A Pratfall is a Beautiful Thing

That's me doing my backfall that was so high up on my shoulders I easily followed it up into a headspin.


In "My Wonderful World of Slapstick" Buster Keaton wrote " A pratfall is a beautiful thing", and I couldn't agree more. Back in his day pratfalls were a part of any decent physical comedian's repertoire . In case you're not familiar with Buster Keaton he was a master physical comedian and filmmaker of the silent movie era. He, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd are considered to be the best of that era. All three could perform flawless pratfalls but it was Keaton who raised them to an art form.



When I was first learning to do pratfalls I studied all the footage available for all three movie clowns which was not so easy in the early nineties but I managed to find videos here and there from various sources. Pammy taught me my first fall which was the backfall. I didn't own any mats to practice on so the next best thing was our front lawn or on the wooden stage at the children's theater where we were working at the time .

Chad Miller, my best friend and fellow road clown and a really gifted pratfall artist, tried teaching me a 1-0-8, which is kind of hard to describe except to say you basically do a front somersault but don't land on your feet. Check out the video below for a better idea. Chad did his best to teach it to me but he couldn't break it down piece by piece so I could better understand it. He had a knack for falls and simply did it. I tried to study it as it happened and then I would try it. I was about 70% successful. It wasn't pretty but it worked. I only learned the finer points of the 1-0-8 on the road but I'll get to that later.



Keaton's 1-0-8 is 36 seconds into this montage.

Getting back on track, the way Pammy taught me the backfall was to start low and work my way up to a standing position over time as I become comfortable throwing myself backwards to the floor. To start the fall, whether starting low in a squatting position or standing up you spring upward then back . The idea was to land on that meaty part of your shoulders and not your spine. That would be a bad idea and my pratfall career would have come to a quick and painful end. Pratfalls can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing and shouldn't be attempted without professional instruction and supervision.



I discovered that I really enjoyed pratfalls and would constantly practice them. I went from backfalls to frontfalls to stairfalls in the course of six months of daily practice then once I became proficient at them used them on a regular basis in the children's plays we so often performed in.

But it wasn't until I went to Ringling Brothers Clown College where pratfalls were definitely a part of the curriculum that I that I got to see Buster Keaton in action and see some truly amazing pratfalls by this cinematic physical comedian genius. He could do anything. Having done pratfalls since a very young age on the vaudeville stage, his falls seemed so effortless. He was amazing!





And it wasn't until I was well into my first year on the road that I learned how to execute a 1-0-8 properly. There was an acrobat on the show who was the trainer/guardian of a group of young acrobats known as the Chicago Kids. Yanos was his name. I can't recall his last name right now. I'll have to look it up in a program. I knew him from Clown College where he was not teaching acrobatics but doing maintenance work plus other assorted duties not related in any way to his circus training. Anyway, there he was on the road. Back then there was always plenty of time to work between shows on just about anything including pratfalls. Chad and I worked them regularly especially between shows on two and three show days.

One day Chad and I asked Yanos to help me with my 1-0-8's. He set up a safety rig that I held loosely with one hand then I showed him my version of the fall. It needed work and Yanos broke it down for explaining my mistakes and how to correct them to improve the fall. Sure enough when I did it his way it felt like a whole different fall. When done right it feels like you've landed on a cushion. It was weird. I don't fully understand the physics of it but it felt like I was caught in a pocket of air and set down rather than fall down. It was a revelation! Chad was manning a video camera and I've got the footage somewhere.

Pratfalls gave me a feeling of freedom like I could do anything. They were fun, exciting and beautiful. They're slapstick illusions and there's nothing like them. I could never be as good as Buster Keaton or Chaplin or Harold Lloyd but I think I loved doing them as much as they did.