Well, I gotta say, this will be much less time consuming than a Stooge tournament, being only 40 shorts.
As far as why no silents for Laurel and Hardy, my reasons:
- 40 is a nice even number, why mess with a good thing?
- The whole confusion over the "pre-Laurel and Hardy shorts." Really, only two of them could arguably be considered real Laurel and Hardy shorts anyway.
- While the silents are available, not quite as readily so these days, and the talking films all came out recently on DVD.
I do like silent Laurel and Hardy too, but we'll just simplify it with just talkies. I have an idea for a future features tournament, and it will be epic. Let's just do something simple and fun for now, though.