At the end of the nineties I had a silent comedy phase. I went back and rented every Chaplin and Keaton movie I could find and read both of their autobiographies. I read every bit of commentary I could about that era, and even took clowning classes to get a sense of how you someone can tell stories without words.
During this time, I wrote two full length biographical pieces, a screenplay called Buster Keaton's American Life and a play called Chaplin and Keaton on the Set of Limelight. I like them both, but I might never be able to do anything with them due to the legal difficulties of using real historical figures. I may post them here at some point.
What could be done, and something that really should be done, is for someone to do silent comedies today. Just because sound in the movies had become the standard in the 1930's doesn't mean that silent comedies should ever have gone away completely. My contention is that in the age of YouTube, someone who could make modern silent comedies could really make a mark. You don't have to set the characters back in the time of Chaplin and Keaton either. They could be set in the present day. You'd start, like they did back then, with shorts and then if they gain popularity build on them to try and tell more complete stories until you got to feature lenth.
With that I'm posting a silent comedy short screenplay that I wrote a while back but recently, about people trying to get to work, called Road Rage.
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