FUZZY REFLECTIONS glide over the metal canisters, banks of switches and assortment of movie reels that hang like modern art inside Stanford Theater’s projection room.
Projectionist Phil Krikau is master of all he surveys in this cramped booth — the sound, the curtains, the lights, the experience.
And for curious eyes he rotates a knob and briefly opens up the “Peerless” projector, its high-intensity carbon-arc flame filling up the inside of the massive machine with unearthly greens and yellows. Brilliant light spills from the innards of the clanking and whirring contraption as Krikau, 37, recalls falling for the projectionist’s magic in his youth.
“It was very mysterious — it was just these black windows up there,” he says, the light carving shadows on his softly lined face. “I could never see in them; all I could see was the ray of light coming out.”
As a child, spying the strange dots which occasionally flickered in the screen’s upper-right hand corner, he realized they signified a changeover from reel to reel. “As me years went on for me,” he admits, “the exhibition of film intrigued me more than the actual film itself.”
An ancient-sounding bell clangs three times, interrupting his reverie with the signal of an impending changeover. He lovingly threads up the next reel and peers through the window for the evanescent cue. With a yank of a switch, the 16-year veteran executes a smooth transition.
Most modern theaters have replaced projectionists and their craft with a mere push of a button. Krikau has persevered through rough stretches, picking up extra cash delivering flowers or driving airport shuttles. Now he works full time at the Stanford.
Although he emphasizes his respect for theater owner David Packard, Krikau disagrees with the film purist’s oft-stated disdain for all post-1960 cinema. “I think there’s a lot of modern film that’s perfectly socially redeeming,” says Krikau, who has also spun reels for the San Francisco International Film Festival for the last five years.
This fan of magical films like The Wizard of Oz revels in the loneliness of the booth, his silent labor creating a seamless dream for an audience unaware of his existence.
“I never hung out with the crowd when I was a kid,” Krikau says. “I think maybe I had one or two friends at a time.
“When I come up here it’s sort of like I’m closed off to the world. I can venture into the world of film fantasy. Film presents this mystery that real life cannot show you.”
