Correction (Feb. 1 12:16 a.m.):Due to a reporting error, and earlier version of this story incorrectly named the Greensboro theater where Stuart Hoyle landed his first projectionist job. It was the Janus Theater. The story has been changed to reflect the correction. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.
If movie-goers and their movies are in good hands at the Varsity Theater, that’s because Stuart Hoyle knows what he’s doing.
Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, Hoyle is on the job at the Varsity that he’s had for roughly two decades, and it normally goes off without a hitch.
Having worked as a projectionist since the early ’80s, from a brief stint at a porn theater in Burlington to movie houses all the way in New York and Cambridge, Mass., Hoyle knows the true test of a projectionist’s ability.
“There was a projectionist at a Harvard Square theater, and he said to me once that projecting is a really easy job until something goes wrong,” he recalled. “And then you get to find out how good you are.
“If you can go up into the booth and get it back into working order in two minutes or less then you’re a good projectionist. Five minutes, you’re an OK projectionist. If you can’t do it, or you give up, you’re not a good projectionist.”
When asked about his own abilities, Hoyle was politely demure, but admitted that he didn’t encounter problems often, and when he did he found quick solutions. That could only be expected from someone with his kind of experience.
Hoyle, who is 51, was born in North Carolina and moved all around the Piedmont with his family in his early years. He landed his first projectionist job at the Janus Theater in Greensboro when he was 21.
“I had never worked a movie theater before that,” he said. “My boss, she was good enough to give me the rudiments of projecting.”
Mostly, however, Hoyle learned from on-the-spot experience. One such lesson sticks out in his mind from his time at the Janice.
“I can remember a devastatingly wrong thing that I did at my first job,” he said, telling of when he accidentally set-up an X-rated movie that the theater was showing later that night instead of the correct movie.
“I sold all the tickets, ran up, pushed the button and was walking down the steps and heard, ‘Sex World — bah bah bah bum!’ So I had to run up there and un-thread it very quickly. But I guess that everything worked out.”
After a short time at the Janice, Hoyle moved up to New York City. There he landed a projecting job at the infamous 8th Street Playhouse, the Greenwich Village theater that launched “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” into cult status with regular midnight showings. Though the Playhouse was known for its transgressive streak, Hoyle’s four-month tenure there was relatively uneventful, even when he broke labor laws.
As a member of the projectionist’s union in North Carolina, Hoyle didn’t join the theater’s required union when working at the Playhouse. Despite being an accidental scab, Hoyle insisted that he never had to cross a picket line, a lucky break in the heavily unionized and activist movie business.
By 1989, Hoyle enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Iowa, and from there went to the University of Texas for graduate school, where he studied cinema’s much older cousin: theater.
Before he went off to school, however, he had worked additional movie houses in the Boston area and in Chapel Hill. One of those theaters was the Varsity, which hired Hoyle shortly after converting into a two-screen venue in 1981. His first stint there was for four years. He came back after grad school in the early ’90s, as he recalls, and through ups and downs in the movie business — as well as three changes in ownership — he has been there ever since.
Except, that is, for the scary months last year when the Varsity was closed and its future was uncertain. When former owner Bruce Stone made the announcement in June that he was closing shop, Hoyle’s first concern was understandable: “I’m out of a job.”
He traveled the Triangle by bus looking for other theaters, applying at such disparate venues as Southpoint Cinemas and the Carolina Theater.
But then came good news: two Chapel Hill residents, Paul and Susan Shareshian, were reopening the Varsity, and they wanted Hoyle to return to his old job.
“I heard from people on the street that they were looking for me,” he recalled.
Of the newly remodeled Varsity that he calls home, Hoyle spoke very positively.
“Paul has made a lot of really good, dramatic changes,” he said. “It’s much more attractive now.”
Even in the parts of the Varsity that haven’t been renovated, such as the projection booth, Hoyle seems to enjoy his job. He eagerly describes the process of projection, which involves implements with such suggestive names as “feed-out platter” and “the brain,” to interested lay-customers. And of course he gets to see tons of free movies.
“That’s one of the things that’s influenced the way I live. I go to see a lot of movies. I’m a big fan of movies. I’m the last bastion of Hollywood,” he joked.
Hoyle has also noticed increased appreciation from the town, noting that business at the Varsity is steadily improving.
“The town is saying, ‘Thank you, and welcome back,” he said.
And this is something special for Hoyle, for whom the Varsity is more than just a job.
“The Varsity is more special to me because I’ve worked off and on here so very long,” he concluded.
“I’ve worked in movie theaters so long that the theater I work at is my home.”
Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu.
