Author: Ben Model

  • Enjoying Douglas MacLean – It’s Not Just Me

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    Ben Model
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    On Tuesday night I rolled the dice and presented yet another obscure, unknown silent comedy film I’d taken a liking to at a show I was accompanying. Sure, I liked the wacky adventures and Fairbanksian enthusiasm of Douglas MacLean in Bell Boy 13, but would the audience? It was very satisfying to me that within…

  • Gilbert Gottfried, Silent Film Narrator

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    About a month ago I went from being a fan and regular listener of Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast to being a guest on the show. Josh Mills and I were on the show’s 294th episode to talk about Ernie Kovacs. The podcast aired on SiriusXM last week, and became available for everyone else as…

  • My Favorite Silent Film to Accompany Is…

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    The question I am asked most often at show Q&A’s, social situations and in press interviews is one I still don’t know how to answer. “Do you have a favorite film that you like to accompany?” After 38 years of accompanying silent movies I am still caught off-guard trying to answer this. The truth is…

  • Undercranking Study: Buster Keaton Trails a Suspect

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    Buster Keaton, along with Larry Semon, made the best use of taking different shots at different cranking speeds within a scene. This part of the Silent Film language was available and used by everyone in the silent era. Since the film was running faster in projection, mixing cranking speeds is undetectable. Action stars like Douglas…

  • Author! Author!

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    I think it might be useful that DVD authoring be taught in film schools and film preservation programs. Not to everybody, and not as a requirement. But it would be a useful elective to offer, or as a sub-section of another course. Because until the streaming world offers a distribution medium as accessible to independents…

  • Thanks for Reading My Blog in 2019

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    The year is winding down and I wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading my blog during the past several months. I’ve gotten a lot out of blogging, and found that what I’d heard about blogging from two podcasts I listen to is true. Most importantly, for me anyway, it’s helped me…

  • There Ain’t No “Santa Claus” Silent Film

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    If a venue and I are looking at a December date, I get asked the same thing other film accompanists get asked. Is there a good Christmas silent movie we can show? It’s easy to program to the calendar with films from the 1940s onward. There are a couple perennial Xmas favorites, thanks to Laurel…

  • Four Seconds

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    The pause between songs on a record album or CD is usually four or five seconds. I don’t know how this was determined back in the early days of long playing records, but it is just enough time to mentally take a deep breath before the next track begins. I’ve found the same is true…

  • “Little Old New York” Released on DVD

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    Marion Davies’ 1923 Historical Rom-Com-Drama is Now Avaiable in a New DVD When Marion Davies’ own collection of nitrate 35mm prints of her films came to the Library of Congress in the 1950s, she couldn’t possibly have predicted that her silent films would ever be available again to the general public. The motion picture elements…

  • Arthur Kleiner – Mid-Century Silent Film Pianist

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    Ben Model
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    On Wednesday, Nov 20 at 7pm, there will be a presentation at MoMA about Arthur Kleiner, silent film accompanist. It’s a name classic film fans aren’t familiar with, but he was “the sound of the silents” at the museum for the first three decades of its movie showings. In 1939, four years after the founding…