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Joy-Riders of the Theatre
WHAT THE MANUFACTURERS SAY ABOUT FILM RACING, A CURRENT EPIDEMIC
By K. Owen
BILL isn't a vtiy high-brow name, is it? Nevertheless my friend Bill has a forehead so lofty that I wonder how he happened to be born without snowy hair.
Until I subpoenaed him to a photoplay of the highest order recently. Bill hated motion pictures. Since then he hasn't hated the pictures ; he has merely ridiculed them. My excellent entertainment turned out to be a jumping-jack show. Here's the why ;
The operator, says his controlling exhibitor, had a 10:58 date with friend girl, while the controlling exhibitor had an 8-reel programme and a lot of announcements. Everything proceeded at schedule speed until the lad cut into the five-reeler for the finale. My friend and I had entered a moment before. Just then, too, Romeo Operator glanced at his watch. Not for nothing had he pitched for the Crank Turners in their memorable 11 -inning game with the Ushers ! His wound-up arm began to unwind, and as it twirled in tremendous drives around the curves and appalling bursts of speed on the stretches, my perfectly good photoplay spattered against the screen and rebounded to our eyes in galvanized fragments of heads, arms, legs, bodies, scenery, motors, furniture, sky, ocean and mechanical impedimenta which made us almost tumble from our seats in sheer dizziness.
My friend the unbeliever said nothing until we reached the sidewalk. Then he suddenly clasped my hand with a warmth and fervor which were suspicious.
"Thanks for the treat !" he exclaimed. "I had expected to be merely bored. I didn't look for an indoor joy-ride. I had all the sensations of falling over a cliff in a Ford, and being pinched by a speed-cop at the bottom !"
BilJ hasn't been among the leaping shadows since. Thoroughly outraged. I've been asking the picture manufacturers what may. or may not, be done to stop picture racing, an evil existing mainly in cheap, poorly-run theatres, but which once in awhile pokes its sinisterly rapid head among the seats that retail at a quarter or a half a dollar.
Every manufacturer of consequence has answered the long-sufferer's appeal, and their comments are of extraordinary interest.
First of all came the reply of Nicholas Power, probably the world's foremost manufacturer of projection machines. Says Mr. Power:
"Films are supposed to be universally taken at the rate of 16 pictures to the second. The trouble in projection does not come through ignorance on the part of operators as to what is the proper speed, but from the willingness of some exhibitors to totally disregard the merits of the picture to serve the ulterior purpose of finishing the show in as little time as possible.
"I do think that programmes are too crowded in the majority of cases. It is the tendency of rival theatres to locate too closely together which causes neighborhood competition. The aim of this neighborhood competition is to beat the other fellow's show. For instance, if the theatre on 'C street has a seven-reel show, the competitor on 'D' street will give a nine-reel show and
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