Read Online Flicker by Theodore Roszak - Free Book Online Page A

cheerfully.
    â€œIt all belongs to the movies,” she told me. “The pictures need a theater, the theater’s a human habitat. Sure, this place has alwayslooked pretty crummy. That’s because there’s only so much I can do, and there’s nobody to help. If I could afford to make it a picture palace, I would. Believe me, the art of the cinema begins with scraping the chewing gum off the seats.”
    Apologizing abjectly, I surrendered and did as I was told.
    There was only one task in all the lot that was remotely intellectual. When Clare learned I was ten fast fingers on a typewriter, she at once put me to work typing her program notes. This assignment, what with all the revisions Clare now took the liberty of producing, often kept me up into the small hours of the night; but it meant that I’d be the first to read each new installment of her work. With me to take over the dog labor of cutting stencils, mimeographing, collating, stapling, her writing began to grow in length. Soon she was adding a monthly essay to the notes, several dense paragraphs of film history, criticism, and comment on the passing cinema scene. While I was no more than the hands that typed the words, I now felt I was some significant part of The Classic’s cultural role; I’d given Clare the chance to unfold thoughts she hadn’t the time to gather before.
    It wasn’t until well into the second year of my semivoluntary apprenticeship that Clare began to introduce me to the higher mysteries of programming, as well as accounting and budgeting—the “business end” of things. These she discharged from a cubbyhole office just above the theater where she kept her files, her personal archives, her legal papers and ledgers. Clare regularly spent two or three hours each working day on the telephone tracing films and bargaining with distributors. “Listen and take notes,” she instructed me. “It’s the only way to learn.” And I’d glue my ear to the extension phone while she went about the tedious, time-consuming toil of securing the movies that were The Classic’s staff of life. In those prehistoric days, when repertory and revival theaters were rare phenomena, the task of tracking down old and unusual films, finding decent prints, negotiating for them with hard-nosed and mercenary distributors often required the combined talents of a detective and a diplomat.
    About this time, an envious Sharkey put in his bid for more of my services. Convinced that he was cruelly overworked in the projection booth, he saw no reason why he shouldn’t share the slave. But Clare said nothing doing, turning his request away with a snappish finality that Sharkey never challenged.
    At first I had the impression this was a matter of snobbery on Clare’s part. As captain of the good ship Classic, she regarded the mechanicalside of the enterprise as below decks and Sharkey as the hairy ape who stoked the boilers. Not that Clare couldn’t handle the apparatus herself if the need arose. She took charge of the projectors whenever the two of us had a viewing session. Even on those occasions, however, she insisted on keeping me away from the machines. I assumed that, out of some uncustomary sense of kindness, she was sparing me the dirty work I ought to view with principled repugnance. But I was getting things wrong. Clare’s seeming disdain for the projectionist’s trade was simply a reflection of her rancor against Sharkey. If she was determined to keep me out of his domain, it was only because she felt that Sharkey had unloaded too much work upon her as it was. Her orders were absolute. “I don’t want you lifting a finger to help that bum.”
    One day, without warning, Sharkey failed to report in. I arrived at the theater that evening to find Clare setting up for the scheduled screening, hefting film canisters, testing the projectors, and cursing Sharkey an inspired streak.