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Fortunately we had a small crowd that night and everyone was very understanding.

That was the only time I ever cussed DTS. If not for DTS, the sound would have cut-out as soon as the soundhead filled with film and I'd have had about 300 less feet inside the projector head.

I've worked in a couple of non-tiled booths at other theaters, and the carpeted one at my usual theater. Now that I've thought about it, it's kind of an interesting situation:

- Our carpeted booth is very staticky.
- One of the tiled booths has no static problems. This is in a very new theater, all new ventilation, etc, etc, etc.
- The other booth is actually concrete, and had static from hell. This was in a very old theater (50+ years maybe). They "borrowed" our portable humidifier after they had a wrap on the opening midnight showing of Star Wars TPM and some kind soul in the audience called that 1-800-rat-on-us-to-Lucas phone number.

Oh, and may I add that I got that print in my theaters after it had gone through 2 other locations, and it left my care in MUCH better shape than it arrived in? I can't begin to tell you how much I hate it when some lazy projectionist decides to leave 8 million layers of splice tape at every splice when he's making up.

I quickly ran upstairs to the box and I saw a BIG mound of film on the floor. I don’t really know what happened but the platter didn't pick up the fault. And instead of the film going back onto the floor the film was falling to the ground. Approx 6000feet of film on the floor. REALLY EMBARRASSING . The next session ran 20 late and only 50feet was damaged, but is still usable. I am never forget that in a hurry.

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So I'm loading up the movie on the B screen, and I'm thinking about beer or my girlfriend or somesuch thing, cause I put up reel one and forget to push the reel latch down. And the movie starts fine, so I head down the hall to the A screen and thread up the movie there, and start it rolling. And I'm sitting there fat dumb and happy for about 10 minutes when from down the hall I hear:

sproingKABAMMM!!!!

I look down the hall to see the reel rolling on the floor after falling off the spindle. Now this chain (CinemaNational, which was sold to Mid-States, which was sold to USA, which was sold to Loews, which was sold to Hoyt's, which is being sold) bought these flimsy, crapola non-floating hub reels. And when this one hit the floor, one of the flanges bent under it so as to prevent the film from paying out properly. I could NOT get this thing to bend out again. Finally the popcorn kid came up to see why the show was off, and we finaly located this big honkin' screwdriver and were able to use it as a pry bar to bend the flange back enough to allow the film to pass thru.

Now the manager is watching the two of us on the floor trying to get the reel bent back into shape, and he's laughing his ass off as he thinks that this is the funniest thing he's ever seen. The next night I went upstairs, and a sign had been hung from the reel spindle in his writing:

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Steve

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"Old Projectionists never die, they just changeover!"