Patrons were filing into their seats or leafing through their playbills. That became a favorite moment for me: I got to leave my position in the spotlight booth and hurry down the flight of stairs to the mezzanine, entering from the back and trotting down the aisle, and hoisting myself over the marble railing in front of the first row. During the show I would operate the projector remotely from the spotlight booth high up in the balcony, but at intermission I would have to climb over the railing and onto the rigging to change the reels of Super 8 film. My projector would be nestled among the bulky lights and thick black coiled cables. He meant only the mezzanine, where a Bell and Howell would be stationed on the narrow shelf under the marble railing that ran the length of the first row. He pointed skyward, and I craned my neck to the ornate Shubert ceiling. But,” he paused and fixed his blue eyes on me, “you gotta get up there.” I knew he’d been expecting a portly middle-aged guy. “So you’re the projectionist,” he said with a slight smile. He was surveying the scene with an air of authority, so I figured he must be Fred. I introduced myself. I spotted a lanky guy with a shock of white hair wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. As instructed, I searched for Fred, head of the stagehands’ union. All around me, stagehands snaked thick cables up the aisles and unloaded scenery and crates of costumes from the freight trucks backed up in the alley outside. My suede cowboy boots clicked like a metronome as I walked across the barren, dimly lit stage. Just like that, I’d vaulted from the lowly red light district to the shiny jewel box of the Shubert, two blocks but worlds away.Īt the early morning call, I entered the Shubert stage door and followed the distant echo of voices down a narrow hallway. “Once the show closes, you’re back on the waiting list.” I didn’t care if the engagement was three days. “It’s just a three-week engagement,” Mike cautioned. What would be my part in a live stage show? Dancin’ called for film clips to be projected during two numbers as part of every performance, eight shows a week, Nov. The Local 182 business agent, Mike Canney, offered me Bob Fosse’s musical revue Dancin’, which was headed to the Shubert Theatre as part of a national tour. I was eager to move on to a first-run cinema that smelled of popcorn and carpet cleaner instead of mildew and urine. As long as Angelique in Black Leather and Honeypot stayed in focus and in frame.īut after two years, the Pilgrim’s outsider/underbelly intrigue had faded. High up in the projection booth, I had neither boss nor public to serve. I read my assigned books and wrote film reviews for the campus weekly on my portable Royal typewriter alone and unbothered. The union wages were well above minimum and, more important, I had a booth of my own. As a college student who loved film and was loath to wait tables, working as a projectionist seemed ideal. Dancin’ was my ticket out of Boston’s combat zone.įor nearly two years in the late 1970s, I worked as a projectionist at the Pilgrim Theater, a once grand but now decaying palace with a giant marquee that blared “Adult XXX open all nite!” I took the job in stride all newly licensed motion picture operators had to pay their dues in the neon-and-porn -drenched “zone.” It was that competitive then.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |