His films include An American Potter (1976), Before the Nickelodeon: The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter (1982) and Errol Morris: A Lightning Sketch (2014).
[3] The son of Robert John Musser, who worked for Union Carbide, and his wife Marilyn (née Keach).
He also apprenticed to local studio potter Gerry Williams, a former conscientious objector whose father was close friends with Gandhi.
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.
Its opening chapter expanded on an earlier, influential essay that proposed looking at the early years of cinema within the framework of “screen practice.”[7] The book provides a broad overview of American cinema into the nickelodeon era, emphasizing both the diversity of cinematic expression and the rapid and ongoing transformations in the modes of production and representation.
Musser also detailed the legal battles and other factors that led to serious disruptions of the American industry and produced what is sometimes referred to as “the chaser period” in 1901–03.
[8] Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company[10] was a revision of Musser's dissertation and the first of the trilogy to be completed but the second to be published due to the introduction of new publication methods involving digital technology.
[11] It is also the companion to his documentary Before the Nickelodeon and lists the 18 complete Edison films (many only a single shot in length) and sources for the various quotes that are heard on the sound track.
Musser sees Porter as a representative of the fading old middle class 1) in his methods of filmmaking (his consistent use of partnerships with experienced men of the theater such as George F. Fleming, J. Searle Dawley, and Hugh Ford); 2) his system of representation (the alinear temporal structures of his films which often depended on simple, easy to follow stories; well-known stories familiar to his presumed audience, or a live commentator or lecturer to explain what might otherwise be unclear; and 3) the ideology of his films, which mixed progressive even radical elements with more conservative ones.
In many respects Harry Braverman's various insights in Labor and Monopoly Capital; The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (1974) shaped the intellectual framework of the book.