Charles Musser
- Producer
- Editor
- Director
Charlie Musser grew up in Old Greenwich and Riverside, Connecticut, and
attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he took
Public Affairs courses with Gerry Studds, who co-chaired Eugene
McCarthy's 1968 presidential campaign in New Hampshire. (Studds was
later Congressman from Cape Cod and the first openly gay national
political figure in the United States.) He also apprenticed to local
studio potter Gerry Williams, a former conscientious objector whose
father was close friends with Gandhi. He won the school's history prize
his senior year. In the fall of 1969, Charlie became a Yale freshman as
its undergraduate college admitted women for the first time. He created
his own major in film studies and, took classes with Jay Leyda,
Standish Lawder, Murray Lerner, David Milch, Michael Roemer and Peter
Demetz. His wrote his first film paper on Dziga Vertov's Man with a
Movie Camera.
Charlie left Yale after his junior year to try his luck in the film
industry. He moved to New York City and rented an apartment on 45th
Street between 9th and 10th Avenue (Bebell and Bebell film labs was on
one side, Motion Picture Enterprises on the other). He has lived on the
same block since 1972. Charlie began to knock on doors, starting at the
top of the nearby Film Center Building. On the 14th floor, he talked
his way past the receptionist and was hired to sync dailies of blown
off hands and feet for a medical film-his first professional job. After
gigs with Sam Lake Enterprises (cutting hard core inserts into soft
core films) and other Film Center companies, he worked his way down
45th Street and knocked on the doors of Leacock-Pennebaker (56 West
45th Street). Pennebaker put him in touch with a new sub-tenant-- Peter
Davis, then beginning work on a Vietnam War documentary that became
Hearts and Minds (1974; Oscar, Best Documentary). He was hired to sync
dailies during the day, while the cutting room was used on nights and
weekends by a several upcoming filmmakers, including Debra Shaffer and
Bonnie Friedman, Barbara Kopple and Alexis Krasilovsky. Charlie worked
on Hearts and Minds for two years -one year in New York and one in Los
Angeles. As the first assistant editor, he also cut two scenes in the
final film.
After Hearts and Minds, Charlie returned to Yale and graduated, writing
his senior essay on Russian Formalism and Early Soviet Film Theory. He
became a part-time graduate student at NYU's Department of Cinema
Studies and worked professionally as a film editor on Sons of Bwiregi
(for Amram Nowak and the Maryknoll Missionaries) and other films,
joining IATSE local 771. He also received a bi-centennial grant from
the National Endowment for the Arts to make An American Potter (1976),
on Gerry Williams: it was awarded a Blue Ribbon from the American Film
Festival, "Best in Category-Fine Arts" from the San Francisco Film
Festival, as well as a CINE "Golden Eagle." He then worked as an editor
and segment producer for Tony Potter on Between the Wars (Alan
Landsburg Productions). Working in film made Charlie interested in the
origins of editing. From his research he soon realized that film
editing was not "invented" but rather editing (the juxtaposition of one
shot or scene to the next) and "post-production" were the domain of the
exhibitor in the 1890s and were only centralized inside the production
company in the early 1900s. Edwin S. Porter, an exhibitor who became
America's first "filmmaker," embodied this shift. Receiving the Society
for Cinema Studies Student Award for Scholarly Writing for his essay
"The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter," Charlie was soon awarded a New
York State Council of the Arts grant to make a documentary that became
Before the Nickelodeon: The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter (1982),
which had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival. Carrie
Rickey of the Village Voice called it one of the year's best
documentaries. It was subsequently shown at the London, Berlin, Sydney
and Melbourne film festivals.
Although Charlie continued to work as a film editor for the next
several years, he increasingly focused on academic scholarship. He
became the film historian for the Thomas A. Edison Papers and was the
catalog editor of its Motion Picture Catalogs by American Producers and
Distributors 1894-1908: A Microfilm Edition (1984) He also co-curated,
with Jay Leyda, a traveling six-part film program for the American
Federation of the Arts: Before Hollywood: American Films from American
Archives, 1894-1915 (1986). With Leyda as his dissertation advisor, he
completed his Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from NYU in the fall of 1986. He
also wrote three books: The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to
1907 (1990), Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison
Manufacturing Company (1991)-a revision of his dissertation and a
companion to his documentary, and (with Carol Nelson) High-Class Moving
Pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the Forgotten Era of Traveling Exhibition,
1880-1920 (1991). The Emergence of Cinema received the Jay Leyda Prize
from Anthology Film Archives, the Katherine Kovacs Prize for best book
on film and television, and the Theater Library Book Award. In this
period, he loaned his life's savings to James Schamus so that he could
produce his first feature film, Raoul Ruiz's The Golden Boat (1990).
Through James he also met Errol Morris and subsequently wrote an
article on new approaches to film truth that were developed in Morris's
The Thin Blue Line (1988).
After teaching as a visiting assistant professor at UCLA's School of
Theater, Film and Television in 1991-92, he returned to Yale as an
assistant professor in 1992. As Director of Undergraduate Studies,
Charlie ran the Film Studies Program (chaired by Brigitte Peucker) and
did much to expand and reorganize its offerings. He taught such courses
as Intro to Film Studies, Film Theory & Aesthetics, and the Classical
Hollywood Cinema. Charlie also originated Documentary Film Workshop, a
year-long course in which students made documentaries for their senior
project. The course, which he taught as an overload, was later taken
over by D.A. Pennebaker. Penny was soon co-teaching with his partner
Chris Hegedus. In 2008, they were succeeded by Laura Poitras. Charlie's
books included Edison Motion Pictures, 1890-1900: An Annotated
Filmography (1997), which received Honorable Mentions for both the
Katherine Kovacs Prize and the Theater Library Book Award. He also
co-edited (with Jane Gaines and Pearl Bowser) Oscar Micheaux and His
Circle: African American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era
(2001), which included his essay on Micheaux's Body and Soul (1925),
which had been recognized with the annual Kovacs Prize for best essay
on film and television.
Charlie became a tenured, full professor at Yale in 2000-and co-chaired
Yale's Film Studies Program with Dudley Andrew for the next eight
years. He also started the Yale Summer Film Institute with teachers
such as Sandra Luckow, Marc Lapadula and Greg Johnson. Increasingly
Charlie taught critical studies courses on documentary, including the
first university-level courses devoted to Errol Morris (in 2008) and
D.A. Pennebaker (in 2009). When Yale faced a budget crisis in 2009,
Charlie returned to teaching Documentary Film Workshop (first with
Ashish Avikunthak then on his own). In conjunction with the Yale Summer
Film Institute and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas,
Charlie would curate a weekend of film screenings each summer with
visiting filmmakers such as Spike Lee, Karim Chrobog, and Socheata
Poeuv. This unexpectedly facilitated Charlie's return to film
production. When Errol was unable to attend a series of screenings
devoted to his work, Charlie and cinematographer Carina Tautu traveled
to his offices and made a 65-minute documentary (entitled Plan B),
which was shown in lieu of a Q & A with the filmmaker. This material
was later incorporated into the slightly longer Errol Morris: A
Lightning Sketch. Charlie has somewhat playfully described it as the
third film in his documentary trilogy on important American artists. It
also reinvigorated his long-standing commitment to the integration of
theory (critical studies) and practice.
attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he took
Public Affairs courses with Gerry Studds, who co-chaired Eugene
McCarthy's 1968 presidential campaign in New Hampshire. (Studds was
later Congressman from Cape Cod and the first openly gay national
political figure in the United States.) He also apprenticed to local
studio potter Gerry Williams, a former conscientious objector whose
father was close friends with Gandhi. He won the school's history prize
his senior year. In the fall of 1969, Charlie became a Yale freshman as
its undergraduate college admitted women for the first time. He created
his own major in film studies and, took classes with Jay Leyda,
Standish Lawder, Murray Lerner, David Milch, Michael Roemer and Peter
Demetz. His wrote his first film paper on Dziga Vertov's Man with a
Movie Camera.
Charlie left Yale after his junior year to try his luck in the film
industry. He moved to New York City and rented an apartment on 45th
Street between 9th and 10th Avenue (Bebell and Bebell film labs was on
one side, Motion Picture Enterprises on the other). He has lived on the
same block since 1972. Charlie began to knock on doors, starting at the
top of the nearby Film Center Building. On the 14th floor, he talked
his way past the receptionist and was hired to sync dailies of blown
off hands and feet for a medical film-his first professional job. After
gigs with Sam Lake Enterprises (cutting hard core inserts into soft
core films) and other Film Center companies, he worked his way down
45th Street and knocked on the doors of Leacock-Pennebaker (56 West
45th Street). Pennebaker put him in touch with a new sub-tenant-- Peter
Davis, then beginning work on a Vietnam War documentary that became
Hearts and Minds (1974; Oscar, Best Documentary). He was hired to sync
dailies during the day, while the cutting room was used on nights and
weekends by a several upcoming filmmakers, including Debra Shaffer and
Bonnie Friedman, Barbara Kopple and Alexis Krasilovsky. Charlie worked
on Hearts and Minds for two years -one year in New York and one in Los
Angeles. As the first assistant editor, he also cut two scenes in the
final film.
After Hearts and Minds, Charlie returned to Yale and graduated, writing
his senior essay on Russian Formalism and Early Soviet Film Theory. He
became a part-time graduate student at NYU's Department of Cinema
Studies and worked professionally as a film editor on Sons of Bwiregi
(for Amram Nowak and the Maryknoll Missionaries) and other films,
joining IATSE local 771. He also received a bi-centennial grant from
the National Endowment for the Arts to make An American Potter (1976),
on Gerry Williams: it was awarded a Blue Ribbon from the American Film
Festival, "Best in Category-Fine Arts" from the San Francisco Film
Festival, as well as a CINE "Golden Eagle." He then worked as an editor
and segment producer for Tony Potter on Between the Wars (Alan
Landsburg Productions). Working in film made Charlie interested in the
origins of editing. From his research he soon realized that film
editing was not "invented" but rather editing (the juxtaposition of one
shot or scene to the next) and "post-production" were the domain of the
exhibitor in the 1890s and were only centralized inside the production
company in the early 1900s. Edwin S. Porter, an exhibitor who became
America's first "filmmaker," embodied this shift. Receiving the Society
for Cinema Studies Student Award for Scholarly Writing for his essay
"The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter," Charlie was soon awarded a New
York State Council of the Arts grant to make a documentary that became
Before the Nickelodeon: The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter (1982),
which had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival. Carrie
Rickey of the Village Voice called it one of the year's best
documentaries. It was subsequently shown at the London, Berlin, Sydney
and Melbourne film festivals.
Although Charlie continued to work as a film editor for the next
several years, he increasingly focused on academic scholarship. He
became the film historian for the Thomas A. Edison Papers and was the
catalog editor of its Motion Picture Catalogs by American Producers and
Distributors 1894-1908: A Microfilm Edition (1984) He also co-curated,
with Jay Leyda, a traveling six-part film program for the American
Federation of the Arts: Before Hollywood: American Films from American
Archives, 1894-1915 (1986). With Leyda as his dissertation advisor, he
completed his Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from NYU in the fall of 1986. He
also wrote three books: The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to
1907 (1990), Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison
Manufacturing Company (1991)-a revision of his dissertation and a
companion to his documentary, and (with Carol Nelson) High-Class Moving
Pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the Forgotten Era of Traveling Exhibition,
1880-1920 (1991). The Emergence of Cinema received the Jay Leyda Prize
from Anthology Film Archives, the Katherine Kovacs Prize for best book
on film and television, and the Theater Library Book Award. In this
period, he loaned his life's savings to James Schamus so that he could
produce his first feature film, Raoul Ruiz's The Golden Boat (1990).
Through James he also met Errol Morris and subsequently wrote an
article on new approaches to film truth that were developed in Morris's
The Thin Blue Line (1988).
After teaching as a visiting assistant professor at UCLA's School of
Theater, Film and Television in 1991-92, he returned to Yale as an
assistant professor in 1992. As Director of Undergraduate Studies,
Charlie ran the Film Studies Program (chaired by Brigitte Peucker) and
did much to expand and reorganize its offerings. He taught such courses
as Intro to Film Studies, Film Theory & Aesthetics, and the Classical
Hollywood Cinema. Charlie also originated Documentary Film Workshop, a
year-long course in which students made documentaries for their senior
project. The course, which he taught as an overload, was later taken
over by D.A. Pennebaker. Penny was soon co-teaching with his partner
Chris Hegedus. In 2008, they were succeeded by Laura Poitras. Charlie's
books included Edison Motion Pictures, 1890-1900: An Annotated
Filmography (1997), which received Honorable Mentions for both the
Katherine Kovacs Prize and the Theater Library Book Award. He also
co-edited (with Jane Gaines and Pearl Bowser) Oscar Micheaux and His
Circle: African American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era
(2001), which included his essay on Micheaux's Body and Soul (1925),
which had been recognized with the annual Kovacs Prize for best essay
on film and television.
Charlie became a tenured, full professor at Yale in 2000-and co-chaired
Yale's Film Studies Program with Dudley Andrew for the next eight
years. He also started the Yale Summer Film Institute with teachers
such as Sandra Luckow, Marc Lapadula and Greg Johnson. Increasingly
Charlie taught critical studies courses on documentary, including the
first university-level courses devoted to Errol Morris (in 2008) and
D.A. Pennebaker (in 2009). When Yale faced a budget crisis in 2009,
Charlie returned to teaching Documentary Film Workshop (first with
Ashish Avikunthak then on his own). In conjunction with the Yale Summer
Film Institute and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas,
Charlie would curate a weekend of film screenings each summer with
visiting filmmakers such as Spike Lee, Karim Chrobog, and Socheata
Poeuv. This unexpectedly facilitated Charlie's return to film
production. When Errol was unable to attend a series of screenings
devoted to his work, Charlie and cinematographer Carina Tautu traveled
to his offices and made a 65-minute documentary (entitled Plan B),
which was shown in lieu of a Q & A with the filmmaker. This material
was later incorporated into the slightly longer Errol Morris: A
Lightning Sketch. Charlie has somewhat playfully described it as the
third film in his documentary trilogy on important American artists. It
also reinvigorated his long-standing commitment to the integration of
theory (critical studies) and practice.