| |
|
| |
|
Getting to Know You | |
|
| |
|
Introducing Ordinary Members of the Guild | |
|
| |
|
Kathleen "Birdie" Ostridge | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Later, when I went to the movies as a kid, I had my face turned to the port windows of the projection booth with a burning desire to find out "how the magic happened."
I learned how the movies magically appeared at age 13. From 1973 through 1976, I worked at the 1939 art-deco Fortuna Theatre in Northern California, where Ted Ostrow taught me everything there was to know about motion picture exhibition, from selecting and booking the films, to projection and maintenance engineering, to cranking down art deco glass chandeliers. Interlaced with this education were frequent discussions about directors such as Agnes Varda ("Lion's Love") and films like "El Topo".
By the time I was 14, my idea of fun was to steal scenes from trailers. I had drawers full of these itty-bitty "trailer trims," rolled up and held together with paper clips. I would construct short films with them, using my cement splicer and a fair amount of spit. I had an audience of 800 right outside the booth door, and I made shorts that I knew would make them laugh. I would manage to get Arlo Guthrie from "Alice's Restaurant" and Mae West from "She Done Him Wrong", plus loads of others, into one film. I learned about how to play to a crowd.
At 18 I was the youngest person to become an IATSE moving picture machine operator in San Francisco. I worked in nearly every theater in the city before settling at the 2,500-seat Fox-Warfield Theatre, a 1922 vaudevillian house which had been shut down for a decade. We revamped it and began a Michael Thomas-Bill Graham film/ concert booking scheme. One day I'd have "Star Wars" in 70mm and 47 feet of speakers lined up behind the screen, and the next day Bob Dylan would be playing a series of concerts with speakers flown overhead. Squeezed in on Dylan's day off would be a Lana Turner tribute with a single speaker sent up from below the stage on the hydraulic.
With the Fox-Warfield up and running to great success, I was asked by Mel Novikoff of Surf Theatres to take the Castro Theatre under contract as its operator. I brought to the Castro everything I had learned previously, including the all important "never break the magic spell" rule and the knowledge that I had a real live audience outside that could be made to roar. The theater itself was in a state of disrepair, as it had fallen on dark times in the '70s. The largest audience the 1,500 seater could muster for special events was 900. The balcony was never opened.
After what seemed like an endless flurry of 16-hour days spent repairing and installing all things technical, with the picture looking good and the Dolby stereo sounding great, we began to see a growing audience. And one that I had been egging on with laughter, claps and cheers from the back of the balcony, until they realized en mass that they were encouraged to express themselves.
Mel was able to procure archive and vault prints and, by the time I had been there a year, we had original nitrate IB Technicolor prints of such classics as "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone With the Wind". Then, due to the fact that our audience increased steadily until we hit an average of 8,000 people a week, we were able to start demanding that new prints be struck of the classics.
In 1983 I moved to L.A. to work for director Godfrey Reggio and Island Alive Films on "Koyaanisqatsi". I created a post-production QC system for prints and premieres which Lucasfilm was later to do with its TAP program. During the hey-day years of Carolco Pictures, I was personal projectionist to executive producer and chairman Mario Kassar. I joined the studio projectionists in Local 695 in 1990. I have since worked as personal projectionist to a number of studio heads, both on the lot and in their homes, as well as at all of the studios and laboratories while on the daily board.
Our business is changing rapidly however, and recently it's been nearly impossible to make a reliable living as a projectionist. So I have taken Avid courses and am now working towards becoming an apprentice and buying an Avid and a Kem system. Despite the changes in my career, there's one thing that hasn't changed, though: my desire to entertain people with moving pictures.
|
Birthplace: Hollywood, CA |
Reprinted from
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter
Vol. 20, No. 4 - July/August1999
Guild Home | Newsletter Home | Top of Page
Copyright © 1998, All Rights Reserved by The Motion Picture Editors Guild, IATSE Local 700