The reason it is being discussed is because you Brad are the exception. And a wonderful exception I might add. I started working in the booth in 1973. Women in the south of the United States were barred from the booth. I hedged my way in and have stayed there ever since. I now run my theater with a head projectionist who is female, an assistant projectionist who is female, a relief projectionist who is female and a staff of female theater attendants. I am an equal opportunity employer but I have found no males who will stay on the job. Once we had a male projectionist who feigned a projector failure on SuperBowl Sunday and shut down the theater. While the gender issue seems less important nowadays, remember that it wasn't to long ago when women wern't allowed in this male domain. Thank goodness todays generation of projectionists and theater operators have learned that gender is not the issue and that great showmanship is. Unfortunately for women Brad, not all operators share your view and thus the reason for discussion.

Neatness. Attention to detail. Willingness to show up on time (or early) and do the work. Enthusiasm and a general sense of energy. Good communication skills.

Culturally...this gives women an edge in this country. While it is true that I have had the pleasure of training and working with some highly-motivated young men, the general scenario is that the women have a better work ethic.

Strength is another issue...can they move a print? It's a requirement.

So is age...must be 17 or older (there has only been one exception that I'm aware of).

Here's one that you won't see in the U.S.A. - A height requirement...can you see through the booth window? Can you thread the brain on the top platter?

So, essentially, there are a couple of basic "yes or no" type questions that make a person eligible for the training program. Male or Female isn't one of them.

After that, it's up to the candidate to impress us during training and examination.

Odds are that in the ten vacancies I have in the upcoming training, probably six of them will be female. If history is a valid barometer, then I'll end up with three females in the top five.

Could it be that women try harder because they feel that they must prove themselves?

As far as lifting cans, in New York there was never any question of lifting film shipping cans. The union rule was simple -- projectionists don;t lift film cans. The manager has to assign someone else to do that, usher or whoever. That was when there were change-over booths. I have no idea what the rule is now because projectionists are always moving prints around by themselves, platter to platter.

As far as film students are concerned, I don;t know, perhaps times have changed, but all I know is this: in my neighborhood theatre every summer, the projectionist would prop the booth door open to get some air; I discovered this when I was about 10 years old and I would sneak up there and sit outside the door, mesmierized, looking at him work....looking at what I saw as unbelievablly huge machines and the super blue/white shafts of light spilling out around the lamphouse door. It was all an amazement to me -- like watching the Wizard of Oz at work, and I knew I wanted more than anything to do what that guy was doing. Today I work in a beautiful 2500 seat art deco, single screen theatre with a change-over booth which still runs carbon arc. We are located next to Brooklyn College, literally a 5 minute walk from the Film Department, and NOT A SINGE film student in all these years has ever come up to me and said, "I would love to see how you run a film." I get young stage hands who want to learn projection, a kid from my class on film sound recording, but no film students. To me, this is quite uncomprhensible. If I were in school and there was a facility such as our Whitman Theatre that I would have access to at almost any time I wanted, you can be sure I would be in there every free moment. I guess film students today get more turned on by fantasies of making another JAWS that will break all box office records bringing in those magic millions in a single weekend rather than the relatively more mundane magic that goes on in a projection booth. Each to his own.

Oh, as for their knowledge of practical film issues....one year they used our theatre for screening their student films. Most of them had no idea what aspect ratio their own films were shot in. Which is no surprise as once one of their professors wanted to screen a film that I was not familiar with. He said it was "wide screen" so I asked did he mean it was an anamorphic print. His face glazed over and it was quite clear he had no idea what I was talking about. Rather than embarrass him, I said not to worry, I'd be able to tell when I got the print.

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That never seemed to be a problem in New York. I know one "vertically challenged" operator got a manager to provide an OSHA-approved ladder
for a booth with a five-stack platter system, while the use of a
wooden or plastic beverage carton, stepladder or one of those wheel-retractable "step-stools" is common. And I remember a slender young woman,able to reach the spindle above the penthouse to place a full 6,ooo'reel, by doing a ballet leap, scissoring her legs in a motion
half-dance and half weight-lifter.
I've seen some elderly projectionists used to sitting down to thread up. So height shouldn't be a problem for the ambitious.

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Mike (with his hateful self) wrote:

OK, lets face facts. Anyone who is willing to spend $12,000 a year for an education in film is not exactly the brightest person in the world. Film students are morons.

These are hardly "facts."

I should know, seeing as how I am one.

Dear Diary: Mike has a low self-esteem, but he's so caught up in thinking he's normal that he has gone ahead and decided that everybody else is a moron, too.

Maybe YOUR film school sucks. At only $12,000 a year, it probably does - That's not your fault. It is, however, your fault for patronizing that school after arriving at the conclusion that you'd have to be a moron to stay there.

Maybe YOUR fellow classmates are indeed morons. Maybe it would've been safer for you to say "the film students at (name of your school) are morons." But that's not finally what you said. Sure there were morons in my film school but, for the most part, I'd say we were a pretty okay bunch.

But someone who doesn't know as much as they think they do is not necessarily going to be unable to learn something that someone who doesn't pretend to know anything can learn.

Whatever THAT means!

Film students generally have a lack of practical film knowledge.

Maybe at YOUR film school. Bear in mind that most film schools are teaching production and or criticism. They don't teach classes in projection. You won't learn that there unless you get work-study and end up running the films for the classes. Nobody I knew in film school aspired to being a projectionist.

But speaking from experience, that's because, as others in this thread have hinted at, they are not taught anything of value at film school. This doesn't mean that they don't have a love for film and a willingness to learn. I do. And I think that they have something to offer the theaters that they work at that you may not get from someone who doesn't have that love for film.

People first...what good is it to love films if you hate the people you're screening them for?

As for "the other people in this thread" who harbour similar irrational feelings toward an entire group of people...All I can say is that it's a disappointment that in such a field where details are par for the course, that you could go and paint a group of people...PEOPLE...with so broad a brush.

Not to wax my own car too much, but I'd like to think that I have made the place that I work at better.

I somehow doubt this. I've never known a hater to improve a working environment.

All of this being said, if there's one group of people who I hate more than anyone else on this planet, it's film students

Unbe-phugging-lievable!

Notice I didn't knock the intelligence of film students, what surprises me (over and over) is that year after year, film students come and go and I never find any of them coming to my booth with that passion to learn, not so much how run projectors, but just to learn the process....to see how the fruits of their creative labor finally becomes alive on the screen. I can;t understand how they WOULDN'T be intrigued by what goes on in the booth. My only measure is by how I felt at that age and how that projection booth was almost like the sound of the Pied Piper's flute; I was drawn to it.

Before I got my first projectionist job in that booth in Texas, I got a job as an assistant manager in a first run house in Austin TX (I believe it was the State Theatre on Main Street). I was so excited because I thought that job was a position of power -- powerful enough to get me into the booth -- my main desire. I fantasized that I would make friends with the projectionist, even get to run the projectors.

I wasn't there more than a day when I ventured up to the booth to introduce myself. A VERY suspicious projectionist opened the door a crack to ask what I wanted. I said, nothing, just wanted to say hello, maybe just look around. He reluctantly opened the door to let me in. I looked around like a kid in a candy store. He kept asking, "So what do you want; is something wrong?" I said, "No, no....I just thought maybe you could teach me how to work the projectors." He became frozen in place, speechless. I saw his reaction so I added, thinking it would show him my good intentions, "This way if you want to take a day off, I could run the show for you." He went ballistic. He threw me out of the booth saying, "Listen, you don;t come up here anymore, understand. If you have anything to say to me, you use the intercom. The only time you need to talk to me is if there is something wrong with the picture or sound and if you bother me anymore I am going to make a complaint to the union." So much for my irresistable, youthful charm.

I was devastated. The only reason I took the job was that it would put me that much closer to that magic projection booth. Later the manager explained to me that management and the projectionists were pretty much antithesis to each other -- they were both always walking on eggs and being very careful not to step on each other's feet (the reason for which was something I could never quite grasp, even to this day). By the end of the week I sadly realized that I would never get into the booth through the management backdoor and that my biggest responsibility would never be running a show, but counting paper cups and tallying popcorn sales sheets. I quit at the end of the week -- it was my shortest, most unrewarding, but enlightening job stint in my career.

Reverie over.

Certainly if I were the father of a little girl there is no doubt she would grow up well versed in technology and I would encourage her to question how and why things work, etc.

As for students, I have a helper who is a film student and he has proven to be good worker with good attention to detail and showmanship. Not perfect but then who is?

My editor just graduated from film school in fact, and I've had this debate with her many times. Unlike me, she thinks that film school was a valuable experience in which she learned a great deal and was given the opportunity to work with equipment that she normally wouldn't have. I think that's bullshit. Someone with her talent and determination could have easily found ways to learn just as much, if not more, outside of film school, and get paid for it.

I believe that film school is certainly a place where people can learn about film. But at the same time, I think you can learn more in your living room watching DVDs with commentary tracks by people who are actually out there making the films that we love.

I remember my first year at film school a teacher was trying to make a point. He said, "Name some of the great directors out there right now."
Someone responded, "Kevin Smith."
"Name Someone else," the teacher said.
"Paul Thomas Anderson."
"Someone else."
"Tarantino."
"No."
"Rodriguez."
"No."
"Soderbergh."
"No. Name people who have made a lot of movies."
"Carpenter."
"Yes!"
"Lucas."
"Yes!"
"Kershner."
"Yes! What do these guys have in common? They all went to film school. And they're the people who redefined cinema."
I could not believe what he was saying. Yes it's true. Those people did go to film school. And they did redefine cinema. TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO! But what about the first fifty people listed? They didn't go to film school. And they're the people who are redefining cinema today.

It's really hard to embrace something when all of your idols say it's bullshit. I really do hate film school. I don't mind most of the people, but I think you'd agree that there are a lot of morons who go there.

As to whether or not it's just my school in particular, I would have to say no. I actually go to the largest film school in the world. McNaughton and Kaminski are graduates. My favorite critic went there, too (but he doesn't really count, because he was a critic when he was 18, and dropped out shortly thereafter). There are two things that I hate about film school, and these things are not limited to my school. They are universal. I hate how you could take the money spent in a year's worth of education and instead put that towards a 16x9 Hi-Def monitor and an XL1 and still have enough money to pay the rent. I think you'd learn more this way. The other thing I hate about film school is the very subtle and unintentional way that students are pushed into certain creative directions. This seems very dangerous. I'd rather have filmmakers seek out their own tastes in film. But seeing as how the great filmmakers no longer go to film school, I guess it doesn't really matter.

Have I improved the booth that I work at? Maybe not. But I don't hate the people that I show movies to. I don't know where that assumption came from. I love them. I take my job very seriously. I grew up in this community, and now I'm the guy who shows them movies. That is so fucking cool. Also (and this is going to sound pretentious as hell), I think of myself as the last "artist" in the filmmaking process. P.T. Anderson says that no director has final cut. The projectionist has final cut. He is so right. This really hit me during my first summer in the booth. We had just put together our print of EYES WIDE SHUT. I was looking at it on the makeup table thinking, "Kubrick spent the last 3 years of his life making this thing, and now it's my job to show it to people. I better not fuck this up." I don't know whether or not I've improved the booth that I work at. But I do know that I was the guy who convinced them that we should have someone in the booth at all times, and not just on weekends. So that's something. Right?

One of the people who trained me was a woman. She knew a thing or two about the Norelcos, lemmetellya'.

I agree with the sentiment that gender is irrelevant and it's more about genes and upbringing.