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, signalling "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 payed 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 "Galipolli," 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, exhorbitant 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.

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