I had hoped to attend the TCM Classic Film Festival this year because it’s one of the last festivals still screening 35mm prints, and I really love watching movies at 24-frames-a-second. But the stars were not in alignment for that to happen, so I instead treated myself to a trip to Portland for what was to be my third pilgrimage to see 2001: A Space Odyssey on 70mm film. (My second pilgrimage was flying to Seattle to see it there on 70mm at the Cinerama, some 15 years ago or so, the first time I saw it on 70mm they still had such facilities at home in Boulder, Colorado.) What follows is a transcript of Dan Halsted’s introduction to the screening last night – which was absolutely fantastic on all levels (quality of print, sound, and presentation).
I’m Dan Halsted I’m the film programmer here at the Hollywood Theatre. I wanted to give you guys a quick background about the whole project. So 70mm was originally installed here at the Hollywood Theatre in 1959. The first 70mm movie was Solomon and Sheba, a King Vidor movie starring Yul Brynner – and for that screening the Norelco AA2 projectors were installed here.
The AA2′s are widely regarded to be the best film projector ever designed they run 35mm as well as 70mm, and they are the same projectors that were here in 1968 when 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered. The Hollywood had the exclusive engagement on the movie – it played for 42 weeks and 10 months, which is insane. Is there anyone here who saw it here during that original engagement? (One elderly gentleman raises his hand to applause.) We’ve had quite a few at the other screenings, it’s really impressive. So after that screening the theater mainly played 35mm with occasional screenings in 70, and then in 1986 was the last year that 70 played here – almost 30 years ago – and that was a time when the theater had fallen into disrepair, it was dark times for the Hollywood Theater for quite a while, and it was during that time that all the 70mm parts went missing. Whether they were thrown away or stolen by a thieving projectionist – which is most likely, actually – but regardless they were long gone.So this has been a dream project of mine to bring 70mm back here, and last year I brought up the idea to Joel Miller of North West Projection, who is our technician who installed our sound system a couple years ago, and he was instantly excited by the idea and we set out to see if we could pull it off. I’m a film collector so I used my network of weirdos across the country to see if anyone had some AA2 parts, because these projectors stopped getting manufactured in the mid-sixties, so you can’t just go to the AA2 store and start getting parts. So we started talking to film collectors and projection technicians, we started checking Ebay all the time, and we started to find everything we needed. We added it up and it was going to cost a little over seven grand. So we did the fundraiser last year for $7,000, and people were so excited that we actually raised twice as much money and we got $15,000. Once that happened, Joel and I got together and said we can take this to a whole other level, to install magnetic sound capability, top-of-the-line sound processor, and Joel installed a couple extra speakers behind the screen for the directional audio channels. Even this last week we were watching 2001 and we were like “man, it looks amazing, but it’d be great if we could make it even bigger.” So we got a rigging crew to come in here and they raised that top masking a few feet and we were able to get it out further on the sides (applause). This is the biggest image that’s been projected here since the mid-1960s, which is really awesome (more applause.)
After thanking the many people who made the entire venture possible, Dan alerted everyone to the fact that the film would be preceded by the proper overture music that precedes the opening MGM titlecard, also used for the intermission, and extending past “the end.” Judging from the applause the film received at the end, I was not alone in finding it a sublime experience.
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