. An Arbuckle historian will also be in attendance, and the team will take Q&A.

	New Arbuckle Film Bio in the Works Feb. 27, 2007: Mad Rabbit Films and Argus Entertainment are in pre-production on a feature film based on Roscoe Arbuckle. Comedian Jim Gaffigan was slated for the starring role, but he has reportedly stepped down from the project. Shooting is scheduled to begin late summer/early fall in Los Angeles. You heard it here first!

	Hey, Roscoe: Come to MoMA! May 16, 2006: New York City's Museum of Modern Art tipped its boater to Arbuckle in a month-long film retrospective titled "Rediscovering Roscoe: The Careers of 'Fatty' Arbuckle." The exhibit concluded May 15. The event showcased an amazing collection of material, including classics from Arbuckle's Keystone and Comique days, as well as films he directed in the 1920s. MoMA also screened three Arbuckle sound shorts from the 1930s: Buzzin' Around, How've You Bean? and Tomalio, films not included on the recently released four-DVD set. According to MoMA's website, the festival represented "an opportunity to not only appreciate Arbuckle as an immensely likeable performer but also to discover his neglected work behind the camera as gag writer and director during his exile, as well as his return to the screen in the sound era." Co-stars in the festival naturally included Mabel Normand, Buster Keaton, Louise Fazenda, Edgar Kennedy, Al St. John, Eddie Cantor and Charlie Chaplin. The retrospective was divided into 12 programs, most spotlighting about a half-dozen comedy shorts. Arbuckle scholars and experts introduced each film collection. "Rediscovering Roscoe" was organized by curator Ron Magliozzi and film historians Steve Massa and Ben Model.

	Arbuckle-Inspired Album Snags Grammy Nod January 3, 2006: Dave Douglas's Arbuckle tribute album, "Keystone" has received a Grammy nomination in the category of Best Contemporary Jazz Album. "Keystone" features 11 new compositions inspired by Arbuckle's early film work. The high-tech "Keystone" is also a DVD, featuring on its flip side a video copy of "Fatty and Mabel Adrift," as well as scenes from "Fatty's Tintype Tangle," both with Douglas's musical accompaniment. The album was released in September under Douglas's label, Greenleaf Music. "Keystone" is joined by four other nominees in the category: "Soulgrass," "The Way Up," "The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance Of The Infidel," and "Momentum." The 48th Annual Grammy Awards will be presented in Los Angeles on February 8 and will air on CBS at 9pm EST. Click here to be transported to the official, overdone, hard-to-navigate Grammy site

	A Jolly Good Fellow... October 4, 2005: Arbuckle best friend and protégé Buster Keaton was born on this day in 1895. Arbuckle had many friends, but none were more loyal than Keaton, who helped his pal find work during the dark period following Arbuckle's acquittal. After Arbuckle's death, Keaton kept a framed picture of his friend in his den. Wrote Keaton's wife, Eleanor: "Buster loved Arbuckle, and the two remained the best of friends until Arbuckle died in 1933." Happy 110th, Mr. K., and give our regards to Roscoe.

Musician Dave Douglas

Arbuckle Inspires
New Jazz CD/DVD

September 5, 2005: Jazz trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas has announced a September 20 release date of a new jazz CD honoring our favorite film comedian.

The album, titled "Keystone," will feature 11 new compositions inspired by Arbuckle's early film work. Utilizing a new technology, the disk will also be a DVD, and the other side will feature "Fatty and Mabel Adrift," as well as scenes from "Fatty's Tintype Tangle," both with Douglas's musical accompaniment. Douglas's label, Greenleaf Music, will release the album.

According to last Sunday's New York Times, "Keystone" grew out of a collaboration between Douglas and The Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill, NY, which had approached the musician about writing film scores. Douglas told the Times that he chose Arbuckle's work because the pacing meshed with his musical style.

But Douglas added that the attraction grew when he realized to what degree Arbuckle had suffered injustice. "It hit on my sense of social consciousness and made me want to be part of setting something right for Roscoe Arbuckle," Douglas told the Times.

Douglas and his band will perform October 1 at the Paramount Center, playing pieces from "Keystone" over screenings of four Arbuckle films, including "Fatty and Mabel Adrift" and "Fatty's Tintype Tangle."

A New York City performance is slated for Feb. 18.

Dave Douglas's Greenleaf Music label

	August 31: On This Day In History... August 31, 2005: The year 1887 would be a significant one in the history of film. On August 31 of that year, Thomas Edison received a patent for the "kinetoscope," an early projector prototype that let people see "movies" for the first time. Five months earlier, of course, Roscoe C. Arbuckle was born in Smith Center, Kansas. Due to their fragile nitrate base, most of the early kinetoscope films no longer exist. But because Edison also created paper copies of individual frames, early kinetoscopes (such as "Fred Ott's Sneeze") can still be viewed today. (You can view "Fred Ott's Sneeze" at this website)

Laughsmith Exec Prepares New Arbuckle Book, Documentary

July 2005: Laughsmith Entertainer Producer Paul E. Gierucki is working on a new book and documentary about the life and work of Roscoe Arbuckle.

The Laughsmith website reports that the documentary will be a three-part series titled "Arbuckle." Its tagline: "Before Lloyd. Before Chaplin. Before Keaton. America had another slapstick master."

Film historian John A. Coryell reports on the site that "Arbuckle" will chronicle Arbuckle's life and career and will likely be released in conjunction with Gierucki's book, currently titled "Not Guilty: The Last Days of Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle."

Coryell writes that the book was some seven years in the making and will "feature hundreds of previously unpublished photos, letters and documents from Arbuckle's personal collection as well as rare interviews, posters, lobby cards and newly discovered memorabilia which detail Arbuckle's life and his virtually forgotten cinematic work following a 1922 Hays Office ban from appearing in motion pictures."

About the documentary, Coryell writes, that it "will also bring to light previously undocumented information and films which, for the better part of a century, have remained essentially unknown to the public and film historians alike."

Stay tuned...

	The Boy of Summer: Arbuckle Books Hit Shelves July 24, 2005: Publishers released paperback editions of two Arbuckle books this month, a sign that a nationwide bout of "Roscoe-mania" is only around the corner. Bloomsbury's July 5 release of "I, Fatty," Jerry Stahl's popular fictionalized account of the Arbuckle story, coincides with McFarland & Company's release of Stuart Oderman's 1994 tome, "Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle: A Biography of the Silent Film Comedian, 1887-1933." Whether Oderman has included any new material in the re-release is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the book features a new whimsical color cover--a vast improvement over the unadorned, scholarly looking original. (Amazon reports the paperback has 255 pages, while the hardback has 245; this could indeed reflect some modest additions [a la Lauren Bacall's "And Then Some"], or it could just be a function of bigger type.) As of July 24, Stahl's book ranks 45,201 in Amazon sales, while the lesser-known (and apparently as-yet unavailable) Oderman work ranks 121,134.

	Never 'Forgotten': Arbuckle DVD Set Dazzles May 24, 2005: This four-disk set is a treasure-trove of Arbuckle material, some of it newly (and brilliantly) restored, all of it lovingly compiled by a gifted team of restoration artists and historians led by Paul Gierucki. Ten and a half hours' worth of footage includes Arbuckle's early work at Keystone, film from his Paramount years, and rarely seen works from his post-scandal period, when he directed under the name of William Goodrich. $44.96 at Amazon.com

	Turner Classic Movies Spotlights Arbuckle April 4, 2005: Turner Classic Movies today saluted Arbuckle with an afternoon lineup of 14 films never before shown on the network. The salute, which TCM called "Spotlight on Fatty Arbuckle," was part of the network's month-long "April Fools Festival," featuring classic comedies every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in April. Other featured performers include Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy. All but three of the featured films focused on Arbuckle's work as an actor and director at Keystone Studios, where he was under contract from 1913 to 1916. Two of the three remaining pictures, "Fatty at Coney Island" (1917) and "Love" (1919), were produced by Arbuckle's Paramount-affiliated production company, Comique Film Corporation. The final film, a five-reeler called "Leap Year" (1921), was produced by Famous Players-Lasky and was never released in the United States due to the 1921 scandal that ruined Arbuckle's career. The Arbuckle films began airing at 1pm EST with "Fatty Joins the Force" (1913). The other 13 films followed in a block and included "A Flirt's Mistake" (1914), "The Knockout" (1914), "The Rounders" (1914), "Leading Lizzie Astray" (1914), "Mabel and Fatty's Wash Day" (1915), "Fatty and Mabel at the San Diego Exposition" (1915), "Wished on Mabel" (1915), "Fatty's Tintype Tangle" (1915), "He Did and He Didn't" (1916), "The Waiter's Ball" (1916), "Fatty at Coney Island" (1917), "Love" (1919), and "Leap Year" (1921). The Arbuckle festival concluded at 6:45pm EST, just as people were returning home from work.