Dustin Hoffman and the Silent Movie Gala

The following article by David Weddle appeared in April/May edition of
VLife, a supplement to Variety.

The Stong and Silent Hype

Dustin Hoffman's personal crusade to revive interest in silent film
By David Weddle

For Dustin Hoffman, silent movies are pure cinema - more visceral, more
poetic and more profoundly moving than sound films. When he tells this to
freinds and colleagues in the industry, most still dismiss silent pictures
as primitive historical artifacts with little contemporary relevance.
Nevertheless, Hoffman spends countless hours each year promoting the Los
Angeles Chamber Orchestra's annual Silent Movie Gala.

"Every Year I invite people," says Hoffman. "And every year it's the same.
They make a face and begurdgingly agree to come. It's like they're doing
you a favor, because it sounds boring to them. But when the lights come up
and the movie's over they say, 'My God, I've never seen anything like it!'
They're really high. Many people in the business have never seen silent
films with an orchestra, which is startling."

When LACO screened Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights" in 2003, for instance,
more than a thousand people gave the film a standing ovation that lasted
nearly five minutes. Like many in the audience, Hoffman wiped tears from
his eyes as the house lights came up.

The actor feels such a messianic zeal to convert the uninitiated that every
year he buys tickets for anywhere from 60 to 100 guests. "And he pays the
full gala tickey price," says Hanna Kennedy, a member of the orchestra's
board. At $250 a head, that means Hoffman shells out as much as $25000 for
a good cry. As the gala's chairman, he also helps plan and promote the
event. "He's deeply involved in every aspect of it," says Kennedy, "and has
been an incredible spokesman for us."

Hoffman found his passion for silent movies while studying at the Actors
Studio in NY in the early '60's. "Lee Strasberg talked about silent film as
being a pure art form," Hoffman explains. Strasberg expounded at length
about the expressive body language of the great silent clowns. Chaplin or
Keaton could convery complex thoughts and emotions without works, even while
the camera was on their backs; they could act with their shoulders, their
spines, the backs of their heads. "Keaton pioneered underacting," Hoffman
says. "So did Chaplin. Of course, that's exactly what Method actors were
doing in the '50's and '60's. They were trying to get the audience to come
to them. The audience had to reach in and get the information out of the
actor, which is exactly what Chaplin does in the last scene of 'City
Lights.'"

At Strasberg's urging, Hoffman began to study silent films. It paid off.
When he starred in the hit Broadway farce "Eh?" in 1966, Walter Kerr and
other NY critics compared his breakout performance to Buster Keaton. And
since then his style has often mirrored the silent greats, from his
Chaplinesque limp-footed gait as Ratso Rizzo in "Midnight Cowboy" to his
Keatonian tour-de-force physical comedy in "Little Big Man."

Keaton's masterpiece Steamboat Bill Jr. will be screened at this year's
Silent Movie Gala at Royce Hall. In it, and ineffectual Keaton tires to
prove himself to his gruff and violent father. It's a comic refraction of
Buster's tragic relationship with his real father, Joe Keaton, who was a
chronic alcoholic. "Keaton had a profoundly sad life," says Hoffman. "He
didn't try to disguise that experience; it's all over his work. How
serendipitous that he lived at a time before big corporations dominated the
movie business. In those days, directors and stars had almost complete
creative control over their work. A few years later or earlier in history,
Keaton wouldn't have had access to that kind of a canvas. To me, these are
the most exciting kind of films and they;re more relevant today than ever.
We're living in a time where we have used technology to turn film into
product instead of an art form. Chaplin and Keaton and many fo the great
silent moviemakers were the antithesis of that."

The 15th Annual Silent Movie Gala will take place Saturday, June 5 at 8 pm
at UCLA's Royce Hall. Tickets range from $25 to $250. For information, call
213-622-7001, ext. 275. www.laco.org.