FINAL CUT

A couple of nights ago, I had a nightmare in which I was trying to project a reel of 35 mm film, which I assume was one of my movies. The take-up reel didn’t work and the film began to unspool onto the floor. When I tried to fix it, the film became tangled. And the more I tried to fix it, the worse it got. The film broke and I couldn’t find tape to put it back together, and soon the gears of the projector were chewing up the film, turning it into celluloid confetti.

I awoke sweating, my heart pounding. And when I tried to make sense of the dream, I began to remember all the times in the past that the projectionist really had screwed up my screenings. My films have been shown with the reels in the wrong order, so the audience has seen the ending before the middle of the film. This may work for PULP FICTION, but it killed my movies.

Once at a film festival, whose name I shall not mention, my movie was shown upside down and backwards with the soundtrack clearly visible. And at a festival in Japan, my film got stuck in the projector and the whole audience groaned and screamed as the image froze and then proceeded to burn up before their eyes.

There’s an old saying in Hollywood that the projectionist has final cut, and I can tell you from these atrocities that it is absolutely true. You kill yourself to make a film and then hand it over to some guy who unwittingly turns it into complete dogshit. So I must tell you that I do not mourn for the end of 35 mm film. Most theaters today show digital projections and I am grateful. For one thing, there are no longer trained projectionists. With the creation of the multiplex, films began being screened platter style on enormous reels the size of bicycle wheels in order to avoid change-overs (a dying skill.)

I remember my wife and me going to a late night showing of Kubrick’s EYES WIDE SHUT several years ago, and when the film began, the top half of the image was on the bottom and the bottom was on the top. Kubrick must have been rolling in his grave. After several minutes of this I went out into the lobby and asked to see the projectionist. I was taken to the kid selling popcorn. “There’s nothing I can do about it,” he told me.

“Of course there is,” I responded, “There’s a lever on the side of the projector that can correct this. It’s easy.” The kid looked at me like I was from Mars. “I can show you where it is,” I offered.

“No one’s allowed in the projection booth,” he told me as he filled a coke for a patron. “I’ll go take a look in a minute.” Ten minutes later, he came back to tell me he couldn’t find the lever I was talking about, and the only thing to do was stop the film and restart it, which would take
a half an hour. We didn’t get out of the theater until almost two in the morning and ended up talking about the movie until dawn. (She hated it, I thought it was brilliant.)

Nowadays, I always ask to see the projectionist before the screening of one of my films and talk to him about the aspect ratio, the sound demands and so on in order to establish a rapport, so he doesn’t end up fucking me (and my film) in the ass. If there’s a problem, I run up to the booth and let him know ASAP.

But this is a strategy I’ve learned over time and one that wasn’t in place back in 1986 when RE-ANIMATOR was invited to be screened at the London Film Festival. It was a very great honor, as they had never before shown a horror movie at the festival and they asked me to introduce it and attend a reception afterward.

When the screening began, I knew immediately something was wrong but wasn’t sure what it was. I was able to see boom mikes in many of the shots and the tops of ceiling-less sets.

Lights were clearly visible, and in the big scene in which the nude Barbara Crampton is ravaged by the decapitated Dr. Hill, you could sometimes see that she was actually wearing panties. I later learned that the projectionist had failed to put in the 1:85 masking and was screening the print full aperture, a technique that went out of vogue shortly after GONE WITH THE WIND. I sank lower and lower in my seat, holding my head in my hands.

I dreaded attending the reception, and even contemplated making a quick dash for the door. But I was the guest of my British distributor and didn’t want to let him down. When I got up my nerve and walked into the reception, I was immediately surrounded by beaming members of the audience. “How brilliant!” they gushed. “You kept reminding us it was only a movie!” I thanked them, knowing in my heart of hearts that their praise was actually earned by the projectionist who had just popped my rectal cherry.

p.s. As for the last line in the paragraph above, my wife wanted me to cut it. Said it made her physically sick. I told her that was the idea.