Richard M.Roberts Banned from Nitrateville

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Joe Migliore
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Re: Richard M.Roberts Banned from Nitrateville

Postby Joe Migliore » Thu Sep 04, 2014 8:37 pm

Louie Despres wrote:
DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THE IMMIGRANT'S MISSING FRAMES!!!


I love Michael Hayde's joke about how Chaplin shooting 40,000 feet of film clearly indicates it should be a forty-reeler! You'd think that would stop the whining...but they just turn the whining up to eleven.

David B Pearson
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Re: Richard M.Roberts Banned from Nitrateville

Postby David B Pearson » Thu Sep 04, 2014 8:46 pm

Well, there's nothing quite like the thrill of reading Richard trash Nitrateville trash Richard trash Nitrateville,

Gary Johnson
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Re: Richard M.Roberts Banned from Nitrateville

Postby Gary Johnson » Thu Sep 04, 2014 8:53 pm

That's the funniest thing Louie has said in months...

There were no archives that would have taken the two-color negatives at the time, much less had any way of printing or restoring them. Eastman House was just getting up to speed and Iris Barry at MOMA would have turned up her nose at the material and refused it. The Library of Congress did not even have a Motion Picture Division until the 1970’s.


I still find it amazing that we have what we do today from the silent era and that there are enough copies floating around among collectors that there is material for Gierucki's crew to actually restore and enhance.

Joe Migliore
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Re: Richard M.Roberts Banned from Nitrateville

Postby Joe Migliore » Thu Sep 04, 2014 9:24 pm

Gary Johnson wrote:
I still find it amazing that we have what we do today from the silent era and that there are enough copies floating around among collectors that there is material for Gierucki's crew to actually restore and enhance.


It really is astounding how much has been recovered and given a new life; this is a golden age for fans of silent comedy. Try seeing any of this stuff in 1974 at your convenience. (Even titles that weren't actually lost were often impossible to see.) I agree; every hard won foot owes it's survival to the dedication and perseverance of the very people making it available for home viewing.

Louie Despres
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Re: Richard M.Roberts Banned from Nitrateville

Postby Louie Despres » Fri Sep 05, 2014 9:52 am

Gary Johnson wrote:That's the funniest thing Louie has said in months...

There were no archives that would have taken the two-color negatives at the time, much less had any way of printing or restoring them. Eastman House was just getting up to speed and Iris Barry at MOMA would have turned up her nose at the material and refused it. The Library of Congress did not even have a Motion Picture Division until the 1970’s.


I still find it amazing that we have what we do today from the silent era and that there are enough copies floating around among collectors that there is material for Gierucki's crew to actually restore and enhance.


Uh, check again. I didn't say that unless there is another Louie on that forum.

Richard M Roberts
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Re: Richard M.Roberts Banned from Nitrateville

Postby Richard M Roberts » Fri Mar 06, 2015 3:34 pm

Yes Kids, it has been so truly boring and inconsequential over there at Nitratevile that we have not bothered to add anything to this thread for six months. Now they are apparently reviving ancient threads in order to have anything to talk about. I see someone is dredging up the "Smashing Agee's Pantheon of Comedians" thread (which goes back to the beginning of Nitratevile I believe) just to rewheeze the "Langdon is no good and was controlled on sticks and strings by Frank Capra" crap. YAWWWWWWWWN!

But hey, did ya know that W. C. Fields came out of D. W. Griffith? Hmmm, you'd think those decades of Vaudeville and being a Ziegfeld star would count for something.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

Gary Johnson
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Re: Richard M.Roberts Banned from Nitrateville

Postby Gary Johnson » Mon Mar 09, 2015 2:56 am

What's this??? Richard has been banned? From NinnyVille??? For walking and chewing gum at the same time??!!!

WHY DIDN''T SOMEBODY TELL ME????

Richard M Roberts
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Re: Richard M.Roberts Banned from Nitrateville

Postby Richard M Roberts » Mon Mar 09, 2015 4:41 am

Gary Johnson wrote:What's this??? Richard has been banned? From NinnyVille??? For walking and chewing gum at the same time??!!!

WHY DIDN''T SOMEBODY TELL ME????



And wasn't it too bad about the Titanic?


RICHARD M ROBERTS

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Re: Richard M.Roberts Banned from Nitrateville

Postby Richard M Roberts » Tue Mar 10, 2015 12:50 pm

It has been moderately amusing to see the fine likes of Michael Hayde and Joe Migliore waste their time this week trying to talk sense and facts into the general arrogance and ignorance of various folk in that ancient, dead thread on “Smashing the Agee Pantheon”. We obviously had another James Agee worshipper who got brainwashed in College that Agee (always a darling of the academics, another short-lived Southern Alcoholic Depressive whose meager canon of work was ignored by the “intelligencia” when he was alive but was happily proselytized and analyzed to death once he was dead, very overrated, after all, he was mostly just a critic don’t forget) was God and who obviously wasn’t bright enough to “get” Harry Langdon or do enough actual research to know how to talk about him, not that that stopped him. He was also apparently enough of a literary snob to devote a site to Donald Westlake but refuse to consider him a “great writer” or whatever. Hell, I will read all of Donald Westlake’s work again twice before I ever read Agee again.

And then there’s that comedy “expert” Neibaur……….does anyone really care what he thinks about anything? Yet you have to chuckle to read him use terms like “gaggle of ubergeeks who gather and watch 16mm movies in their basement” (as opposed to, what? undergeeks who sit in their hovels watching DVD’s of silent comedies, then crank out weekly books of under-researched “opinion” from what they see there? Hmmm, and I think such “undergeeks” need to thank those “ubergeeks” for much of the material that turns up on those DVD’s to begin with) or referring to “fringe comedy buffs” as if he isn’t one of them (or the textbook example of one).

It is total nonsense to think that, on the basis of one Blu-Ray release, we can better assess the Sennett films than certainly Walter Kerr and probably James Agee as well could. Kerr had access to most of the major New York film collectors of the time, he saw plenty of fine Sennett prints (including most likely, some of the prints actually utilized on the set) and what he wrote about was based on what he saw. Kerr suffered that standard East-Coast Intellectual snobbery that has unfortunately tainted a lot of film history writing, both academic and otherwise, and it shows through in decent chunks throughout THE SILENT CLOWNS, and running him a hundred more Sennett comedies was unlikely to remove that filter he saw them through.

Again, all a lot of hot air from some gasbags, and wasted time on the part of the mafians who took part, but it is fun to see that Gebert still worries about our takes on his silly little site as he whispers “quiet please, please, HE might hear you!” . Then he comes over and counts the number of words I write…..must mean something to him…..weird.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

Joe Migliore
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Re: Richard M.Roberts Banned from Nitrateville

Postby Joe Migliore » Wed Mar 11, 2015 1:23 am

Richard M Roberts wrote:
It has been moderately amusing to see the fine likes of Michael Hayde and Joe Migliore waste their time this week trying to talk sense and facts into the general arrogance and ignorance of various folk in that ancient, dead thread on “Smashing the Agee Pantheon”. We obviously had another James Agee worshipper who got brainwashed in College that Agee (always a darling of the academics, another short-lived Southern Alcoholic Depressive whose meager canon of work was ignored by the “intelligencia” when he was alive but was happily proselytized and analyzed to death once he was dead, very overrated, after all, he was mostly just a critic don’t forget) was God and who obviously wasn’t bright enough to “get” Harry Langdon or do enough actual research to know how to talk about him, not that that stopped him. He was also apparently enough of a literary snob to devote a site to Donald Westlake but refuse to consider him a “great writer” or whatever. Hell, I will read all of Donald Westlake’s work again twice before I ever read Agee again.


It was a waste of time; after dismissing or ignoring whatever didn't fit his narrative, he invites everyone to check out his blog. (How else are you going to learn how W.C. Fields came from D.W. Griffith? Certainly not from an actual film historian.) I get the appeal of that Agee piece: It's obviously genuinely heartfelt nostalgia, that did get some people searching for films that weren't on their radar. What I don't understand is why anyone would defer to it now, as some kind of founding document. The poster basically said we should all get down on our knees and thank him, or we wouldn't be able to enjoy these films today. (It sounds like I'm paraphrasing, but I don't think I am.) That's not overreach so much as it is a cognitive disconnect. There is an impressive amount of scholarship out there on silent comedy now; why wouldn't this blogger make use of it? Well, I guess if he knew what he was talking about, he wouldn't try telling Michael Hayde what's what about Langdon. (That's when I left the party, which apparently is still going on.)


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