Musty Suffer and the Power of Kickstarter

The post this week doesn't involve Mix or something he would know, but I found something interesting in The Star Ledger newspaper back in April about a silent movie star. 

Musty Suffer was an early silent movie star. He's not remembered like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. I gather that Musty was a successful comedian, but not a superstar. His work was saved by the National Register for its cultural significance. I can’t imagine that he was some hack. 

Musty Suffer died in the early half of the last century. Most of his work was during the 1910s through 1920s. Sadly his work was forgotten even though it was saved by the National Register.

Kickstarter is a cool way for artists to raise money for projects. Some of the art is good and some things are unique. It beat going through tons of investor to find that one that had faith in the project. Artists took their art straight to the people. The site later got corrupted by movie stars looking to get other people to pay for their vanity projects when they could afford it themselves. 

Ben Model found Suffer’s old movies. He thought the films were hysterical and wanted to share this with people. He went to Kickstarter and raised money. His sales pitch is still on YouTube. The people that saw the old movies raised the money he needed to restore Suffer’s movies. Once the movies were cleaned up, Model provided the background music for the movies as they are silent movies. The music was his own score. When the project was complete, he made a DVD set out of it. 

The DVD of Suffer's movies is available on Amazon. 

I think this is a great story about a guy that discovered forgotten movies and had the passion to spread this to the world. I don't know about Suffers descendants, but it must make them happy to see Suffer become a name again. According to the trailer for the DVD set, Stuffy's movies hadn't been seen in 97years. All the people that contributed to Kickstarter are also part of this exciting story. 

You can find the movies on Amazon. You can see a clip on YouTube. The clips are funny and worth the time. 

Who is your favorite silent movie actor?