NitrateVille Interview: Paul Gierucki on Mack Sennett
Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2014 7:28 am
NitrateVille Interview: Paul E. Gierucki on Recovering Mack Sennett
Their names and faces are still common enough among movie fans— Mack Sennett, Bathing Beauties, Keystone Cops, Chaplin, Arbuckle, Turpin... among the oldest figures of whom that can be said. Yet few people today have seen a wide enough variety of their work to say they really have a handle on the output of the legendary slapstick studio. That's due to change in the next few months as Cinemuseum and Flicker Alley unleash a torrent of Sennett productions and other films from that era, including the first of a pair of releases spanning 100 Sennett films in all, plus releases devoted to Harry Langdon, Fatty Arbuckle and others.
Spearheading it is Paul E. Gierucki, a longtime producer of comedy-oriented releases including A&E Biography's program on the Three Stooges and such releases as Industrial Strength Keaton and The Forgotten Films of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, and co-founder of CineMuseum. He agreed to answer a few questions for NitrateVille about the projects now in the works, beginning with the remarkable discovery four years ago of an unknown and long-lost Charlie Chaplin film. At the end of the interview he also attached the newly-released list of titles for volume one of the Sennett collection.
First question I can't help asking about: there's a Chaplin film whose existence at all was somewhat in doubt, things being retitled and confused with each other all the time. And yet the very guy who was working on Sennett projects at that time happens to be the guy who finds the only copy in a flea market somewhere. How did that happen?
I have been fortunate to recover several lost and unknown films over the years but finding this one was pure happenstance; the best example of being in the right place at the right time.
I attended an antique show in Taylor, Michigan, but found nothing of interest. On my way out the door, an old steamer trunk caught my eye. I stopped, raised the lid, and was stunned to find a cache of 16mm prints. Nothing was marked, I had to spool through the titles by hand, but it was mostly industrial films, cartoons, commercials, several sound comedies, a few silent Keystone titles, just odds and ends. After examining everything, I selected a handful of reels, haggled for the lot, took them home and put them on a shelf for repair at a later date. That was it.
Fast forward five or six months; I was reading Brent Walker’s blog about Chaplin’s lost short HER FRIEND THE BANDIT, which was believed to have been reissued as THE THIEF CATCHER. Bells went off -- that was one of the Keystone reissue titles that I had picked up several months earlier!
In spite of the late hour, I cleaned the print and dragged out an Elmo 16-CL. Rather than struggle with a screen I instead projected it at about a foot wide on the office wall. The print was a Tower Film Corporation reissue of A THIEF CATCHER (incorrectly billed as “THE THIEF CATCHER”) retitled HIS REGULAR JOB. My initial excitement waned as the film advanced, it was clearly not the lost Chaplin short but was in fact a lost Ford Sterling and Mack Swain vehicle. Still an exciting find, just not what I was expecting. It was at that point, 5 minutes and 6 seconds into the film, that a small group of Keystone Cops entered the scene – one of them looking suspiciously like a young Charles Chaplin. I vividly recall being confused, wondering exactly who and what I was seeing. A quick scan of the standard Chaplin reference books, film catalogs, and web sources turned up nothing. So, I watched the scene again. And again. And again. I could not believe it but there it was on the wall, Chaplin as a Keystone Cop.
Wanting additional unbiased verification, I sent an email with some frame grabs to the usual Silent Comedy Mafia suspects (Richard Roberts, Rob Farr, Brent Walker, Steve Massa, Robert Arkus, and David Pearson) with the note: “Is this who I think it is?” After a flurry of excited responses, calls, questions, comparisons, and further consultations, we had enough information to break the story which was picked up by news outlets around the world. We had the unveiling on Saturday July 17th, 2010 at Slapsticon in Arlington VA. The rest is history.
So what has the process of restoring and transferring the Sennett films been like? I'm guessing there wasn't much preserved by Sennett or Keystone itself and it's a lot of different flavors of collector prints.
Honestly? This project has been the most difficult, rewarding, frustrating, exciting, maddening, and incredibly interesting thing we have ever done.
CineMuseum was quietly preparing a small collection of Keystone rarities when our friend Charlie Tabesh at TCM set the wheels in motion for us to do something much larger. In a five-minute long, life changing phone conversation, he laid out his plans for a spectacular 100th anniversary tribute to the Keystone Studio. We agreed to curate and provide the content -- 78 fully restored Mack Sennett films ranging from his earliest screen appearances to his final productions. It was at that point that we also scrapped our smaller release in favor of reconstructing 100 films to celebrate the 100th anniversary.
There is no single source from which one can acquire the entire Keystone / Sennett Library. Rather the best surviving materials had to be located, cleared, licensed, and shipped from various archives, museums, and private collections around the world. The logistics of this alone were staggering. (Brittany and I referred to this production, internally, with the code name: Project Impossible!)
The reconstructions are mastered in HD from a variety of elements including archival 35mm nitrate negs and positives, 35mm safety materials, paper prints, 16mm negs and positive prints, we also used 9.5mm and 8mm for completeness, and sometimes the lone known surviving print. The quality of the materials has been a mixed bag ranging from flawless to abysmal and everything in between. The workload to get everything looking just right has been absolutely massive.
As to content, these films have been heavily edited, altered, and revised many times over the years for an endless number of reissues. Footage has been excised, reordered, or lost, and art cards (intertitles) were rewritten to reflect changing tastes. In short, many of the comedies that we grew up watching bore little resemblance to their original release form. We are thrilled, however, to have had Sennett authorities, authors, archivists, and collectors serving as consultants, several of the world’s finest silent film accompanists providing amazing scores, and a small army of crack technicians to help put it all together. We utilized surviving studio documents and other contemporary resources to reconstruct the films as originally intended. Those changes were often significant and, in some instances, it will be like the viewer is seeing an otherwise familiar film for the very first time.
This project has taken longer than anticipated, due in part to a rapidly changing distribution landscape, but Volume I has officially been scheduled for Blu-ray release in June through Flicker Alley.
Besides the Sennett sets, I know you have multiple projects going. Can you describe what the releases are and a bit about each one?
We prefer not to announce production details too far in advance because things continue to change on a daily basis, but I can tell you that CineMuseum is also poised to release SILENTS PLEASE: THE GREAT COMEDIANS, and LOST LANGDON.
SILENTS PLEASE contains fully restored episodes of Paul Killiam’s wonderful documentary programs SLAPSTICK, CLOWN PRINCES OF COMEDY, THE FUN FACTORY, SAD CLOWNS, THE WILL ROGERS SPECIAL and more. These restorations are mastered from the original film elements and are exclusively licensed to CineMuseum courtesy of our good friend David Shepard and Film Preservation Associates.
LOST LANGDON is a compilation of Harry Langdon rarities that we discovered several years ago as well as the new reconstruction of THERE HE GOES!
THE ARBUCKLE ANTHOLOGY and BLUE COLLAR BUSTER are also in queue but details must remain under wraps for the moment; we can only offer our promise that they will not disappoint Arbuckle and Keaton fans.
Most of us would have an idea of Sennett's output that was pretty skewed toward a few figures—Chaplin, the Cops, etc. You've seen far more, how would you describe the studio and its output overall? Who or what's missing from a picture that focuses on those things?
When people hear the name Sennett it immediately conjures images of the Keystone Cops, the Bathing Beauties, and breakneck slapstick chases. These elements certainly exist in the Sennett world, but a closer look at some of the surviving, properly restored films reveals some impressive examples of farce, parody, subversive humor, social commentary, word play, and great elements of drama. There is far more here than just the “primitives” that many critics have conditioned us to expect.
Comedy is a highly subjective art form. At the risk of incurring wrath, I must confess that my personal list of top comedians differs from those of celebrated critic James Agee. Nor could I limit my picks to just four masters. I love the works of Chaplin, Arbuckle, and Normand, but they are only part of the Sennett legacy. The films of Ford Sterling, Mack Swain, Syd Chaplin, Billy Bevan, and Lloyd Hamilton, have been unjustly overlooked are are long overdue for serious critical reappraisal. They remain funny and surprisingly relevant today. Some of my favorite titles from Volume 1 include A LOVER’S LOST CONTROL, FATTY AND MABEL ADRIFT, GALLOPING BUNGALOWS, HIS BITTER PILL, GYMNASIUM JIM, HIS MARRIAGE WOW, SUPER-HOOPER-DYNE LIZZIES, THE PRIDE OF PIKEVILLE, THE EXTRA GIRL, and THE DENTIST. Your mileage may vary.
* * *
THE MACK SENNETT COLLECTION - Volume 1 content list:
1 THE CURTAIN POLE
2 THE MANICURE LADY
3 A DASH THROUGH THE CLOUDS
4 THE WATER NYMPH
5 A GROCERY CLERK’S ROMANCE
6 ON HIS WEDDING DAY
7 BANGVILLE POLICE
8 A FISHY AFFAIR
9 THE SPEED KINGS
10 A THIEF CATCHER
11 THE GREAT TOE MYSTERY
12 RECREATION
13 SHOT IN THE EXCITEMENT
14 THE NOISE OF BOMBS
15 AMBROSE’S FIRST FALSEHOOD
16 A BIRD’S A BIRD
17 GUSSLE’S DAY OF REST
18 DO-RE-MI-BOOM!
19 A LOVER’S LOST CONTROL
20 A SUBMARINE PIRATE
21 FATTY AND MABEL ADRIFT
22 HIS BITTER PILL
23 MADCAP AMBROSE
24 TEDDY AT THE THROTTLE
25 HER TORPEDOED LOVE
26 A CLEVER DUMMY
27 HEARTS AND FLOWERS
28 DOWN ON THE FARM
29 DON’T WEAKEN
30 GYMNASIUM JIM
31 THE EXTRA GIRL
32 THE DARE-DEVIL
33 BLACK OXFORDS
34 GALLOPING BUNGALOWS
35 HIS MARRIAGE WOW
36 SUPER-HOOPER-DYNE LIZZIES
37 A RAINY KNIGHT
38 SATURDAY AFTERNOON
39 A SEA DOG’S TALE
40 HOBOKEN TO HOLLYWOOD
41 ICE COLD COCOS
42 BROKE IN CHINA
43 THE PRIDE OF PIKEVILLE
44 FIDDLESTICKS
45 RUN, GIRL, RUN
46 TAXI FOR TWO
47 THE BLUFFER
48 THE DENTIST
49 DON’T PLAY BRIDGE WITH YOUR WIFE
50 THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER
Extras will be announced shortly.
A recreated insert (with some familiar names) for Galloping Bungalows.
