You'd never guess this was a D.W. Griffith short if somebody didn't tell you. Griffith's shorts usually weren't THAT short, and they were also usually dramatic. Here Griffith shows his comic side and a Keatonesque flair before there is such a thing as Keatonesque.
People are sitting in a movie theatre complete with musical accompaniment when not only do some people come in late, but the women have on some ridiculous headgear. Maybe it was appropriate for the time. A commotion is stirred, and finally a way is found to make them remove their hats that, again, I say was Keatonesque. You have a film within a film (it's what the people are watching), a mechanical device that is the hero, and then some guy with an obvious false nose and mustache that just happens to be Mack Sennett, early employer of Roscoe Arbuckle, who was the guy who actually got Keaton interested in film.
People are sitting in a movie theatre complete with musical accompaniment when not only do some people come in late, but the women have on some ridiculous headgear. Maybe it was appropriate for the time. A commotion is stirred, and finally a way is found to make them remove their hats that, again, I say was Keatonesque. You have a film within a film (it's what the people are watching), a mechanical device that is the hero, and then some guy with an obvious false nose and mustache that just happens to be Mack Sennett, early employer of Roscoe Arbuckle, who was the guy who actually got Keaton interested in film.