Fatally Uncomfortable with Hip Hop

In what must surely be a personal record, I have seen films seven of the last eight days.

My only regret was that buttered popcorn did not accompany a single one of those screenings. I'm not proud of that, but it was out of my control.  Tonight's viewing came courtesy of one of my favorite semi-regular events, the Silent Music Revival.

My fondness arises from the fact that it melds my desire to learn more about old movies (a silent film is shown) and to hear as much live music as possible (an improvised score is played by a local band).

The chosen band was Photosynthesizers, an electronic soul hip-hop band I always look forward to seeing for their outstanding musicianship. They attract a diverse audience wherever they play and brought out just such a crowd tonight at the Firehouse.

As a tease to start, organizer Jameson showed the 1907 short, "That Fatal Sneeze,"  while the band played. It was about a boy who puts sneezing powder on an old man's brush and handkerchief  after the man got him sneezing with pepper. The man starts sneezing, making things go awry at home. He heads outside where his sneezes destroy store windows, get a crowd following him and eventually set the ground rocking.

His final sneeze is so violent that he disappears in a puff of smoke. That darn 1907 humor.

The main event was "The Uncomfortable Man," an experimental and silent film from 1948, significant because it was made years after the advent of talkies. In it, a depressed artist is writing a movie while going about his daily life in NYC, where a sign advertised "Rooms, 30 cents."

Is it me or does that seem like a hell of a deal, even for 1948? Wasn't that during the post-war boom years? But I digress.

He arrives in the office smoking a cigar, only to deposit it in his (wooden) inbox and start smoking a pipe instead. I had to assume that pipe smoking was somehow more business-like.

Besides that political incorrectness, the man is also cruel to his dog, hitting him, throwing him and holding his muzzle to shut him up. But there were unintentionally funny moments, too, like when the man slept in his shirt, underwear, socks and shoes.

And the little boy in front of his house peeing into the street. You don't much see public urination in movies anymore. Through it all, the drunks, the fall into the elevator shaft, the horse on the sidewalk, Photosynthesizers provided an ultra-cool soundtrack to the weirdness happening in the film.

The man onscreen may have been uncomfortable, but the band was right at home creating the sounds to accompany the weirdness.

Kent Munson wrote, directed and starred in the movie and never made another one. According to film geek Jameson, there's almost nothing available on the man, an unlikely situation in this, the information age.

Yet here we were 63 years later watching this man's oeuvre and listening to a group of very talented musicians play soulful hip hop to it.

That, I would say, is the brilliance of the Silent Music Revival.