The Goat & Why Worry? with Jeff Rapsis

Composer Jeff Rapsis performs live piano scores to two classic silent comedies starring Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. 

About The Goat (1921)

Dirs. Buster Keaton, Malcolm St. Clair (23min)

Buster Keaton stars in and co-directs this two-reel short from his second year as a starring comedian. A simple premise once again leads to a lot of gags, and Keaton continues to demonstrate his developing abilities as a film maker.

Due to an accident, an innocent and unsuspecting Buster Keaton winds up with his face on a WANTED poster…

About Why Worry? (1923)

Dirs. Fred Newmeyer, Sam Taylor (1hr 3min)

Seeking a cure for his multitude of mostly imaginary ailments, wealthy hypochondriac Harold Van Pelham (Harold Lloyd) takes a tropical vacation to the South American island of “Paradiso.” There, rather than the rest and relaxation he was expecting, he finds himself in the middle of a political revolution, winds up in jail, and joins forces with the amiable giant Colosso (the towering John Aasen, who was cast through a nationwide search for an actor of proper stature) to try to quell the unrest. 

The last of the features Harold Lloyd made with producer Hal Roach, Why Worry succeeds as both a wildly inventive slapstick showcase and an almost surreal satire of American interventionism. - The Criterion Collection

ABOUT JEFF RAPSIS

Jeff Rapsis is a writer/editor, educator, and also a composer and performer who specializes in creating live musical scores for silent film screenings. He does other things, too. Specific talents include an ability to place coins on either elbow and then catch them in the same hand before they hit the floor, though sometimes he misses and the coins go flying just everywhere. He's also an award-winning journalist, newspaper publisher, and owner of multiple dogs. Visit his website here.