, based on his semi-autobiographical novel. He also wrote and starred in the Emmy-winning Your Show of ShowsBut in 1968, the duo set to work rewriting an old script at Columbia with Aaron Reuben. “What we were going for really was authenticity. We wanted to make it look like the era [as best] we could,” says Van Dyke, who even visited a couple of silent-film actors at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital "just to talk and see what life was like.
The rest of the film, says Reiner, is "melodrama," chronicling the rise and fall of fictional silent comic Billy Bright, who was his own worst enemy. Even 50 years after its release, it’s a bit difficult to watch Van Dyke play such a jerk. A womanizer — he even cheats on his wife when she’s pregnant — and an alcoholic, Bright runs roughshod over everyone in his life.
Reiner says there is a lot of Keaton in Bright, though "there were other comedians who had the same problem he did." Keaton battled alcoholism after his career stumbled when he moved to MGM in the late 1920s. His ex-wife, Natalie Talmadge, changed their two sons' last names to hers and wouldn’t allow Keaton to see them.
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