The Coolest Theatre I've ever been in.

Many moons ago (1992) I visited California, on Hollywood Blvd just down the street from the famouse Chinese theatre was a theatre called the El Capitan. It's a magnificently restored old Movie Palace. The marquee alone was one of the most elaborate I've seen. The theatre is owned by Disney. The movie playing was an enoyable but forgettable comedy called The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag starring my favorite how-did-she-get-famous-she-can't-act 'actress' Penelope Ann Miller. I went to see the movie just to see the inside of the theatre. It was incredible how they had restored it to it's original glory. Even old time showmanship reigned, it had, wait for it... curtains over the screen! Not just one but three, two opened sideways and another set went up. The theatre was also THX which is about as good as you can get as far as sound and picture. I would call it one of my best movie experiences ever and I've seen a lot of movies.
I was back in California a few years ago with my sister and greatly looking forward to seeing another movie there. However I was dismayed to find the movie playing was The Tigger Movie. My sister refused to go. I don't think I'll ever forgive her.

The Scary Parts of Projection.

Like most jobs involving machinery being a projectionist has it's hazards.

While running the projector has a lot of sprockets and rollers turning at very high speed. The sprockets have teeth on them to catch the sprocket holes on the film. If one was to get clothing etc caught in the machinery it would not be pleasant.

If you ever meet me in person you may notice I always have my sleeves rolled up, even when I'm not working, force of habit. I usually cringe when I see a projectionist with long hair.

The light from the lamp's is incredibly bright. Just under normal operation it get splashed in your eyes every so often. It's tough on the eyes to look in the projector while it's running if there's a problem and I need to figure out what is causing it. I knew one guy who had been projecting for a lot longer than I have, he said everything he looked at had a kind a haze around it.

Changing the bulb or opening the lamp's can be one of the most dangerous things. The bulbs are under very high pressure and can explode. The image below is a bulb and the plastic protector it comes in. I've only heard of one guy who had one explode on him, luckily it was already is the plastic protector. He said it sounded like a shotgun going off and the air was full of tiny particles of glass.

I change our bulb once a year and wear a face shield, I rather value my sight. I'm supposed to wear gloves but it's pretty much impossible to maneuver in such close quarters wearing welders gloves.

Projectionists these days do have it comparably easy though, back when they used nitrate film it was a whole different story. The film itself was highly flammable and was going past a very bright hot light. Not the best combination. Theatres used to burn down on a regular basis. Some of you may have seen the Italian film Cinema Paradiso. It shows an example of nitrate film catching fire. Great film by the way.

I had heard something about nitrate film I didn't believe until a few days ago. I was told years ago it could burn underwater?!! That didn't make sense to me since there would be no oxygen supply. However a few days ago I saw the below footage on film-tech.com. I couldn't get a direct link to work but if you follow these directions you can see it.

Goto www.film-tech.com
Go to videos listed along left side
scrool down to miscellaneous
Click on last item, nitrate film buring underwater, requires Quicktime.

Talk about freaky.

Did you know Western Film has the most seats of any theatre in the city? maybe.

It may be hard to believe but it's true. The theatres at the Silver City may look bigger but since the seats are larger the biggest one still has about 40 seats less than Western Film. in recent memory there were only 3 theatres that had more seats. The Capital downtown was a Famous Players but has been 'closed for renovations' for about 6 years. The great 6 plex on top of a dead mall known in it's last days as Smuggler's Alley had an absolutely fantastic theatre #1. That area is now a parking lot. When the theatres in the Galleria were a Cineplex theatre #5 was a great big THX theatre with 70mm capability. Rainbow turned the back part of it into the two small theatres with aisles down the center.

The maybe is because I'm not sure how many seats the recently reopened Hyland has. I think it would be a close race.

Booking next week could have been interesting.

Today is Monday, the day I book whatever starts on Friday. Failure to Launch and V For Vendetta both did very well over the weekend. We came close to setting a non-tuesday record with Vendetta on Saturday night.
This is good news or booking could have been interesting. There were no new movies available. I thought Inside Man might be available but they were holding it. Usually when no new movies are available I play something that we have been holding back as a reserve, usually a movie I'm not sure will go over well at Western Film. Last example of this was Fun With Dick and Jane. I didn't think it would do well, put it in an empty slot and was proved correct. The other tactic I use is to bring back something we have done well with in the last little while. Sometimes we'll take a chance on a 'art' movie that is good but doesn't have a high profile.

However I have no movies in reserve unless you count Aquamarine and a couple horror movies. The movies we have done well with lately are all out on DVD. I asked about playing the documentary Why We Fight but there were still no prints available.

Luckily both current movies did well enough to hold over. I decided to switch the order so people that want to see V For Vendetta but won't come to the late show would get a chance. Hopefully people will still want to see Matthew McConaughey shirtless at 9:35.

Summer at the movies starts next weekend with the release of Mission Impossible 3. It will push a lot of movies out of first run. Over the summer we usually get movies quicker because the sheer volume of new releases pushes them out faster.

Personal appearance by a director at UWO?

There has been some talk about bringing a Director into UWO as a speaker. Naturally the ones most people would be interested in seeing cost more to bring in. My question is this:

Would you be willing to pay about $20.00 to see a Director in person?
If so which ones?
These are some of the names that have been mentioned.

Kevin Smith
Spike Lee
Wes Craven
Ivan Reitman
David Cronenburg

BTW Don't bother mentioning Spielburg, Tarantino, Scorsese or any of the really big name guys, we couldn't afford them.

So leave your comments or suggestions, I'm curious what people say.

When Technical problems Arise.

One thing I noticed when I worked in the multiplexes and to a smaller extent at Western Film is that the audience usually thinks there is someone sitting watching the movie in the projection booth. When something goes wrong nobody goes out to the lobby to tell the staff. I've seen people sit as long as 20 minutes before someone let the staff know. That incident happened at the Wellington 8, the wrong lenses were being used so the picture looked all distorted. It was about 20 minutes into the movie before I got the call to fix it.
In a multiplex there is usually only one person running up to 12 theaters, sometimes more. Everything is automated so all he or she has to do is thread up and start the show. In some theatres you are lucky if they can stick around long enough to focus the picture.
We had a minor hiccup at Western Film last night. The power blinked for a split second. This can cause a couple problems. The lamp may go out and not come back on by itself. If the power is off long enough the platter can get shut off but the projector keeps going with the result of hundreds of feet of film on the floor.

When the power blinked last night the lamp went off but everything else kept going as usual. Our projectionist immediately went in and turned the lamp back on so the screen was dark for less than 30 seconds. The odd thing was that the power usually only blinks or goes off up there during thunderstorms. It wasn't raining. We are always extra vigilant watching the theatre during storms for exactly that reason.

I had a technical issue as an audience member once that was quite interesting. I went to see The Birdcage at a theatre that was downtown. Great theatre, I was so pissed when they tore it down. The movie was playing in DTS, one of the kinds of digital sound. A mistake had been made in the printing of the film so when the 4th reel came on the DTS was playing the sound from the first reel?! It actually matched nicely so no one noticed for a couple minutes until we started seeing people talk but hearing no dialogue. I figured out what was happening, it took me a minute or so to get out of the middle of the crowded theatre and past the upset patrons to tell the projectionist to turn off the DTS. Once he did everything was fine.

In short, if something goes wrong while you are watching a movie, let someone know!

Western Film played the trailer but not the movie?

I often get questioned about running trailers for movies we never play and having up posters for movies we never show. I thought I'd give some info why that happens.

1. Usually the movie sucks. One of the benefits of being second run is we can see how the first run theatres did with the movie. A film like Date Movie we probably would have played but it bombed.

2. It has to do with the Studio, as I've mentioned before some studios won't let us split so we don't play some of their movies. Date Movie is also an example of this, Fox wouldn't let us split it even if we had wanted to play it.

3. On the rare occasion we play a movie aimed at children we have to play trailers for children's movies. One can't really play a trailer for Saw 2 in front of Ige Age 2.

4. We put 4 trailers on in front of each movie, that creates a fairly consistent 10 minutes of trailers before the movie starts. Not only is the movie experience not complete without trailers (to me at least) but it gives late comers extra time to get into the theatre without missing any of the actual film. Occasionally I don't have 4 trailers in the proper format for movies I know I'm going to play so I put on something we may or may not play.

The posters work in a similar fashion but as soon as I know I'm not going to play a movie I take them all down. Some posters come in that I never even put up because I know I won't play the movie. I never put up the Ultraviolet posters for example. I have posters for Ige Age 2 I haven't put up because that's a very iffy movie. It's Fox so we probably won't be able to split it. A kids movie for the late show tends not to work here.

How Western Film Chooses it's Movies.

Western Film is a second run theatre which means we have to wait until movies leave the Famous Players and Cineplexes. We pay a lower percentage than they do and as such are able to charge less.

Each Monday all the theatres book for the following playweek which is Friday to Thursday. The first run theatres decide which movies they are dropping based on how well the movies did over the weekend and what is coming out the following week. A big movie like Star Wars opens on multiple screens so pushes other pictures out.

Our Booker lets me know what movies are available and I choose from there. I normally pick 2 movies, one for early show, one for late show. If there isn't anything new I want to play I'll replay something that did well recently or, occasionally, play something I didn't want to play just to fill the spot.

As an example, this week we had 4 new movies to choose from.

Aquamarine - aimed at too young an audience for us.
Date Movie - Fox so couldn't be split, plus it sucked.
Ultraviolet - bad movie, we don't do well with these kinds of bad action movies.
Pink Panther - this is the one I choose, it's a good movie for exam period, short and funny, (I hope, I haven't seen it)

To fill the other spot I asked about Mrs Henderson Presents and the documentary Why We Fight. We could have played these in earlier weeks but there were no prints available. Mrs Henderson was available so I booked it. There were no prints of Why We Fight so we'll have to wait for it.

It gets really interesting when there is nothing of interest available or more than 2 movies I want to play available the same week.

Loud Trailers

The last post reminded me of a common complaint from movie viewers (at other theatres, not Western Film). The trailers seem to be recorded at a higher volume than the movies, sometimes painfully so. Western Film plays our trailers at a volume level of 5 on our sound system, the movies play at around 7. If we played the trailers at 7 we'd be blowing people out of their seats.
There was one extreme example lately, we have a trailer for The Da Vinci Code that is incredibly loud even at 5. The first time I heard it I thought the projectionist had already turned the volume up.
I can't imagine how loud that trailer must have been in a theatre that plays everything at the same volume.
It kind of reminds me of TV commercials, everybody knows they are louder than the shows but the industry says they aren't. I think they do it to wake people up. On the other hand loud commercials on TV can backfire, there's always the Mute button. I know I use it quite often.

Bad Trailers.

Is it just me or are movie Trailers getting worse? I've seen so many of them that more or less give away the entire film. I can't remember the name but there was one a while ago I literally didn't bother to see becuase the trailer had given it all away.
Like many things style of trailers changes with time so there may be hope. I used to have a trailer for Bladerunner and I've seen other trailers from about the early 80's. They were usually very long and not well done. I think the Bladerunner trailers was about 4 minutes long, most trailers now are about 2 minutes.
Universal did a spectacular job with the trailer for Inside Man. It's one of the best trailers I've seen in ages. Gives you a good idea what's going on without revealing too much. Just what a good trailer should do.
Still, I like to watch the trailers before a movie. I feel like the experience is not complete if I miss the trailers. I usually don't mind missing the commericals though, I tend to see them about 20 times each because I go to so many movies.

Do Critics matter?

One of the stories of the last few days has been the increasing tendancy for Studios not to advance screen movies for critics. So far this year there have been 11 movies not screened vs. 2 this time last year. Most of them have been horror movies and such that the critics probably would have given negative reviews. Three of them, Underworld: Evolution, When a Stranger Calls, and Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion opened at #1. Some are saying the Studios aren't screening the films to prevent negative reviews from hurting opening weekend business. On the other hand, most of these movies are more or less critic proof. I went to see Underworld: Evolution opening weekend. The critics would have slammed it but I thought it was a lot of fun.
One critic was accidently invited to a screening of BenchWarmers and wrote a review which went out over the wire services. Sony Pictures tried to get the review pulled, calling it 'unauthorized'. The critic didn't even give it that bad a review.
The funny thing about the situation with Sony is they got caught a couple years ago making up phony quotes from nonexistant critics praising some of their less films.
Disney publicity chief Dennis Rice said, "If we think screenings for the press will help open the movie, we'll do it. ... If we don't think it'll help open the movie or if the target audience is different than the critics' sensibilities, then it may make sense not to screen the movie." Sounds like a public relations way of agreeing with the critics.

Film is an odd business

I haven't worked a lot in other industries but the film business seems to run weirder than other businesses. Part of it comes from the nature of the product. Technically there's competition between the studios but there really isn't. The studios may sell the same type of product but if Fox has Star Wars you have to deal with Fox. If Paramount has Mission Impossible 3 you have to get it through them. It's not like Coke and Pepsi where the products are fairly interchangeable. I doubt many people would leave a restaurant that only has Pepsi when they want Coke.

I've mentioned Fox won't let us split movies most of the time. The funny thing is they don't mind if you only play one show each evening instead of 2. We sometimes do this for long movies or during the summer if it's quiet.

The really funny thing is Fox won't let us split with their own product?! Last year we wanted to play Mr and Mrs Smith and StarWars the same week and they wouldn't let us.

Other odd things happen. I have a poster on my wall from the 1997 rerelease of the first 3 Star Wars movies. The poster says, and I quote ' Three reasons why they build Movie Theatres'. The odd thing is that Lucas has pulled the movies out of service, meaning movie theatres can't play them? The Star Wars movies are the second most requested movies for our midnight series and we can't play them.

Sometimes the studios just seem to throw good movies out with no advertising or promotional support. 16 Blocks is a good example. It was a good film but got practically no press and didn't do as well as it could have. I haven't seen it yet but Lucky Number Slevin looks like another one. It starts today but practially no one seems to have heard of it. The trailers make it look good. Wouldn't one think a movie starring Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley and Lucy Lui would have gotten a trifle more press?

The general public has some part in this as well. It seems they won't see a movie if they haven't heard of it
whether it's good or bad. People often assume a movie they haven't heard of is bad.

One incident particularly struck me once. Before I worked at Western Film I was working at the old Westmount 2-plex. There was a line of coming soon movie posters along the wall. One woman looked at a poster and said she'd never heard of it in a dismissive tone. There has to be a first time she 'hears of' a movie and the coming soon posters are supposed to do just that.

more in a later post.

Why I go to movies.

Some of you may have wondered wny I go see movies at other theatres even though I run Western Film and can see them for free. There's a couple reasons for this.

1. I like going to other theatres so I can relax, when I watch a movie at Western Film I always feel like I'm 'on call' if anything happens. Usually the movies I watch at Western Film are ones I haven't had time to see or didn't want to pay $10 to see elsewhere. Sometimes I'll watch movies I saw elsewhere a second time at Western Film.

2. I also go see movies I know won't be playing at Western Film. Usually movies such as horror films or films from certain studios (I'm talking about you, Fox and Paramount) that make it hard for us to play all of their films. I saw Slither last night. Western Film doesn't play horror movies. If all the movies Western Film has ever played were compared for attendance horror films would be at the bottom, even the big hits like The Ring.
I went to see Transporter 2 a while ago because I knew Western Film wouldn't play it, although I wanted to. It was from Fox and they would have wanted both shows each night for the week. It wasn't a big enough film to do that.
I'll probably have to go see Thank you for Smoking somewhere else because it's from Fox as well.

Du'oh The Simpson's movie! and Slither.

I haven't seen it but there is a very short trailer for the Simpson's movie in front of ICE AGE. As a huge fan of the Simpson's I might have to go see Ice Age now. The movie doesn't come out until Jul 27 2007 so I'll have to wait a while for the movie. I hope it's worthy of the big screen. South Park pulled it off so I don't see why the Simpson's shouldn't be able to.

I went to see Slither last night. I like comedy/horror movies. I found it fun to watch if somewhat hokey. It was referencing a lot of older horror movies. The main character, the Sheriff, played by Nathan Fillion, has some good one-liners. Fillion also starred in Serenity and is Canadian so he gets extra points in my book. Too bad it's the first horror movie this year so far to bomb it's first weekend.

Dowloading Movies, Spam and Telemarketers.

A few things I have been wondering about for a while.

As you can probably guess I'm against downloading movies. Despite what anyone says it is stealing someone else's work either in the form of the people who made the movie or those who legally show or sell the movie (such as little ol' me).

Anyway, my question is: If the public can download movies off the internet for free, who's pirating the movies and why? They aren't making any money off free downloads and they are taking the risk of getting caught.

Why do we get Spam? Everybody hates it but it keeps getting worse. I can only assume there must be some people who actually buy the products or get caught in the scams. If no one responded then there would be no reason to send the spam. Would you buy a drug from a company that has to misspell it just to get their letter to reach you? Would you believe that someone in Nigeria is willing to give you millions of dollars?

The same goes for telemarketers. If no one bought the products they are selling they wouldn't have any reason to call.

Anyway, just musing.

Mini Movie reviews.

Just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in about a few movies I have seen recently.

INSIDE MAN- great movie, kept my attention. The acting and writing were well done. As far as Spike Lee directing, I think any reasonably competent director could have done this. It was the writing and acting that made it. Lee pulled a couple of camera tricks that I thought were misplaced, didn't fit with the rest of the movie and drew my attention out.

ULTRAVIOLET - I like Milla Jovovich and I love sci-fi and action movies but this was truly one of the worst films I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot of movies). She was good but the movie made absolutly no sense. It looked cool and the fight scenes were interesting but that was about it.

WHY WE FIGHT - An interesting documentary about the military-industrial complex in the US, it also touched on oil and American Imperialism. Didn't say much really new (at least to me). It did mention a faked attack on some US warships that helped start the Vietnam war. I hadn't never heard that before. Sounds similar to a recent occurence doesn't it? It wasn't really a documentary in the true sense. It was definitley trying to make a particular point.

TRANSAMERICA - I can see why Felicity Huffman got an Oscar nomination, she did a really good job. It wsn't as funny as the trailer suggests but overall it was interesting to watch.

UNDERWORLD 2 - I'd seen it before and watched it again this week at Western Film. I like this kind of movie and found it quite entertaining. Not high art but fun to watch. I bet there'll be another sequel.

V For VENDETTA- Great movie, very entertaining. It was less of an action movie than I expected, had more of a political subtext. Some people don't like the ending and I can understand why. Also having a terrorist as a hero no doubt creates some conflicting opinions. Hugo Weaving did a good job of creating a character with only his voice and body movements. Natalie Portman is beautiful but is not a good actress.

16 BLOCKS- This movie didn't get a lot of press or promotion which is surprising for a movie with Bruce Willis. It wasn't Die Hard but was quite entertaining. I do agree with almost everyone else that the voice Mos Def uses for some reason is very annoying. Western Film could have played this next week but we decided to play Fun with Dick and Jane since we hadn't played it yet. I may play 16 Blocks next week with Brokeback Mountain.

DATE MOVIE - had it's moments but was pretty bad, nowhere near as good as similar movies such as Scary Movie. Alyson Hannigan was ok but I prefer her as Willow. I doubt Western Film will play it. The distributor Fox is one of the hardest to deal with. As a result we usually only play their big hits. They usually demand we play their movies for both shows each night. We can't justify that for most of their movies.

FIREWALL - It's playing at Western Film this week so I guess that's a disclaimer. It's a good solid thriller. Harrison Ford is good as always. Paul Bettany makes a good bad guy. It's worth $4.25 (and I'm not just saying that because it's playing here).

An example of Bad Timing.

The last post reminded me of a time we lost a show at the Galleria when it was a Cineplex. It wasn't a Tuesday though. I think it was a weekend matinee. We were playing Saving Private Ryan.
(spoiler alert)

About 10 minutes from the end of the movie, just when Tom Hanks character is dying the bulb goes. Everything else keeps going so the audience can still hear the movie but there's no picture?!
The manager asks me to stop the show and fix the problem.
I had to tell him I couldn't fix the problem in time to finish the show. The xenon lamps in movie projectors are under very high pressure and can explode if not handled properly. They are especially likely to explode if they are hot. It's recommended to wait at least 20 minutes for a dead bulb to cool down before changing it.
What made it even worse was the bulb in this projector was a big old 5000 watt. Most projectors use about 2000. It would not have been pleasant if that sucker had exploded.
It was too bad for the people in that show, sitting for almost 3 hours and not being able to watch the last 10 minutes of the movie. I'm glad the manager was the one they would have yelled at, not me.
Of course now at Western Film it would be me they would be yelling at?!

BTW I just changed the bulb at Western Film, the old one was starting to have problems igniting which is the first indication it needs to be replaced.

BTW You may wonder why theatres don't just change the bulbs every month or something. The 200o watt bulbs Western Film uses cost $850.00 each.

A subset of Murphy's Law

I used to work as a projectionist at Famous Players and Cineplex when they still had cheap tuesdays. It got to the point I hated working Tuesdays, things always went wrong on Tuesday night. The weird thing is from a projection point of view it doesn't really matter if there are 2 or 300 people in the theatre. In most theatres the projection booth is high up and you can't even see all the seats.
It always seemed odd to me that things would go wrong on Tuesdays when there are the maximum number of customers to piss off, Murphy must have had a special subset for movie theatres. I should point out what most of you are probably thinking, it was usually equipment failure or film jams that were not caused by the projectionist.
Occasionally the problems were caused by the projectionist. I have one really memorable screw-up. I was working at the Wellington 8 and I had to thread up what we call a yo-yo. Bascially there is one print of the film, it plays in one theatre, runs along the wall on some rollers then plays in another theatre. One time I somehow flipped the film over and put the soundtrack on the wrong side on one of the projectors. Stopping one projector after it has started is enough fun but when you need to stop two about 50 feet apart it gets to be a lot of fun. Naturally it was Tuesday night and both shows were packed. I managed to stop the projectors without anything breaking, flipped over the film, rethreaded, and restarted the show.
I think the subset was directly poking me that night, one of the first things a projectionist learns is which side the soundtrack is on and to make sure it's threaded up properly.
We almost never have problems at Western Film but I still get this nagging feeling when I work Tuesdays.

Wonder Woman and a scary image.

It has been reported that Lindsay Lohan is interested in playing Wonder Woman?! Joss Whedon who created the tv series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel is planning to make a film version of Wonder Woman. There has been much speculation over who would get the role.
Personally I don't think Lindsay Lohan is anywhere near a good fit for the role. For one she can't act, two she doesn't physically fit the role. Wonder Woman needs to be someone who is more physical.
According to the imdb.com some of the actresses being considered are Charisma Carpenter, Kim Basinger, Lucy Lawless, Salma Hayek, Michelle Rodriguez, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Sandra Bullock, Nadia Bjorlin, Mischa Barton, Rachel Bilson, Jennifer Connelly, Katie Holmes and Jennifer Lopez.

I would pick Michelle Rodriguez, Salma Hayek or my #1 choice would be Eliza Dushku who played Faith the Slayer gone bad on Buffy and Angel.






Let's hope they don't pick Katie Holmes, Jennifer Lopez or Lindsay Lohan or the project will get negative reviews before it's even made.

Any thoughts?

Tom Cruise at it again.

There were reports that Tom Cruise threatened Paramount he wouldn't do promotion for Mission Impossible 3 if Comedy Central in the US replayed a South Park episode on Sciencetology (not sure how it's spelled). Viacom owns both Paramount and Comedy Central. To me this raises several questions.

Does he have the right to use his clout to get a South Park episode pulled?

What would he have done if Comedy Central was not owned by Viacom?

What is he thinking? I don't think this guy needs any more bad press. After all the ridicule he's received over the last year or so he probably needs a hit a bad as Paramount does. There were reports around the time he jumped on Oprah's couch that Paramount was considering cancelling MI:3 because of his erratic behaviour.

Any Thoughts?