Buster Keaton to have a comic slant. After Keaton's successful work with Arbuckle, Schenck gave him his own production unit, Buster Keaton Productions. He made a series of two-reel comedies, including "One Week" (1920), "The Playhouse" (1921), "Cops" (1922), and "The Electric House" (1922). Keaton then moved to full-length features. Keaton's writers included Clyde Bruckman, Joseph Mitchell, and Jean Havez, but the most ingenious gags were generally conceived by Keaton himself. Comedy director Leo McCarey, recalling the freewheeling days of making slapstick comedies, said, "All of us tried to steal each other's gagmen. But we had no luck with Keaton, because he
Buster Keaton actors would phonetically memorize the foreign-language scripts a few lines at a time and shoot immediately after. This is discussed in the TCM documentary "Buster Keaton: So Funny it Hurt", with Keaton complaining about having to shoot lousy films not just once, but three times. Keaton was so demoralized during the production of 1933's "What! No Beer?" that MGM fired him after the filming was complete, despite the film being a resounding hit. In 1934, Keaton accepted an offer to make an independent film in Paris, "Le Roi des Champs-Élysées". During this period, he made another film, in England, "The