Edgewater Hotel Sign Comes Down
The Art of Not Knowing
If You Tweet It, He Will Come
Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
The Daily Photoist: November 20, 2009
Just as the best place and time one can panhandle in Toronto is outside the Princess of Wales Theatre when the show letting out is Les Misérables, there are likely few more effective or appropriate locations to stage a union protest than outside a movie theatre screening a certain film about agitated simians/urban revolutionaries targeted squarely at a hip, leftist audience consisting primarily of agitated simians/urban revolutionaries.
Anyone ambling along College Street between Clinton and Grace on Friday night found themselves greeted by members of I.A.T.S.E. (the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, generally pronounced "Eye-at-see") Local 173, the Ontario Projectionists and Video Technicians Union, urging a boycott of the newly reopening Royal Cinema.
The substance after the jump.
From the brightly-coloured leaflets the picketers were graciously distributing:
• The Facts... A new company, Theatre D Digital, has purchased the Royal Cinema.• The new owners of this theatre have refused to employ our members despite the fact that we have a legal collective agreement at this theatre. They have forced our projectionist out of his job.
• We have been forced to picket because Theatre D has refused to meet with us and discuss the situation after many attempts on our part
The handout then goes on to inform that "You can help by not going in until this dispute is settled, buying nothing at the snack bar," and contacting the owners, John Hazen and Dan Peel.
Those aforementioned owners, presumably realizing that they had a public relations nightmare unfolding under their marquee, shot back with their own release, hastily (but efficiently) typed up and printed out on site. In part:
Contrary to Local 173 claims, Theatre D did not purchase nor is the owner of the Royal Theatre, 606 College Street, Toronto. Moreover it did not purchase the business or the corporate entity that formerly owned or operated the Royal. The company which owned or operated this facility is, to the best of our knowledge, no longer in business and none of its principals is involved with Theatre D. The Royal Theatre was purchased in June, 2006 by a historical property enthusiast and leased to Theatre D.[snip]
It is incorrect to suggest that Theatre D is ignoring the union's concerns. Theatre D was only made aware of the Local 173 concerns a few weeks ago - some five months after the theatre was sold and retrofitting began. Once the union provided copies of the relevant documents Theatre D requested legal advice regarding the union's claims. As these are complex issues involving several areas of law, the research and opinion have not yet been completed but are expected to be ready shortly.
"Theatre D is unaware of any legal or moral obligation that would compel it to assume any contract Local 173 may have had with the former owner(s) or operators of the Royal Theatre," said Dan Peel of Theatre D.
There having been no prior word or news coverage of the union's grievances or intention to picket (although a Google News search reveals a Canada NewsWire (CNW) release from earlier in the day), potential patrons were thus compelled to base any decision on whether or not to enter the theatre on the dueling leaflets, which of course only provided parts of the story.
More substantive information can now, however, be garnered from that CNW release, which illuminates that "Under the Labour Relations Act of Ontario a Union retains its jurisdiction whenever a business is sold. The Royal was sold to Theatre D by the McQuillan family that formerly ran the Festival Chain." The Theatre D release disputes the latter claim, but their retort that the movie house was sold to a "historical property enthusiast and leased to Theatre D" is certainly news to us. Virtually every article published about the Royal's salvation (including several archived on Theatre D's own site), makes specific mention of the ownership of the property itself having been transferred to Theatre D.
Another issue one might consider, although it is of course irrelevant from a labour perspective, is whether the projection at the previous incarnation of the Royal was actually all that good. Having seens scores of films there over the past few years, Torontoist can recall countless occasions in which multiple reels or even whole films were presented out of focus. Although there are certainly many factors that may have contributed to this, one person familiar with the situation confided that the blame lay with the projectionist. Not that the projection at the new Royal is necessarily better: during the first screening, the horizontal masking was excessively modest, leaving blank spaces on the screen at both sides of the frame, which itself was darker towards the edges, as though the film had been shot with a spotlight mounted on the camera.
In any case, we would hate for this disagreement to devolve into another Blue Man debacle and sincerely hope that all parties involved are able to come to an amicable resolution, so that we can sit back in the theatre (which has new, yet equally bouncy, seats!) and enjoy forms of warfare other than those concerning class.
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MAD MAX II:
Mad Max: Hey! that guy said you would give me petrol!
Dude in White: (as the guy dies) Whatever deal you had died with him.
New theatre, new slate, I say.
And the projectionists need to do their homework before they go parading around the town square. It's not clear from either side what the real stoy of ownership is/was. Was the property just being held abandoned by the bank? Did the previous owners simply go out of business?
And shit - I can't even count the number of times there were annoying technical glitches during screenings in the old Royal.
Ok but whether the old projectionist is legally entitled to his job or not is kind of besides the point. There used to be a union local and now there's not. The theatre is union busting and that sucks. If the old projectionist was incompetent then that is grounds to fire him, but it sounds more like shitty equipment.
The new owners should stop researching with lawyers, and be respectful to their workers - let the union in.
. . .Or we could just let the theatre have succumbed to the wrecking ball. Complete agreement with Dave above. It's a new theatre. It's a private company. Let them get on with it.
Oh yeah, and having patronized the Royal for many years, I can say that more often than not, the projectionist skills were ass.
Hey!
I want to make it clear that Monkey Warfare was NOT targeted squarely at a hip, leftist audience.
If it had been, this site would not be linking to a bad review of how unhip it is (now for the 4th time).
Let me make it clear. Monkey Warfare - Not Hip
Reg
P.S. Down with unions! Up with workers' councils!
I didn't go to the crappy theatre before, but this union dispute is inspiring to give the place a try.
Why should Theatre D have to hire the same projectionist? Whatever you may say or think about unions, don't have have a right to decide who will work for them -- even if that person must be a union member?
Hey Reg,
I personally love Monkey Warfare. I saw it at TIFF, and I saw it again last night, and I have plans to take more people to see it again on Monday (hopefully the Royal will have made some progress with its projection issues, both the technical and labour ones). I've been urging everyone I know to see it; the film fills me with a glee that makes me want to shout its title from the rooftops. (I hope you don't think I'm being sarcastic, because I'm actually quite serious.)
On the other hand, I'm not Torontoist's film critic and this was in fact my first piece of writing for the site. As such, I felt the courteous thing to do was to show deference to Mathew by linking to his original review, however much I disagree with it.
As for the film being "targeted squarely at a hip, leftist audience," I meant that in the most affectionate way. On a number of levels, the film is an ode to my dual passions of film and public space advocacy in Toronto; I feel like it's a movie made for me and my friends.
I've been thinking about that great voiceover in Masculine Feminine in which Léaud's Paul says:
While I would stop short of calling it the film of my life, Monkey Warfare succeeds at being something that few films I have ever seen actually manage to be: anthemic.Having worked in cinemas quite a bit I know that having an experienced projectionist can be a very good thing.
That said, the cost of running a cinema are high while the profits are marginal. This increasing true when you are talking about a rep cinema. The Royal will not be running first run blockbusters. It will not be packing them in on several screens (incidentally most of those multiplexes are served by just one projectionist).
In order to be profitable and stay alive to serve those of us who like to go there, the new Royal cannot afford to run as the old Royal. It must change or suffer the same fate as its predecessor.
The union cannot see this. Many of it's members cannot see this. All they see is the past. The past is fleeting.
Change is sometimes for the better.
Sorry, Jonathan. I don't mean to be a kneejerk, reactionary asshole. (hey - I got nothing on that Dean Blundell guy whose show I was on Thursday).
I just keep getting thrown by this "we" stuff.
Quoting that voiceover from Masculine-Feminine in relation to my film is actually one of the most touching things anyone's ever said to me. Sniff.
"In order to be profitable and stay alive to serve those of us who like to go there, the new Royal cannot afford to run as the old Royal. It must change or suffer the same fate as its predecessor."
This makes me sad. So does the name 'Theatre D' and the whole deterioration of the independent movie theatre industry in this city.
Oh well, at least we still have Bloor Cinema.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that when Theatre D bought/leased the Royal, they turned part of it into a film production facility. Isn't the daytime facility side of things meant to be the primary source of income now, and not the snack bar or box office? D must be doing a fair bit of business to have opened a second one of these facilities, so I don't see how this is an issue of money, and I don't see how The Royal is now any less independent than when it was part of a chain (as odd as that sounds).
Hey Rek,
The following is the paragraph from Theatre D's release that I opted not to include in my original article:
I think Theatre D just bought the building, not the "business". Otherwise, they would be operating "Festival Cinemas". The few remaining staff of snack bar personel contacted Theatre D and had to interview to get their jobs back. Personally, I don't really see why the projectionists feel like they need to picket (and the "unfair employer" signs are kind of suspect considering nobody protesting has ever been employed by Theatre D).
Otherwise, I am overwhelmingly excited about the return of the Royal. My summer was so boring without my neighbourhood movie house.
Sounds like a "continuity of employment" issue - that when you sell a business you transfer not only the assets and liabilities but the employment contracts.
The projectionists feel like they need to picket because they are legally entitled to work at the Royal. Projectionist contracts are location based rather than business based and are not simply null after a change in ownership. Theatre D seems to be aware of it (how could they not be) and rather than coming to an agreement decided to ignore the issue. Now it's biting them on the ass and they're looking for excuses, of which there are none.