8mm Forum: Play Misty For Me

This is topic Play Misty For Me in forum General Yak at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on July 23, 2014, 10:53 AM:

We went to The Enzian last night to see a special 35mm showing of the Clint Eastwood classic Play Misty For Me. It was a very good turn out considering it was a late evening, mid-week showing on a very wet night. I requested a tour of the projection booth, and was escorted upstairs. The booth has a single 35mm Simplex projector, connected to a platter system. Alongside is a Barco digital projector, connected to a computer hard drive. The Enzian is now the only cinema in the area still running 35mm, and they aim to keep it that way for all their classic film showings. They have recently rennovated the auditorium, with all new carpeting, seats and tables, and all new acoustic wall panneling. It looks great.
Well the film started and had been running for about 15 minutes when the show suddenly came to a halt and the house lights went up. The manager came in through the side door and announced that the show was over and they would be re-funding tickets. He said the film platter had broken and over 1,000ft of film was now laying on the floor of the projection box. Sound familiar? [Big Grin]

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Anyway, nobody moved, and he went back out. Then he came back in and said that the projectionist thought he could get back on the air in about 30 minutes, if anybody wanted to hang around that long. Again nobody moved. Ten minutes later the lights went down and the film resumed without any further mishaps. I sat there for a few minutes feeling rather smug with the thought that such a thing would never happen in one of my shows! [Wink]

Anway I dont know which was the scariest, Jessica Walters coming at Clint Eastwood with the butcher knife, or the thought of a thousand feet of 35mm spilt all over the floor!

Posted by David Ollerearnshaw (Member # 3296) on July 23, 2014, 12:32 PM:

Wish we had somewhere with real film. And I really like that film too.

Posted by Nigel Higgins (Member # 4312) on July 23, 2014, 01:47 PM:

Its such a shame cinemas have now gone digital just not the same .

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on July 24, 2014, 02:35 AM:

A very doubtful comment that the platter had broken. For a start two platters would have been involved, one feed, one take-up.

The more likely cause if the print was old and had some degree of curling was that it just skipped off one of the many roller assemblies, got jammed, and the system shut down.

There might have been film all over the place which is a daunting sight to any projectionist.

I once had a very long film which fitted almost to the edge of its platter and about ten minutes from the end the cooling fan in the ceiling above the top platter (which was feeding) simply blew the remaining film right off the edge of the platter. It just left a mangled heap which was very difficult to unravel particularly as I had four other screens to attend to (single manning).

The show and the next show were cancelled. I had a front of house person sent up to help as we gently pulled the remaining film straight along the whole length of the 120' projection box. We cut the remaining film once it was sorted out so that it could be temporarily put on a spool for cleaning.

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