Author: Ben Model

  • My Scoring Evolves

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    Ben Model
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    I can usually recognize the accompaniment styles of a number of my colleagues when I hear them on a home video or broadcast. A few months ago I caught a silent on TCM and didn’t recognize the pianist. Which was weird. Because I was pretty sure I’d scored that film for home video and for…

  • Why Wasn’t This Advertised More?

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    As silent film fans, we’re past the point of going to a show, seeing empty seats and blaming the venue for not doing enough to get people in. There’s no budget for advertising for silent film shows, really, and ads aren’t necessarily going to be effective anyway. But there is something we can do about…

  • Singer Peter Hanley – Under-Documented Kovacs Ensemble Player

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    Ben Model
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    Ernie Kovacs show ensemble cast members turn up out of seemingly nowhere in the TV-ography of the shows. Ernie’s penchant for casting or hiring people through unusual channels and based on a personal reaction runs throughout his career. The trajectory of singer Peter Hanley is harder than most to identify. Peter Hanley was hired as…

  • How Do You Replace Kukla, Fran and Ollie?

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    Ben Model
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    The Nation’s First Exposure to Ernie Kovacs Was in a Summer Replacement In 1951 After hosting a daily 7-9am wake-up show as well as a number of other programs — cooking, fashion, quiz — for local NBC affiliate WPTZ, Ernie Kovacs got the chance at a network show. He’d been on the air a few…

  • Silent Film Is Something That Happens

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    Ben Model
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    There are three key elements that make up what Silent Film truly is. It’s the overlapping presence of these live factors, at a show, that make the full experience. It’s the reason I refer to Silent Film as a medium and not a genre. It’s a medium that’s a close relation to sound film, but…

  • The Nairobi Trio: Behind the Masks

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    Ben Model
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    The best-known and most-seen version of Ernie Kovacs’ famous “Nairobi Trio” sketch is one shot on videotape. It was used in an episode of the 1977 series “The Best of Ernie Kovacs”, and it’s on YouTube. I’d always thought the trio members were Ernie, Jolene Brand (keys) and Bobby Lauher (mallets) on that ABC special.…

  • Missing the Shot in Sherlock, Jr.’s Pool Game

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    Ben Model
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    [This was originally posted on May 15, 2019, and was revised on May 18 to correct some factual errors brought to my attention by a colleague.] The pool game in Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. is one of the film’s many memorable sequences. For many years, one of the trick shots in the game was only…

  • Audience Preservation: Silent Movies as Family Programming

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    Ben Model
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    One of my favorite sounds at a silent film show is that of kids’ laughter over the laughs of the adults in the theater. People bring their children or grandchildren to silent film shows from time to time, and it’s a wonderful thing. These are general audience shows that are part of a venue’s film…

  • Speedy Has Quite The Hold On An Audience

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    Ben Model
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    A number of personal, “tone-poem” slice-of-life films were made at the tail end of the silent era. The ones often mentioned are titles like Sunrise (1927), The Crowd (1928) and Lonesome (1928). Even von Stroheim’s The Wedding March (1928) has a very thin plot, and is almost a meditation on the courtship of his and…

  • Silent Filmmaking Then and Now

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    Ben Model
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    Is Silent Movie “Cosplay” Necessary? I don’t spend a lot of time watching silent films made recently or any time after sound came in. Maybe I should. In pondering the idea of making one myself, I’ve often wondered how important it is that the film look like it was made during the “silent era”. Silent…