THE MAN BEHIND THE MAGIC

The following is an interview done in Falkirk in 2001 with Max Gibson, who has been in the projection business in Scotland for nearly a half-century. I asked him some questions just before the local cinema here, the ABC, closed its doors for the last time, and he moved through to Edinburgh to work.

Max’s flickershowing lair in the ABC was on the top floor of the cinema, which had once been a dancehall in days gone by. I ascended the narrow winding stairwell behind him and got a glimpse into a different world. It was truly odd to see the town I had grown up in from an altogether different angle, and I stared out of a window over familiar landmarks suddenly grown alien and new and intriguing.

Growing up, the ABC had always been a hothouse of excitement and release and mystery. I remember marveling at posters for the likes of Lucio Fulci splatsploitation flickershows like House by The Cemetery and City of The Living Dead – heady stuff when you’re only a preteen. And once something (I’ve never even heard of since – maybe I wet-dreamed it) called Caligula’s Hot Nights, which never even had an image on the electric blue poster, just the name of the film written in white and an ‘X’, that way-cool rating. Man, that was hardcore quality fucking mayhem. No wonder the place made an impression.Seeing the projection booth with Max and looking down into the cinemas I had (mis)spent large chunks of my youth in was an eye-opener too.

A million disparate celluloid images threaded through the projector of my mind: seeing my first ‘AA’ film when I was 12 or 13, Blade Runner. Seeing my first ‘18’ when I was 15, The Terminator. Going to see a double bill of Revenge of The Nerds and Bachelor Party (the one film no doubt mysteriously missing from Tom Hanks’s CV these days) when I was 15 with a friend and us hunkering down in our seats because two rows in front of us was our music teacher from school. Seeing the Eddy Murphy film The Golden Child with my brother and him puking on the floor during it – an apt critique of the film to this day. Opening the back door of Cinema 1 to let my brother and a friend of his sneak in to see Day of The Dead when I was 17 and they were 15.

A million variant memories on a celluloid entertainment theme; sure every single person reading these words could provide matching ones of their own. But how many of you have ever seen the projection booth, or even thought about seeing it? It just never crosses your mind. So the next time you go to see a movie, spare a thought for the anonymous person in the room from where the golden Technicolor light is spraying. Being a true projectionist is a dying dinosaur art, so without further ado let Max’s story be a wee insight into that lonely hidden world for you…

SO YOU’VE BEEN IN THE CINEMA SINCE, WHAT, 1956?

45 years come May.

WHAT ACTUALLY MADE YOU GET INTO CINEMA PROJECTION?

Well, like any kid at the time I loved the movies. All us wee boys would go see Flash Gordon and Randolph Scott, y’know. We were weaned on the cinema. For some reason I took a brainstorm when I was 15 to go to the cinema and ask for a job and they gave me it. This was in Kirkcaldy. The chief did say that the pictures was finished and I’d be better off getting a job in the linoleum factory. The linoleum factory hasn’t been there for about 35 years. 

IT’S BEEN LAID TO REST. WHAT WAS YOUR WAGE BACK THEN?

I can remember it was two pounds six shillings (£2 6s) which is two pounds thirty pence. That was for a forty-five hour week, I think. Well, cinemas weren’t open on a Sunday and I was off one day and one night a week, so…you can work out the hours. But I’ve never regretted a minute of it, the whole thing’s been a laugh. Hence the book. 

WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED, WERE YOU TRAINING UNDER A PROJECTIONIST, DID YOU DO ON-THE-JOB TRAINING?

It was a five-year apprenticeship, unlike now where they just get a young chap out of the job centre and give him six weeks’ training and he’s a projectionist. To us old-timers, of course, he’s not a projectionist, he’s a machine minder. I don’t mean any disrespect to them, as time goes on they’ll pick things up, but I was never allowed near a projector for a year. There were other things to do, like making the tea and running the chief’s messages. I went to the college and everything to pick things up. That’s another part of the thing. I went to the Cowdenbeath Mining Institute for projectionist training. That was a laugh. Because there were a lot of cinemas in those days, every small village in Fife had at least one cinema; some of them had two. There was certainly one in Cowdenbeath; there was maybe two. They all had boys working so there was quite a few of us ended up there. But why that place was chosen I’ve no idea; the place was full of miners. All the time we were there we didn’t learn much because the minute the tutors started teaching us about electrics and film handling and so on, the door would open. “Could anybody show a film to this class up the stair, because everything in those days was a 16mm film; all educational films, we had no video or anything like that. So this went on all the time. Of course, the class gradually dwindled during the day because we were all over at this Mining Institute showing films. When it came to the end of course none of us knew anything about projection, but by God we could sure blow up a coalface. 

THEY HAD PROJECTORS AT THE MINING INSTITUTE?

No, it was just theory. The only things they had was batteries and so on, basic electrics and pieces of film…there wasn’t actually much to it when you think back, because there wasn’t much to the film, there was just a moving projector with sound and that was it. There was none of the Dolbys and fancy things, all the electronics nowadays. It was a lot simpler in those days; the film was either on or off, it was one of the two. Nowadays it’s full of electronics and it’s just a nightmare sometimes if things go wrong. 

THAT’S FUNNY WHAT YOU’RE SAYING THAT YOUNG GUYS THESE DAYS CAN JUST WALK IN OFF THE STREET AND AFTER JUST SIX WEEKS THEY CAN WORK MACHINERY WHICH YOU’RE SAYING IS MUCH MORE COMPLEX…

I’m not saying they can’t do it, their basic training is six weeks. They then can put a programme on or make a programme up, but it’s only through time that they’ll learn through experience what things go wrong and how they mend it. Nowadays, this being the electronic age you don’t mend it, you just pull the bit out and throw it away, stick another bit in. For instance here, just about a month ago, we had the main light shutter on the projector slam into the cut-off shutter. Now the light shutter makes the picture move, well it’s the intermittent that makes the picture move but it’s the light shutter that makes you see it. And without the shutter you don’t see anything but a big streak. Of course this happened in the middle of the programme. The projector nearly leapt off the floor, as you know they’re sitting on the floor, they’re not wee things on a table. And this propellor, as you might call it, was flying around at an amazing speed and it slams into a piece of the machinery, bends itself back on itself, punches a hole in itself, how it didn’t cause great damage I don’t know but the film couldn’t continue. And I actually took the shutter out of the machine – which is an engineering job – and battered it out on the bench. There was a hole in it, and I tried to stick that up with plaster and stick it back and tried to get on with the show. That just doesn’t happen in a modern cinema. For one thing the projectionist just doesn’t have time because he’s got another ten pictures to look after. 

WHO WAS THE FIRST FAMOUS PERSON YOU MET?

Funnily enough, I was thinking about this the other day. I didn’t even realize he was a famous person. Away back in the days when I was an apprentice and they still put coal in the back of the projectors, this person came into the box in the Regal in Kirkcaldy, and he was one of the directors of the ABC, Robert Clark. He came in, very polite, “how do you do, how are you getting on, are you the new boy,” and I was thinking it was one of the bosses. It was one of the bosses, but it was only later I discovered he was the Robert Clark, the producer of The Dambusters; he’d put his own money into the film. If you see the film you’ll see it, ‘produced by Robert Clark’. That was the first famous person I met, although I didn’t realize it at the time. He was a pretty big guy; as you know, The Dambusters is still spoken about yet as being one of the best British films. 

I HOPE YOU WERE POLITE TO THE GUY!

Well I was, he was my boss. 

WHO WOULD YOU SAY WAS YOUR FAVORITE CELEBRITY YOU’VE MET, I SUPPOSE IT WOULDN’T BE PARTICULARLY POLITIC TO ASK WHO YOU DIDN’T LIKE…

The nicest person I’ve met was Richard Attenborough. The higher you tend to go in the career and they bigger they are, the nicer they are. It’s only as they get lower down that they get temperamental and when they get down to the downright nobodies they’re a damned pain in the neck. 

WOULD THAT BE BECAUSE THEY’VE GOT SOMETHING TO PROVE?

I don’t know what it is, you know, they’ve made a four-minute film and you’ve to show it as part of a programme for someone. You can get a huge producer or director and they’ll say “oh, hello Max,” find out who you are first of all, “just you do it the way you do it.” Then this guy comes in with his four-minute film and God almighty! He’s flighty, he’s running around the ceiling, “oh my film, my film,” for God’s sake it ain’t Gone With The Wind, y’know? Of course you don’t say that. 

TRUE ENOUGH. SO WHAT WAS IT ABOUT RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH THAT IMPRESSED YOU?

He was just a gentleman. The film was Cry Freedom, it was a 70mm presentation in Edinburgh, we ran it a couple of times in the morning, and I asked him “how exactly do you want it run?” He said “ah, you do it whatever way you want,” and he gave me a big hug. Another incident was Leonard Nimoy, who came to the press showing in Glasgow for The Wrath of Khan, was it? Star Trek 2, The Wrath of Khan, I think that was the one he directed. The Trekkies were there of course. He went outside and I took some photographs of him and the Trekkies. There were people walking past and you could see them looking at him and thinking, I know that person; he didn’t have his pointed ears on of course. And this old lady was sort of hanging about, looking and looking. And you could see her working it out in her mind, I know this person. And as he turned to go back into the cinema, to go up the stairs to meet the press, it dawned on the old lady who it was and she followed us in. I was walking up the stairs with Mister Spock, a camera strangling me round the neck, and she followed us in and then stopped, quite crestfallen, and sort of turned away and walked away. By this time Leonard Nimoy’s eye caught this lady leaving the front door. He said “who was that Max?” I said “I think she actually recognized you and she wanted your autograph.” He turned on his heel and went down the stair, left all the press standing, and followed her out into the street. And you should have seen the old lady’s face, the sheer adoration on it, he said “that’s alright my dear” and signed her bit of paper. Now that was a really, really nice thing to do. But as I say, the bigger they are, the nicer they are. As you say, they don’t have anything to prove.

SO OBVIOUSLY YOU APPRECIATE COURTESY WHEN YOU SEE IT.

Yes. It’s all the people that’s not known that I’ve not had trouble, but jeez, they drive you up the wall. Charlton Heston was an absolute gentleman, and why should he not be? 

WHERE DID YOU MEET HIM?

He opened our new kiosk at the ABC in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow. The kiosk was re-designed and he was appearing at STV so we waylaid him on his way to the airport to come and open our kiosk. Of course, it blossomed into a full-scale Hollywood morning premiere, just about. The whole street got closed off, there was the police, and the crowds gathered…you could hardly get into the blooming door for the crowds, and all he was doing was opening a kiosk. So we stretched a big piece of 70mm film across the front of the kiosk and he cut it through and opened our kiosk. And I’ve kept the film because it’s got Charlton Heston’s fingerprints on it. 

WHAT ABOUT YOUR BILL DOUGLAS STORY?

Now that’s an old story. In my youthful days I used to fly airplanes like something completely mad, that’s why they called me the Blue Max, after the film you know. I didn’t have a car in those days and one day I decided I would buy a bike because I was fed up getting on the bus to the airport because I used to go out to the airport all day and sit on the grass; changed days, I mean you can’t do that now. And the first time that I got the bike, I decided it was a nice evening one night so I thought, I’ll go away and try my bike out. So I cycled away out to Tranent, beyond Musselburgh – I stayed in Musselburgh at the time. And out there was a friend of mine, John Eccles, who owned Carlaeverock Farm, which is through Tranent and turn right. I decided to go and see if John was in, it was just a nice length to cycle there and back. He was in one of his fields in this huge harvester. I propped my bike against the wall and waited for this big harvester to come towards me. When it arrived John said “oh it’s you Max, come aboard.” I said “I’m on my bike” but he said “chuck it on the back”. So I chucked it on the back of the big harvester and away we went. And there I was, taking in the harvest; he gave me a shot of it. John had straight lines and I was all over the field. Anyway, come the evening we decided to go down to the local pub. I think it was called The McMerry. It was a small hotel with about six bedrooms and this local bar and the only people sitting in it were myself, John, and this other person sitting at the other end of the bar. Now, unknown to us, this person was Bill Douglas who had come back to the area to make a film about his childhood, which became the My Childhood trilogy, which is legendary now in Scottish filmmaking. And he was telling the barman that he’d had amazing response from local people and the local council, who were keeping up the old buildings that he was brought up in. They were all empty, but they were prepared to keep them standing, the Coal Board was gonna open up the old pit for him where his father had worked, and so on and so on. He eventually said to the barman “the only thing I’m disappointed in is that I wanted an aerial shot of the mine and I don’t think I’m going to manage it.” And the barman pointed to us at the end of the bar and said “see these two…you-know-whats sitting at the end of the bar, they’ll do it for you.” And later on Bill Douglas said “you could have hit me with an elephant and I would never have felt it, I was so shocked.” And that’s how we met Bill Douglas. Then we discovered that the basis of the story was his own childhood was lonely and the only person that befriended him was a German prisoner-of-war who was working on the farms. He was going to make the film on a farm as well as in a village. So John said “you want a farm? I’ve got a farm.” So the My Childhood, and the second one, My Ain Folk, was made on John’s farm. The bus conductress in the film was John’s sister, the farmer driving the tractor is John, the old couple singing in the pub are John’s mother and father, and the ambulanceman is me. That was the second one, My Ain Folk, but it’s part of the My Childhood trilogy. So there I am, I’m preserved forever in the British Film Archive.

THERE MUST BE SOMETHING COMFORTING ABOUT THAT, THAT YOU’RE SO INTO FILM AND YOU’VE ACTUALLY BEEN PRESERVED ON CELLULOID.

And that’s all because I bought a bike! 

DO YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS ON SCOTTISH FILMMAKERS? SEEN ANYTHING THAT YOU’VE PARTICULARLY APPRECIATED? ANYBODY YOU RATE? HAVE YOU SEEN RATCATCHER?

No, no I haven’t. Well, because of the set-up in cinemas now you very rarely see a film, you’re just pushing buttons and general things like that. I haven’t seen or been in the Scottish film scene because I’m not in Edinburgh or Glasgow, and that’s where it all happens. 

GLASGOW’S THE PLACE WHERE IT’S REALLY HAPPENING, I THINK.

Um-hum…but during the Edinburgh Film Festival, that’s where you meet people and you get involved. But I do have a Scottish project going on at the moment of course, namely the Film Museum. I’ve been invited to give advice on how to set things up, I’ve designed a logo and suggested a title for them and now they’re looking for independent funding to set up the Scottish Film Museum, which is badly needed. (It never happened)

WHEREABOUTS DO THEY WANT TO SET IT UP?

The Coatbridge area, which is in between Edinburgh and Glasgow. We do have the Robert Riddell-Black film library. He was one of the top documentary filmmakers in the 50s and 60s. He was the first man to win an Academy Award in Scotland with The Great Ships. He used to make films all about Scotland and Ravenscraig, etc. At the Festival every year we used to have a programme at the Regal called Scotland on The Screen for films in Scotland and Robert Riddell-Black made a great many of the films. And that film library is in the hands of the people who want to set up the Scottish Film Museum. We’ve got his projectors, his editors, his film library and the man is still alive and he’s dead keen on the idea. Independent funding is now being sought for that. 

THAT’S JUST REALLY INTERESTING, I MEAN…I’D NEVER HEARD OF THAT BEFORE.

Oh, there’s a million Scottish stories. 

YOU GROW UP WATCHING THE HOLLYWOOD STUFF…BUT IT’S ONLY RECENTLY THAT SCOTTISH FILM SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN TAKEN MORE SERIOUSLY. I MEAN, A LOT OF THAT STUFF IS JUST LOST OR UNKNOWN.

There’s a lot that’s totally undiscovered, it’s the wee things that you start hearing about now and again. For instance, I can’t remember his name, but the first person ever to interview a film star was from, I think it was the Orkneys. Way back in the 1910s he interviewed film stars and he published it in a magazine which literally became the world’s first film magazine. He apparently was killed the same day as the Titanic sunk, he fell down a liftshaft. I mean, the Scottish influence in Hollywood was quite strong, Charlie Chaplin’s arch enemy James Finlayson was from just about a mile from where we’re sitting at the moment. 

THE GUY WITH THE MOUSTACHE?

Yeah, he had a moustache, he was from Larbert. There’s a plaque to his memory down at the Town Hall cinema. And the other one, you know the big huge bloke in the early Chaplin movies, Eric Campbell, he was from Greenock. And there was Donald Crisp, he was Scottish, he was in How The West Was Won, and Brigadoon, but that was awful…

YOU SAY YOU HARDLY SEE ANYTHING THESE DAYS, WHAT WITH YOU PRESSING BUTTONS AND WHATNOT, BUT HAVE YOU SEEN ANYTHING THAT’S IMPRESSED YOU RECENTLY? ANY GOOD RECENT FILMS?

I think the last film I actually sat and watched from end to end was Dances With Wolves. I thought the making of that film, the way it was presented on screen was pretty good, the sweep of the prairies, the wind blowing through the grass etcetera, it was kind of like old- fashioned filmmaking. Funnily enough a friend of mine and I were discussing the other day what, in our opinion, was the most perfect film made. And we both came up with the same film. What film impressed us the most with the direction, the photography, the content, the editing, you name it…what film was exactly right in every department? And we both came up with Lawrence of Arabia. 

IS THAT A FILM YOU COULD WATCH OVER AGAIN?

Yes, on a 70mm screen of course. 

YOU ELITIST SWINE!

(Laughing) That’s the medium it was shot in and that’d the medium it’s supposed to be seen on. 

IS THIS THE LAST OF THE OLD DANCE HALL TYPE CINEMAS?

I’d say it’s not maybe the last but it’s certainly the last I can think of. It was the Grand Theatre first and then it was the cinema, but God, there’s nothing left. The picture palaces have gone, left as the century ends. The English Heritage have rescued a few of them. They were, however, bingo halls. Bingo was the curse of the cinema in the sixties, but what it has actually done is preserve them. Because all the old cinemas were split up into three, four different screens, wrecked of course, but when bingo had taken over the auditorium was still complete. 

SO THIS CINEMA WAS AN ACTUAL THEATRE?

This was the Grand Theatre. I don’t know what it was before that. An old lady came in one day last summer and said she had seen Charlie Chaplin on the stage here. Now I don’t know if that’s true or not, but…if it was Charlie Chaplin it must’ve been before he went to Hollywood. If he was on a variety act here he must’ve been a way, way down the bill. Because once he went to Hollywood…that was before Hollywood was there, he founded it. So she must’ve been talking about the beginning of the century, so…she might be right, but I’ve certainly never heard…

WAS CHARLIE CHAPLIN EVER IN SCOTLAND?

He went to Elgin every year on holiday. 

I TAKE IT 7O MM IS YOUR FAVORITE PRESENTATION MEDIUM?

Well, I’ve got to say, I have not seen anything like three-strip Cinerama, and of course I’m one of the old brigade of the Cinerama boys, that was THE ultimate widescreen process. There was no widescreen until Cinerama came along in 1952. It didn’t arrive in Scotland until the early 1960s, by which time it had expanded to 90ft wide by 30ft high with a 16ft curve on it and seven channel stereophonic sound. When all this came out in the fifties nothing like it had been seen. There had been expanding screens in the silent days for the early musical numbers…and funnily enough, where the Cinerama was in Glasgow at the Coliseum, that was the one cinema that had the expanding screen in the twenties. But it was only for a musical number and then it would shrink again. It was a bit of a gimmick. No-one wanted widescreen pictures before 1952. The picture was exactly the same ratio as it had been in the silent days except slightly shorter because the soundtrack had been added. Then in New York this miracle burst onto the audience, this huge wide panoramic picture in full color and perfect focus from nine inches to infinity and seven channels of sound. Nothing had been heard like it, then all of a sudden Hollywood was alive and awake to widescreen pictures. And that’s how Cinemascope came on the market and that’s how Todd-AO 70mm came on the market. That’s why you’ve got widescreen television now, because Cinerama blew the pictures up. 

HOW LONG IS IT SINCE ANYTHING HAS BEEN DONE IN CINERAMA? IT’S THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY NEXT YEAR, ISN’T IT?

Aye, in America. Nothing’s been shot in Cinerama since 1969, in true three-strip Cinerama. When the Cinerama people lost control of the Cinerama corporation, it moved on to making it cheaper. Because it was cumbersome and expensive, it went onto 70mm. It was actually Ultra-Panavision they used, it was squeezed at the edges but not in the middle and this allowed for the big curve. But to the true Cinerama audience, it wasn’t true Cinerama. What it was was 70mm presented on a Cinerama screen. 

SO WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR THE EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL?

Well that’s because I worked in the Regal at the time. We got a lot of premieres…one year we must have done most of the blooming Festival because we had three shows per day to make up and split down on one projector, for 16mm and 35mm. Mostly premieres, that’s where I met folk like John Cleese, Richard Attenborough, and so on and so on. A lot of people were actually technicians, etcetera, and Japanese filmmakers, temperamental Italians. I’ve shown films where a naked man jumps out of the screen and run up the cinema…

WHAT WAS THAT FOR?

Oh, I can’t remember, it was a chase – it was pretty well done, actually and they had pinched the Cinerama screen of course. Ideal with louvers – the Cinerama screen was not a solid screen, it was a louvered screen. And they had this man getting chased, and he was losing his clothes as he went until he was naked. He ran towards the camera and the editing cut him out of it. And the real person, who was the same size as he was on the screen by this time, leapt out of the louvre and ran up through the cinema, and the audience was shouting “BRAVO! BRAVO!”

There was another one with hammers and nails and I couldn’t understand what was going on. They put a solid screen up in front of our screen. And I thought “what in the hell’s this for.” At the end of the film there was about ten minutes of clear film and the director kept insisting I didn’t shut it off, I just leave the white light. I said “I’ll leave the white light, yep,” thinking to myself, “pal, if you crack this lens and you’ll be paying for it.”

And he kept coming in “don’t shut off, don’t shut off” and I’m like “I won’t shut it off”. I didn’t know what was going on. Come the end of the film – there’s a soundtrack still on the film right enough, playing music – and this white light hitting the screen. And the next thing the entire audience was up on the stage battering nails into the screen. I still haven’t quite figured out what the meaning was behind it, but everybody had a good time.

SOUNDS FUN. IS IT A DISAPPOINTMENT TO YOU THAT A LOT OF THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE SCENES, LIKE THE USHERS AND USHERETTES AND YOURSELF, DON’T GET THE RECOGNITION THEY DESERVE?

Well that’s always been the thorn in your flesh you might say over the years, the projectionist…and the viewer at the other end of the production line. And of course we were paid low wages and worked long hours…some of the guys were a bit scatterbrained, y’know? But every one of them loved the job. And they were never really given full recognition, they certainly weren’t given the treatment or the wages that they really deserved. If they’d done that they would have had full technicians even in the old days, more-or-less as they’re getting now once a person is fully trained. There was always a thought that you could spend millions making a film and everybody making that film was doing the absolute best they could, even to the girl who was brushing the bits of fluff off the costumes and so on, they were all doing their best. And then they hand the finished product to a cinema. And here at the other end of this production line is a projectionist. And if you had projectionists that couldn’t care less – which I never really met any of, they were all pretty dedicated – but they used to get hounded and some of them used to get treated really badly. They don’t get the recognition…it’s part of the film, this is the forum being presented to the paying public. However, when the Cinema Museum opens I intend to rectify that, because projectionists are becoming a thing of the past with the digital age coming on. They’re not really projectionists now as they were in the past because they physically presented the film and they physically opened the curtains and changed the colors of the lights etcetera and they made the show. The light show in the cinema was all part of the performance, that was done by the projectionist, it wasn’t done by motors or computers. He was the one who had the eye for the colors, etc. I remember in the Rio Cinema in Kirkcaldy, I think at the time it was the biggest cinema stage in Scotland, it had three prosceniums and two curtains. And people used to come from all over Fife to watch the light show before the film started. And they talk about discos nowadays? Sorry, it’s all been done. When this Cinema Museum opens I intend to put a plaque on the wall for all the projectionists over the hundred years for physically projecting films and thanking them for showing us the magic. 

WOULD YOU SAY THAT THE THING WITH THE NAILS AND THE HAMMER IS YOUR MOST UNUSUAL PRESENTATION, I READ IN YOUR CV THAT THERE WAS A 56-PROJECTOR PRESENTATION…

That wasn’t moving film, that was audio-visual. I can’t remember what it was, it was something to do with Scotland. I used to work at Calton Studios, which is no longer there, down in Calton Road, and I think they had 18 projectors, I can’t remember…or was it 50-odd…I can’t just remember. I needed them with the audio-visual stuff. The slides were shooting through so fast that the film was actually moving. You were presenting slides at literally 24 a second so you were having moving pictures. It was quite incredible, and the heat and the noise was something else. 

I TAKE IT YOU’VE HAD TO UPGRADE TECHNOLOGIES AND PICK THEM UP AS YOU WENT ALONG, AS THE PROJECTION TECHNOLOGIES ADVANCED AND WHATNOT?

Yeah. Funny you should say that, this came up quite recently. There was a person spoke to me and I was quite annoyed. He more-or-less implied that I was an old fogey living in the past, and the technology of the cinema had moved on. I really rounded on him, I said “what do you mean, living in the past? If you study my career and my CV, you’ll see that throughout my career I have stayed at the front of cinema technology.” And he didn’t know what to say. 

THAT’S RIDICULOUS. YOU CAN RUN THESE THINGS, THEY CAN’T.

Well, it won’t be around long because it’s all going to be electronic shortly. 

WHERE CAN YOU SEE THINGS GOING? YOU THINK THE FUTURE IS DIGITAL OR WHAT?

The future is digital, yeah. The studios are looking to cut costs of making films and one of the big costs of course is all the prints. When you consider how many film prints are made to supply the world it’s colossal, and the costs of making these prints. Whereas if they could beam them in…that’s gonna be a helluva lot cheaper. But the loss of work…I’m not sure how long it’ll take, but digital will definitely take over. If you don’t believe that you’re like Canute holding back the ocean. But the jobs it’s gonna cost in the film labs, etcetera…but on the other hand, I think to myself, “is Kodak going to let this happen?” But I also think, “what would be better than digital?” And I come back to that same answer, 70mm film. 

BRING BACK THE SPECTACLE.

No, not the spectacle, I think 70mm will re-enter the cinema in normal multiplexes under normal screens of say 30ft wide. And a 70mm image on a 3oft wide screen has got to be seen to be believed. And it’ll be comparatively cheap, because the drawback with the 70mm was not that the film was twice as wide and cost more, it was the expense of laying down the six soundtracks on it, magnetic sound, it was expensive to put the magnetic sound and record it onto the film and so on. They don’t do that now, they’ve got digital, on a wee tiny disc. The cinema’s went full circle in sound from sound on disc to sound on disc. 

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE CINEMA YOU’VE WORKED IN OVER THE YEARS AND FOR WHAT REASON?

The Coliseum in Glasgow has a special place in my heart because it was a special presentation…we’re back to Cinerama, How The West Was Won to 2001: A Space Odyssey. One, we were looked upon as the elite, and we were picked from different cinemas to go to the Coliseum, although I didn’t realize it at the time. And I dunno why they picked me, but they did. And the one thing I admired about the Americans, who owned Cinerama, was it was the one time in my career that I was treated as one of the technicians. The cumbersome way they had to photograph Cinerama in three strips and separate sound…it was a rigorous discipline getting it right. Cinerama looked upon the projection of this system as a rigorous discipline and you had to get it right. They expected an absolute high standard of presentation. But my hat off to the Americans, they made sure they paid you for it. When we were selected for the Coliseum, we did not know at the time that the Americans would be paying us an extra wage. They got us in there because they knew we wanted to do it, not because of the money. They didn’t tell us about that until after we were there and we got half a week’s pay on top of our wages. They expected the best and they got it. Throughout the approximate three-strip Cinerama run, I think we only had three breakdowns and on these three occasions it wasn’t the projectionist’s fault – it was the equipment. But we managed to tie it up with string and continue. 

HOW MANY PROJECTIONISTS WERE THERE?

Ten. There were five on at each show, there were four running the machines and one floating. 

HOW MANY SHOWS DID YOU HAVE A DAY?

Two. It was actually a good job, because it was only matinees on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. It was great. Didn’t start until eight at night and then you went home and 10.30. And we were getting one-and-a-half week’s pay. 

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING IN THIS CINEMA?

This cinema, two years. 

SO WHAT ABOUT THE YOUNG FOLK OF TODAY AND CINEMA?

There’s a strange thing about young people today, talking about the multiplexes. It’s amazing how many young people have said to me “I don’t like a multiplex.” And I say “oh, how’s that?” I’m talking about young people of 14, 16. “Oh, there’s not much atmosphere in them.” And I say to them – and this is on more than one occasion – “how would you know what the atmosphere in a cinema is like, a real cinema?” And they can’t answer you. But the strange thing is they instinctively know something’s missing. 

I TAKE IT YOU’RE NOT A FAN OF MULTIPLEXES AT ALL THEN MAX?

No, I mean, it’s the way forward, you can’t stop it, but there is something missing of course, I call them supermarket cinemas. And I could tell you what’s missing. 

WHAT DO YOU REGARD AS MISSING?

The magic. It is no longer an event. It’s blasé like going to school, going to the shop, going to the sports club, going to the cinema. In days gone by when you went to the cinema it was an important event because people’s lives are different to what they are now. In the heyday of cinema when I was small, people were living in substandard housing conditions – the toilet was on the outside stairway, shared by up to six families. The pipes froze every winter, nobody went holidays, they couldn’t afford them. The men went down the pits or to the shipyard, the wives generally worked helluva hard keeping a house and bringing up the kids. Where was their escape? Three hours of magic at the local picture house. And what the kids miss nowadays is 3000 children sitting in a cinema cheering Flash Gordon on and booing Emperor Ming, and absolutely going crazy when the cavalry arrives at the last minute. Poor Indians, I know – you can’t make films like that now. But that was real excitement. It was a huge influence in people’s lives, the cinema, and that’s one of the things the Museum will tap into. Because every person who lived in Scotland or anywhere, but we’re talking about a Scottish Cinema Museum, was influenced by the cinema more than anything else in their lives. Television doesn’t do it. You sit there and it influences, you, yeah, but it didn’t influence people like the cinema did.