I\u2019m not much of a social butterfly and I have no innate \u201csense\u201d of how these things work.\u00a0 I do know one odd thing: if you\u2019re a projectionist, then you\u2019re considered the lowest of low in society.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure why this is.\u00a0 It may be the plethora of underpaid teenagers who were relegated to projection booths, most of whom screwed up prints and caused the presentations to look bad.\u00a0 I suspect that it\u2019s something deep-seated in the heart of a lot of arts organizations, and I\u2019ll write more about that in a bit.<\/p>\n
As most of you know, I make a \u201cliving\u201d doing film presentations and preservations, and I prefer the look of projected film.\u00a0 I\u2019ve worked in scores of venues, from Lincoln Center to a dilapidated opera house in Delphi Indiana that rained plaster from a leaky ceiling.\u00a0 Some places have their own projectors and a staff projectionist, but often, if I\u2019m going to run film, then I need to bring my own projectors.<\/p>\n
In order to make ends meet, I also act as a projectionist-for-hire, which is one of the jobs I hate most.\u00a0 That\u2019s when I get treated the worst.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had amateur filmmakers yell at me for running their film with not enough \u201cpink\u201d in it, and I had another guy who had me change the volume on his movie 200 times. (That\u2019s neither a typo nor an exaggeration.)\u00a0 Sadly, a lot of people shoot things on their phone and then, when it looks different on a 30-foot screen, they panic.<\/p>\n
And then the worst one: I was working at a museum once who had Peter Bogdanovich come in to introduce Touch of Evil<\/em>.\u00a0 That\u2019s great, because he\u2019s an expert on Orson Welles… in fact Welles lived in his house for a while.\u00a0 But Bogdanovich is also a director who\u2019s made some cool pictures, and I\u2019m a big fan.\u00a0 I spliced together a best-of trailer reel of several of my favorites, and I also got the reissue trailer for Touch of Evil<\/em> touting all the restoration techniques that went into it.\u00a0 It was all 35mm and all ready to get to the projector.<\/p>\n But they wouldn\u2019t let me run it.\u00a0 And I was never allowed even to speak with Bogdanovich.\u00a0 I could look over and see him, and I wanted to ask him about Noises Off<\/em> and The Cat\u2019s Meow<\/em>.\u00a0 He had interviewed heroes of mine like director Allan Dwan.\u00a0 Couldn\u2019t ask him anything about it.\u00a0 Whatever for?\u00a0 Were they afraid I was going to give him projectionist cooties?\u00a0 Sprocketosis?\u00a0 What\u2019s the deal?<\/p>\n My guess is that this is something of an arts caste system.\u00a0 Put simply, I think there\u2019s this idea of there\u2019s them what does the art<\/em>, and there\u2019s them what supports the artist<\/em>.\u00a0 These \u201cnon-artists\u201d are somehow less valuable people than the \u201cartists.\u201d\u00a0 And they shouldn\u2019t mix company.\u00a0 That would be bad.\u00a0 Apparently, you don\u2019t want to besmirch yourself with contacting someone who is in the support mode.\u00a0 That includes the sound guy, the janitor, the security people, and the projectionist.\u00a0 They\u2019re like the untouchables in the caste system.\u00a0 Neither to be seen nor heard.<\/p>\n Now, the problem is that I\u2019ve got my feet in both worlds.\u00a0 I have to.\u00a0 If I have the only print of a film, then you know who\u2019s going to project it?\u00a0 I AM.\u00a0 I\u2019ll insist.\u00a0 The fact that I\u2019m a historian\/collector makes me an artist, but the projectionist is support only, and contaminated.<\/p>\n So the arts communities, particularly my local one, don\u2019t know what to do with me.\u00a0 I\u2019m not the only one who encounters this.\u00a0 Just last night, a friend of mine from Boston, who knows more film history than most professors, was told, \u201cYou know, most projectionists don\u2019t get to pick films like you do.\u201d<\/p>\n What?\u00a0 So this guy has been demoted from a valuable commodity to the being the equivalent of a janitor in the projection booth.\u00a0 (Not that I\u2019m trashing janitors, mind you… they provide a tremendously valuable service.)<\/p>\n Oh, and it\u2019s not isolated.\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s been a huge stink in LA<\/a> about underpaid projectionists, which is odd, given that there are fewer and fewer of them anyway. You’d think that the ones left working are the good ones that are really needed.<\/p>\n I seem to get more film historian jobs outside my local area, and I find that I seem to get more respect (and hence pay) the farther I am from home.\u00a0 This is why I love to hang out at film conventions where they run oddball films (sometimes mine).\u00a0 It\u2019s great to be around folks who understand film and respect it as an art form, but I still struggle with carrying that idea back to my local area, where I\u2019m apparently contaminated with projectionist ptomaine.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s really sad, because it means that, instead of consulting me, programs are created by \u201carts people\u201d who are completely and utterly ignorant of film.\u00a0 And it means that everyone programs the same five films all the time.\u00a0 I know of three different showings of Wizard of Oz<\/em> in my area just this year, and it\u2019s only February.\u00a0 OK, it\u2019s a great film, but haven\u2019t they made anything else?\u00a0 Oh, yeah, I guess Casablanca<\/em>.<\/p>\n Again, I don\u2019t quite understand this, but I\u2019ve responded to it.\u00a0 I have taken to avoiding projection-only jobs.\u00a0 I don\u2019t ever promote myself as a projectionist.\u00a0 I promote myself as a film historian\/collector\/presenter.<\/p>\n This has even affected my choice in vehicles.\u00a0 A while back, my dad was noticing that I was constantly loading film and equipment in and out of my car.\u00a0 He said that I should buy a van, so I could leave stuff in there all the time.\u00a0 I told him that I couldn\u2019t, and I told him why.<\/p>\n \u201cDad,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s a perception thing.\u00a0 The projectionist owns a van.\u00a0 The film historian has a car.\u00a0 I have to have a car.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d Dad said, thinking a bit.\u00a0 \u201cI understand.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m still not sure that I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m not much of a social butterfly and I have no innate \u201csense\u201d of how these things work.\u00a0 I do know one odd thing: if you\u2019re a projectionist, then you\u2019re considered the lowest of low in society.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure why this is.\u00a0 It may be the plethora of underpaid teenagers who were relegated to … Continue reading “Janitor in a Booth”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,207],"tags":[172,173,171],"class_list":["post-655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-films-pocket-rants","category-film","tag-caste-system","tag-historian","tag-projectionist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=655"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":659,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions\/659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}