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Awhile back I was working on my theater budget and realized I didn’t know how much projectionists made. My guess, based on prior experience, was they were well paid. I made a few phone calls and the best advice I got was to call theaters in the area. I put that aside, not wanting to alert competitors of my plans, and went online. I found absolutely nothing, which is in itself something.

 

A few days later, I was talking to a film equipment broker and decided to ask him. I learned something I never would have imagined: projectionists--those interesting, somewhat odd people who joined unions and took pride in splicing film stock in small, dark rooms--are nearly extinct. I worked at a theater in the 70’s, and one of my favorite things was talking to Chuck in the booth. Chuck was a volatile, somewhat crazed personality in those days. He’d done two tours in Vietnam and earned a graduate degree in literature from UC Berkeley. Complex, fearless, but surprisingly sensitive (he’d hate that), he kept a steady conversation going while he threaded the projector and peered through the little window to the screen, searching for the dot that cued the next reel (see Cinema Paradiso for more details). More often than not, the drama in the booth was better than what was on the screen.

 

The equipment broker told me new projectors need little upkeep or expertise, so theater owners hire kids or do it themselves. This was good news because it meant my wife and I could be the "projectionists" and save lots of money. Nonetheless, I was disappointed. Over the last thirty years I’ve watched tons of movies, and I’ve always imagined there was a Chuck-like character in the booth. Finding out that projectionists like Chuck were disappearing (not to mention theater managers like sixty-year-old Mr. Reed, who wore a suit, smoked cigars, and personally greeted every customer who entered the theater), made me realize how dated my idea of "going to the movies" was.

 

Then I opened the newspaper and discovered that the newest wrinkle in the movie-going experience is movie theaters that don’t show movies. There it was on the front page of the New York Times: "Exhibitors are heading toward showing more than just movies faster than anyone had expected." Huh? Who were these people who actually expected this to happen? How long before the "movie" in Movie Theater goes the way of projectionists and cigar-chomping managers?

 

Now, to be honest, I had an inkling that sometihg odd was in the air. A film booker suggested I have two projectors in the booth: one for film and one for DVD’s (there are few film prints available for the older movies we’ll present). He noted that then we could connect the DVD projector to cable. That’s what the article in the Times was about--movie theaters charging customers to watch TV. Well, not exactly. Most programs will be special events, the World Series, operas, concerts, but, given how things are going, showing regular programs can’t be far away. And why is this happening? The number of people who go to movie theaters is stagnating; attendance inched up less than one percent last year and this sluggish trend has been going on for years. That’s why people in the business are rethinking the "movie theater" experience. Nowadays, there are brew pub movie theaters, full-service restaurant movie theaters, and theaters with huge game rooms, daycare, and cafes.

 

So "going to the movies" can mean a lot of different things; several of which have nothing to do with movies. We plan to make our single screen theater similar to the ones we grew up with, but we’re also considering programming live music, lectures, film classes, and partnering with a theater group that will present plays. I doubt I’ll ever forget my initial impressions of movie going, characters like Mr. Reed and Chuck, lodge sections, and ushers patrolling the aisles will always come first to mind. But that nostalgic vision will fade quickly enough, and I’ll remember that screens are now multiple, projectionists passe, and the "movie" in Movie Theater an anachronism from a bygone day.