The Screening of Cab 16 at Millenium Film Workshop by Rick Hancox

(May 1969, New York City)

One of he my first interests upon arriving in new York for the first time was to enroll in classes at Millennium Film Workshop Inc. This I did, for a fee of $15, which I was to regret later. Scheduled lecturers failed to show up and classes turned into a confusion of arguing and shouting between self-inflated novices-most of whom had never even touched an 8mm camera. All discussions were dominated by three or four people who gained such positions by the ability to speak non-stop, or through sheer amplification. The Workshop had been advertised as a place where members could “make use of the 16mm and 8mm equipment to shoot, edit and screen their own individual projects.” But it was until after one paid his membership fee that he saw the equipment included on 8mm editor/viewer with a plastic bag over it, covered in dust, one pair of 16m rewinds, secured to a table by strands of Scotch tape, and a good pair of rewinds and 16mm viewer unfortunately dominated by a senior member of the Workshop by blocking off one of the three rooms with a sheet of plywood, behind which he secretively toiled on his first 16mm film. The Workshop’s only projector (there was no 8mm projector) was an old mag-optical Bell and Howell with a motor that banged and ricocheted like a machine-gun, and a speaker which boggled the mind, to say the least. It was an eight inch oval speaker nakedly exposed and hanging precariously by a string from a nearby beam. Its incredibly thin and distorted sound was further aided by a crackling short circuit in the projector’s sound amplifier.

All can be forgiven, however, when one considers the difficulty of running an independent film workshop in New York City, but when one has own 16mm film (Cab 16) screened and criticized on the basis of poor sound and technical quality by an 8mm film lecturer who does not even know the cost of an 8mm roll of film, and who abused the already-poor screening facilities by continually playing with the focus wheel and volume control all through the film (the volume control short-circuited every time he touched it), then I think one has legitimate grounds for complaint.

The lecturer who appeared at the Workshop Tuesday nights to teach low-budge filmmaking, enthusiastically invited members to bring in any 8mm films they were working on, and then later admitted the Workshop did not even own a single 8mm projector.

Instead of teaching filmmaking he seemed to see himself as a good-natured adult thee to give encouragement and inspiration to the bright-eyed young filmmakers. Instead he came off like some kind of condescending Boy Scout leader whose only contact with film was snapping daises with his Kodak Instamatic. After ruining the presentation of Cab 16 in the manner described above, he later took me aside, and with an arm sympathetically around my shoulder, proceeded to tell me that while he felt certain technical misgivings relating to the soundtrack hindered Cab 16, I should not “give up,” but “keep trying,” and someday I might be able to make a film. Upon being denied a refund of my membership fee, I left Millennium never to return.