Dear Father Simon and the all-forgiving collective.

My confession dates back to the early 1990s when I was involved with an independent cinema collective in a small town in Bavaria, Germany, where we had five screenings of a cult film by a famous director. I wasn't on projectionist duty for that week but I wanted to see the film, which I had only seen on TV before, once, late at night. So I went on day four, said hello to my mate on day duty, got myself a beer and sat down in my usual seat in the back of the moderately crowded cinema.

The film started as it should, the titles rolled, and the first twenty minutes or so were business as usual. But then the plot started to veer off in an unusual direction. I thought to myself "This is a strange version of the film...." but didn't do anything - only a minute or two later, my colleague came in, grabbed me by the sleeve and whispered "could you come out for a second?", and we both went to the cinema foyer. He was as white as a sheet.

Now comes a technical explanation. Fear not, Sister Rebecca, I'm trying to make it as short as possible.

A traditional 35mm cinema film arrives at the cinema not all in one piece, but usually in five small reels of about 20 minutes each, as these can then be stacked and transported in a box not unlike a large, and very heavy, hat box. To distinguish the different parts of the film from each other, each reel has another colour-coded piece of film taped to the beginning and the end, which gets taken off when the film gets assembled, and then glued back on again for the transport to the next screening venue, so they too know which part of the film is which, even if a reel ends up accidentally in the wrong box.

Only, on this occasion, somebody had made a mistake. Either our assembler or the guy who took the film apart at the last screening before us had confused reel 2
and 3, so, the bits nearer the end were now running before the bits at the beginning....

My colleague looked at me (slightly senior and a year or so more experienced in the cinema business): "What do we do? Should we stop the film, apologise and give them their money back?" I thought for a bit. Money back was not an option. "Well, nobody's complaining, and after all, they're getting the whole film, just not in the right order, so we should leave as it is, really." And I went back in to spot any developing unrest. Thank God the end credits were in the right place, but in between was, well, jumbled up completely. All the characters do the same things but in the wrong order.

As the film ended, I went to join my colleague at the box office for mutual support, just in case of any complaints or questions. There weren't any. Some people looked a bit puzzled when they went out, but that was normal with our film selection, so nothing too unusual.

Everybody had left. It was now half past midnight. Taking the film apart and rearranging it would have needed probably two to three hours for two inexperienced people. I looked at my colleague and said: "Nobody complained today. Nobody complained in the last three screenings either, or we would have had a message from the others. Tomorrow will be OK, too. I think we should go home and leave it as it is."

And we went home. I phoned our assembling guy to take care of the problem when the film was due to be sent off to the next venue. And yes, nobody complained at screening number five either. Some of the colleagues had noticed, but, like us, chosen to ignore the problem.

Our deepest heartfelt apologies go to our lovely customers, who probably still think that the film in question is a lot more confusing than it actually is. Now that most cinemas have reached the digital age, it can't happen again anyway. You're safe.

Oh, and special apologies to film director David Cronenberg, whose masterpiece "Videodrome" was the film in question. In which naughty girlfriend Nicki ends up auditioning for a show in Pittsburgh that she doesn't know exists. They search for a character who doesn't exist in a show that no one knows about. I'm looking forward to his new film. In the right order.

Please forgive me!

Brian