Reg Hartt
The Projectionist as Auteur
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Click to enlarge Reg Hartt in Rochdale College photo
The Rochdale College 2nd Floor Lounge after the mass evictions
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge Rochdale Daily Planet January 16, 1969 clip. Note that the college Registrar and others rejected Reg Hartt for being a capitalist, and the college removed the many ads Reg posted in Rochdale
Click to enlarge Daily March 8, 1969 clip
Reg Hartt wants a licensed bar to replace the college library. Click to enlarge Tuesdaily November 7. 1972 clip
Reg Hartt wants a licensed bar to replace the college library. Click to enlarge November 21, 1972 Rochdale Tuesdaily clip
Click to enlarge Rochdale Tuesdaily January 30, 1973 clip
Click to enlarge Rochdale Tuesdaily February 13, 1973 clip. Mike Eleser simply did not want Reg to completely monopolize the 2nd floor meant for all Rochdale residents to use. Reg wanted to create a "community centre" on the second floor that already existed.The Reg Hartt Cinema
The Projectionist as Auteur
Reg Hartt is an eccentric amateur projectionist who showed Hollywood entertainment in the 2nd floor lounge of Rochdale College for 5 years beginning in 1970. It was just a place for him to make a living as a projectionist, and he did not have to pay rent. Basically, he was a capitalist parasite who did not belong in Rochdale with his short hair and bully bullshitter personality. Before using the 2nd floor lounge as his screening room he experimented with projecting films onto a large white cloth screen on the 17th floor roof patio. He claims to have screened some films in Rochdale before 1970, but there is no evidence of this. The documented evidence is he attempted to, but twice was stopped by the administrators "smelling a rat" who "wanted to show films for money", a "blatant capitalist" with a reputation as "devious and unreliable". Mr. Hartt was an unwelcome outsider who persisted and persisted and persisted until he had complete control of the Second Floor Lounge rent free to make a living showing hard core pornography and Hollywood movies.
Reg also screened films in the Bathurst Street Church, the Spadina Hotel, Sneaky Dee's, Queen Street West, Mirvish Village, and elsewhere. In the 1980's he had his own very small movie theater. He showed his films at places around Toronto during the time he had his small operation in Rochdale, such as at the U of T, Neil-Wycik and the "Hall", an unheated barn-like building. At the Hall I watched "Lawrence of Arabia" in below freezing temperatures. It was strange watching the hot desert movie in the cold, and I had to leave after half an hour because my hands and feet were becoming frostbitten. For this I had to pay admission.
In Rochdale the typical films Reg showed were "Performance", "Barbarella", "Metropolis", and "Fritz the Cat". He used a 16mm film projector and a medium size viewing screen. General admission was usually $1 or $1.50 for double bills. This was slightly more than the 99¢ Roxy Theatre, a genuine movie theatre with a gigantic screen, better sound, comfortable seats and 1000 times more movies than Rochdale. Before screenings, Reg kicked people out of their lounge who would not pay up. Joel Scott of Toad Lane Tenants Association and others hated him for this. Alex MacDonald of Govcon charged Reg with "gross capitalism". Considering that Reg Hartt did not live in Rochdale and did not pay rent to use the 2nd Floor Lounge for his mercenary cinema, Alex and Joel were justified in their criticism of Mr. Hartt. He was an outsider, and the space should have been used by other projectionists as it was before he took it over.
Hans Shuster, Mike Hersh, Bob Huber, Dan McCue, and others used to show films there before Reg Hartt monopolized it. De Fat Daddy Cinema (room 205) operated mostly in the South Cafeteria on the 2nd floor in 1968, then changed its name to H. G. Noxzema Presents (room 202) and screened films in the 2nd Floor Lounge in 1969. Open Films was run by Ralph Bendahan in the 2nd Floor Lounge and there was the Rochdale 8 mm Film Co-op (John Webb) as well as Libre Films presented by projectionists from a Colorado commune. The Rochdale Maintenance Department showed films in the 2nd Floor Lounge using the name "Aquarian Goat Films" until the Fall of 1970. All these projectionists showed mostly documentary, avant garde, amateur, experimental, and old classic films for free or a donation, whereas Reg Hartt screened commercial Hollywood products that were profitable. When Reg persisted and finally took over, all other projectionists disappeared forever from Rochdale and he had a lucrative monopoly with a captive audience.
Previously, Dirty Dan McCue did a much better job managing the 2nd Floor Lounge with live music concerts, seminars, and film screenings. For example, the Teenage Dance Band performed in the lounge in July 1969 for free and it was infinitely better than watching "Fritz the Cat" for money. The lounge should have been a venue for live rock bands because there were several good movie theatres within walking distance of Rochdale. In fact, Rochdalians saw most of their movies elsewhere. The two hottest films in 1974 in Rochdale were "The Harder They Come" and "Janis". Reg Hartt did not show these movies in Rochdale.
There were some uncomfortable chairs in the lounge but most people sat on the carpeted floor. I often used my jacket as a pillow and flaked out on the floor, and it was very comfortable. "Barbarella" is one of my favorite films, and I first saw it in the 2nd floor lounge in 1970. The same for Polanski's "The Fearless Vampire Killers" I watched in the summer of 1970. When the film ended Mike Donaghy commented that it was a great movie that he loved. The Beatles' "Let it Be" was incredibly boring, and only the loud music kept me awake. I thought Fellini's "8 ½" was autobiographical, specifically Fellini's dick size. But it was so boring I actually fell asleep. One of the worst aspects of this cinema was that the same movies were shown over and over and over again for years. Reg must have screened "Metropolis" hundreds of times. Fortunately as the years passed Reg showed fewer and fewer Hollywood movies in Rochdale. In the last two years there were very few. He concentrated on his four porn films that made him a lot of profit when he screened them at Rochdale, Neill-Wycik College, the U of T, and elsewhere.
Mr. Hartt sometimes gave rambling monologues before the films But he never talked about films, and it was like an amateur version of a Lenny Bruce stand-up routine. A typical monologue was about his reverse swastika ring and the reaction it got from Jews. Reg is not Jewish and a mirror image of a swastika is still a Nazi swastika. It is extremely offensive to the many millions of good people who suffered from Nazism. Reg mainly talked about himself in his monologues, so it usually was an irrelevant jerk-off, although some enjoyed the live performance.
When hardcore porn became somewhat legal in the USA, Reg showed four porn films repeatedly for years: "Deep Throat", "Behind the Green Door", "Bijou", and "Boys in the Sand". The last two were gay, although Rochdale was extremely homophobic. There was a complete aversion to his gay porn, but Reg was gay, which he announced at a Rochdale GovCon meeting. To be able to see hardcore porn for the first time was a real treat. Linda Lovelace in "Deep Throat" had small tits, and the guy in "Bijou" had a monster cock. I saw "Deep Throat" three times, "Behind the Green Door" was a scratched poor quality print, and I never watched "Boys in the Sand", although Bill Granger told me it was good. Xaviera Hollander, the famous Happy Hooker, gave Bob Naismith a blow job during the Canadian premiere of "Deep Throat" in 1972. Admission was $10. One night in 1974 I overheard Reg talking to Walt Huston about a home movie of Fergie's Great Dane dog "Craps" fucking a chick. Walt said it wasn't so great to watch, but Reg was interested. Reg certainly had balls to be the first projectionist in conservative Canada to openly show hard core pornography to the general public. But frankly, I believe he did it for the money.
I was very surprised that straight men were so tolerant of the two gay movies in homophobic Rochdale. Probably they watched them out of curiosity and it was the only hardcore porn available. It helped that Wakefield Poole directed both, because his artsy porn has been compared to David Lynch in its innovative visual style and strange logic. Simon Liston, who studied Film at Ryerson, told me he hated "Bijou" because of the porn star's giant dick. In Simon's case I can assure you it was strictly penis envy.
It was a complicated and expensive process to see the porn movies. A paid membership was required. But this membership could not be bought during porn film screenings. It had to be acquired when regular films were shown. There was a desk outside the 2nd Floor Lounge where Tony Osbourne, Paul Peters, or Paul Skura checked membership cards and collected admission money. Unlike men, most women do not like porn. This was certainly true of Cathy Johnson who complained, "It's so boring. All you ever see is suck fuck. Suck fuck." Candy Kane invited me to see a "smut movie" with her. I declined.
Apparently Reg Hartt did not live in Rochdale. There is no evidence of it and he did not respond when I asked him several times, yet another example of his deviousness. Possibly he lived there briefly, but Rochdale was just another place for him to earn a living as a projectionist. No wonder Reg has such a bizarre misunderstanding of Rochdale. He imagines it was a genuine college where he taught "Cinema Studies" by charging admission to a captive audience to watch "Deep Throat".
The 2nd Floor Lounge was the closest thing Rochdale had to an auditorium, and that was its main function. But it was used mostly for the cinema. Reg didn't refer to it as the 2nd Floor Lounge, he always called it "My screening room" and often advertised it as the 2nd Floor North Cafeteria, even though that was a separate space. I watched "Barbarella" in the 2nd Floor Lounge, which was advertised as the 2nd Floor Cafeteria. The official "Main Lounge" was the public lounge for all tenants to be used for socializing, meetings and other events.
Usually Reg did not advertise his film screenings in the Rochdale newsletters. Instead he attached his fly posters to walls all over the building, on all 18 floors. Nobody else ever did this because it was not allowed. There were many complaints about this to the management and he was ordered to stop. But Reg did not stop. This fly poster advertising continued when Rochdale was closed and Reg plastered more illegal posters on Toronto lampposts than anyone in the city's history.
When the building closed Reg wrote an autobiographical pamphlet titled "The Night They Raided Rochdale College". It's a tribute to Gay icon Mae West, apparently with nothing about a police raid on Rochdale College. For some inexplicable reason, this projectionist who didn't live in Rochdale considers himself an authority on Rochdale. But I never ever saw him anywhere in Rochdale except for the 2nd floor lounge: never at a party, meeting, on the elevator, or anywhere. His pamphlet states: "Rochdale was also the only place on the face of the earth where one could legally do hashish, LSD, marijuana and mescaline." No. These drugs were very illegal in all of Canada, which is why Rochdale was constantly raided by the police and eventually closed. However, in Nepal and parts of India, these drugs were legal. Reg is not qualified to write about Rochdale.
Today Reg uses the pretentious title "Director of Cinema $tudies" for his projectionist job at Rochdale, although at the time he called it "Cinema Archives" on rare occasions. Reg never went to university or had any formal education in film. He claims that Peter Turner gave him the position and title. So what? Mr. Turner was merely one of dozens of presidents of Rochdale College, accountable to GovCon and not the college dictator. He was president during Rochdale's lowest period, when it was only a hippie drug store with no education. He moved out in 1971 and never came back. Turner had no authority to make Reg Hartt the permanent projectionist in Rochdale forever. Nobody had that authority.
Cinema Studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to the cinema. It is concerned with exploring the economic, cultural, political, and artistic implications of the cinema. Screening Hollywood movies for profit is not Cinema Studies, it is a form of capitalist entertainment. In November 1972 Reg wanted to turn the 2nd floor college Library into a licensed bar! Is that the behavior of an academic educator? No, it's the crazy idea of a capitalist in the entertainment business with contempt for education. Reg conferred with the Greenies about his licensed bar plan, and they approved it. He didn't understand that the Greenies were the enemies of Rochdalians.
Reg Hartt has now re-invented Rochdale as a genuine college where he was an academic. But he is just an uneducated projectionist who has some notoriety because he has plastered more illegal ad posters on Toronto lampposts than anyone else in the entire history of Toronto – probably more posters than all others combined some years. For over 30 years Reg Hartt has attached tens of thousands of his posters to lampposts in the downtown area.
The fly posters were always self-promotion ads about Reg and his films. Some were not selling anything except himself. He posted an announcement that his name was no longer Reg, he was "Bear" and he had abandoned projecting movies to become a film producer and director. Soon came another public confession poster that complained about the LSD he had taken was not the same drug he had used ten years earlier. Children on their way to school read this shit, as well as his ads with graphic descriptions of his gay porn films. He did not care or consider how his ads could harm children, because he is a sociopath.
Reg Hartt was reported to the Toronto Advertising Hall of Shame and the Licensing and Standards Committee. Shortly afterwards, Hartt was notified by the City that his "Cineforum" must close, but it survived. Cineforum is an amateur cinema Reg has in the living room of his house where he charges patrons to sit on lawn chairs and watch movies. Reg has earned his living this way for almost 20 years. He shows "The anarchist surrealist hallucinatory film festival", "The sex and violence cartoon festival", "Triumph of the Will" and Salvador Dalí prints. His Cineforum seats 20 and patrons bring their own food and drinks. Sometimes Reg has guest speakers, mostly artists and writers. He charges from $20 to $100 for each customer to sit on lawn chairs in his living room to watch films and listen to his monologues, such as "What I Learned from LSD". The average price for a movie ticket is currently $8. Reg does not advertise his exorbitant admission prices, and he does not show movies if enough people do not show up.
Recently he has been showing countless digital 3-D movies, and owns a 3-D camera he used to create the silent film "Toronto Bleeds" – 40 minutes of unedited footage of the aftermath of the G20 riots. What do people think of him? On the internet "kerouacdude" wrote: "He hosts movies in his living room and apparently he's a bit of a nut – before the film he'll go into a self-involved, somewhat paranoid rant about the film, critics, or whatever's on his mind. Conventional advice is to go as close to start time as possible."
In a "Varsity" interview he said, "I love Toronto. And the city loves me." No. At the end of this internet entry are 2 comments. One is from "Grant" who wrote, "This guy seems pretty thick-headed with his comments about Canadian film. I think the kind of pessimism he spouts off is part of the problem with our film culture." The other comment was not published but the editor wrote "bagel breath's comment was not acceptable within our terms of use and has been removed."
My take on this is movie screenings are an anachronism now that we have home video. Film projectors are as relevant today as the horse and buggy. However, Reg Hartt's cinema in Rochdale ranks with the "Unknown Student" sculpture, Laurie Peters' murals, the Rochdale Library, and Etherea Restaurant as one of the most positive, stable, and enduring facets of Rochdale College. But the operation mainly benefited Reg Hartt. If his cinema was "educational", it was a kindergarten compared to the 99¢ Roxy Theatre, which was like Oxford University in comparison.
As for Reg himself, he was an outsider in Rochdale, misunderstood what it was, and nobody knew anything about him because he did not live in the building. He looked very out of place in hippie Rochdale, like a conservative suburban Jewish nerd, with his short hair and strictly business aloofness. Strangely, Reg had a very low profile in Rochdale, was not sociable, and his ads in the college newsletter did not mention his name. However, when the building closed, his name was the most important thing on his countless fly posters in Toronto. It wasn't just a movie, it was a film presented by the world famous Reg Hartt. His shameless self-promotion with fly posters has given him some minor local fame or notoriety, but it will pass because he has not created anything. It will backfire on him, because karma is a bitch!
Without his illegal posters Reg would be almost unknown. I cannot comprehend how anyone can take him seriously, although he is a one of a kind. Superficially Reg gave the impression that he was normal, conservative, and not eccentric. But he is eccentric, erratic, and has an inflated opinion of himself. The projectionist as auteur. An anachronism who uses 16mm and 8mm film formats for his cinema. Reg was outraged and "shocked" at my views on him, his movie operation, and Rochdale College. However, I don't give a shit what he thinks or imagines about Rochdale College or himself.
He told me he doesn't care what people say or write about him. I thought he was like George M. Cohan, who said, "I don't care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right." No. Reg expects people to write their interpretations of his bullshit he tells them, and nothing else. It would be dishonest and irresponsible reportage to pander to him. I attended his cinema in Rochdale, I can smell bullshit a mile away, and I only write the truth. So he insulted me in emails for writing the truth about him. He does not want people to know that he did not live in Rochdale College and announced at a Rochdale GovCon meeting that he is gay. Later he denied "coming out". But there is no question about it. One of the countless fly posters he polluted Toronto with was mostly a photograph of Arnold Schwarzenneger's cock. The text was not selling anything at all, it was simply Reg drooling poetically over Ahnold's cock.
Unfortunately, Reg cannot seem to tolerate criticism. After I repeatedly told Reg Hartt to leave me alone, he sent me more emails to insult me personally. Reg is not very good at it because he does not know me at all. Yet he posted at least half a dozen blogs on the internet specifically about me. In the blogs and the emails his insults were the psycho-analytic type coming from a notorious eccentric. Genuine celebrities never attack "bad press", especially if they claim they don't care what is written about them. This ordeal proved to me that there is something seriously wrong with Reg Hartt. In my Spam I noticed "Give me honest hatred", a blog or email from Reg obviously about me. To clarify things, I do not hate Reg Hartt. I simply disapprove of his outrageous bullshit, what he did in Rochdale College, and for appointing himself the Rochdale Director of Cinema $tudies.
I do not want a Google search for my name displaying malicious bullshit about me from a disgruntled projectionist. This entry is for a chapter in my book "Rochdale College" and it is all I have written about Reg Hartt for publication. I was a projectionist at the U of T for four years, have written 4 movie screenplays, and published two large books of movie reviews. I own thousands of movies on DVD and watch them with a high definition video projector on a screen 10 feet wide. Reg Hartt is inferior to me regarding knowledge of the cinema. You probably know more about movies than he does.
© 2011 Wolf Sullivan
