December 20, 2014

The Projectionists at One of LA’s Most Famous Theaters Are Apparently Tired of Being Paid Like Crap


The ArcLight is one of the most famous theaters in Hollywood. (It looks like a golf ball. In my house it is known as the golf ball movie theater.) Every Friday night, arm-linked lovers bustle in to find new big flicks. Last night some patrons also found the following Christmas card:

David Slack

This comes from TV writer David Slack who added on Twitter, “I love you, @ArcLightCinemas but I got this outside your theater. Don’t be an a-hole. Pay your people better.”

It’s tough times for projectionists. It’s a high skilled job that for a long time made a reliable career, but over the last decade theaters have increasingly dropped their 35mm projectors in favor of digital setups that don’t require the same technical proficiency to operate. ArcLight projectionists are having an especially difficult time. According to the Stage Technicians Unions, which has been protesting the theater for months, they make less than half what projectionists at competing theaters in LA make. 

I reached out to Chris Forman and will update if he gets back to me.

We've never been very good at being conservative.

And usually, that serves us well in doing the ambitious, hard-hitting journalism that you turn to Mother Jones for. But it also means we can't afford to come up short when it comes to scratching together the funds it takes to keep our team firing on all cylinders, and the truth is, we finished our budgeting cycle on June 30 about $100,000 short of our online goal.

This is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell, as our namesake would tell us to do, for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability has a chance at the polls and in the press. If you value our reporting and you can right now, please help us dig out of the $100,000 hole we're starting our new budgeting cycle in with an always-needed and always-appreciated donation today.

payment methods

We've never been very good at being conservative.

And usually, that serves us well in doing the ambitious, hard-hitting journalism that you turn to Mother Jones for. But it also means we can't afford to come up short when it comes to scratching together the funds it takes to keep our team firing on all cylinders, and the truth is, we finished our budgeting cycle on June 30 about $100,000 short of our online goal.

This is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell, as our namesake would tell us to do, for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability has a chance at the polls and in the press. If you value our reporting and you can right now, please help us dig out of the $100,000 hole we're starting our new budgeting cycle in with an always-needed and always-appreciated donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate