You can’t take me anywhere
This evening, I went out to a special movie presentation with some of my friends. It was a Secret Cinema screening of the 1925 silent film, “The Unholy Three,” starring Lon Chaney. This silent film was a smash hit in its day, featuring a cross-dressing ventriloquist, a cigar-puffing little person with anger management issues, a pretty pickpocket, and jewel heist, and a crazy-strong ape.
Tonight’s showing featured live musical accompaniment by accomplished keyboardist Don Kinnier. It’s an incredible treat to have the chance to watch a silent film with a skillful accompanist; a musical score helps give shape and breathe life and into the otherwise slightly uncanny moving images. Inevitably, somewhere well into a silent film, I’m suddenly awestruck by the fact that the accompanist has been playing continuously for a ridiculously long period of time, always in sync with whatever is happening onscreen. It’s like watching a musical marathoner jauntily breeze by and wondering how anyone can possibly keep up.
This was especially the case tonight, when I managed to fall asleep during a large chunk of the film. Clearly, I am a philistine — not fit for polite company, much less carnies and homocidal primates.
Either that, or I need a serious dose of Geritol and REM sleep.
