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MoMA sent over a press release this morning about an event called Silent but Deadly: An Evening of Comedy Shorts, which looks very cool. Curator Ron Magliozzi and silent film accompanists Steve Massa and Ben Model have put together a program of silent slapstick comedy shorts that “explore social, cultural, and political subjects”; they’ll be screening these, followed by shorts comissioned from contemporary comedians including Nick Kroll and ThunderAnt, AKA Fred Armisen and Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein.
The press release doesn’t reveal exactly what they’ll be showing in terms of silent films (when I think slapstick silent comedy I think Fatty Arbuckle, but unless the comedy of being fat is a cultural issue, I’m not sure his work qualifies), but I hope the contemporary response pieces fall somewhere along the lines of ThunderAnt’s Boink!, embedded below. It’s a mock, New York Noise-like public access indie rock show, featuring special guest Sadaam Hussein, who strums an acoustic guitar in his “home recording studio in Manhattan” while talking about the life of a dictator in the language of a jaded old punk rocker.
The MoMA program takes place January 6; there’s more information at their website.
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We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Hey, thanks for posting news about this event! The film selections came from a 5-part course we taught at MoMA this fall called “Cruel and Unusual Comedy” which screened rare silent short from MoMA’s collection, grouped by different social issues. I’ll list here the films that Ron Magliozzi, Steve Massa (who is a film historian, not an accompanist) and I picked for the “Silent But Deadly” event on Jan 6:
LIZZIES OF THE FIELD (1924) - chock full of bizarre car gags - from our “Mack Sennett vs. Henry Ford” session
CHASING THE CHASER (1925) - in this rarity directed by Stan Laurel, henpecked James Finlayson’s suspicious wife hires a detective, played by femail impersonator Fred Covert, to spy on him; look for a cameo by Fay Wray - from our “drag” session
THE KNOCKOUT (1923) - this boxing picture is part of a series of one-reelers featuring “The Dippy Do-Dads”…and all animal cast (dogs, monkeys, chickens, ducks etc), complete with miniature sets - from our “Kids and Animals” session
Three other shorts we picked will be displayed on video monitors in the lobby during the reception:
MIND THE BABY (1924) - a kidnapping plot with sequences involving a dog, a baby and an alligator (all in the same shot!)
A CHANGE OF COMPLEXION (1913) - a kitchen maid pull a prank on her employers…while they are asleep she blacks up their faces
THE PHONEY CANNIBAL (1913) - down-on-their-luck comedy duo Ham & Bud pass themselves off as a preacher and a tribal pygmy to raise rent money
I’ll be accomanying the silents at 8pm on the piano.
Ben Model
silent film accompanist