@enhydra lutris
Thank you for bringing it to our attention. This really speaks to me, 'the anarchy that just grows out of the right circumstances, a self-organizing phenomena where people, independent of governments or formal organizations evolve solutions to issues or ways to exploit opportunities.' Again, thank you.

I saw that film a few times as a kid, would probably have a much idfferent perspective today, and possibly different today from last week.

Yesterday la58 (iirc) recommended aeon to QMS, and since I have stumbled across specific pages/articles that I liked before, I loaded up the site. (aeon.com) There I quickly found an article titled The Order of Anarchyhttps://aeon.co/essays/what-san-francisco-carpooling-tells-us-about-anar..., which talks initially about a Berkeley "organic" ride-share system, for rides from Berkeley to SF's financial district. I actually remember it well. It evolved on its own, out of nowhere, as a win-win for drivers and riders due to the peculiarities of the bridge toll system.

The author expands from there, referencing several works of a particular anarchist writer/advocate. What he speaks to isn't "overthrow the state" anarchy, nor "anarchist party/organization" anarchy, but the anarchy that just grows out of the right circumstances, a self-organizing phenomena where people, independent of governments or formal organizations evolve solutions to issues or ways to exploit opportunities. Unorganized self-rule that does not tend to become Lord of the Flies The Berkeley free ride-share phenomenon still thrives and will so long as the circumstances favor it and the law allows it. There is a lesson there.

The funny thing is, when I read the summary of the plot of It Happened on 5th Avenue above I suddenly saw the shadows and outlines of some such unorganized self-rule that became formalized and yet grew out of anarchic beginnings. There is much we can all learn and understand about the possibilities of success through "relative autonomy from the state". For starts, there is a booklist embedded in the aeon article, starting with James C Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed , which I just might have to procure and read.

If it isn't obvious, I recommend the article.

be well and have a good one

@on the cusp And a good holiday season! This is true: 'It is interesting that families and family values depicted after WWII look nothing like those in modern movies, or even modern advertisements.' I don't know why it is so.

I much prefer old movies over the newbies. I only watch a movie on rare occasions, typically when traveling. It is interesting that families and family values depicted after WWII look nothing like those in modern movies, or even modern advertisements.
I hope your Dad is faring well. Great that you can be around for him.
I will close the office for several days over Christmas and again at New Year. A short trip is planned, just to see what the beach in MS is like.
Thanks for the OT, chica.

@usefewersyllables
From an angle I never heard about, or thought of before; the projectionist. It's fascinating. I would love to hear more stories about the films, students, and all of it.

Have a great holiday and thank you!

to work my way through college was to get licensed as a motion picture projectionist. This slightly anachronistic practice dates back to the early days of film, when movies were distributed on nitrate film stock- as opposed to the more modern acetate stocks. Nitrate stock is also referred to as "guncotton", of course, and each reel of 35mm film is about a quarter stick of dynamite. Flammable, indeed. Like ya read about.

Having the film break between the aperture and the intermittent drive sprocket downstream would leave a frame of the print in the light path from the arc lamp to the lens, to get hot and catch fire- which in the teens through the 40s and with nitrate stock, generally resulted in the loss of the theater. After the first few of those, the laws changed, and projectors of the era had fire doors, and fire rollers, and the booth had automatic fire shutters over the projector ports- so that when the fire started, hopefully the only person who got incandescently dead was the projectionist.

Fast forward to the late 60s-early 70s, when non-inflammable acetate was the only film stock in use, and the fire hazard had long since completely disappeared. But some states still required that projectionists be trained, licensed, and ready to nobly sacrifice themselves in case a reel of the Movietone News decided to launch itself into orbit.

This was when projection was still a performance art, part of the show; and the reel changes every 10 minutes waited for no man. You'd thread up to the 5 second mark on the leader for the next reel, and then wait for the cue dot from the previous reel (which is supposed to be 7 seconds from the end: 24 frames/sec, so 168 frames). When you saw the first dot, you'd start the second projector, and it would come up to speed- 2 sec. At a count of 4, you'd open the damper shutter to let the light from the arc lamp into the aperture- but no light would make it to the screen, not just yet. And at the last cue dot (10 frames from the end), you'd step on the zipper pedal.

The zipper shutter is why you never saw a reel change, at least if you had a competent projectionist. Stepping on the zipper pedal would close the zipper shutter in the active projector, and simultaneously open the zipper in the projector you had just started- which should have accelerated over 2 seconds, and should have the very first frame of the next reel in the aperture, if you'd counted right.

And nobody in the audience should know that there even *was* a reel change- the sound changes over at the same moment. Done right, it works a treat. Part of the show!

Then on the other projector you close the damper, kill the motor, demount the reel, and put up the next reel, threading to 5 on the leader. Lather, rinse, repeat: done right, there are no gaps or warts from house-to-half until you bring the lights back up and send 'em on their way. And you damned well learned to count to 168 quickly (or cut a string to the right length).

The college I attended was a union shop. And the union guys made serious bank on all of the student-facing A/V stuff, except for projection in some cases: they hated the film classes and the exotic international student clubs, with a passion. And I just happened to have the state P ticket... So I also got to make bank, at 85% of union scale, projecting every flavor of Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Urdu, Tagalog, yadda yadda films you could imagine. Not French or Spanish- the union guys liked those, because they were nearly porn. Only the completely unintelligible ones, especially the ones film professors tend to show.

It was a very good gig. Saw a lot of film, learned a lot about life, could afford to keep a roof over my head and study. I might have to write down a story or two from that- like the time I got to project 5 Hitchcock movies on absolutely pristine, original release, only-twice-ever-shown Technicolor prints. Or how I still dislike Bollywood (they were right about that). Or the time I did a film class *vintage* vintage festival, and most of the prints (from private libraries) were indeed nitrate... Or the time I involuntarily participated in an international incident involving the Chinese government. But that's for another day.

Film. Yay! They also served, who only stood and wound from the road reels to the house reels, checking for bad splices, checking for cue dots, and counting frames... Any other technical film geeks (or SMPTE members) here?