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"Complaint to the Management"

Posted by clarkjohnsen (R) on September 27, 2002 at 07:03:59

(Duncan Shepherd Shares a Burden)

Complaint to the Management

The impulses of selfishness and altruism form an alliance.

Review by Duncan Shepherd
Published September 26, 2002

Common occurrence: the film is out of focus or is improperly framed. What now?

I pass over the evident fact that I have been unanimously elected for life to the post of designated trouble-shooter in the event of any hiccup in the projection of a film anywhere in the entire county, while the remainder of the audience are cleared to sit like bumps on a log, practicing a Buddhist-like acceptance of life as it comes. I pass over, too, the stray militant who, out of some deeply buried racial memory or vestigial sense of tradition, will whistle, clap, or call out "Focus!" -- just as if in the age of the multiplex there were still a sentient and responsive human being up in the projection booth, monitoring the progress of the show with an eagle-eye. I even pass over my own crotchety notion that the job of alarm-raising ought, by unstated covenant, to devolve on the audience member seated closest to the exit, much like the duties assumed by the airline passenger situated in the exit row. I pass over all this because none of it strictly pertains to the gripe du jour.

It is true that my response-time in a crisis has increased somewhat since the advent of "stadium-style" seating. Preferring, as before, to sit at or toward the back of an auditorium, I now find myself to be one of the farthest viewers from the exit rather than one of the closest (I used to be out of my seat like a shot), and therefore am prone to ponder a while longer over the willingness of other viewers to put up with a fuzzy picture or lopped-off heads, or their readiness to laugh sophisticatedly at the microphone poking down into the top of the frame as though this were the mistake of the filmmaker! (And in a sense any margin for error left to the whims of a multiplex projectionist could in fairness be characterized as a filmmaker's mistake.) But no. Time and time again the impulses of selfishness and altruism form an alliance, and I shoulder my lifelong responsibility out of my perverse conviction that a film is ideally to be viewed in focus and in frame.

And so begins my ever-lengthening journey, which perforce lengthens the amount of the movie I am missing en route: down the stadium stairs, through the tunnel to the exit, then another city block or so to the lobby where I endeavor to flag down the first seventeen-year-old in a uniform I see. I have my set phrases, to attach to the relevant variable. "The focus is soft in theater fourteen." Or: "The picture is framed too low (or too high) in theater sixteen." Or simply: "Could we please get the film refocussed/reframed in theater eight/ten/twelve?" I'm in a hurry. I'm missing the movie. So I waste no words, I state no credentials, I pull no rank. I am just a customer like any other, except of course in my persnickety preference for seeing a movie as it was intended to be seen.

Which brings me to my complaint. There is no need here to single out any particular theater or chain for censure, inasmuch as the modus operandi seems to be the same all over. What I would like to see happen, in some pie-in-the-sky fantasy of a world of care and efficiency, is that the uniformed seventeen-year-old would whip out a walkie-talkie with the approximate speed at which Dirty Harry pulls his Magnum on a scumbag, and would bark into the static, "Ace, we've got a problem in fourteen!" And I could spin on my heel with assurance that by the time I retraced my steps to my seat the problem would be fixed. What happens instead is that the seventeen-year-old frowns slightly and cocks his head, as I would fully expect him to do if I had informed him that some phosphorescent green tentacle was emerging from one of the toilets in the men's room; and then, inevitably, unpreventably, he sets out on the half-mile hike to the specified auditorium to check out for himself whether there might be a scintilla of truth in the wild claims of this old crank.

And I fall in beside him, left-right, left-right, left-right, and for roughly the five hundredth time my heart sinks. I know from vast experience what's going to happen once we get there. By some immutable law of the universe, when eventually we arrive at the auditorium and come out of the tunnel together at the foot of the screen, the image at that moment will be a humongous close-up that minimizes whatever the problem is, and my seventeen-year-old hiking companion will throw a glance at it and say, "Looks okay to me," thus indicating that he has no clue what to look for, and requiring me to try to detain him there until, in the case of a focus problem, we are accorded an extreme long shot in which the letters on street signs or storefronts are illegible and the actors' faces unidentifiable, or, in the case of a framing problem, we are accorded a standard medium shot in which the heads are cut off at the top of the screen or the bodies cut off at the bottom of it. And I can say, "See?"

An affirmative response at that point brings no relief, no elation, no thrill of victory, because I know, from vast experience again, what will happen next. The seventeen-year-old, gazing skeptically at the screen, reserving judgment as to whether the filmmaker might be up to something experimental that eluded my comprehension, will at last with reluctance activate the walkie-talkie, the alarm will be raised, I will return to my seat to await developments, and the aforementioned law of the universe will see to it that when the peripatetic projectionist makes his way to the trouble spot and peers through the glass, he will be presented with a humongous close-up and say to himself -- I can hear it in my mind's ear -- "Looks okay to me." And I have no way to detain him, no way to explain to him what he should be looking for, no further recourse.

Sometimes there is no need. Sometimes, through luck or conscientiousness, a change for the better will be effected. Other times nothing happens at all (did the projectionist ever come round or was it the humongous close-up?), or I can detect at least a fleeting effort to refocus (often on the wrong sort of shot) or fleeting effort to reframe (often in the wrong direction) and ultimately no improvement. Those times I must decide whether to make the trek again to the lobby and miss some more of the movie, or else to work on my acceptance of life's inescapable imperfections and my empathy for those who incline to watch movies at home on video. Or one other option: to make the trek again to the lobby and keep right on going out the front door.

* * *

In the new Diamond Men, when the tyro salesman learns how long his mentor has been on the job, he marvels, "Thirty years! That's older than me!" With that in mind, I note that next week marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Reader, and so the thirtieth year I have occupied this position. (Granted, I was barely out of kindergarten, but still.) I mark the occasion myself with the simple observation of how often it is, how almost without exception, that the ushers I must convince to refocus a film, the ticket takers, the host or hostess at the courtesy desk, the studio "reps" who stop me at the door of a promotional screening and inquire who I am, are people who were not yet gleams in their respective daddies' eyes when I was already on the job. It puts things in a certain perspective. A certain Caligari perspective.

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