This Saturday’s Ernie Kovacs Award ceremony will be the second time my work has allowed me to cross paths with Fred Armisen. In January 2009 Armisen and collaborator Carrie Brownstein made a short video for a silent movie event at MoMA called “Silent But Deadly” that was part of the museum’s PopRally series. The “S.B.D.” show was tied to the first go-round of “Cruel and Unusual Comedy” a slapstick silent film series that Steve Massa and I co-curated with MoMA’s Ron Magliozzi and which had a handful of other incarnations during the 2010s.
The page on MoMA’s site for PopRally, which ran from the late 2000s until the pandemic shutdown in 2020, states the series was “…a series of events at The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 that serve as a gateway for young and diverse audiences to engage with MoMA. Led by a cross-departmental committee of Museum staff, PopRally produces dynamic programs including artist collaborations, performances, film screenings, and digital content that encourage new and experimental ways of encountering modern and contemporary art.”
The program held in January 2009 paired local comedians with some of the more outlandish silent comedy shorts that Steve, Ron and I had programmed for the Cruel & Unusual Comedy series (which was ultimately presented at MoMA in May-June) This was 2009, and at the time these comedians were making short comedy videos for their websites and YouTube channels, which was something new and popular then, as was the practice of stand-up comics posting videos of their act on YouTube.
The comedians, some of them duos, were to watch the silent comedy short and then make a “response” film to it. The PopRally show at MoMA presented the silent shorts – which I accompanied – and the response films, which the comedians introduced. It was a fun way to get a lot of young people in to the big Titus 1 theater for a film screening. There was also free beer. (The night was sponsored by Grolsch.)
At that point in the 21st century, Fred Armisen was in his seventh year as a cast member of SNL. He and Carrie Brownstein had been making short comedy videos together as “ThunderAnt” for a couple years, and these led to their Portlandia series which debuted in 2011. And so, Film Club (2009) was in the same vein as their other videos.
They were assigned the 1923 Hal Roach 1-reeler Chasing the Chaser, starring Jimmy Finlayson and directed by Stan Laurel. Although their “response film” finds Fred and Carrie stuck having to watch this silent movie and avoiding doing so at first, they eventually settle in to watch it…and they get into it to some extent. What I really appreciated is that Fred’s character picks up on an aspect of silent comedy where the people in a scene don’t hear something that should make a sound. (I write about this aspect of silent movies in my book The Silent Film Universe.) Film Club was one of the best of the response films made and shown that evening.
Steve and Ron and I met Fred after the screening, very briefly. Pleasantries and thank-you’s but it was a busy night with lots and lots of people at the show (and free beer). I’m looking forward to hopefully getting to spend a little more time on Saturday during the Ernie Kovacs Award festivities.
The award ceremony will be held at the historic Texas Theatre on Sat Nov 22, and is presented by the Dallas Video Fest – tickets are available here. Oh…and also on Fri Nov 21, I’ll be accompanying Keaton’s The Cameraman (1928) at the Texas. Details and tix are here.
Here’s the 1923 Hal Roach short, and below that is the ThunderAnt response film. Below the videos are photos taken at the January 2009 PopRally “Silent But Deadly” event.
