Tweet I had The Dream again

[Mike Gebert]

I'm currently in my hometown, Wichita, Kansas, visiting family. I left Wichita, I sometimes joke, so I could just see a movie without having to project it myself. In those pre-Netflix days, desperately wishing to see foreign films, and silent movies, and all kinds of things, I helped run an existing (but dying) film society and then started its replacement. I booked the films, wrote and designed the brochure, and even projected the films myself. (I was not the world's best projectionist, but adequate enough, I guess.) Then I moved to Chicago— okay, work had something to do with it too— and threw myself gleefully into the anonymity of attending movies without being responsible. I admire those who collect film and put on shows like Cinevent and Cinesation, but am very happily a bystander and supporter rather than a direct participant.

Except we never really leave such things behind. Specifically, the nervous feeling that you have a full house and something could go wrong. The dream for me often went like this: I had a full house for my screening of Napoleon. But I looked at the reels and... oh hell! They seem to have sent me an episode of Green Acres by mistake! I put the reel on and start running it forward to see if Napoleon is on there somewhere— but the reels start moving slower and slower, and the audience is getting restless...

I had this same dream in various forms, adapting to changing times— sometimes it was a VHS of Napoleon I had to fast forward through— but in the last decade it seemed to finally leave me. Until I came back to my hometown this week.

We were showing King Kong— by some system by which it was projected onto both the screen and one of the side walls. Jack Theakston and I were in the booth. (I have never met Jack in real life, but I know he's involved with the Capitol Theatre in Rome, NY, so I suppose that's how he wound up in this particular dream.) Because we were showing it on two walls, there was some elaborate mirror system in the booth that made it really hard to move around the booth without casting your shadow onto one of the images of King Kong. Suddenly we realized— they didn't send us the last reel! How could you show King Kong and not show the ending? People would riot! Jack, quick-thinking, put on a two-strip Technicolor short he just happened to have with W.C. Fields in it (actually it turned out to be three-strip and Fields, who was used to only working in two-strip, himself commented on the unusually good quality of the color) while I desperately tried to figure out where we could come up with the last reel of King Kong in time....

I woke up, dread hanging over me, and saw this in the local paper this morning:

Orpheum Theatre renovation could boost downtown
19 Comments
BY BILL WILSON
The Wichita Eagle

If timing is everything, then Wichita's 90-year-old Orpheum Theatre couldn't have picked a better time to launch a multimillion-dollar capital renovation campaign.

Preliminary work has begun at 200 N. Broadway toward a goal of a full-scale restoration beginning in a year that will bring the historic theater back to "destination status," said Jennifer Wright, the Orpheum president.

http://www.kansas.com/2011/08/04/196050 ... pheum.html" target="_blank

The Orpheum is a very fine old atmospheric-style theater, I saw House of Wax there as a kid ('71 reissue), which has been slowly restored over the last couple of decades into a performing arts space. I wish them well; I will send them a check, not for the first time. But more than once, it has been the location for one of these dreams. And all I can say is, it better stay the hell out of my dreams tonight.

[Danny Burk]

There's a Hitchcock/Dali collaboration in here somewhere...

I once saw a telecast of King Kong where they cut to a commercial as the planes were converging on the Empire State Building, and when the commercial was over Kong was on the ground with Carl Denham giving his wrap-up lines.

My local Classic Arts Showcase channel regularly cuts off the end of segments to go to a station identification break or to start another program. Drives us crazy! I also saw a film with opera singer Alfredo Krauss where every time he started to sing they cut to a commercial. I actually called the station, but they were clueless.

I once dreamed that i watched an entire late 40s British movie with John Mills on TV. Wish i could remember it, it was pretty good. I don't remember any commercial breaks, so in those days it really was a dream!

greta

I once saw a telecast of King Kong where they cut to a commercial as the planes were converging on the Empire State Building, and when the commercial was over Kong was on the ground with Carl Denham giving his wrap-up lines.

My local Classic Arts Showcase channel regularly cuts off the end of segments to go to a station identification break or to start another program. Drives us crazy! I also saw a film with opera singer Alfredo Krauss where every time he started to sing they cut to a commercial. I actually called the station, but they were clueless.

I once dreamed that i watched an entire late 40s British movie with John Mills on TV. Wish i could remember it, it was pretty good. I don't remember any commercial breaks, so in those days it really was a dream!

greta

I once dreamed one of those Escape from Behind the Iron Curtain films, where I was Ray Milland's chauffeuse. It was in black and white, except for that romantic springtime interlude in the orchard. The blossoms were in glorious technicolor. Such a cliché, I'm ashamed of myself.

Mike—that was no dream!!

I hope, Mike, that you were wearing pants.

Bob

Only a Kansan would dream of Green Acres.

Jim

I hope, Mike, that you were wearing pants.

Bob

And that you studied for that test.

[Mike Gebert]

Yes, happily, the film was King Kong and not 1968's naughty-bawdy comedy smash, What Do You Say To a Naked Projectionist?

I never have the test dream, only the film society dream. You may read into that what you will about my priorities in college.

I lived the wrong last reel dream a couple of times in my early tv days. Luckily I didn't have to face the audience.

Back in the early 80's I worked on a film society in Manhattan, and I projected
the 16mm prints. One time we were showing The Big Combo. It was on three
reels. Somehow I jumped from the first reel the the third, missing the middle third
of the movie. No one at the show noticed. I guess it goes to show that movie is all
about the visuals, the plotline was not really that important.

[Mike Gebert]

The worst one like that for me, back in the college film society days, was that New Yorker sent us My Dinner With Andre with two reels (out of 3) marked "Reel 2." Talk about a movie where there was no way to tell from just looking at what was on screen if you were in the middle or close to the end!

At the end of last year, a friend of mine was showing MEN WITH WINGS, the Wellman film starring Fred MacMurray. The film started and we didn't notice anything was wrong until about 10 minutes from the end, when plot points came up that we didn't know anything about. My friend realized that as the opening credits were ending, something distracted him and he started reel two, so we missed the first 10 minutes or so of the movie. We had to watch that at the end.

This sounds like the projectionist's version of the actor's nightmare