Wondering who in their right mind would publish something like Northwest Picture Show? I’m a little biased on that subject, but if I were you, that’s what I’d be asking…
How did I get interested in silent film? Pizza. Literally. When I grew up in 1970s Everett, Washington, at the end of every sports season we’d have a team dinner to celebrate. Everett was a lot smaller then and there were limited options for large parties, so we frequently ended up at the local Shakey’s Pizza, which had an open seating area with long tables so everyone could sit together.
As our parents talked and waited for the food, we boys ran amok. That usually meant chasing each other around, screeching and throwing things, since this was slightly before such places had video arcades to keep us mesmerized. But there was also a small platform in front of the ovens where we could press our faces against the plexiglass, watch the pizzas being made and argue over which of them was OUR pizza. (What a surreal experience to be 16, working your first real job, and have 20+ little kids gawking at you like a zoo animal, screaming at the top of their lungs every time you put a new topping on each pie.)
What Shakey’s did as well was to show movies in the main dining area as a form of incidental entertainment, which were probably beat-up 16mm film prints that someone had to change out every half hour or so. They seem to have been old Keystone/Sennett/Roach films, and it was my introduction to some sort of strange otherworld. Everyone onscreen moved really, really fast, and waved their arms excitedly whenever they talked, even though you couldn’t hear a thing they were saying. And the people. The men had mustaches that ran from shoulder to shoulder. Some tall, some short; some wide, some not. The women could be dainty and pretty, but they could also be old battleaxes who clubbed their husbands with rolling pins, or the most hideous bride you’ve ever seen, complete with a five o’clock shadow. They had hair bows even larger than the mustaches, and wore swimsuits that looked like they doubled as inflatable rafts.
But what I remember most were the cars. Old-timey ones that started up, when they felt like it, via a handle in front, as if they were a wind-up toy. You could drive these things anywhere. They zipped up and down makeshift roads, went into ditches, tumbled over embankments, and frequently defied the laws of physics. They seemed to be in every movie, and were nearly indestructible, except for the occasional film when the driver bent over to crank the handle, only to have the entire thing disintegrate into a pile of rubble.
Most people ignored these films, but I kinda liked ‘em. They made absolutely no sense, but I was in elementary school, so I just enjoyed the chaos. Later, when I was a bit older, our local PBS station sometimes aired a clip show featuring comedian Harold Lloyd. (A fifth grader watching PBS. This is what you did back in the days when there were only 4 or 5 television channels.) Later still, in the mid-80s, I worked at a different pizza place that also showed knockabout comedies, this time on what seemed to be an infinite VHS loop. Sometimes on my break I’d sit at the back of the restaurant and watch them. I prided myself on being the only teenager in Washington state who could pick Snub Pollard out of a lineup.
I graduated from the University of Washington in 1991 and, in my last quarter there, had one final elective course before graduating. How fortunate, then, that they had a survey class on American film history that very spring, where I could renew my interest (for the third or fourth time) in silent cinema. But we dispatched with that entire era – as of 1991, the first 1/3 of all cinema history – in just a handful of lectures. I mean, we just skipped right past the good part so we could spend what seemed like WEEKS talking about Alfred Hitchcock. No. One. Cares.
(In fairness, part of the class involved screenings on Thursdays and Fridays, and the one silent film we watched was my introduction to Buster Keaton’s The General. So there was a little bit of good.)
Now I’m hooked – on silent comedy, in particular. For starters, I took some extra graduation cash and bought books on Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Once I plowed through those, I started trolling libraries and used bookstores for anything on the silent era. There was no rhyme or reason to what I was picking up – if I saw it, I read it. Sometimes more than once. To this day I remember being 23 and finding an original hardback edition of Kevin Brownlow’s The Parade’s Gone By, priced at a mere $3, in a random box at a library book sale. I strutted out of that place like I won the fucking lottery.
Eventually some of that reading paid off. I wrote a book about Charlie Chaplin’s sound films (Chaplin in the Sound Era: An Analysis of the Seven Talkies; Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. – 1997), mostly because no one had written a book focused specifically on that subject. I’m proud of that, though parts of it make me wince in hindsight. On the bright side, I still receive the occasional royalty check, which I usually take down to my local Starbucks so I can blow the whole damn thing on a single drink. A venti, even, if I happen to bring extra change.
In the early to mid-90s I spent 3+ years as the Northwest’s least talented and least read movie reviewer. I wanted that to be a paying gig, but I buckled during negotiations and offered to do it for free, if the paper (a small local weekly) would just vouch for me so I could get the press credentials. It was a great experience, and I will always be glad I did it. But those columns…dear God. I kept photocopies of those reviews, which I unearthed recently when I moved back to Seattle after 15 years in Atlanta. I read 2, maybe 3 paragraphs, then took everything and dumped it in the recycling bin. Trust me, we’re all better for it.
I did a little better with my other publishing efforts – spots in the Seattle Times, book reviews on the Silent Era website, a recent article in Columbia magazine on a 1921 Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest in Bellingham. I did a lot of writing for HistoryLink in the 2000s on both film and non-film subjects, which partly sparked my interest in merging silent film history with Northwest history. I published a second book (Silent Film Stars on the Stages of Seattle: A History of Performances by Hollywood Notables; Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. – 2009), which is infinitely better than my first but has only been read by a total of 3 people, and I’m including my mother.
You can read the “About” section of this website to learn more about the genesis of Northwest Picture Show. It’s been a 25-year journey, but it’s not like I’ve been working on it the whole time. I have a job. I have a family. I do other stuff. Not well, perhaps, but I do other stuff.
Back in the 1990s, when I called myself a film reviewer, and did so with a straight face, my goal was to get on with one of the big Northwest newspapers, which would allow me to write about the movies as a profession while pursing my side projects. That was NEVER going to happen, so the joke I told for 3 decades was this: I reviewed movies for a few years, until 1995, when I finally decided to give it up. I wanted to catch on with one of the big newspapers, but they already had full-time reviewers, and those guys weren’t going anywhere. There were a few small papers around, but I couldn’t live on what they paid. Plus, all those guys wanted the same big newspaper job I wanted, and they were infinitely better than I was. There just wasn’t an outlet where I could write about movies full-time. So I failed as a movie reviewer and decided to stop. And the day after I stopped, the internet was invented.
It’s been 30 years since I quit, but I guess I can’t tell that joke anymore, because now I have my own website. I may be a slow learner but…dream fulfilled.
