Free Flicker by Theodore Roszak

entrusted to their care.
    â€œI didn’t realize how old the machines were,” I later observed to Clare.
    â€œOld!” she responded gloomily. “They’re antediluvian. It makes me shudder to put film through them. Christ! If only we could get far enough ahead around here to buy some decent equipment. I pray for the day.”
    But she was talking about thousands of dollars, and by then I knew The Classic limped along from week to week on a bank account that never rose above three low figures. For months at a time, it was all Clare could do to cover the rent and the bills. “I don’t know which I’m more ashamed of,” she confessed, “Sharkey or his machines.”
    Sharkey, on the other hand, loved his machines, and he loved teaching about them. All the more so since he’d built them with his bare hands from shreds and patches of discarded gear. On its mechanical side as in everything else, The Classic was a seat-of-the-pants operation, making do with secondhand and cast-off equipment, some of it just inches above the level of junk. Even my untutored eye could tell as much. But Sharkey took specific pride in the age of his projectors and the pedigree of their every salvaged part. The big, battered lamp boxes, for example. They bore a boldly scripted logo on their side whose paint had long since worn away; but the raised metal letters could still be made out. “See that,” Sharkey announced to his gawking apprentice.
“Peerless.
Best brand there ever was. These honeys have seen duty in all the finest movie houses in L.A. Opened the old Pantages downtown. Chaplin, Valentino, Clara Bow—they all traveled through that box first run. Nobody’s improved on Peerless in the last thirty-five years. Look at the weight of that metal. That’s industrial-strength steel. Battleship quality.”
    Clinging precariously to the front of each superannuated lamp box and emitting a slow, steady drip of oil that spattered on newspapers Sharkey had spread beneath was a piece of machinery called the picture head. Sharkey’s version was a jerry-built package of recycled gears, shutters, reels, and rollers. This I learned was the projector’s principal muscular organ; its function was to marry each frame of the advancing film for a risky split second to the hotly concentrated blaze of projected light that gave the passing pictures their moment of life. Both heads bore the brand name Simplex, and their vintage was also antique. “Early thirties,” Sharkey told me. “These date back to the opening of Grauman’s Chinese. Best quality of the day. I must’ve rebuilt these babies down to the last screw. But I’ve got them tuned to perfection. Sure, they need a lot of help; but there’s history in those gears. That makes a difference. You know, like they say witha Stradivarius: the wood remembers. Well, metal has its memories, believe me. I wouldn’t trade Simplex here for anybody’s so-called top of the line. Tacky—that’s what they’re building these days. These machines got faith in themselves; they were built with conviction. Back when the U.S.A. was king of the movie mountain. Don’t be fooled by appearances. The way Dotty and Lilly handle film is a love affair. They just caress it along its way.”
    Dotty and Lilly were the pet names Sharkey had given his machines—after the Gish sisters. “But,” I observed, “they do seem to chew up the film quite a bit.”
    â€œBah!” Sharkey answered, looking wounded. “That’s not their fault. It’s the state of the film stock we get sent. Lots of it is scrap condition, ready for the garbage can. Torn sprockets, bad splices … the head can’t get a grip on material like that. Look here.”
    He took me to the rewind table, where he was transferring that night’s movie from its packing reel. This, as I learned, had to be done with