While most people were out watching/reviewing movies that were recently released, I was out at the Cinematheque theatre on Howe St taking tours of the building for its 7th annual open house.
I and pretty much everyone else who came around got to experience the small compact spaces of the theatre as well as some live music by an acoustic musician and a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. My first tour was in the theatre itself where a host showed me how to thread a film reel and work an old fashioned miniature projector, as he called it an exercise for film students. (Of course, I’d never experienced it while I was a film student so this was something else for me.)
Moving on, there was a tour of the projection room, where a larger projector was. And you could only touch the warm side of the main generator. I had to wait a while for the next tour so I went straight to the concession area where they served free popcorn and bottled water. No ice cream, though it was clearly on the sign . . .
The next tour was inside the film storage room, a narrow room in an even narrower hall. But I still got some facts about how they had almost every last movie stored in there since they started.
After that was finished, I excused myself for the next tour which was a library and a board room on the upper floor next to the projection booth. Not much in there except for some film guides, film books and scripts. They had, however, remodeled, and it looked finely furnished.
After all that touring, a vintage movie called Some Like It Hot was showing, so I checked it out. According to a quick introduction before the screening, shooting most of this movie was a frustrating process. I settled in and watched this film, which was about two broke men (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) who are looking for new work as musicians while escaping one of America’s top gangsters. When their last resort is an all women’s orchestra, they dress in drag, shave off all their body hair, and head off to join this ensemble while resembling characters from a Monty Python sketch. To sum it all up though, this movie was rather hilarious and interesting to watch. Even though Cinematheque didn’t seem like too big a place, my visit was still very interesting.
