The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 46

D14. SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 2001 NA LOS ANGELES TIMES Latino Rap: Radio-Friendly Boost to Morale Keaton: New Book on Comedian 7 ft skK LORI SHEPLERLos Angeles Times RODDY McDOWEU. Buster and Eleanor Keaton at their ranch in LA. in 1965. come a performer, he might have been a civil engineer, and that sensibility shows in his use of inanimate objects as integral parts of elaborate gags often filmed with spectacular natural scenery as a backdrop.

He said that "no man can be a genius in slap-shoes and a flat hat," but these photos make a good argument against that. Keaton was born with the movies in 1895. He learned his timing and honed his comic instincts in vaudeville, beginning at age 5 as the youngest member of the Three Keatons. His parents, Joe and Myra, used their child as a prop; he was, Vance writes, "routinely thrown about the stage, and occasionally into the audience, by his irascible father." New parents are urged not to try this at home. On the bright side, it did teach the young Keaton balance and agility and made him fearless as a stuntman in his own films.

He also learned that the more stoic and serious he appeared throughout his ordeals, the harder the audience laughed. The stone face with eyes the size of hard-boiled quail's eggs became his trademark. When asked what was his philosophy, he answered, "To be funny." "Buster Keaton Remembered" is a beautifully produced appreciation and celebration of a genius in slap-shoes and a flat hat who was funny indeed. Vance's descriptions of Keaton's films bring them to life, and laughter to the reader, and his sketch of Keaton's life makes a legend into a real person with obvious if unelucidated flaws. Eleanor Keaton died in 1998, just' after she completed her part of the work on the book.

Vance tells us that she wanted to write a tribute to the man she adored and admired. He helped her to do that while producing a fresh look at an actor whose ability to make us laugh is undiminished. some of his rap artists from left, Mathis and Van Morrison, Heller remembers the exact date when he and Eazy-E founded Ruthless Records: March 3, 1987. "People laughed at me," he recalls. "They thought it was the craziest thing they had ever heard But it was absolutely the most important period of my career, because I feel that gangsta rap was the most important movement since the beginning or rock 'n roll.

"N.WA (artists) were the first great rap audio documentarians of the problems in our inner cities. The fact that we had this new art form called rap, gave them the stage to present these problems to white, middle-class America." Heller said he structured Hit A Lick just like Ruthless, giving artists, for example, complete creative license and -24-hour access to the studios. Whether he can duplicate that success at Hit A Lick remains a big question. The demand for Latino rap is not exactly a groundswell yet. Gonzalez is aware of the chal Continued from Dl this week.

Not a smash, but enough to boost the morale of the struggling company. "We're thrilled," says affectionately called Pops by his crew. "It's very difficult to come in cold turkey and sell a movement, but this success will draw national attention and set the stage for the records we have coming." Hit A Lick is the only Latino rap label with a stable of signed artists, he said. They include two pioneer Latino rappers Frost, formerly known as Kid Frost from the 1990 hit "La Raza," and Mellow ManAce who had the bilingual hit "Menti-rosa" the same year. Rounding out the roster are a 20-year-old rapper-composer who goes by LiT Blacky, and gangsta rap groups Eastside Ghetto and Big Shots With Malice and ALT.

And don't forget MWA, a Mexican takeoff on Heller's notorious Compton group. "Maybe we don't have the exposure yet," says Heller, "but we don't have the competition either." The Hit A Lick concept originally came from Pablito, the label's streetwise president who was so good at building low-rider cars he exported Impalas to Japan. He hooked up with producer Gonzalez, a former deejay and music mixer (known as Tony who worked with Heller at Ruthless Records, which launched N.WA Pablito, a Mexican American, and Gonzalez, a Cuban American, designed and remodeled the current Hit A Lick facility and invited the semiretired Heller to come on board in the spring of 2000. "I'm going to go for it," Heller recalls saying after seeing the setup. "I think I can do this one more time." Heller had backed away from the music business after his tumultuous relationship with N.WA, which detonated the explosive gangsta rap movement with the groundbreaking 1989 album, "Straight Outta Compton." The band hailed by critics but condemned by others for its violent lyrics and anti-authority messages broke up in a hemorrhage of bad blood.

After leaving N.WA in a dispute over money, Ice Cube lashed out at the group and its manager Heller in the 1991 rap song, "No Vaseline." Heller was also involved in a bitter legal battle with the estate of Ruthless' co-founder Eric Wright, alias. Eazy-E, who died of AIDS in 1995 at 31. That suit was settled in Continued from Dl trolled improviser. MGM turned him into a scripted comic, and he disliked these pictures because they came at the expense of comedy and at the promotion of farce. As Eleanor Keaton and Jeffrey Vance point out in "Buster Keaton Remembered," he disdained farce "because it is based on simple misunderstanding or mistaken identity, which in a legitimate story would be quickly resolved." He responded to this misuse of his talent as his father had handled his own distinct problems, by drinking.

He behaved erratically; his absences delayed filming; his first marriage deteriorated. Despite the money he made for MGM, in 1933, Louis B. Mayer canceled his contract. The next seven years were lost in the fog of a disastrous second marriage, more drinking and a pile of forgettable short comedies and second-banana parts. Eleanor Norris saved his life, though, when she became the third Mrs.

Buster Keaton in 1940. A contract dancer in the MGM musicals of the late 1930s and '40s, she met Keaton in 1938 while learning to play bridge, his lifelong passion. Keaton's first two marriages were doomed by incompatibility and his heavy drinking, but the third endured and was a happy one. It was Eleanor who helped him straighten himself and try to reclaim his past talent. "Buster Keaton Remembered," written partly from Mrs.

Keaton's recollections by Vance, a film archivist and silent-film historian, is an unabashed attempt to show a new generation of film enthusiasts what they missed and to remind those who have seen Keaton's films how special he was. Each of the large-format book's 225 beautifully reproduced black-and-white photos does as much as a still can to capture Keaton's whimsy and artistry. (Some of the most iconic pictures of Keaton, including perhaps' the most famoushim leaning out perpendicular to the ship's rigging and gazing out to sea through binoculars in "The Navigator" never appeared in the films they supposedly represented.) He used everything from locomotives and steamships to prefab-. ricated houses as the mechanisms for his perfectly timed gags. Keaton once said that had he not be- 4 Scoop DeVille, Li Blacky and Frost.

lenges. But he notes that he produced the hits for Mellow Man and Frost more than 10 years ago, "when people still were saying the country wouldn't listen to Latinos on radio." Frost believes he was ahead of his time. But he's none too pleased with the current state of Latino rap, which got "stuck in cliches about things we don't have. Chicano rappers are talking about hitting switches in low-riders, then you see the dude and he's in a broken-down Hyundai." Frost, whose real name is Arturo Molina, is now a father of three: and lives in Pasadena. His 13-year-old son is also an aspiring rapper who calls himself Scoop DeVilld, just a kid in diapers when his heavily tattooed dad had his hit.

"It's time to start new, with the' young Latin age group," says the. teenager, lounging at Hit A Lick one recent afternoon with his father and fellow rappers. Heller is ready too. "I was just waiting for something where I could tell my friends I did it again, "he says. 11 3 Jerry Heller, second from left, with December of 1999.

Heller is still entangled in another legal dispute over what he considers his false and misleading portrayal in "Have Gun Will Travel," a book about Death Row Records written by Ronin Ro and published in 1998 by Doubleday. A trial court threw out claims of defamation and invasion of privacy made by Heller and two other plaintiffs. That ruling was partly reversed earlier this year in reference to one allegedly false statement made against Heller. A new trial date has been set for Dec. 12, Heller said.

"Maybe it was a hiatus," says Heller of his retreat from the industry. "Maybe I was burned out. But retirement is so final. In my mind, I don't think I was ever out of the music business for good." Despite past controversies, Heller's new partners express faith. "I know what kind of gentleman this is," Gonzalez says.

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