Ben Model’s blog

  • I know, I know…haven’t posted in a long time. This is gonna be a quickie, ’cause I’m running off to Culpeper and D.C. for a weekend of shows. Steamboat Bill Jr at the LOC Packard Campus theater in Culpeper VA on Sat 7/25 and The Gaucho at the NGA on…

  • June 18 — My brains and time are primarily occupied with any and all work on finishing up the sheet music book these days, and I’ve managed to wedge in time to check out a piano for MoMA’s Bartos theater, and have been working out details for my August shows…

  • June 7 — I was hired by Kino in March to record a score for the silent film of Sherlock Holmes (1922) starring John Barrymore, and got my promo copy of the Barrymore box set that it’s part of the other day. Packaging and esp the artwork is very nice,…

  • Our first four Cruel and Unusual Comedy shows at MoMA have gone extremely well. We’ve had great houses – I’d guestimate 200+ people, and lots of new (and younger!) faces – at every program. Eileen Bowser came to our first show, and will be guest speaker at our last show…

  • May 19 – Steve and I were on the Leonard Lopate Show this afternoon. This was my third time on the show; I’d been on (solo) in 2006 for the MoMA Arbuckle series, and in 2007 as sidekick to Jessica Rosner plugging Kino’s Reel Baseball DVD (which she produced). I…

  • May 18 — Steve Massa and I were on WFMU tonight for a full hour on “The Speakeasy with Dorian“, hosted by Dorian Devins and co-hosted by Bruce Bennett. Bruce is a great film writer who I reconnected with in 2000 when he wrote a profile on me and Stuart…

  • May 16 (Sat) – Had two great shows of “Museum Trip” in Brooklyn with Parallel Exit, and then got a second crack at Duvivier’s “Au Bonheur de Dames” at MoMA. Made some improvements in the Duvivier score second time around in terms of underscoring choices, wanting to make it play…

  • I’ve now played for all four of the Julien Duvivier films in the series at MoMA, with two repeats to come. So far my favorite is La Vie miraculeuse de Therese Martin, perhaps because its storyline is much more simple than the other 3 pictures. All of them have stunning…

  • I have just scored and uploaded to YouTube a 16mm print I picked up on eBay a year (or so) ago, called Border River (1919) starring and directed by Edgar Jones, who made dozens of films — mainly westerns — throughout the teens and early twenties. There are no FIAF…