2008 SFSFF13—Interview With Artistic Director Stephen Salmons

Michael Guillén: It seems to me that the appreciation of silent film is poised at a cultural juncture where audiences have become attentive to film preservation. The precarious ephemerality of celluloid lends poignancy to the experience of silent film. Clearly, San Francisco’s Silent Film Festival, like the Noir City Film Festival, has become beloved by its audiences who cherish these films of yesteryear.

Stephen Salmons: I completely agree. We’re extremely fortunate to have the loving audiences we have. We can take some credit for building that kind of an audience. We started the festival because we loved the films and we wanted the vibe—I guess you’d say—that came from the festival to be one of love for film. We don’t have any hidden agenda here. It’s not a marketing ploy in any way. We’re not showing films because they’re about to be released on DVD. We’re showing films that we find ourselves that we love and that we want to share with an audience. Film Noir is the exact same thing. You have somebody who loves the genre, loves the movies, and they want to share that love with other people. People really do respond well to that. We have a wonderful audience of people who are sharing their mutual love. I’ve even been amazed in the last couple of years when we have a really big house for one of the films how incredibly attentive the audience is to the smallest detail. I’m stunned how the group dynamic worked out to be so powerful and positive.

Guillén: Poet William Blake encouraged people to “kiss the joy as it flies” and I find that advice pertinent to film culture, which is changing so much so rapidly, that those who do appreciate vintage film are truly experiencing love for something they fear losing.

Salmons: That’s actually my point about film blogs. They seem to be a natural reaction to the need for a pure film culture where people are sharing their love of film to counter how the market is being swamped more and more.

Guillén: When Richard Van Busack interviewed you a few years back for Metroactive, he moreorless laid out how Melissa Chittick’s initial efforts kickstarted the festival; but, I’m curious at what point you knew that you loved silent film enough to come on board to eventually become the God of San Francisco’s Silent Film Festival?

Salmons: Oh Jesus!! [Laughter.] Thank you, Michael.

Guillén: I’m basically quoting from last year’s hilarious Chronicle podcast with Mick LaSalle.

Salmons: Where we were being completely ironic. I’m a 50-year-old man, which means that I got my film education at rep houses. I’m a pre-VHS person. You either stayed up late to watch a movie or you found it at a rep house. I’m from Santa Cruz where the Sash Mill Cinema was our rep house. It was originally a woodworking mill that made windows sashes. It was a beautiful old funky building and I was there almost every night of the week. Also, we had the Nickelodeon Cinema ("The Nick") in Santa Cruz, which is a great art house. So I got my education at those two theatres.

I was also making Super8 films. I even went so far as to enter them in some festivals where I won a couple of awards; but, I couldn’t afford to shoot sound. I could only afford to shoot image. Without realizing what was happening, I was learning how to be a silent film maker and how to tell stories without the use of sound, which I found to be extremely difficult but very compelling; a difficult art form to learn how to do correctly. That was the first piece in the puzzle.

The next piece was my actual film history courses when I went to college. They would start with the silent era and inevitably the clips they would show were such low quality that occasionally the professors would make a point of saying that what we were watching was a fifth or sixth generation dupe and wouldn’t give us any idea what the films were really like. But that was all you could really see. There was no way to actually see the prints correctly so I wasn’t getting any idea what the silent era was really about. I had the impression that most people weren’t. We were being told that the first 30 years of filmmaking were important; but, we couldn’t see how; we couldn’t see the evidence of it clearly.

Then when I moved to San Francisco and discovered the Castro Theatre, The San Francisco International Film Festival was traditionally showing at least one silent film every year under Peter Scarlett. I think the first one I saw at the Castro was The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) with Dennis James on the Wurlitzer and that was an absolute revelation—"Here it is! Here’s how they really are!"—I was just blown away by the beauty and the power of both pure imagery and visual storytelling, which I’ve always really loved particularly in film, combined with music into this operatic experience of a pure emotional assault, which you can nurture and think about for days afterwards. That was the next piece. I thought, “My God, I’ve seen what silent filmmaking is really like.” It’s incredibly powerful and I didn’t know that because access was so limited. I thought, “If I don’t know that and I’m a film lover…!” I spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours at rep houses and never saw silent films at rep houses (unless it would be something like a very poor 16mm print of Metropolis or something like that in incorrect aspect ratio running too fast). My eyes were opened.

Then I met Melissa Chittick who—at that time—was a volunteer at the Red Vic Moviehouse. She had gotten a degree in film from UC Santa Barbara. She had taken similar kinds of film classes from Charles Wolfe in particular—who’s on our advisory committee to this day—and he instilled in her a love for the concept of silent film. But she had the exact same thing happen to her. She didn’t know what silent films were really like until she saw them at the Castro Theatre. Then she said to the members of the Red Vic Collective, “Why don’t we have a Silent Film Festival?” Their response was, “Why don’t you do it?”

By sheer chance I happened to meet her. We both worked on Union Street. I was a picture framer and worked in a picture framing shop and she was a bank teller who used to work at Wells Fargo. I had a film book with me one day when I was making the store’s deposits and she noticed that. She said, “Oh, you like film? I’m trying to start a Silent Film Festival.” I thought, “Oh my God!” So that’s the origin story right there. It’s all about proper presentation and that’s what finally struck me when I saw The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: you can’t watch VHS tapes of these films or DVDs by yourself at home and get anywhere near or close to the actual conception of what the filmmakers intended.

Guillén: Definitely the visual language, as you say, is so important. For myself, it happened at your festival with Seventh Heaven (1927).

Salmons: Can you describe your experience?

Guillén: It was an emotional assault and an aesthetic arrest. I was so overcome with emotion, I couldn’t believe it. I sat in my chair weeping, unable to collect myself.

Salmons: At our first festival we showed Lucky Star (1929), which—along with Street Angel (1928) and Seventh Heaven—are the three Frank Borzage films with Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. Borzage—I don’t know how he did that—how he could make such a direct assault on your emotions the way he did and have it be so honest. He’s one of the most emotional filmmakers and yet I never feel manipulated by his films. All of the emotion is earned.

Guillén: His films were before melodrama got a bad name. There’s a purity to the melodrama that is, as you say, honest and direct.

Salmons: We show a lot of melodrama. I think melodrama was an honest art form. That would be very interesting to trace where melodrama became corrupted into an unappreciated art form.

Guillén: When it became a disingenuous and manipulative formula?

Salmons: Yeah. But in the silent era, it was not formula.

Guillén: Last year when I spoke with Edward Millington Stout for SF360 about the Castro’s Wurlitzer organ, and I relayed to him my emotional reaction to Seventh Heaven, he asked me if I understood why I had such a physical reaction to the film? I admitted that, no, I didn’t understand why. He said it was because the Wurlitzer organ is vibrating the floor and my body was absorbing all those vibrations. You’re not just watching something and having an emotional response, he said, you are literally feeling the emotion physically through the vibration of the music.

Salmons: That’s wonderful. Very interesting.

Guillén: Which leads me to ask about the context of venue. Could we be having a silent film festival of this stature anywhere else but the Castro Theatre?

Salmons: Of course our goal is to eventually do that and to move the festival around. I hope that in the future we could package presentations and travel them and do tours with them; but, yours is a really good question. We do a lot of piano accompaniment, some ensemble accompaniment. The Wurlitzer is a very unique musical instrument. When I mention The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Dennis James’ performance on the Wurlitzer was part of what made that experience so spine tingling for me. The moment at the end of Four Horsemen where they’re in the cemetery and we finally realize that the Christ figure is Christ and he spreads his arms wide and says, “I knew them all"—of all the grave markers—what Dennis did right then on the Wurlitzer, this huge swell of holy music, made me shiver up and down! So the Wurlitzer is a very unique musical instrument. The number of musicians who have Dennis’s skill and ability to provide that kind of accompaniment is extremely small. Ed Stout is the Master of the Wurlitzer. Ed tells us who can play that Wurlitzer. If Ed says he doesn’t want somebody on that Wurlitzer, they don’t get to use the Wurlitzer. There’s really only four or five people that we can turn to—Dennis James, Chris Elliot, Clark Wilson (who will be providing musical accompaniment for two films this year), and a couple of others—and that’s it! It’s definitely a dying art form.

Guillén: That’s actually one of my literary aspirations and part of the reason I contacted Ed: I want to write a book on these few remaining contemporary theatrical organists.

Salmons: [Gasps.]

Guillén: Ed told me there were only about five left.

Salmons: I’ve never read any study on that.

Guillén: There isn’t one. I researched it. There isn’t. That’s why I’ve put in a request to speak with Clark and is actually one of the main reasons I began attending the Silent Film Festival. Suddenly I became quite aware of the various styles of musical accompaniment being provided for silent films at various festivals and retrospectives. Honestly, I’m not always pleased with what the San Francisco International endeavors with their combinations of silent film and contemporary musicians. Some of their events have worked for me and several have not.

Salmons: During the Peter Scarlett years, they would do one of each. They would have Dennis James play for a program—and I would always see those—and then some of the others where they were trying to reach the kids with the contemporary musicians. I’ve seen one or two of those that I’ve enjoyed; but, for the most part, I don’t like them because of the transparency of what’s being attempted. I don’t think the music matches usually. When we first started and introduced ourselves to people in the industry who exhibit silent films and preserve and archive them, we went to some of the conventions like the Cinecon Convention in Hollywood. We’d see how they did it. We saw how they used pianists. Then seeing Dennis James on the Wurlitzer at the San Francisco International, I could see how the art form was surviving through musicians like Dennis. I wanted to work with them. These were the experts. These are the people who have studied silent film and are trying to preserve historically accurate music that is—at the same time—completely emotional and relevant.

Guillén: It truly is a layered visual experience when it’s done right. You’re getting the visual language of the film but you’re also watching the musicians perform with the film.

Salmons: Yes! I don’t know if you’ve talked with Dennis or who you’ve talked to but organists will tell you that—though their back may be to the audience—they’re completely attuned with what’s happening in the audience. Dennis has said that he’ll feel the audience’s energy pouring right through his back, releasing right through his hands up onto the screen. When it’s all working right, absolutely. When he did Flesh and the Devil (1926) at our Winter event, it was completely like that. I was stunned at how seriously the audience took Flesh and the Devil, which we always hope to have happen, but they did it. Dennis was picking up on their energy and he even said afterwards, “I’m exhausted!” because of the way the music is a conductor for a large group’s energy. It’s amazing. Sometimes I watch the musicians too along with the emotional experience of the film itself.

Guillén: Help me place this in context. I know Richard Von Busack asked you about the silent film festival circuit, and I remain curious about that. What is the culture of silent film outside of our own festival here in the Bay Area? The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is so fantastic; are there comparable events going on stateside?

Salmons: No, not really.

Guillén: Though there is the famous silent film festival in Pordenone, Italy, which Jonathan Marlow has written about to The Greencine Daily once or twice.

Salmons: Which I finally got to go to for the first time last year. Stacey Wisnia has been two or three times. That’s the granddaddy. When Melissa and I were first talking about the idea, we heard of Pordenone and its eight-day-long festival of silent films. We heard they were showing them all correctly with live music. We figured that—if they were able to do that in Italy—we should be able to do a one-day festival here. Pordenone has a lot of government and local support. It’s incredible what they do there. After eight days I was so fried. [Laughter.] It was like having a tremendously large meal at every single film.

Here in the States, the reason we started it as a film festival was because we didn’t see anybody doing that. There is a circuit of conventions and most of them are not focused on silent film; they’re focused on rare, early film. They’ll show some silent and some sound film. Cinecon is like that. There’s the Cinevent in Columbus, Ohio. There’s the Cinefest in Syracuse, New York. There’s a couple of others like that. And then there are some events that are hosted through educational institutions like the Kansas Silent Film Festival, which has been around for about 10 years, and is done through the University of Kansas. That’s a free event that the University sponsors.

And then there are still a few of these grand movie palaces that have survived that will do some rep programming because they still do have some theatre organs in them. There’s the Paramount in Seattle. Dennis James plays regularly there. He lives up there now. They’ll do a silent series where you can see a silent film maybe once every Monday six to eight weeks in a row where Dennis will accompany on the Wurlitzer. So there are those kind of events happening. Occasionally a larger venue like The Lincoln Center will program a silent film. I think they just had Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra play for Beggars of Life (1928) a few weeks ago. So there is a little bit of rep programming happening and there are festivals that feature silent film and then there is this other underground of the conventions where the rare film lovers all congregate. Sometimes they’re the ones who discover films again in the same way that collectors are as responsible as archives for preserving films. These conventions where people go to see a film because nobody has shown it in 80 years. They don’t care what it is, but nobody’s shown it. They frequently stumble onto great finds too. But the idea of a festival—like other film festivals—we chose that idea because we didn’t see it happening. We thought that would make it noteworthy, if we did it that way.

Guillén: “Noteworthy” is an understatement. Through this network, then, of these conventions and festivals, is this how you find the films to program each year at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival? I’m sure it’s an organic selection process over the course of a year.

Salmons: That’s a very good way to put that. It’s a process that’s grown over the course of our learning how to do the festival. Initially, the very first people who helped us were The Silent Society of Hollywood Heritage in Los Angeles. They were very important. When we were just starting Randy Haberkamp—who’s now the Program Coordinator of Educational and Special Projects for the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—he was the head of the Silent Society. That’s an organization that met once a month at the DeMille Barn, which used to be located across the street from The Hollywood Bowl (even though The Hollywood Bowl isn’t there anymore). It’s called the Lasky-DeMille Barn because it’s the first—I guess you’d call it the first studio in a sense—which DeMille built in 1913 to make The Squaw Man (1914), which is sometimes identified as the first American feature film. That’s going to be debateable, of course; but, the Lasky-DeMille Barn still stands. It’s a barn but they’ve preserved it as a historic landmark in Los Angeles. The Silent Society would come in there once a month and show silent films with live piano accompaniment. We had heard that Randy—more than anyone in Los Angeles—was the person we should talk to about how to show silent films. Through him we quickly met David Shepard….

Guillén: Who you’re honoring this year?

Salmons: Yeah. We discovered those people who were keeping silent film alive whatever way they could. When we first met with Randy, we said, “Here’s our idea. We want to create a high profile event for silent film. That’s the concept. There are these clubs and are these conventions that cater to educated film lovers; but, we’re going to try and create a high profile event that caters to people who don’t know about silent film.” Because that’s who we were! We discovered them and we wanted to share this sense of discovery with the greater filmgoing audience. He was very much supportive of that. Then we met Jere Guldin, who’s the archivist at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, who we visit almost yearly to watch whatever they’ve preserved. We showed Chicago (1927) because they discovered it and we were instantly on top of that. We’re in constant touch with archivists and professionals like that about what’s being found and what’s being preserved. I’m pretty sure that we’ll do our best to show Bardely’s The Magnificent (1926) in our Winter event next February because we heard from Serge Bromberg at Lobster Films that he had found it. We all went, “Ah!” It’s organic, like you said. At this point in our history, we are part of the circle of people who are informed when films are being found, preserved and restored. Also we’ve seen a lot of films over the years that stick in our minds.

Guillén: We are blessed in San Francisco that the San Francisco Silent Film Foundation is doing all of this for us.

Salmons: I should say that Randy definitely told us—when we told him we wanted to do this in San Francisco—"Well, you couldn’t do it in Los Angeles.” Because Los Angeles is all about product. You can have societies and groups of people who almost clandestinely meet to appreciate film; but, the idea of creating a silent film festival wouldn’t happen in Los Angeles. But in San Francisco? It’s the ideal place. Most people I talk to agree that the Bay Area probably has the most avid, intelligent and inquisitive film audience anywhere in the nation. Most people say they think it’s better than New York.

Guillén: I won’t argue with that.

Salmons: So we’re very fortunate in that sense that we just happened to be in the right place to start the festival where there’s already a built-in audience, at least a certain number of people, who will come to see something just because they’ve never seen it before and they’re thrilled. From there we built the audience outwards through word-of-mouth.

Guillén: This last year I met and spoke with Daisuke Miyao who wrote a book on Sessue Hayakawa. The book added a whole new layer to my understanding of silent cinema that I’d not considered before. Again, I think this fits into something of a cultural zeitgeist with regard to film preservation and—as you’re detailing—discovering “lost” films. What he made me aware of—and I’m hoping you can comment upon this—is the transnational nature of silent cinema and how many U.S. silent films have been recovered from German and French resources. I know that in this year’s program you’re paying something of an homage to that reality?

Salmons: We’re actually experimenting with that in a couple of ways. First of all, an even greater discovery for me through doing the festival is to show films from other countries that I’ve never heard of before and seeing just how advanced their filmmaking had become by the ‘20s also. Everything we’ve shown from China, from India, from Mexico….

Guillén: Because of my love for Mexican film, the first program I attended at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival was your screening of the silent film Tepeyac (1917) on the Virgin of Guadelupe.

Salmons: It’s very interesting that the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is going to be showing The Iron Fist (El Puño de hierro, 1927). That was one of the films we looked at when we decided we wanted to show a Mexican film. We heard there were a few films. When we contacted the archive, they said there was The Iron Fist and Tepeyac. The Iron Fist is a very interesting melodrama but we wanted to show something more representative of Mexican culture and The Iron Fist was essentially an imitation of American culture. It’s a wild movie; but, we picked Tepeyac because we wanted something more authentic.

The Brazilian film, Sangue mineiro (1930) directed by Humberto Mauro, was an eye opener for me. All of these films have been eye openers for me. Here are great artists working all around the world in the ‘20s discovering this art form.

Then we have this other issue that you’re talking about, which has been equally fascinating, of our films being saved in other countries. Her Wild Oat (1927), the Colleen Moore film, was found at the Czech National Film Archive and repatriated to the Academy Film Archive where Joe Lindner restored it over the course of a year. They spent a large sum of money for a silent film restoration on that. We’re trying to focus better on preservation from different, unique angles this year and we decided to do something we’ve never done—and I’m real anxious to see how this turns out—we’re going to emphasize the fact that our films frequently only exist because they’re located in foreign archives. We’re going to show the print of The Unknown (1927) that was found at the Cinemateque Francaise, which means it has French intertitles. I want to push that point home to audiences that silent cinema is a global culture.

Guillén: Absolutely. The bottom line is that image is transnational and speaks over national languages. I’m so enthused by the experiment with Guy Maddin reading the translations of the French intertitles. I saw him narrate My Winnepeg at last year’s Toronto International and—just as you say Dennis James picked up on the energy of his audience to commandeer his performance—Guy Maddin is another performer who definitely works off his audience. He’s going to pick up on their energy, they’re going to be reacting to him picking up on them, and I anticipate a hilarious synergy.

Salmons: We’re being a little careful because it is an experimental thing for us and that’s why we’ve scheduled it as a late show. But Guy is so wonderful. When we gave him a short list, he immediately chose The Unknown. This could be a really cool event, both from an entertainment point of view and an educational point of view that will teach you something about—as you say—the transnationality of silent cinema.

Guillén: And I loved your anecdote about how it was found in the Cinemateque Francaise in a film canister labeled “unknown” and everyone assumed it was an unknown piece of film until someone put two and two together and realized it was the film The Unknown.

Salmons: It’s incredible. That’s how some of these films are found. There are a couple of famous stories like A Page of Madness (1926) being found in a rice barrel at Kinugasa’s home and Carl Dreyer’s Joan of Arc (1928) being found in a broom closet in a Norwegian mental institute. I love these stories! The fragility of the survival of these films and the fact that The Unknown would have been sitting on a shelf at the Cinemateque Francaise for decades and they just didn’t have the staff or the budget or time to go through everything in their collection. I’m not sure if it’s known who the actual person was who looked at the canister and made the connection: “That could be The Unknown.”

Guillén: I’m a superstitious fellow and for me it’s almost as if there’s a sentience to the genre: that it must survive. That it will survive.

Salmons: That’s very interesting.

Guillén: And these stories of “chance” discovery are the ones that excite us because there’s no chance about it. These discoveries are amazing because it’s remarkable these films even exist to be found. Chances are, they should have been lost by now. And yet they keep popping up. These films will not be undone.

Salmons: [Laughs.] I love that. It may be a sentience that’s operating through a lot of private collectors too. We’re discovering that more and more people did keep films than people even knew they did. Films are turning up in archives—such as the find of Beyond the Rocks (1922), which was found in a Dutch collector’s home—and the incredible story that this was a man who hoarded films and, apparently, he had so many films in his home that he couldn’t even walk around. He had cans of nitrate next to his bed.

Guillén: That reminds me of Stephen Parr at Oddball Films. Every time I wander among those stacks I think, “My God, he lives with this!”

Salmons: Thank God for the collectors. Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is like that too. Jesse just loves film. He loves finding a rare print of something. It doesn’t really matter what it is; just that it’s rare. Thank God for them because they’re preserving these films as much as anybody. Hopefully, I get to hear when that person’s passion becomes public.

Guillén: Another commendable project of the Silent Film Foundation is how the festival encourages young scholars such as Brian Darr to research and prepare the informative slide programs offered at the festival proper between the films and the program guide essays which, eventually I understand, you’ll also offer online. Can you talk a bit about that?

Salmons: Hopefully we’ll get to do that in the next couple of months, yes.

Guillén: For now, however, that is such a perk to go to the festival and be given these wonderful program guides full of insightful commentary and recent research. They’re collector items.

Salmons: It just occurred to us at some point that we were showing the films and sharing our love of the films, but something was missing. I’m not going to say who this was but we went to a film presentation in the Castro of some silent films and the program was introduced by some man who said, “If you want to learn more about the movie, go to the library. There’s plenty of good books there on silent film and I’m sure you can find something there about this movie.”

Guillén: You wanted to ask for your money back.

Salmons: In a sense, yeah. There had long been some sense of dissatisfaction among the Silent Film presentation staff that—when the film was introduced—we didn’t get any information. We didn’t get any context. Nobody told us how the film was made, we didn’t get any sense of who the directors were, and we thought, “Could we give the audience more information?” So from the very first we did one-page hand-outs that had some information on the film because we wanted people to walk out of the movie theatre and go, “I want to know more now. How do I learn more?” That’s why we’ve had The Booksmith table for all the years too. We wanted you to be able to walk right out the door and go get a book about the film and learn. I’ve always believed that—once your passion’s been ignited—the next thing you want to do is learn and that we should be giving people that opportunity. The program guide with the essays grew from initially just one-page hand-outs and then we started inviting people we knew were lovers of silent film to join our volunteer committee. That’s been incredibly successful. All of those people on the committee do it out of sheer love.

The slide show was essentially the same thing. We would go to the Metreon or something like that and watch these highly-embarrassing Coca-Cola quizzes—"Do you recognize this star?"—and that struck us too, “Hey! There’s all this time when you’re entering the theatre. Instead of putting all this dumb stuff on the screen, why don’t we use that space also?” That was another way to give the audience entertaining opportunities to be educated. Hopefully, within the next couple of months, we’ll start to get the essays and slideshows up on line. We’ve set up on our new website an archive page where the essays and slideshows will go to. I’ve been very frustrated by the fact that the only way that people get to see the slideshows is to attend the festival and that all this incredible information that the volunteers have amassed and put together hasn’t been more accessible.

Guillén: For last year’s Silent Film Festival, I was happy to talk with Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne and the power-behind-the-throne Charlie Tabesh regarding their presentation of Camille (1921). Robert made an observation that I found quite intriguing. He said that West Coast audiences are much more into silent cinema and appreciative of the silent classics on TCM than East Coast audiences because of the time difference. The way their programming is scheduled, the silent films are shown on the East Coast after midnight but we get them earlier in the evening. What is the connection between TCM and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival?

Salmons: Initially, the interest with TCM was MGM. When we first started doing the festival, if we wanted to get our hands on an MGM film, we had to go to Turner because Ted Turner had bought the MGM library and Turner Entertainment was the source for all MGM silent films. We initially dealt with Dick May who worked with Kevin Brownlow and others to create new prints and restorations. Dick May worked with Kevin Brownlow to create the restoration of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that I saw. Turner was spending a lot of money on restoring the films in his archive because he—for some reason—felt that he had something that could generate profit whereas most major studios felt they could do nothing with the holdings from their silent era. We’re talking about the era before the DVD boom. So initially we were dealing with Turner because we wanted MGM films.

Over the years, we’ve gotten many films from them. Of course Turner was bought by Warner Brothers so the connection with Turner weakened a little bit. Now if we wanted to get an MGM film, we had to go to Warner Brothers and ask them for a print from the Turner Collection in their holdings. It became complex. So initially our dealings with TCM was specifically because we were securing prints and Dick May and other people at Turner had been putting a lot of money into restoring actual film before the boom in digital restoration, which is now where a lot of it is happening. When Turner restores a film now, it’s digital. No 35mm print is made. The restoration that was done—how long has it been now?—five or six years ago or more of Greed (1924), the reconstruction that Rick Schmidlin did, Turner funded that but it was a digital restoration only. MOMA showed that five or six years ago and I got to see a video presentation of Schmidlin’s work and all I could think was, “I can’t believe this.”

Guillén: The San Francisco Silent Film Festival has never projected digitally?

Salmons: We have shown clips digitally. I have no doubt that somewhere in the future, we’ll experiment with a digital presentation.

Guillén: Don’t let me know. [Laughter.]

Salmons: I know. But it’s because it’s going that way. I always want the festival to emphasize 35mm and emphasize the original format that the films were shown in; but, sooner or later, just as an experiment, we’ll show a digital restoration digitally because we’ll want to make our audience aware that that’s the state of preservation. Now you’re seeing restorations happening without a film print being generated. There are some restorations happening like that. I haven’t seen one myself yet; but, a few people—including Dennis James—have told me that the cost is coming down and the quality of the restoration is astonishing. At the same time, all archivists agree that digital is not the way to go for archiving film.

Guillén: They don’t know how long digital will last, do they? Isn’t there some concern that it won’t hold up?

Salmons: From what I’m hearing from archivists like Pat Loffin, who’s the head of George Eastman House, is that digital is not an archival medium at all. Part of the reason is that it doesn’t decompose; it just goes bad instantly. If you’re starting to lose a film, you know you’re losing it and you can then hopefully schedule restoration; but, you can lose a digital file from one second to the next.

Guillén: It’s just like losing a file on the computer. It can corrupt.

Salmons: Yeah. They’re still saying that film—properly stored—is the best archival medium. I’m worried that we’ll reach a point in the next five or ten years where 35mm projectors will vanish out of movie theatres. The Castro Theatre, I know, is excited about that. [Laughter.] I don’t think it will happen tomorrow; but, it’s a concern in the next five or ten years. The same way that I’m concerned that the Wurlitzer can continue to function and that people like Ed Stout can continue to maintain it so that musicians like Dennis can continue to play it. We’re concerned for the future of showing the films in the format they were meant to be seen.

Guillén: Which is why I quoted William Blake about kissing the joy as it flies. I believe San Franciscan audiences have become somewhat aware of what’s happening and—just as fleeting as love can be—cherish the love while they have it. There’s nothing else you can do.

Salmons: We’re all very suspicious of technology.

Guillén: Are these sea changes the reason you’ve applied the focus this year to film preservation? And why you’re profiling key figures in film preservation?

Salmons: A little bit more because this issue of future preservation is becoming more and more prevalent all around us now. I do want to be focusing more on that. There has always been a desire to bring the archivists and preservationists and collectors and unique individuals like David Shepard out in front so that the audience can see that there are actually people alive today, right now, who are making it possible for them to see these films.

Guillén: Talk to me about the development of the Silent Film Preservation Fellowship.

Salmons: This is brand new, put together by Stacey Wisnia, our Executive Director, and Rob Byrne, who is the Vice President of our Board of Directors. Rob is a success story for all preservation in that he was a technology executive up until this year, at which time he turned 50 and decided to change careers and is now going into film preservation himself. He’s going to go to the school in Amsterdam. He’s studying Dutch right now, enrolled in an immersion class in Dutch, and will be going to Amsterdam in October. All I can say is that another film preservationist born is always a good thing. The preservationists being turned out by the Selznick School are all instantly being hired by archives. We’re seeing a new generation of film preservationism happening. There seems to be some excitement about that and people are moving in that direction.

So we wanted to do something to bring more attention to the fact that there seems to be a lot of new enthusiasm for film preservation. At the Pordenone Silent Film Festival every year they have a program in connection with Haghefilm Conservation Labs in Amsterdam—who has been a sponsor of our festival for a few years too—where they offer a fellowship to a student who’s graduated from one of the film programs like the Selznick School or the Amsterdam School. An archive selects a film that’s on their list of films that need to be preserved—usually a short—and that student works with a lab to preserve the film and create a print. That program was premiered at Pordenone and they’ve been doing that for several years.

With some funds from the festival, we’ve preserved a silent film, a cartoon, at the UCLA Film and Television Archives. We’ve always wanted to get more into actual preservation, not merely promote the need for preservation but do some preserving. This is another step in that direction: to promote the idea of preservation by selecting a graduate student once a year, selected by the organization itself. This year, for example, the Selznick School picked the student who will receive the fellowship.

Guillén: Is the Selznick School the leading school for film preservation in the United States?

Salmons: Yeah. At the moment they are the preeminent preservation school in the United States. UCLA offers some courses. And there are a few other places in the world where you can get a degree in preservation. It seems to be picking up steam, as I said. So the idea behind the award is to promote greater knowledge of that happening and to play a little bit of a role in making that happen and encouraging that to happen. This year the film has been selected and the student has been selected and they’ll be at the preservation program on Saturday morning at the festival. We’ll introduce them, announce what the film is, and then—on Monday morning as soon as the festival’s over—the student will go right to Monaco Labs and start her fellowship. She graduated from the Selznick School on June 20, we sent a certificate announcing the fellowship to her, and then we’ll be bringing her out for the festival, and then she’ll be here for an entire month preserving the film.

Guillén: My final question. It’s always humor-inducing and warm-hearted that the McRoskey Mattress Factory sponsors San Francisco’s Silent Film Festival. How did they come on board to become a major sponsor?

Salmons: I’m so happy you’re asking this question! [Laughter.] The short answer is: they love silent film too. The head salesman at the McRoskey Mattress Factory store on Market Street, Larry Cronander, is a big lover of silent film. He had been coming to the festival for several years. He’s especially a big fan of Rudolph Valentino. The year we showed The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—when it came full circle for me and I finally got to show the film that inspired me, with Dennis on the Wurlitzer—Larry approached us and said, “Y’know, I’m from the McRoskey Mattress Factory and we’ve been here in San Francisco for 100 years and history is very important to our organization, the President of our organization is the daughter of the man who founded it, we love silent film, and we’re trying to find cultural events to get involved with in this city, and wonder if you’d be interested in collaborating with us?” I went to their office and they showed me their archive of all these incredible photographs of the history of their organization and they even had some pictures that showed silent film advertising on billboards in the background around the store and I realized, wow, we’re connected in a way through mutual love of history and Larry’s love of silent film. I have to tell you that more people get the biggest kick out of the McRoskey Mattress Factory’s involvement. It’s completely genuine. They love what we do and we really like them too.

Guillén: Let alone the incredible excitation that maybe this year my raffle ticket will win me the $5,000 shopping spree at McRoskey!

Salmons: [Laughter.] We’re lowering the ticket price this year so it makes it even more attractive. Every festival needs sponsors. We need a base of individual donors, which is our largest base, and you need sponsors, and you receive grantor support, and you hope that your relationship with sponsors is honest and sincere and that a sponsor isn’t picking on your festival purely because they’re hoping to profit from it, that their involvement is because they enjoy what you do. You hope that you enjoy your sponsor. It’s just been the most enjoyable relationship. They’re such nice people. Robin McRoskey Azevedo didn’t share Larry’s enthusiasm for silent film initially; but, it only took a couple of years of Robin coming to the festival and now he’s on our Board of Directors!

Guillén: Stephen, thank you so much for all of this history. You’re doing such a wonderful job and I’m looking forward to this year’s Silent Film Festival.

Brian Darr gave us early hints of this year’s San Francisco Silent Film line-up at Hell on Frisco Bay.

Stephen Salmons is so charismatically conversant that it’s one of the few times I wished I did podcasts instead of transcriptions, because he deserves to be heard. Fortunately, several others have recorded their conversations with him. Donna Hill’s thorough podcast preview of this year’s Silent Film Festival at her site Stolen Moments is an indispensable guide. It runs at about an hour’s length but is completely worth the listen.

Mick LaSalle’s Chronicle podcast from last year contains some hilarious banter. As does the session when he and Salmons discuss Lars and the Real Girl.

Killer Movie Reviews also has a recorded interview with Salmons from the 2003 program. Angie Coiro speaks with Salmons, among others, on a 2004 KQED broadcast on silent cinema.

Cross-published on The Evening Class, Parts One and Two.

Related Links

• San Francisco Silent Film Festival
• Metroactive Interview With Stephen Salmons (Richard Van Busack)
• San Francisco Chronicle Podcast (Mick LaSalle)
• Stolen Moments Podcast Interview With Stephen Salmons (Donna Hill)
• Twitch Interview With Daisuke Miyao (Michael Guillén)