|
Author
|
Topic: One Got Fat (A 16mm Memory)
|
Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
|
posted October 01, 2015 07:52 PM
For people my age and not much younger, memories of school days are filled with Kodak Pageants. It was a special day when they rolled in a Pageant: a gray monolith on a steel cart, both usually stenciled "AV".
"We are going to see a movie today!"
We film collectors pride ourselves on being able to deal with movie projectors in a time when all it takes to see a movie is a slipped disk! Back then, EVERY teacher was qualified, from the most technical teacher to the least: it was part of the job!
For me this lasted all the way into undergrad. A year or two in the Pageants started to be replaced by a TV and VCR on one of those same steel carts. When I went to show a film at my son's elementary school a few years ago, we found one of these in the Janitor's office loaded with copy paper: it was kind of bittersweet.
One 16mm day that stands out above them all happened for me roughly 4th grade. They herded the lot of us into the gym and showed us this astounding film about bike safety. A pack of monkeys (I'm serious) bikes to a picnic. One after another they violate some bike safety rule and wind up either dead or seriously injured! (These were G-rated demises, of course! Monkey brains didn't appear on screen until Indiana Jones...)
The smart one that survives all the way to the park not only doesn't cancel the picnic, but eats all their lunches! (What a Pal!)
As absolutely awful as this sounds, it's stuck with me more than 40 years now. It's entirely possible if it did the same for a lot of kids back then it's actually saved lives!
-Given the attention span of your average grade school kid a more subtle film may have dripped out our ears before Recess!
This one popped into my head recently. I didn't even remember the title, but I had to Google it and see if I could reel it in.
Now appearing all the way from 1963:
(I saw it roughly 1972!)
One Got Fat
(They'll have to add another Monkey for the remake: the one that forgot to wear his helmet!)
--------------------
All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
at least Orville got there safely. 
Printer-friendly view of this topic
