Thank This Retired Projectionist for Those 3 a.m.Odyssey 70-mm. Imax Showings Pat Caldwell is 69 years old and, as Chris Stanton gushes in this uproarious Q&A, “a legend to IMAX nerds.” Caldwell loves Vision3 film stock, hates _Joker: Folie à Deux_, and has discovered more than one dead body in a movie theater. His decades-long career as a projectionist includes a stint at a Tennessee porn theater with “very good equipment,” and he once spent half a year screening _Lawrence of Arabia_ four times daily.
When Stanton reached out to Caldwell on the occasion of _The Odyssey_, he may have landed the year’s most entertaining interview. > So Sam taught me how to run the projectors, and he got drunk, passed out on the couch. And after the concession stand in the box office closed, I would go up and run the rest of the movies for him. This went very nicely until one night there’s a knock at the door.
I opened the door and here’s this old man standing there. And I said, “Well, who are you?” He says, “I could ask the same question. I’m the business agent of the local projectionists’ union.” I explained what was going on.
He woke up Sam, chewed him out. And the next day they made me an apprentice. I trained for a year with no pay at all the local theaters in Nashville.
Jennifer Wilson | The New Yorker | June 9, 2025 | 5,746 words “At a sex-choreography workshop, a writer discovered a world of Instant Chemistry exercises, penis pouches, and nudity riders to train for Hollywood’s most controversial job.” “The racist 1980s comedy broke box-office records worldwide—then promptly disappeared. The story behind it is revealing.” How ‘Go,’ the Wildest, Druggiest, Horniest Cult Movie of 1999 Got Made (And Almost Didn’t) “Twenty-five years after it came out—and got bulldozed in theaters by The Matrix—the timeline-twisting indie comedy Go looks better than ever.” Tagged: art,chris stanton,christopher nolan,directors,film,imax,interviews,movie theaters,movies,pat caldwell,theater,vulture . And if you want Longreads in your inbox, select the newsletters you want to receive: Tuesdays and Thursdays, we'll send you our latest originals and all our editor's picks—and Fridays, go even deeper with our Top 5 of the Week.
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