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A Hollywood job fades to black: Film projectionist

As movies go digital, a film projectionist talks about how it feels to be one of the last of his kind.

Ever since the Great Recession started more than five years ago, Americans have paid closer attention to how we bring in a paycheck every two weeks. But the American labor market started changing long before the financial crisis. Today we’re starting a new series on Marketplace called “Disappearing Jobs” to examine the changing job market.


For the last 40 years I’ve been a motion picture projectionist. A film projectionist.

A friend of mine was managing a sleazy old theater called the Vagabond Theater and said “our projectionist just quit. Go in there and run it.”

I didn’t care about getting paid, I just wanted to go in there and do it. So for $3.50 an hour, I taught myself. I found a stable union job and I was told by my older peers that I could probably keep this job forever. I would never have to retire because it didn’t require physical labor, it just required your know-how on the equipment.

Everybody in America went to the movies every week, so we were important. Also, “projectionist” was listed as the highest-paid industrial job in California. I like to remind people of that now that they’re trying to pay us nothing.

Digital movies drive change
My favorite quote is still the studio executive who said “we have a robust system and we can pay any idiot $5 an hour to run it.”

So why do away with the film projectors? The reason is everyone loves new technology, and now they have it.

I still intend to be the last projectionist alive. But it will be a real accident if I get more jobs.

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