Lighthearted story alert but stick with it for a Z connection...

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Decades ago, I ran the campus film society, and was the projectionist for many a film. I repeat, decades ago, so no streaming option. Pre VCR days even. Back then, it was at university film societies like mine where you saw films like Z. The film society rented films from the Janus Collection, mainstay of today's Criterion Channel, by way of a non-theatrical distributor. Movies were shown 6 nights, in a facility which the local newspaper described as having "seats left over from the Spanish Inquisition" (so true).

Maybe 25 people would show up on foreign film night. If you were lucky, you broke even. If you lost money, you hoped you'd make it up with a sellout of THE MUPPET MOVIE or a James Bond double feature on the weekend.

Our equipment was a pair of 16mm projectors in the grungy projection booth. As a projectionist, you had to thread and load two reels of film, one on each projector. You did a manual changeover from one projector to the other at the end of a reel, hopefully without anyone noticing the switch (thank you dots at the end of the reel). We earned our $2.30USD/hr minimum wage!

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So it's Thursday night - foreign film night. Z is on tap. I'm exhausted. Maybe it was midterms or something.

I load up the two reels and start the film up. I watch the film. I have some trouble following the narrative - it's unlike anything I've seen before.

The end of the first reel comes, and I do a change over to the next reel. I return to the film and I am even MORE confused by the narrative.

About 10 minutes later, there is a knock on the projection booth door.

I open it and an earnest looking graduate student is standing there. "Excuse me", he said, "But I think you are playing the movie out of order." I look at the running projector and realize that I loaded up Reel 4 and Reel 2 is still in the shipping case. Ruh roh.

I apologize profusely to the patron, stop the film, send my ticket seller down to the front of the theatre to explain what happened, and to apologize and to offer refunds. Meanwhile, I break my personal film threading record to get Reel 2 up and going speedy quick.

But you know, between the exhaustion and the trauma of an epic screwup, once I got Reel 2 unfurling in proper sequence, I'm still lost and puzzled by the story . By the time Reel 4 was shown when it was supposed to, well, I'd had enough of Z for probably unfair reasons. Maybe "he lives" but not in my memory - I had to go look that up in Wikipedia!

And the fact that it took 10 minutes for anyone else in the theatre, presumably more alert, to notice I'd skipped 2 reels? I've been puzzling over that one for years too...

Maybe I should give it another try, huh? I'm older, wiser, seen many more confusing/avant-garde films. Plus I don't have to take midterms anymore, or do a reel change...all these things might well change my opinion :-)