Many years ago I was the projectionist at the Cannery Cinema, an art house theater in Northbeach in San Francisco. “She Dances Alone” was there for several weeks. I don’t remember much about the film except that Bud Cort played a director trying to make a film about Vaslov Nijinski, the Russian dancer considered the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century. Nijinski’s daughter, Kyra, played herself. Kyra, an eccentric old woman, held court in the lobby nearly every day of the run. We were running a * of a couple dancing to Pachelbel’s Canon in D before putting up She Dances Alone. I thought it would be cool to do a smooth cross-fade from one projector to another instead of the normal hard cut reel change with the electronic shutters. Early in the run of the film Bud Cort burst into the projection booth right after my groovy soft change-over between the short and She Dances Alone. “What the hell was that? What the HELL was that on the beginning of my film?!” I explained and then he made it abundantly clear that I had, in effect, added a very unwelcome edit to his film. He was right, of course, and I apologized profusely. I also made it clear that I would make normal change overs and would also add a couple seconds between the end of the short and the beginning of his film for the rest of the run. Yeow, spanked by Bud Cort!
*”short* = a short film or cartoon that precedes the feature film