Grady Hendrix writes in Slate about what will be lost with the passing of projectionist as a profession. The truly explosive ending:
With projectionists gone, another part of our lives will lose the human touch. During the Solidarity strikes in Poland in the early '80s, Rivierzo was working at a mom-and-pop theater and received a print for the night's show that smelled like vinegar. He began searching the reels of the innocuous Hollywood feature and found that a chunk of nitrate film stock had been spliced into middle of the film. Nitrate is an incredibly dangerous early film stock that is so flammable it will burn underwater. It is so volatile that playing it requires not only fireproof projection booths but special projectors equipped with multiple, built-in fire extinguishers. Projectionists are trained to treat it like the deadly explosive that it is, and Rivierzo, knowing it could catch the theater on fire, refused to play it.
First the manager begged and then he threatened, but Rivierzo wouldn't budge. Finally, the theater's owner showed up and promised Rivierzo that he would assume all responsibility if anything happened, but he insisted that the film be screened. Reluctantly, Rivierzo agreed, and he carefully threaded up the flammable stock. That night, the cinema hosted a private show for the owner and a crowd of Polish community leaders. The nitrate footage Rivierzo screened was some of the first film smuggled out of Poland, shot by film students on antiquated equipment, that showed police breaking up the Solidarity strikes with bullets. It was the first proof that the crackdown on the Solidarity movement was worse than anyone was being told, and that night's screening was designed to raise money from Polish expats for the cause.
Which prompts David Lowery to share his own story of the view from the booth:
It just so happened that, in February of 1998, on the east wing of the theater, in auditorium seventeen, the usher staff noticed a young man slumbering in his seat after the credits ended. We could see him from the booth, one slack head left in the empty auditorium. I don't remember how they figured out that he was dead, and I don't remember if they canceled the next show or not, but by the end of the night the theater was back up and running with an 'Out Of Order' cover placed over the seat the deceased had occupied. The film he'd shaken off during? Spice World. Which, if my memory serves correct, wasn't as bad a way to go as one might think.
To complete the cache-clearing before I turn back to end-of-semester grading, I gotta say I'm ten kinds of excited about Soft Skull's new film series, Deep Focus, edited by Sean Howe. It is taking a BFI-skewering, 33 1/3-inspired approach to film writing, as far as I can tell.
Deep Focus is a series of film books with a fresh approach. Take the smartest, liveliest writers in contemporary letters and let them loose on the most vital and popular corners of cinema history: midnight movies, the New Hollywood of the sixties and seventies, film noir, screwball comedies, international cult classics, and more. Passionate and idiosyncratic, each volume of Deep Focus is long-form criticism that’s relentlessly provocative and entertaining.
The first batch of titles? Jonathan Lethem’s take on They Live, Matthew Specktor’s meditation on The Sting, Christopher Sorrentino’s examination of Death Wish, and Chris Ryan's closer look at Lethal Weapon. I regularly assign Lethem's Star Wars-centric "13. 1977. 21." to my lit students, so I can't wait to get my hands on Lethem going long form.
Q: So, which flick would you pitch?
