The good news is that Keaton was experienced at stunt work, so he knew what he was doing. Keaton set up several cameras in the surrounding area to ensure that he had the right angle. The town of Cottage Grove declared the day of filming a holiday so thousands of locals could watch the action. The infamous stunt involved a steam train traveling across a burning bridge, and the goal was for the trestle to collapse in just the right spot so the train would fall spectacularly into the Row River. In the process, he had to deal with a range of issues, including lawsuits, forest fires, and budget problems. Keaton was heavily involved in the production and did everything from writing the script to directing the stunts, according to Alta. Most of the movie was filmed in Cottage Grove, Oregon, where an entire town was constructed just for the movie. The General was a comedy/romance/drama about the Civil War. The first and only shot had to be perfection. Keaton didn’t have the budget to build a new bridge, procure a new locomotive, or do the stunt more than once. However, it had to be recorded in just one shot. Studio executives obviously had confidence in the 30-year-old’s abilities because they gave him the go-ahead to shoot such an expensive scene. In today’s dollars that would be the equivalent of more than $600,000-making it the most expensive stunt in the history of silent film.īy the time Keaton made the movie, he had already cemented himself as a stunt master alongside icons such as Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. The spectacular stunt cost $42,000 to make-a huge amount at the time. In 1926, comedian, writer, and director Buster Keaton made a film titled The General, which featured a stunt involving an actual train falling from a burning bridge into a river.
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