“I went to high school with Ernie Kovacs!” is one thing you never expect someone to say to you at an event. But that is precisely what a woman who attended the Ernie Kovacs Day event last month said to… Read More »Kovacs Centennial Celebration Held in Trenton
There were two main types of feature-length comedies made during the silent era. There were the slapstick ones, which sputtered initially in the late ‘teens until Chaplin figured out how to make this work, and the ones that didn’t star… Read More »Douglas MacLean – Picking Up Where Douglas Fairbanks Left Off
Douglas Fairbanks spent six years making feature-length light comedies, mainly playing a semi-typical middle-class young man on a series of adventures. Once he made The Mark of Zorro, there was no turning back to that format. The five- or six-reel… Read More »Silent Comedy Features Without All That Slapstick
Trade ads proclaimed Alice Howell as a (or the) female Chaplin. I’d initially thought this was a parallel to Chaplin’s being the number one star. There are similar proclamations about Mabel Normand, and the analogy fits. Mabel was the top… Read More »A Chaplin-esque Alice Howell Comedy
It’s a wonderful thing when a community is able to raise money to save, refurbish and reopen its town’s original movie theater. It’s even more wonderful when the people involved with programming at these theaters are interested in presenting silent… Read More »The Park Theater in Glens Falls NY
My rule of thumb with projection speeds and silent comedy films used to be guided by whether there were audience laughs or not. Later, once I’d done a lot of research into the difference between taking speed and projection speed… Read More »The Speed Is Mutual
FaceBook reminded me this morning that I sent out a press release for Accidentally Preserved: Volume 1 six years ago. A quick hop onto Google shows that the sixth anniversary is the iron or candy one. Both seem appropriate. My… Read More »Iron Or Candy
One of the insights I’ve had into film programming has come from my many years’ experience accompanying silent films. Literally, it’s the experience of accompanying films during a show, and sensing the vibe in the theater. One thing I’ve learned… Read More »In Film Programming 1+1+1+1 Can Add Up To More Than 4
On this episode of the podcast, I discuss meeting an audience’s expectations while staying true to the film’s original culture, choosing a comedy short to show newbies, and playing for a show where someone else’s music credit is onscreen; also,… Read More »ep. 32: meeting audience expectations, tips on choosing a comedy short, and a trip to Nebraska
I’ve seen the famous Ernie Kovacs commercial for Dutch Masters a few dozen times, at least, and never noticed the string quartet. Not that they were in the commercial, the one known as “Haydn”, the one that won Kovacs and… Read More »Stringing Along With Ernie Kovacs for Dutch Masters