關韶文關關x丘曄【負能量週記】
Episode's summary
Ben and Kerr discuss Ben’s scores for “My Lady’s Lips” (1925) starring William Powell and “Paris Green” (1920) starring Charles Ray, commissioned by the National Film Preservation Foundation to celebrate National Silent Movie Day and Ben talks about following Chaplin’s model for scoring comedy scenes with intermittent action in the “muffin sequence” in “A Dog’s Life” (1918). Show notes for episode 74 can be found here.
Ben and Kerr discuss Ben’s scores for “My Lady’s Lips” (1925) starring William Powell and “Paris Green” (1920) starring Charles Ray, commissioned by the National Film Preservation Foundation to celebrate National Silent Movie Day and Ben talks about following Chaplin’s model for scoring comedy scenes with intermittent action in the “muffin sequence” in “A Dog’s Life” (1918). Show notes for episode 74 can be found here.
Episodes
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ep. 74: National Silent Movie Day and Halloween 2026
ListenedBen and Kerr discuss Ben’s scores for “My Lady’s Lips” (1925) starring William Powell and “Paris Green” (1920) starring Charles Ray, commissioned by the National Film Preservation Foundation to celebrate National Silent Movie Day and Ben talks about following Chaplin’s model for scoring comedy scenes with intermittent action in the “muffin sequence” in “A Dog’s Life” (1918). Show notes for episode 74 can be found here.
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ep. 73: Go Into Your Trance
ListenedBen and Kerr discuss Ben’s performance schedule being back to or surpassing 2019 levels, the scoring and restoration of “The Cardboard Lover” (1928) with Marion Davies, accompanying Davies’ “The Patsy” (1928) at the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, live-scoring Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” (1925) for shows at a few different theaters, scoring “St. Wenceslas” (1930) and other silents by the Czech director Jan S. Kolár for a new Blu-ray from Deaf Crocodile, Ben announces the newly-created browsable/searchable podcast index and encourages listeners to explore it, and much more. Show notes for episode 73 can be found here.
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ep. 72: 2025 Year-End Roundup
ListenedBen and Kerr discuss Ben’s accompaniment techniques for films he played for toward the end of 2025: Keaton’s “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” at the Barrymore Film Center, Mary Pickford in “Sparrows” at the Library of Congress, and Max Davidson in “Pass the Gravy” at the Silent Clowns Film Series in NYC. Ben gives an update on the Undercrank Productions releases currently in production, of rare silents with Roscoe Arbuckle and with Marion Davies. Ben shares some advice for aspiring accompanists about the kind of music light to bring to a show. Ben and Kerr close out the episode discussing ideas about the current status and next-steps for silent film restoration and exhibition. Show notes for episode 72 can be found here.
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ep. 71: Phantoms and Pipe Organs
ListenedBen and Kerr talk about Ben’s busy Halloween season, underscoring the unmasking scene in “The Phantom of the Opera” (1925) at Angel Nyack, and his encounters with theater ghosts; also covered are Ben’s accompanying “Her Sister From Paris” (1925) with Constance Talmadge at the Silent Clowns Film Series, the differences between playing a church pipe organ and a theatre organ for silents, and more. The episode includes performance excerpts from Ben’s scores for the two films mentioned above as well as from a show at the Library of Congress Packard Campus Theater of Josef Von Sternberg’s “Underworld” (1928). Show notes for episode 71 can be found here.
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ep. 70: Flappers, Roscoe and Laura LaPlante
ListenedBen and Kerr talk about Ben’s shows at MoMA’s “Silent Movie Week” of “Saxophon Susi” and “Berlin: Symphony of a Great City”, and at the Rubinstein Atrium at Lincoln Center for an early Louise Brooks Paramount feature. Ben discusses adjusting his approach to laying down a recorded score when scoring “Poisoned Paradise” (1924) with Clara Bow for the National Film Preservation Foundation, and for Keystone shorts for the “Rediscovering Roscoe” Blu-ray set due out in 2026. Ben and Kerr discuss their both noticing a growing and a younger audience for silent film in recent years, with Ben observing this at Capitolfest this past August. Performance excerpts include “Saxophon Susi” (piano, at MoMA), “Love ’em and Leave ’em” (1924) (piano, at the Atrium), and “Finders Keepers”(1928) starrring Laura LaPlante (theatre organ, at Capitolfest). The latter is also included as an example of a live score being affected by the film’s introduction, in this case by historian/author Laura Jerrolds. Show notes for episode 70 can…
