| Welcome to In The Balcony. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Plus, you'll be eligible for the monthly $1 million prize. (Not really.) Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Chico Festival; Unbelievably good boxoffice! | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 10 2012, 07:32 AM (393 Views) | |
| panzer the great & terrible | Mar 10 2012, 07:32 AM Post #1 |
|
Mouth Breather
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Whoever said this was the Year of the Silent Film wasn't fooling around. Our first night, Thursday, a $150/ticket gala thingy held in (and for) the Bidwell Mansion, sold out! We showed them Keaton's "The Boat" and Dave's own Academy Award-winning short "Precious Moments," and you could hear the laughter and applause in the next county. Usually these pictures play to an audience of movie lovers who already know the films by heart, but these were people who had never seen the pictures before, and the laughs were loud and long. The general feeling, I found out afterwards, was that these folks had no idea silent movies were any good at all, and were amazed and amused by what they saw. The Laugh Show on Friday was standing room only. We opened with Chaplin's "Behind the Screen," the biggest hit so far. Even the buffs were unfamiliar with this rare item, and laughed along with the five-year-olds. (The youngest attendee was three, and the oldest, ninety-one). The second film up was Keaton's "Cops," which, after the Chaplin, fell a little flat, even in a gorgeous sepia-tinted print. Next up was the Mack Sennett car racing short, "Lizzies of the Field," which most everybody seemed to love, and the capper was the Laurel and Hardy short with the horse on the grand piano, one of the most surrealistic comedies ever, though you didn't have to explain that to the kids who were delighted to watch grownups act silly. We opened the eight o'clock show with a beautiful hand painted print of Georges Melies' 1904 "Impossible Voyage," with Melies' own English narration read by Dave Shepard. Unforgettable. Enough of the audience had seen Hugo to realize they were in on something special, and it went off astonishingly well. That was followed by the rare silent version of Hitchcock's Blackmail, which played to a mere 250 patrons at $10 a pop. So with one full day to go, we are decidedly in the black and you can count on our showing up again next year. Ain't life grand? |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
![]() |
|
| mort bakaprevski | Mar 10 2012, 08:49 AM Post #2 |
|
Balcony Gang, Foist Class
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
Congrats!!! You came all the way back, cross-country, for this?? Good for you!!! |
| "Nov Shmoz Ka Pop." | |
![]() |
|
| panzer the great & terrible | May 13 2012, 04:33 PM Post #3 |
|
Mouth Breather
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
The other film I have to mention was The Canadian, directed from a Somerset Maugham play by William Beaudine. (Before he became the B picture director everybody makes fun of, he made wonderful silents and his early talkies need investigation, too). I loved it. There are very few titles and the story is told by nuanced acting, like the Mary Pickford films Beaudine also directed. Five stars. The reason I mention it is they will run it at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival this summer. Don't miss this one! Of course I flew across country, mort. This was my baby. I started it. I helped program it. It breaks my heart to leave it at the tender age of one, but whadda ya gonna do? My main duty is elsewhere right now. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · Silents, Please · Next Topic » |





![]](http://z2.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)



11:37 AM Jul 11