Mark Zvaleko:
CLASS OF 1965
Buffalo Public School 8Class of 1965
Buffalo, NY
Los Angeles High SchoolClass of 1972
Los angeles, CA
John Burroughs Middle SchoolClass of 1969
Los angeles, CA
Woodlawn Junior High SchoolClass of 1969
Buffalo, NY
Queen Anne Elementary SchoolClass of 1966
Los angeles, CA
Mark's Story
Born in Lackawanna, NY, moved to Buffalo, NY somewhere around my 1st birthday.
(the memory is hazy from that period)
Lived on Glenwood Ave until 1965.
Attended PS#8 1st through 5th grade. Our phone number was TT3-7887 and it was a party line until about 1963. Imagine that.
In 1965 the folks decided they'd had enough of the snow (not me, i loved it) and i was dragged to Los Angeles, California with my younger brother and sister. Had my 11th birthday in California.
Finished elementary school at Queen Anne Elementary (6th grade) then went to John Burroughs Jr. High (it's now called middle school) and then Los Angeles High School.
While at LA High, there was a rather large earthquake that essentially destroyed the main building so we were bussed for half days to Fairfax High for almost a year.
In the last year of high school, the counselor refused to let me have my Band class so i dropped out and went to Los Angeles City College to take my music classes.
Work?
Tried waiting tables in a restaurant. that lasted a couple days because they took me back to help in the kitchen at the end of the second day and it turned my stomach.
Then got a cool job as doorman and ticket seller at a theatre. The Hollywood Pussycat Theatre. They showed Deep Throat exclusively for almost 2 years. Punctuated with the occasional police raids to take the film away. but it was always replaced a few minutes after they left. there must've been a hundred prints just around the corner. the show must go on! (no matter how crappy it is) The film runs 61 minutes (the film, not the act), the theater seated 666 people at $5.00/seat. they opened the theater at noon, and had continuous showings until 4:00 AM with a full house nearly every showing. you do the math. They made good money.
There was a stupid scandal at the theater and so i became a projectionist / manager at The El Cameo theater in El Sereno. Too many hours.
Then got a job i really liked at "The New Vagabond Theater" which was a revival house showing old films, such as "Night of the Living Dead" "The Red Balloon" and lots of really fun flicks. It was one of those theatres that ran a film for a couple days and then changed to another.
THEN!... after only a year there, it was bought by "Sunshine Cinema" who kept me on as the projectionist. Guess what movie they showed? yep, D.T. ! i got more reading done that year than maybe the rest of my life combined.
OH!! i did take on a self imposed project there. Theater movies come on 20 minute reels and before automation, we'd alternate machines watching for cue marks near the end of each reel signaling the startup of the other projector and subsequent switching audio and picture to the other one, then thread up the next reel and wait the 20 minutes to switch back and so forth. being bored with the film, i endeavored to open the back of the projector that was not running, take out one gear, have a good look, put it back EXACTLY as it came out and when i'd switch running to that machine, go to the other one and take out the same gear and then one more. After several weeks going back and forth like this, i'd had so many gears and pieces out of the machine it was a real race to get it back together and tuned up in time to make the changeover so the audience would never see a delay. It was great fun!
One day as i was racing to reassemble one of the projectors during a show, a man came in to the booth. but i didn't have time to talk or really even to look as my game had become quite extensive. he saw me with gears and screws neatly arranged on the floor and shelves moving at what must've appeared to be breakneck speed to get the thing back together JUST IN TIME To run around to the front, start the machine and make the changeover.
He asked if the machine was broken. I told him no, and explained what i'd been doing and why. (How many times can you watch D.T. ??!)
It turns out he was there to collect a 16mm projector that he had built and rented to the theater. He asked me if i wanted a job working for him designing and building projectors.
...WELL YES!! I DID! So i worked for "Robert Evans Enterprises" which up until then consisted of ...him. He was one of those old man geniuses and i learned quite a bit. Even went back to school to take additional drafting and engineering classes because he was letting me design some parts to have fabricated. Luckily these "special parts" worked just as we'd planned. He was very nice, but he was more interested in building the machines (it would take us several months to complete one or two. we'd work on several simultaneously) than he was in being a business man so he never got paid what he should have for these custom projectors.
To give you an idea of the quality of the machines we built, we would take old RCA 16mm projectors, remove the cases, build our own cases, special water, and air cooling. Special cooling condenser lenses behind the film Parabolic mirrors behind the bulbs. Then huge 1600 to 2500 watt (Xenon) lamphouses behind them.
In one case we used our machine to run the 16mm portion of a film festival for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (The Academy awards people) at their Theater in Beverly Hills.
Many film buffs came to the door of the projection room in wonderment because they KNEW there were no 35 mm prints of the particular films in existence. Well they wer...Expand for more
e right. We got such a steady and bright picture with a throw to the screen of sometimes around 200' that it easily rivaled the 35mm genre. 200' is pretty good even for 35mm.
Also worked for Ansafone repairing telephone answering machines. Back then some of them actually lifed the receiver off the phone with a mechanical device.
OOPS! Gotta back up a bit...
ONE OF THE BEST PERIODS IN MY WHOLE LIFE
was working with a combination 3rd, 4th and 5th grade class in Cerritos, California. Teaching film making was what it was called but it was more "working with" the students helping them to get their ideas on film. THEY came up with the stories, the ideas, handled the camera themselves, did the acting, and directing or the animation. All i really did was to use my experience to show them HOW to do it and then guiding them through the process. That way they saw their own ideas take shape, not mine. I don't recall anything they wanted that they couldn't do. i worked with several classes over 7 years. They split up into groups of 2 to 7 or 8 depending on what their project entailed. In some cases they used kids not in their group as extras. We essentially had the run of the school and sometimes filmed "on location" at some of their homes. One student's parents had a model T Ford and we used that in the school parking lot.
Sometimes they had specific music in mind for their film. One example of that is "The Baby Elephant Walk" (i'll have to ask Jeri Lyn to remind me what the movie was about though) Each group would look at the raw footage after it came back from the lab and decide what to keep, what to cut and what seriously needed re-shooting and how it should be assembled.
Then every year open-house at Room 5 was PACKED! well beyond the legal limits. It was probably the most popular activity in the school each year.
The kids were all wonderful i loved all of them and would dearly hope to get in contact with them as well. Even if only to say "HI, boy that was fun"
THANK ALL OF YOU FOR THE EXPERIENCE YOU SHARED WITH ME.
There is one regret from that period though. And it is that i was only able to give them a small look at the editing process. Although many many of them got to make one or two splices so that they'd know what it entailed. But they did not see the hundreds of hours and weeks i spent at home -sometimes not sleeping for days- splicing the film, and easily hundreds more hours choosing and recording music then splicing tape and timing things so that the music sync'd properly. Ideally, they should have been more involved with the post-production process but the massive hours required to put two hours of filme together was just impractical for elementary school.
Still, i do believe that i edited with only their ideas in mind. It was, after all, THEIR films and i was only the vehicle to get them there. If i'd put my two cents into it, they'd not get what they wanted. It was not meant to be a polished product. It was meant to move their ideas onto film.
I've misplaced many of the names but not the memories.
They were a great bunch of kids and i'm sure a great bunch of adults now. They'd all be in their 40's.
Well, this was volunteer work and i needed some money....
Got a job with The Phone Company (Pacific Bell) worked there nearly 20 years in various departments everything from climbing poles, installing phones, going into manholes, and finally coordinating and testing HiCaps (high capacity) which are the very high speed digital lines connecting phone companies to each other and all the central offices within the companies themselves. An example the smallest hicap is the equivalent of 28 regular phone lines.
Ok that's enough tech talk. one's job does not make one's person. But it was such a big PART of my life ya know.
I've been married twice.
The first marriage gave me three children Mark(not my idea for same name), Angela, and Cynthia. They are now 28, 25, and 25. Yes the daughters are twins. But they weren't always twins. ...for 7 minutes there was only Angela.
Aside from homework and friends, much of our time could be summarized with Lots of table games and card games. MANY camping trips, hikes, day trips, swimming, desert trips to look at stars, driving for 4 hours just to catch a 10 minute sunrise with no wires, poles or billboards in the view. My children love beautiful things and are willing to stop and smell the roses.
Unfortunately the marriage was a rough one and i finally had to terminate it because i'd tried everything i could think of or read about and she refused to go to counseling with me. It was wearing on the children who were quite young, like before they were teens? And it seemed better they should see mom and dad separately and hopefully at their individual best. Sigh! Bet lots of you know that story.
I remained a single dad having primary custody of the children after the first year.
Note: although it was a nasty divorce, I did not do any of the mudslinging. Their mom finally just took me to court and said she didn't want them.
I was ecstatic ! They were great kids! Lots of fun and open to diverse activities.
(hey, this is supposed to be a life story, right? you rather just hear what tv shows i like, What kind of music i like and what color my bicycle is?)
I remained single while they were growing up, dating only a couple times.
more later...
eyes are failing...
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