Ben Model’s blog
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“Sing ‘Fly, Birdie, Fly’,” Angela Fish is prompted by her father in a scene from “Bell Boy 13”. She sits at the piano, beckons Douglas MacLean to join her on the bench, and launches into the song. What do I play here? There isn’t the usual obligatory shot of the…
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Not All Silent Film Needs A Reality Check
“Silent films were never really silent” is one of the main tenets one hears or says in defense of silent films. The medium’s name itself has stuck since the talkie transition, conjuring up a negative in the imagination of anyone who reads or hears it. The name has also reinforced…
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Douglas MacLean-Spotting Around the Ince Lot
Owners of Blackhawk Films 16mm and 8mm prints of “A Tour of the Thomas Ince Studios” probably had no idea why the smiling gentleman, seen racing to the studio in one segment, keeps popping up throughout the film. His is not a familiar face to silent film fans, so why…
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George H. Reed
There are a number of remarkable things I noticed in the Douglas MacLean comedy “One a Minute” (1921) as I worked on it for the new DVD release. One of them was the character played by African-American actor George Reed, and the way he is portrayed. It’s not the usual…
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The Blue Dot After a Flash Photo
I’ve become interested in the idea of conflated memory. It’s taken me down an interesting rabbit hole with my silent film and Ernie Kovacs research. And now, it appears, it seems to have become part of the social media experience. Some of the stereotypes people know and believe about silent…
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Directed by Terry Jones
John Cleese said a lot of things during three days I spent in Dallas in the first week of December, during various events large and small with him held by the Dallas Videofest. A sidebar to an answer to a question he’d been asked, referencing Terry Jones’ directorial style, stuck…
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Talking About Silents with the New Yorker
My “right brain theory” about silent film resonated with a journalist recently. It doesn’t usually happen, and I was pleased as punch that this core aspect of the Silent Film medium got included in the video profile made by the New Yorker Magazine, posted in October 2019. It’s the notion…
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Pie-Eyed – In Search Of The Pie Fight’s Origins
Several of us classic comedy film fans have been trying to dispel the myth of pie fights and custard pie-throwing in silent movies. I’ve been pondering the myth’s origins for a while and have a theory. No factual or documentary evidence, but it the pieces of the puzzle seem to…
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Enjoying Douglas MacLean – It’s Not Just Me
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…
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Gilbert Gottfried, Silent Film Narrator
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…