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Sounds like fun, but why was Michael Moore so heavily involved? IMDB doesn't list him as having anything to do with this movie.

That made me scream with laughter over my morning coffee... can't wait for Borat Instalment #2.

So it wasn't intentional?

Back when it was in the Uptown #1, Midnight Madness used to consistantly be plagued with problems and often horrible delays but this is the worst snafu I've 've heard of. I remember waiting for what seemed like forever to get into Orgazmo many years back. At least at the Uptown you had the Brass Rail to help pass the time.

Up until the late-90's in Canada one had to be a licensed member of a union in order to run a projector in a film theatre. You had to know how to work the projector inside and out, know what all of the little pieces were called and how to put them together again if they broke.

That meant paying higher union wages to projectionists who would always sit in the booth of the theatre as the film unspooled.

Then, Cineplex-Odeon fought that. They made the argument that a trained chimp could run a film projector and sought to disband the union. They won, and as such all of their projectors became mechanised and one no longer had to have a license to run the projector.

It became just another theatre job like the pimpley faced kid who sells you raisinettes with an ad on his shirt for the new 'wacky teen comedy'.

My first job in high school and university was to work with a qualilfied projectionist, lugging massive cannisters to the top of an old-fashioned movie house and watching him splice trailers etc.

The suits of Cineplex-Odeon were obviously wrong and sadly, I am not at all surprised at what happened at the festival last night.

At least you had live entertainment and it seems Cohen was a good sport about it all.

Moore must be a riot at parties. Everybody's having fun, he has to start talking politics? The pony needs to get a second trick.

I was at the Ryerson Theatre for the 9:15 screening of Fido, the Canadian zombie movie, and the projector was wanky. The film was slightly out of focus -- despite calls from some of the audience for it to be fixed early on.

Near the climax of Fido the picture started jumping and shaking for about a minute before it was adjusted. I had a feeling something was wrong with the projector that might not be just a slight adjustment, so this Borat disaster isn't much of a surprise.

I was not a union projectionist but was a full time one for several years. We always had spare parts on hand on site at all times and for special events like, say, film festivals, there would be a spare technician on call.

It sounds like the theatre did not think having these things were important. You can be sure this will not happen next year.

Ah...The Rail...so good. I walked by the Borat line last night, but my friends were too boozed up to want to Rush it with me. Alas. Maybe tonight at the Elgin? Yay! Just watched a "Requiem", a well-intentioned re-thinking of the exorcist, without all the bangs and flashes. The central performance was excellent, but the movie ends rather anti-climatically. When it plays later in the week, the star will be there. She was quite convincing.

Just saw it. Funny, but a tad over-hyped.

Nicol,

You never struck me as being por-union. Just goes to show you never know about some people.

I try to surprise every now and then...

NIcol should check her facts before she posts on the internet. The TIFF does use long-time union projectionists and for years has done all film assembly and run-throughs in-house to avoid as many screw-ups as possible.

Sometimes, despite all precautions, things go wrong.

Nicol should keep up the surprise streak and confirm her femaleness.

How can the TIFF employ long time union projectionists when there no longer is a union for projectionists in Toronto?

Feel free to prove me wrong, if you know different. Of course that means providing some actual info, not just saying 'Nicol is wrong'. If you can, I will stand corrected.

My post was really just about how the union projectionist no longer existed in Canada and it was a job you no longer 'needed' to be certified to do according to Cineplex, which now has a virtual monopoly on all screens in Canada and certainly operates about 95% of screens in the Toronto area.

The TIFF will employ the projectionists that are at the theatre that is showing the film. Given that virtually all the TIFF is programmed at Cineplex owned theatres (Varisty, Paramount), that means non-union.

It's not like they can fire the standard projectionist there for 10 days and rehire them after the festival.

"...and for years has done all film assembly and run-throughs in-house..."

What house? Piers Handling's successor?

The assembly will be done at the theatre it is showing at and very few (if any) festival film prints get run throughs. Not enough time.

The Festival has warehouse space off-site where they co-ordinate print traffic and print issues.

The Festival has the ability to use whoever they want for the theatres they rent for the duration of the Festival and they do so, bringing in their own tech people and booth staff. They do use the front-of-house staff in the theatres but the booth people are almost always Festival recruited or approved. There are still old union members available for work in the city , and the larger complexes still have shifts for some of the projectionists who were there when the unions were strong. ( Did you think Cineplex had them all destroyed ? ) There are no minimum wage teens working the booths at festival screenings.

I worked the Festival for several years ( no, I'm not a projectionst ) and know what I'm talking about.

Of course, all of this happened in the non-Cineplex auditorium at Ryerson .

During his time on stage, Michael Moore spoke in all seriousness that what was happening was a very untypical experience at the festival based on his many exeperiences at TIFF, and he was correct. For the sheer number of screenings they run, the technical problems are quite rare.

To repeat, sometimes things just go wrong.

Sounds like fun, all things considered.

Peterson,

"The Festival has the ability to use whoever they want for the theatres they rent for the duration of the Festival and they do so, bringing in their own tech people and booth staff. "

No, they do not. They use the same staff that are regularly employed at the theatres they use. As for places like Ryerson (a university campus)...perhaps, but do you actually think the Cineplex and Alliance Cinemas chains lay off their staff for the duration of the festival so TIFF can hire who they want? To use millions of dollars worth of equipment that they do not use on a regular basis? Who are mostly unpaid volunteers with no exhibition experience whatsoever? To man the cash registers and computer systems?

Remember, the TIFF needs Cineplex, not the other way around. TIFF is in no place to make demands. What you're saying makes absolutely no corporate sense.

Again, maybe on independant venues they can, but those are rare. It's not like anyone can just walk into a projection booth and know what to do...especially when there are no unions or standards for projectionists in Toronto anymore.

"There are still old union members available for work in the city , and the larger complexes still have shifts for some of the projectionists who were there when the unions were strong."

All of the projectors in the newer theatres are mechanised so that one projectionist can run multiple screens at once. There is no need to hire outside projectionists and the older ones would not know how to use the newer equipment. We're talking a decade here. Technology has changed and the old crew has moved on. Oh, there may be a few incidentally, but they would not be freelance; they would be part of the regular theatre staff.

"There are no minimum wage teens working the booths at festival screenings. "

Never said there were. I said the projectionist job was seen as no better than this. Who said this? The CEO's at Cineplex a decade ago when they abolished the projectionist union.

Also, there is no mysterious festival warehouse. The prints go directly to the theatre where the print is showing. Again, if you can tell me the location of this mysterious warehouse I'll concede but I worked in a theatre for 3 years and have done every job there. What you are saying makes no sense on either a realistic or corporate level.

It's not like people at theatres do not know how to co-ordinate prints. Quite the opposite; TIFF largely uses volunteers who are not paid and are not necessarily well versed in theatrical exhibition. It would be foolish to use them over even the most young of theatre staff.

Do some things just go wrong? Yes. But when Canadian Cineplex abolished the projectionists qualifications, that made the chances of that all the more likely.

And finally, dude, I couldn't give a rat's ass what Michael Moore says.

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