An ex-projectionist and armchair film critic reminisces...
My first cinematic experience was in 1968 when, at the formative age of 6, I was taken to see the original Planet of the Apes. In the darkness of the theater, I was awestruck at how I was transported to an imaginary world, then magically returned to reality after two hours.
I craved the cinematic experience for the next decade, but as a child, was only seldom afforded the opportunity to go. At an early multiplex, I once sneaked up the stairs and peered into a dimly lit projection booth, to marvel at the film chugging through the projectors at 24 frames per second.
On
my 16th birthday, with driver's license in hand and eligible for after-school
work, I applied for a $2.16/hour part-time job as usher at (now defunct)
Turnpike Cinema in Fairfax, Virginia. When the elderly couple who managed
the place offered to train me to run projectors, I eagerly accepted. Turnpike
Cinema's booth was so old, it still had the firescreens attached to strings,
to be released if the film caught fire. (Very early films were highly
flammable.) The booth had two projectors, which alternated 20-minute reels
six times or so throughout any given showing. Inside a projector, high-voltage
electricity sparked a carbon arc lamp, which reflected off a parabolic
mirror to shine light through the film, projecting the movie over the
heads of the audience and out onto the screen.
A mechanical bell would chime toward the end of a given reel, signaling "get ready for changeover." If the alternate projector wasn't threaded up in advance, the audience saw the dreaded 5-4-3-2-1, then white screen. But 20 minutes is plenty of time to thread the next reel, so it was then a matter of watching for two changeover marks to roll by in the upper right corner of the screen. (Watch for these, when you see your next movie.) First mark, roll the film and open the shudder. Second mark, flip the changeover switch. With practice, these changeovers were so seamless, the audience never noticed.
By
the way, I dedicate this webpage to the drive-in
movie theater, an institution sacred to yesterday's teenagers, but
sadly unknown to today's. I'd frequent the (now defunct, replaced by a
Costco and a Home Depot) Super-29 Drive-In less than a mile from my home,
frequently sneaking my compliant date through the gate in the trunk of
my MGB convertible! (Don't worry, I let her out once inside, as promised.)
After graduating high school, I went off to college in Boulder, Colorado, where projectionists were unionized. I scored a better paying job as relief projectionist for various theaters, including the giant Flatirons Theater on University Hill, a (now defunct) Art Cinema on Boulder Mall, the (also now defunct) Holiday Drive-In on the outskirts of town, campus screenings, and others. These more modern projection booths featured "platters," where all reels of a given movie were spliced together into one continuous strip of film, requiring only one projector per theater. Xenon bulbs replaced the old carbon arc lamps. With more modern equipment, my job generally became easier. At least, no more changeovers!
One
exception to this was the drive-in, which could suffer sudden mechanical
failures. Drive-in speakers are wired like Christmas tree lights, where
an outage in one speaker will affect all speakers from that point forward.
The projectionist only knows of a problem when, you guessed it, everybody
starts honking their horns. I'd hustle out to the horn-honking area with
screwdriver in hand, locate the offending speaker, and perform on-the-spot
open heart surgery. Cheers indicated success.
The experience not only paid my way through college, it exposed me to many hundreds of films I wouldn't otherwise have seen. After showing Reds or Raiders of the Lost Ark all summer long, I knew the script by heart, but still discovered nuances every time I saw the film. Others would be part of a rapidly changing Art Cinema calendar where, like with Quadrophenia or Gallipoli, I'd be forever moved after seeing them only once.
Having handled so much film with my fingers, I relate to it on a visceral level, as a mechanic would a car, or as a doctor would a body. Movies have profoundly influenced me, including the foreign travels I embarked upon, my musical preferences, my spiritual and political beliefs, my understanding of individual and societal weakness, my choice of career and spouse... basically, every decision I've ever made in life, adding up to who I am today. Cinema is an art medium like no other.
Having such a lifetime bond to the cinema, it may surprise you to hear that I have vowed never to set foot inside a movie theater again! I just got fed up with the mobile phones going off in the audience, exorbitant ticket prices, shoddy projection work (out-of-frame or out-of-focus), audience members talking during the movie, perfumed audience members, the disgusting smell of buttered popcorn (which I never did like), lax management and staff, serious scratches running the entire length of a reel, etc. The quality of a cinema experience, always patchy, has dropped like a rock in recent years. So what was my solution? I got a 34-inch 16:9 flatscreen television with a DVD player and a Netflix subscription. Now, I knock over several movies each week in the comfort of my own living room. At least, I can hit the pause button and go take a leak without missing any part of a film!
So without further ado, I present my diverse collection of favorites. They are in alphabetical order, since I couldn't possibly rank-order them. It's biased toward small-time foreign art films, tragic endings, corporate responsibility, triumph-over-adversity, and post black-and-white era films. The list is obviously work-in-progress.
 |
|||
|
1986 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Adrian Lyne |
|||
|
Starring: Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke |
|||
|
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1979 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Ridley Scott |
|||
|
Starring: Sigourney Weaver |
|||
|
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1984 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Miloš Forman |
|||
|
Starring: Tom Hulce, F. Murray Abraham |
|||
|
Not an historically accurate portrayal of Antonio
Salieri.
It is unlikely that any rivalry he had with Mozart
resulted in poisoning. |
 |
||
 |
||
|
2006 |
||
|
USA |
||
|
Director: Mel Gibson |
||
|
Starring: Rudy Youngblood |
||
|
Love or hate Mel Gibson, this film is spectacular in its costumes, make-up, cinematography, and set design. Also, very ambitious, being acted entirely in an ancient Yucatan Mayan language. Rife with historical inaccuracies. For starters, Mayan civilization fell centuries before the arrival of Conquistadors. It's unlikely they'd locate an open mass grave so close to crops. And tribes within walking distance of a city would surely have known about it. But hey, artistic license granted! |
 |
|||
|
1982 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Kevin Rafferty |
|||
|
Starring: N/A (Docu-Comedy) |
|||
|
Funny
but sobering collection of Cold War propaganda. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1995 |
|||
|
Australia |
|||
|
Director: Chris Noonan |
|||
|
Starring: James Cromwell, Magda Szubanski |
|||
|
Pig
becomes useful to avoid becoming dinner. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1993 |
|||
|
Australia |
|||
|
Director: Rolf de Heer |
|||
|
Starring: Nicholas Hope |
|||
|
"God can see everything I do - and he's gonna beat me brainless." Extremely dark humor. First 30 minutes rough. And you think you had a difficult childhood? |
 | ||
 |
|||
|
1990 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Curtis Hanson |
|||
|
Starring: Rob Lowe, James Spader |
|||
|
Demonic
drifter progressively destroys yuppie. |
 |
||
 |
||
|
1993 |
||
|
USA |
||
|
Director: Ron Fricke |
||
|
Starring: (Documentary) |
||
|
Collage
of images and music. No dialog (a "non-verbal" film).
|
 |
 |
|
|
2003 |
||
|
USA |
||
|
Director: Tracy Droz Tragos |
||
|
Starring: (Documentary) |
||
|
A
daughter's journey to know her father, 30 years after his death in Vietnam.
The film's title comes from the phrase Lt. Droz used to close his letters
home.
|
 |
|||
|
1979 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Hal Ashby |
|||
|
Starring: Peter Sellers, Shirley McLaine |
|||
|
|
 |
||
 |
Betty
Blue |
||
|
1986 |
|||
|
France |
|||
|
Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix |
|||
|
Starring: Béatrice Dalle, Jean-Hugues Anglade |
|||
|
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
2005 |
|||
|
USA / Ireland |
|||
|
Director: Edward Zwick |
|||
|
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Djimon Hounsou |
|||
|
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1966 |
|||
|
USA / Ireland |
|||
|
Director: John Guillermin |
|||
|
Starring: George Peppard, Ursula Andress, James Mason |
|||
|
WW I German aviator seeks highest
award. Dogfight scenes eat Top Gun for lunch. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1981 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Lawrence Kasdan |
|||
|
Starring: Kathleen Turner, William Hurt |
|||
|
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1980 |
|||
|
Australia |
|||
|
Director: Bruce Beresford |
|||
|
Starring: Jack Thompson, Bryan Brown, Edward Woodward |
|||
|
Military
courtroom drama involving three Australian soldiers of the Bushveldt
Carbineers, set near the end of the Boer War (1899-1902). Based on a
true story. |
 |
||
 |
|||||
|
1987 |
|||||
|
Australia |
|||||
|
Director:
Mark Lewis
Starring:
(Docu-Comedy)
Exogenous
species multiplies unchecked. | |||||
 |
Charlie Wilson's War | ||||
|
2007 |
|||||
|
USA |
|||||
|
Director:
Mike Nichols
Starring:
Tom Hanks,
Julia Roberts,
Philip Seymour Hoffman True story
of how one colorful character wielded influence to help David conquer
Goliath | |||||
 |
|||
|
1968 |
|||
|
USA / UK |
|||
|
Director: Ken Hughes |
|||
|
Starring: Dick van Dyke |
|||
|
From
an Ian Fleming (of James Bond fame) story. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1988 |
|||
|
France / Italy |
|||
|
Director: Guiseppe Tornatore |
|||
|
Starring: (Italian cast) |
|||
|
Movie theater projectionist comes
of age. A little schmalzy. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
2005 |
|||
|
UK |
|||
|
Director: Fernando Meirelles |
|||
|
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz |
|||
|
As described by one critic, "a distressingly convincing corrupt world where everyone is guilty and no one is responsible." |
 |
||
 |
||
|
2005 |
||
|
Canada |
||
|
Director: Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott |
||
|
Starring: Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky |
||
|
Based on the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan. |
 |
|||
|
1978 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: George A. Romero |
|||
|
Starring: N/A |
|||
|
Schlock
horror cannibal zombie apocalypse. It's so bad, it's good. |
 |
||
 |
||
|
1990 |
||
|
USA |
||
|
Director: Kevin Costner |
||
|
Starring: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell |
||
|
A little schmaltzy, but outstanding cinematography. |
 |
|||
|
1989 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Peter Weir |
|||
|
Starring: Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke |
|||
|
|
 |
||
 |
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly | |
|
2007 |
||
|
France |
||
|
Director: Julian Schnabel |
||
|
Starring:
Mathieu Amalric,
Emmanuelle Seigner,
|
||
|
At 43, Jean-Dominique Bauby, charismatic editor of French magazine Elle, suffered a massive stroke rendering his brain stem inactive. After 20 days in coma, he awoke to find himself mentally alert and with imagination and memory intact, but a prisoner inside his own body. He used his only means of communicating with the outside world, blinking alphabetic code with his left eye, to write a book about his experience. |
 |
|||
|
1992 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Robert Rodriguez |
|||
|
Starring: N/A |
|||
|
Made
in 2 weeks for $7,000. Simply awesome. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1980 |
|||
|
USA / UK |
|||
|
Director: David Lynch |
|||
|
Starring: John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins, John Gielgud |
|||
|
From the director of Eraserhead, a story of tremendous cruelty, compassion,
and courage towards
Joseph Merrick, a
19th Century London man suffering severe congenital disfigurement. |
 |
||
 |
Click here. | ||
|
1987 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director:Adrian Lyne |
|||
|
Starring: Michael Douglas, Glen Close |
|||
|
Extramarital
fling leads to boiling bunny. Ending was modified to suit test audiences'
preferences. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1986 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: John Hughes |
|||
|
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Grey |
|||
|
Teen
cuts class to help troubled friend. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1994 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Robert Zemekis |
|||
|
Starring: Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise |
|||
|
Intellectually challenged fellow charts history seeking love. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1982 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Graeme Clifford |
|||
|
Starring: Jessica Lange |
|||
|
Society
& self conspire to wreck actress Frances
Farmer. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1981 |
|||
|
Australia |
|||
|
Director: Peter Weir |
|||
|
Starring: Mel Gibson |
|||
|
Young
Western Australian pressured into famous WWI battle. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1997 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: David Fincher |
|||
|
Starring: Michael Douglas, Sean Penn |
|||
|
Psychological
thriller. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1992 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: James Foley |
|||
|
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey |
|||
|
Character
study in this stage play turned film. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1972 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Francis Ford Coppola |
|||
|
Starring: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall |
|||
|
Early Coppola was good Coppola. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1974 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Francis Ford Coppola |
|||
|
Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall |
|||
|
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1997 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Gus Van Sant, Jr. |
|||
|
Starring: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Robin Williams |
|||
|
Awesome
story, dialog, acting. Triumphant breakthrough achievement for two young
guys.
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
2005 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Davis Guggenheim |
|||
|
Starring: Al Gore |
|||
|
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1999 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Michael Mann |
|||
|
Starring: Russell Crowe, Al Pacino |
|||
|
Dr.
Jeffrey Wigand heroically exposes Big Tobacco. This guy is my personal
hero. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
2007 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Sean Penn |
|||
|
Starring: Emile Hirsch, William Hurt, Hal Holbrook |
|||
|
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1986 |
|||
|
France / Italy |
|||
|
Director: Claude Berri |
|||
|
Starring: Gerard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil |
|||
|
Hunchback struggles to keep his farm alive. See this before Manon of the Spring. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1991 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Oliver Stone |
|||
|
Starring: Kevin Costner, Joe Pesci, Sissy Spacek |
|||
|
Iconoclast D.A. challenges Warren Report. Awesome editing. |
 |
||
 |
The
Killer |
|
|
1989 |
||
|
Hong Kong |
||
|
Director: John Woo |
||
|
Starring: Chow Yun-Fat |
||
|
Likely
wins the award for most bullets fired in a feature film. |
 |
|||
|
1984 |
|||
|
UK |
|||
|
Director: Roland Joffé |
|||
|
Starring: Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor |
|||
|
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1997 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Martin Scorsese |
|||
|
Starring: (Tibetan cast) |
|||
|
The Dalai Lama's story. Who would have expected a movie this beautiful from Scorsese? Excellent soundtrack by
Philip Glass.
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1977 |
|||
|
Australia |
|||
|
Director: Peter Weir |
|||
|
Starring: Richard Chamberlain |
|||
|
Surrealist
psychological drama. Australian lawyer defending Aboriginal experiences
apocalyptic premonitions.
|
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1995 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Mike Figgis |
|||
|
Starring: Nicholas Cage, Elisabeth Shue |
|||
|
Actually,
love doesn't conquer all. |
 |
||
 |
|||
|
1998 |
|||
|
USA |
|||
|
Director: Werner Herzog |
|||
|
Starring: Dieter Dengler (Documentary) |
|||
|
I find it amazing to see how
experiences shape a person's life and the decisions they make. This is
one remarkable tale. |
 |
||
 |
Man
Facing Southeast |
||
|
1987 |
|||
|
Argentina |
|||
|
Director: Eliseo Subiela |
|||
|
Starring: (Argentine cast) |
|||
|
Psychotic
or extraterrestrial? You choose. |
 |
||
 |