I first saw one of the “Mishaps of Musty Suffer” at the annual, now-defunct Slapsticon festival. I assumed it was another obscure comedy shorts series no one knew about. I found out later that some of these had aired on… Read More »Bob Hoskins and “Musty Suffer”
I make mistakes during shows, and usually I’m the only one who notices. As an artist, often that’s all I come away with from a performance. On Tuesday I used the “toy counter” on the virtual Wurlitzer I often accompany… Read More »When a Whistle Isn’t a Whistle
Running a group of shorts in chronological order at a show isn’t always ideal. For a film class where you’re looking to present a segment of a body of one comedian’s work in the order in which is made, then… Read More »Revisiting What Goes Last on a Laurel & Hardy Silents Show
With a number of new major streaming services launching or about to launch, on top of the established Amazon and Netflix platforms already in people’s homes (and on their phones), as a niche-market distributor I can’t help thinking this is… Read More »Because Not Everything Will Stream
There’s another by-product of my doing a live score for the 1931 Dracula, one that I think is a little more important than the issue of whether or not the music should be added or whether it works. It ties… Read More »Helping Make More Showings of the 1931 Dracula Happen
It may be sacrilege to add music to the 1931 Dracula, and it might also be a great idea. It wasn’t until ten or fifteen minutes into a sound-check/run-through last year that I realized…hey, this is gonna work. The two… Read More »Dracula (1931) – a Horror Movie Without Horror Movie Music
I found myself in a near-trance state, accompanying the 1912 Les amours de la reine Élisabeth (Queen Elizabeth) yesterday at Iris Barry’s History of Film at MoMA. It wasn’t the performance of Sarah Bernhardt that had me under its spell,… Read More »Early Film, and Helping An Audience Know Where to Look
I don’t know what possessed me to do this, but I’ve started a vlog. I may not have the patience or stamina to stick with it, and I value blogging. Making myself write on a regular basis has helped me… Read More »My New Vlog – And Theda Bara
In revisiting one of Chaplin’s best comedy shorts, one of my and many others’ favorites, I noticed something slightly unusual about its title. I wrote my first orchestral score for a silent film – this one – about twenty years… Read More »Scoring a Chaplin Mutual –What’s in a Name?
“It was Blanchette Rockefeller’s piano,” I was told when I was introduced to the instrument in 2003. This was at the Gramercy Theatre on West 23rd Street, and when I arrived was greeted in the auditorium by Ethel Shein. And… Read More »A 1950s Baby Grand for 1910s-1920s Films