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The long hello
The MFA's new curator of film admits he has big shoes to fill. But filling in has worked for him before.
As head of the Museum of Fine Arts film program, Bo Smith was accustomed to glitches from time to time during films he'd programmed. But this was shaping up to be more ominous than a glitch.
A few hours before screening a pair of classic silent films during last September's Russian film festival, he discovered that one of the prints had no recorded musical soundtrack. The pianist he'd hired to accompany the first film wasn't available for the second, which meant that this silent film was going to be extremely silent.
"It was something of a shocker," said Carter Long, Smith's 28-year-old operations manager.
Half-joking, he mentioned to Smith that he used to play piano and "might be able to make some noise," Long recalled. Never mind that he hadn't touched the instrument in 10 years, and that he'd never seen the film, a subtle 1934 comedy about Russian peasant life around the time of the revolution.
But with no alternative, Smith took him up on the offer. Nervously, Long seated himself at the piano and improvised for 66 intense minutes, his eyes glued to the screen while he tried to remember everything he'd learned in music-theory classes about how to put notes together to create a mood.
"He just astounded everybody," Smith said. "He was unbelievable. I was in awe of him."
Now Long is stepping in again, except this time the spotlight is brighter.
A month after the piano episode, Smith unexpectedly quit the MFA to become executive director of the Denver Film Society, leaving Carter Long temporarily in charge of one of the most ambitious museum film programs in the country. Long, who only four years earlier had come to the MFA straight out of grad school to take a job selling tickets, was "by default" the senior person in the department, said Edward Saywell, chair of the museum's department of contemporary art and MFA programs.
The MFA launched a six-month nationwide search for a replacement for Smith, who'd run the program for 21 years. But in the end it looked no further than Long, who had quietly gotten the job done "astonishingly well and with great creativity," said Saywell.
Last month he was named the MFA's Katharine Stone White Curator of Film and Video, a high-profile position that involves programming an ambitious array of hundreds of international films a year and coordinating more than a dozen film festivals
"I'm absolutely thrilled. I can't think of anything I'd rather do right now," said Long, who at 29 is one of the youngest curators at the MFA, and the first-ever curator of film. (The new curator position follows a reorganization last summer that put the film program under the umbrella of the department of contemporary art and MFA programs. Smith, who was head of film and video, was named curator emeritus when he left.)
Long's resume is very short. He grew up in Concord, N.H., and in 2002 graduated from the University of New Hampshire, where he majored in English; in 2003 he earned his master's degree in critical theory of English literature at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. (He has an affinity for all things British; even as a kid he preferred British authors, from Roald Dahl to Graham Greene, said Long, whose affection comes through in his pin-striped pants, argyle socks, and shiny wingtip shoes.)
He came to the MFA in 2004, working his way through a series of jobs in the member-services department, which included selling tickets, answering phones, overseeing staff, and maintaining attendance and financial records. Though it was a long way from what he'd studied in England - his thesis applied Marxist literary theory and deconstruction to contemporary literature and film - he loved the job.
"If you take customer service the right way, it can be very rewarding," said the personable Long, now ensconced in a spartan office deep inside the MFA. "Everyone who comes here comes for the same reason: They love art. It's nice to have a good impact on somebody's day, basically."
But he was a serious film buff, and when a job opened up in the film department last spring, he jumped on it. Smith hired him last April as his film and video operations manager, impressed by Long's reputation as a hard worker. It was an un-glamorous job that involved moving film prints around, keeping records, paying invoices, and arranging guest speakers. But it was perfect for someone who'd grown up spending a lot of his time at Cinema 93, a Concord independent movie theater that also rented videos.
It was there that Long honed his film tastes, falling in love with movies like "Brazil" and "A Clockwork Orange," and going through an intense Woody Allen phase and a long Shakespeare phase, especially the film adaptations by Kenneth Branagh.
At the moment he's in a Werner Herzog phase ("Encounters at the End of the World") as well as a Lars von Trier phase.
"I can't get enough of him," Long said, referring to the Danish filmmaker known for such works as "Dogville" and "Dancer in the Dark" and for his connection to the Dogme 95 filmmaking movement, which mandates restrictions on film production in order to purify the filmmaking.
"I'm not really a genre guy. I tend to like directors," said Long. Right now his
Long's passion for film is matched by his love for music. He plays guitar, bass, drums, alto saxophone, banjo, and keyboard, and has performed in bands since junior high school. He's also made recordings of his songs including one on which he plays melodica, stand-up bass, and pots and pans, inspired by von Trier. ("It was an experiment in playing with restrictions.")
About a year ago he formed a band called Ice Dragon with three others who work at the MFA. They play "heavy slow rock." He's only vaguely aware of what they do at work, he acknowledged. "We don't really talk about our jobs." But he says it's the best music he's made in his life; they recently performed at the Middle East.
Meanwhile, he knows that expectations are high for him as curator. "Bo was a fixture for many years on the programming scene," said David Pendleton, the programmer for Harvard Film Archive, another important local venue for independent films. "Carter has some big shoes to fill."
Long does seem a bit self-conscious about being in Smith's shadow. "I really am honored to follow in his footsteps," he said, unsolicited, adding he was "paying attention" to how Smith did the job, and absorbing his lessons. He emphasizes he plans to build on the existing strengths of the current program, including the film festivals, "which are a huge part of our identity in Boston."
But he makes it clear he hopes "to do this in my own way." This includes programming one-off film series like the "Sports on Film" series that runs through April 23. It includes the French documentary "Zidane," about a full-length soccer match filmed with 17 cameras from the perspective of superstar Zinedine Zidane; and Werner Herzog's "The Great Ecstasy of Sculptor Steiner," reflecting Herzog's lifetime fascination with ski jumpers.
He's scheduled a series of films on consumerism in May including the premiere of "Consuming Kids," a documentary about the commercialization of childhood; and "Objectified," a much-anticipated documentary about industrial design by Gary Hustwit, who made "Helvetica." Long is also considering ways to coordinate film programming with MFA exhibitions, starting with two shows on Mexican photography and prints opening in May.
He's especially interested in luring more college students to the film programs, since "we sit at the heart of what is essentially a huge college campus," he said, then added: "I'd love to see the MFA become the film venue of choice for all of our neighbors."
Linda Matchan can be reached at l_matchan@globe.com. 
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