Mar 6: played for Lloyd’s The Freshman at MoMA. Had a pretty full house and the film went over really well. This is the 3rd time I’ve gotten to play for it in the last several months. While it’s one if the iconic Lloyd films, I still like Kid Brother and a couple others a little better. Still, The Freshman doesn’t really get shown that much and it should. I was surprised that, during the whole Adam Sandler lawsuit thing over his The Water Boy, no one seized on the free publicity for The Freshman and showed it then.
When I played for it last July during MoMA’s “Dali Laughs” series, my wife and daughter and a friend of hers came to the show. Afterwards the three of them were trying to do Lloyd’s little “call me Speedy” jig and just couldn’t get it. They’re all theatrical, dancey gals and I realized the reason they couldn’t do it was because it can’t be performed in real life the way it appears on screen. At the time I was preparing my talk on “undercranking” for the NY Clown Theatre Festival and slowed the jig down to real-time speed to see what the jig looked like.
Playing for this film reminded me that I’ve been meaning to upload the clip to YouTube, and so I’ve just done that. Here it is: