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. Who are you? 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.
A few picks from behind the scenes
How I Learned to Become an Intimacy Coördinator
“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 Strange Saga of ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’
“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.”
