I've been that Quasimodo, back in my days with Penn State Audio Visual Services. You describe very well the feeling of authority that gives you, as well as the fact that even if a projectionist tries to watch the movie, you can never truly immerse yourself, being always completely conscious of the process and your part in making it work.
After that job, it waa years befere I could watch a movie without seeing the dots in the upper righthand corner indicating a reel change.
Yes! Very cool that you’ve also worked as a projectionist as well. It’s a little melancholy that the skills involved in operating those machines are no longer necessary. . . but that would be a different poem for a different topic. Working around film projectors like that does take the magic out of it, but there’s as you described a cool feeling of authority in being the master of those machines making the films go on for an eager audience. Unfortunately by the time I got into it, the cinema I worked in was using a platter system where each 20 minute reel was built into a massive reel containing the whole film that could be projected all in one go, eliminating the need for the projectionist to pay attention to the reel change dots and enact the changeover. So there was a fair bit more idleness for me once I was involved, for all we really had to do was thread and start. . . But then I would sit and read, or write poetry though, and then laugh to myself that I was now getting paid to write poetry.
This one seems really different for you. It's less a chasing around of isolated scenes and senses that build toward a whole, and more a single large concept going deeper and deeper.
Plus, there's a rhyming scheme! It took me awhile to notice it, though, because it's a little more mental than 'aural,' so it's pleasing but doesn't hammer you over the head in a "then/men/when?" kind of way.
Squeezing dollars out of ennui. Yes, so much yes for so many of the jobs most of us do.
I haven't thought in years about whether or not there even still is such a person, as I would have guessed technology might have moved past the need for one, at some point int he last few decades, but I remember when my brother was in college, there was a guy who did this, and actually would occasionally by zoning out or have wandered off when his singular "triangle moment" queued up, so watchers in the theater would be left hollering his name to the window with a kind of elongated booing sound... I've forgotten what it was (I think "Bob," maybe?), but to this day my brother still occasionally reference him in other settings whenever someone is momentarily asleep at the wheel. It's interesting, though, the other elements of characterization you've given this fellow, and clearly there's so much more to him than lazy undergrad. Nicely done!
Haha, yes. Back in my day there was more than just a few times when I was so involved in writing a poem or something, that I forgot to start a movie on time, and so the theater goers were all sitting there with bated breath and cursing the name of that lazy projectionist who couldn’t even do that one thing right he was getting paid to do! Haha. But you are correct that the projectionist trade is no longer needed. I believe something like over 90 percent of all theaters have switched over to digital projection now, meaning there’s no need for a projectionist to thread the machine with actual film, as the digital program will simply turn on automatically according to the theater schedule. But this character of the Multiplex Quasimodo is still a kind of archetype I feel, that we are all familiar with, and it’s been fun seeing others respond with their own experiences or memories of this archaic art of the projectionist. But anyways, thank you very much for reading!
apogee of illusionpigshitpoetJune 27 2020, 20:01:36 UTC
maybe, but i see it more as a zeitgest, some hideous strength, an invisible force to be reckoned with in our human frailty, but that's me, you be different carry on courageous son! ; '
i can't imagine what this is like for you, i grew up in the late 50s and 60s so i've seen things you maybe haven't anyway, i'm certain you can imagine..
Re: apogee of illusionalexanderscttbJune 28 2020, 20:48:26 UTC
I spent the majority of my early adulthood looking back to those times, trying to figure it all out. Needless to say it, truth may always be stranger than fiction as a general rule. Stratagem one of "hideous strength" is to make itself "an invisible force." Once you call the shots on what constitutes reality as opposed to the imagined, you're one step closer to controlling what people may and may not take for what's true. "Whoever controls the media, controls the mind," (Jim Morrison).
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After that job, it waa years befere I could watch a movie without seeing the dots in the upper righthand corner indicating a reel change.
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Working around film projectors like that does take the magic out of it, but there’s as you described a cool feeling of authority in being the master of those machines making the films go on for an eager audience.
Unfortunately by the time I got into it, the cinema I worked in was using a platter system where each 20 minute reel was built into a massive reel containing the whole film that could be projected all in one go, eliminating the need for the projectionist to pay attention to the reel change dots and enact the changeover. So there was a fair bit more idleness for me once I was involved, for all we really had to do was thread and start. . .
But then I would sit and read, or write poetry though, and then laugh to myself that I was now getting paid to write poetry.
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Plus, there's a rhyming scheme! It took me awhile to notice it, though, because it's a little more mental than 'aural,' so it's pleasing but doesn't hammer you over the head in a "then/men/when?" kind of way.
Squeezing dollars out of ennui.
Yes, so much yes for so many of the jobs most of us do.
Two short words in summary: Publish. This.
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But you are correct that the projectionist trade is no longer needed. I believe something like over 90 percent of all theaters have switched over to digital projection now, meaning there’s no need for a projectionist to thread the machine with actual film, as the digital program will simply turn on automatically according to the theater schedule.
But this character of the Multiplex Quasimodo is still a kind of archetype I feel, that we are all familiar with, and it’s been fun seeing others respond with their own experiences or memories of this archaic art of the projectionist.
But anyways, thank you very much for reading!
Reply
Reply
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but i see it more as a zeitgest, some hideous strength, an invisible force to be reckoned with
in our human frailty, but that's me, you be different
carry on courageous son!
; '
i can't imagine what this is like for you, i grew up in the late 50s and 60s so i've seen things you maybe haven't
anyway, i'm certain you can imagine..
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