Episode 66 Show Notes: Catching up on live shows from the second half of 2024
On this episode, Ben and Kerr talk about Ben’s process for scoring Roland West’s “The Bat” (1926) for a home video release. The new restoration was produced and released by Ben’s Undercrank Productions home video label.
Announcement: Ben’s book The Silent Film Universe will be published in Spring of 2025
Capitolfest 21, and Reginald Denny
- From Capitolfest, August 2024, in Rome, NY:
- Focuses on films not generally programmed or available in home video, and all the shows take place in a vintage movie palace, with a 1928 theater organ kept in excellent condition
- Reginald Denny in Clear The Decks – Lacking a digital copy, Ben played without being able to preview the film
- Discussion of Reginald Denny’s career in silent film and after
The Gorilla (1927)
- Talk about sound latency in theater organs, and reverb in large theaters
- Two performances of the same sequence from The Gorilla (1927) at MoMA for Silent Movie Week; and at the Silent Clowns Film Series at Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center
- The Gorilla resurfaced in 2023 at the Cineteca Milano, who have now digitally restored it (available on DCP)
- Ben had to turn down the reverb because of the acoustics of the size of MoMA’s Titus 1 theater!
- Get your local film program or art house to book this fun and lesser-known film!
Underscoring the House Fall in “Steamboat Bill, Jr.”
- Scoring the house-falling-on-Buster gag in Steamboat Bill, Jr.
- Ben realized that, like the reaction shot in the burned bridge sequence in The General, the point of the gag is the reaction afterward (or lack thereof)
- In Steamboat Bill, Jr the gag is preceded by several others to which Buster doesn’t react (as Buster will), and that the house falling is part of a progression
- Ben decided not to score the threat(s), but Buster’s mental shrug. The success of that approach was confirmed by audience member Jeanine Basinger.
- The story of Berthe and Oscar Larson, namesake of the Larson Performing Arts Center
Live accompaniment of films with synchronized sound
- Ben played for the James Whale 1931 Frankenstein (following on a 2023 performance of the Todd Browning 1931 Dracula)
- Ben discusses silent moments most helped by music, such as the Creature reaching for the light
- Kerr asks Ben about accompanying contemporary silent films such as The Artist, Blancanieves, Sidewalk Stories or The Artist. Ben discusses Mel Brooks’s Silent Movie, Jerry Lewis’s The Bellboy and the others mentioned above. (Discussion of technical and rights issues.) Also the possibility of live-accompanying The Three Stooges…
Colleen Moore at the National Gallery of Art
- Colleen Moore in Her Wild Oat
- This light comedy was restored by AMPAS, shown a few times and returned to the vault
- Still available in 35mm, so Ben booked it at the National Gallery of Art in DC
- Shown as a tribute to collector and historian Joe Yranski
- Side note on First National Pictures
- Ben invites aspiring film accompanists to get in touch with questions
- Goodbyes