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I would like to share with you a true story of an event that happened to me many years ago.
I was asked by a cinema owner who was a little unstable to say the least, if I could cover for the chief projectionist who had just been rushed into hospital for reasons unknown to me at the time. I went and said yes I would.
It was a strange set up as the cinema owner was banned from entering his own cinema by the manageress after a feud that taken place some time back. Also she hadn't been consulted about my standing in for the chief, so in her eyes I didn't exist.
She would not speak to me or acknowledge my existence and just blanked me, which I thought was a little strange at the time considering I was doing a job that so few people could do or would know anything about in an emergency situation as a favor in order to keep the cinema open and running.
After a couple of weeks I had observed that every Friday lunchtime she would line up all of the staff excluding me in the entrance foyer and drill them about eveything under the sun, but most of all in the event of, you never ever say the word FIRE!!!. This would start mumberlings between the ranks like what are supposed to do and say then? Play charades, 20 questions may be?.
This one particular Friday I had gone in early being the start of a cinema week to make up all of the prints and put together all of the supporting programs. We had opened the doors and had all of the films running on screen, so I sat down in what was the old rewind room with a cup of coffee.
Within two minutes the projection room door is thrown back and busted off it's hinges, and she is standing between two knackered Westrex 7000's screaming at the top of her voice WE'RE ON FIRE ! WE'RE ON FIRE! FIRE, FIRE! well naturally I thought this was some kind of a joke or a prank.
As these were her first words to me, and the fact I didn't exist and to top it these words could never be said within these four walls, I carried on with my coffee flicking through a old copy of cinema technology.
About five minutes later as we no longer have a projection room door, I can hear a commotion going on outside so I decided to climb down a old fire escape ladder from out of the back of the box. I walked through the fire doors onto the pavement to find a group of people standing in road pointing up to the readograph sign board on the canopy that I had changed the night before with the new film titles, it was indeed on fire!.
Not knowing the building very well I had to think on my feet. I had noticed a very old ancient fire switch on the side of the facade so I went and got an extension ladder and place it up the side of the building, I climbed to the top, leaned forward to pull the handle and as I did so to my horror the entire thing came off the wall in my hand, it was not connected!
The switch being made out of cast iron and weighing about 25 kg it pulled me back off the ladder so now the top of the ladder is up against the neighbors shop behind, with me hanging from it trying to hold onto the switch like some Harrold Lloyd stunt.
As this moment happened there was an almighty cheer go up behind me as there is now several hundred people in the road watching this fiasco take shape before them. It is in moments like this you just want the ground to open up and swallow you.
When the fire service managed to fight their way through the crowds they were greeted by the cinema owner who then asked the fire chief if he could hold off from putting out the fire until he had taken a photo of it with his 1930s Polaroid land camera in which he could not get the case open.
After the flames had been exstingested the fire officer approach me and said '"you should never had thrown the switch like that, it should have been done with a pole and hook", to which I replied lucky I didn't as I would now be in the general having it surgically removed!
The most ironic thing about this episode is the night before when I changed the readograph board I had put up the title of the new biopic movie of Jerry Lee Lewis (GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!)
As I walked away from the cinema that evening after we had closed and looked back at a sad molten mess dripping off of the canopy with the film titles now resembling the font of the Rocky Horror Picture Show reading EAT ALL O IRE!.
I think I know why the chief projectionist was in hospital.
Boy, do I miss those days.
I was asked by a cinema owner who was a little unstable to say the least, if I could cover for the chief projectionist who had just been rushed into hospital for reasons unknown to me at the time. I went and said yes I would.
It was a strange set up as the cinema owner was banned from entering his own cinema by the manageress after a feud that taken place some time back. Also she hadn't been consulted about my standing in for the chief, so in her eyes I didn't exist.
She would not speak to me or acknowledge my existence and just blanked me, which I thought was a little strange at the time considering I was doing a job that so few people could do or would know anything about in an emergency situation as a favor in order to keep the cinema open and running.
After a couple of weeks I had observed that every Friday lunchtime she would line up all of the staff excluding me in the entrance foyer and drill them about eveything under the sun, but most of all in the event of, you never ever say the word FIRE!!!. This would start mumberlings between the ranks like what are supposed to do and say then? Play charades, 20 questions may be?.
This one particular Friday I had gone in early being the start of a cinema week to make up all of the prints and put together all of the supporting programs. We had opened the doors and had all of the films running on screen, so I sat down in what was the old rewind room with a cup of coffee.
Within two minutes the projection room door is thrown back and busted off it's hinges, and she is standing between two knackered Westrex 7000's screaming at the top of her voice WE'RE ON FIRE ! WE'RE ON FIRE! FIRE, FIRE! well naturally I thought this was some kind of a joke or a prank.
As these were her first words to me, and the fact I didn't exist and to top it these words could never be said within these four walls, I carried on with my coffee flicking through a old copy of cinema technology.
About five minutes later as we no longer have a projection room door, I can hear a commotion going on outside so I decided to climb down a old fire escape ladder from out of the back of the box. I walked through the fire doors onto the pavement to find a group of people standing in road pointing up to the readograph sign board on the canopy that I had changed the night before with the new film titles, it was indeed on fire!.
Not knowing the building very well I had to think on my feet. I had noticed a very old ancient fire switch on the side of the facade so I went and got an extension ladder and place it up the side of the building, I climbed to the top, leaned forward to pull the handle and as I did so to my horror the entire thing came off the wall in my hand, it was not connected!
The switch being made out of cast iron and weighing about 25 kg it pulled me back off the ladder so now the top of the ladder is up against the neighbors shop behind, with me hanging from it trying to hold onto the switch like some Harrold Lloyd stunt.
As this moment happened there was an almighty cheer go up behind me as there is now several hundred people in the road watching this fiasco take shape before them. It is in moments like this you just want the ground to open up and swallow you.
When the fire service managed to fight their way through the crowds they were greeted by the cinema owner who then asked the fire chief if he could hold off from putting out the fire until he had taken a photo of it with his 1930s Polaroid land camera in which he could not get the case open.
After the flames had been exstingested the fire officer approach me and said '"you should never had thrown the switch like that, it should have been done with a pole and hook", to which I replied lucky I didn't as I would now be in the general having it surgically removed!
The most ironic thing about this episode is the night before when I changed the readograph board I had put up the title of the new biopic movie of Jerry Lee Lewis (GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!)
As I walked away from the cinema that evening after we had closed and looked back at a sad molten mess dripping off of the canopy with the film titles now resembling the font of the Rocky Horror Picture Show reading EAT ALL O IRE!.
I think I know why the chief projectionist was in hospital.
Boy, do I miss those days.
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