Author: Ben Model

  • Oct 25: Harold Lloyd in “Dr. Jack”

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    Ben Model

    Dr. Jack, along with Keaton’s The Haunted House, was our Halloween offering at the Silent Clowns series. I dressed for the occasion, donning my saddle shoes and straw boater. (BTW, best place to get your own saddle shoes is muffys.com — they make saddle shoes for all the Broadway shows and tours, and they’re reasonably…

  • profile on me in The Epoch Times

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    Ben Model

    Last Friday, I got an email from a reporter from the Epoch Times, asking me for an interview on silent films and silent film music. She had a short deadline and found my website online, and could she interview me on Skype because she was in Bulgaria. Sure. I have a Skype account, fired it…

  • Oct 21-22: a pair of Scandinavian films

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    Ben Model

    Oct 21 and 22 found me back at MoMA’s Bartos theater accompanying a pair of films from my one of my favorite corners of the planet, Scandinavia. Afgrunden and Ingeborg Holm were screened, both in 35mm prints. MoMA’s print of The Abyss is okay; there’s a bit of decomp, but it’s complete. The print of…

  • Oct 17 – “The General” in Lake Champlain area

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    Ben Model

    Oct 16 – Traveled to Essex, NY for a show (on 10/17) of “The General” (DVD projection of the new Kino disc). Could’ve flown to Burlington VT on JetBlue and taken a ferry across Lake Champlain but, let me tell ya folks, Amtrak is the only way to fly. Both the trip up and the…

  • Oct 14-15: D.W. Griffith Biographs @MoMA; press interview

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    Ben Model

    October 13 and 14 found me at MoMA playing for a program of Griffith Biograph shorts, as part of Charles Silver’s series. The Weds show was in Bartos, on the Modus digital, and the Thurs show was in Titus 2, on the Steinway. (The T2 instrument, BTW, was Blanchette Rockefeller’s piano and had been reconditioned…

  • Oct 11 – Silent Clowns: new digs, fun shorts

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    Ben Model

    Sunday Oct 11 was our maiden voyage at the Arclight Theatre. Our audience really loved the new, more intimate space and the films looked great in there. Piano is an old Somebody & Someone upright, which I’d tuned a week or two before and seems to have held. The action is a little loose and…

  • Another happy altscore.com customer

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    Ben Model

    Over the weekend, someone bought and downloaded my piano score MP3 that synchs with the Kino DVD/VHS of Sherlock Jr. with Buster Keaton. I opened my virtual mailbag this morning to find this kind note: I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your making the “Sherlock Jr.” piano score available. I watched…

  • article about “Metropolis” in Queens Gazette

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    Ben Model

    There’s an article in the Oct 14 issue of the Queens Gazette about last week’s show of Metropolis that I spotted online. Click here to read the article. The writer did a nice job, and quoted me on a couple of things and mentioned the Silent Clowns series as well.

  • Oct 10 – “Cat and the Canary” in Brooklyn

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    Ben Model

    Sat, Oct 10 — the first silent film program in this bi-monthly series sponsored by the Brooklyn chapter of the AGO was sparsely attended, unfortunately. The people who came, however, got to hear that magnificent instrument in action. The acoustics in the church are great, and I had fun using the Echo ranks — which…

  • Oct 8 – “Metropolis” at QTIP

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    Ben Model

    October 8, 7:30pm — after playing for the Melies/Zecca matinee program (second time, on Thurs), I headed out to QTIP, or Queens Theatre in the Park for this screening of Metropolis that was part of a weekly series that AMMI was doing in a partnership with the theater. The theater is located inside Flushing Meadows…