Daydreams (1922)

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Buster Keaton is a boy who wants to marry his sweetheart (a pre-stardom Renee Adoree). But her practical father (Joe Keaton -- in real life, Buster's father) wants to know, "How will you support her?" Buster swears he will go to the city to make good, adding, "If I am not a success I'll come back… More Buster Keaton is a boy who wants to marry his sweetheart (a pre-stardom Renee Adoree). But her practical father (Joe Keaton -- in real life, Buster's father) wants to know, "How will you support her?" Buster swears he will go to the city to make good, adding, "If I am not a success I'll come back and shoot myself." The father generously offers to loan him his gun, should that come to pass. And so Buster is off, writing letters home of his adventures. His girl reads that he is working at a hospital. She imagines him as a master surgeon. In reality, he is a veterinary assistant. Then he writes that he is cleaning up on wall street. But he not the tycoon that his girl believes he is -- as a sanitary engineer, Buster is literally "cleaning up." Next he is making his theatrical debut. His girl pictures him on stage as Hamlet. Instead, Buster is actually an extra who is so disruptive that the star haughtily walks off the show. He ends up being chased by the town's police force (in scenes similar in tone to Keaton's two-reeler, Cops, released six months earlier). Finally, a bruised and battered Buster is delivered, via mail, back home to his girl and her father. Obligingly, the father hands the boy a gun, and he and his daughter go into another room while he does the job. But Buster can't even do this right -- he misses. Several fragments of Daydreams are missing and replaced by stills shot while it was being filmed. But it is lucky that the two-reeler exists at all -- the only known copy of it was found in Czechoslovakia. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi