Thanks,

Jeff Joseph
SabuCat Productions

Whether or not he will do silver screens I don't know.....but if you are interested, please email me and I will provide you with a name and how to contact him. I understand he will be in my area in about a week.

Best advice is to check with the screen manufacturer for recommended cleaning procedures, or hire a professional screen cleaning company recommended by others with similar screens:
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/newsletters/reel/december98/screenCleaning.shtml

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

There is a company that specializes in screen cleaning; they are out of Texas and the old guy who reminded my of a Slim Pickens double traveled all over the country in an old Chevy stationwagon to do his specialized and patented screen cleaning. He cleaned our screen one night -- worked on it for 5 hours. It was a remarkable improvement ( you have no idea how the screen gain drops off as the screen ages.. He claimed that screens have a useful life of about 10-15 years, depending on the house air conditioning/filtering and the geographical location (poluted inner city or out in the countryside). He gave us about another 5 years extension on the screen life.

He also told me that silver screens should only be dusted with a large screen brush. In a very bad case of a hand print or stains, like a coke spill, he claimed that you can use spray windex with just the slightest, lightest blotting of the spot with cotton. He said there is no guarantee that it will eliminate the spot, but the stain might be less visible after such a treatment. Silver screens should never be rubbed. I asked him about this because I have a silver screen at home with a few nephew-generated finger prints on it.

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Big Al had a fetish for screens being cleaned his way. After hearing the hype, and having cleaned small screens before myself, I decided to sit in one night while his crew cleaned the big screens at the Bay Harbor on Miami Beach, starting at 3 in the morning.

From watching, I'll say that Broken Hand was a consumate professional with wonderful gentle technique on the aging screens there. One mistep and Al's company would have been looking at buying an expensive huge sheet of vinyl.

The chemicals used were good, and removed most of the AC vent staining, and the job was very satisfactory. That said, cleaning screens is a lot less touchy than applying a finish coat of paint or laquer on furniture. The problem is, unlike a big screen, you can't easily punch holes in furniture with a paintbrush, and if you screw up cleaning a gain screen you can't sand it off and start over.

In your situation, blotting the hand print with distilled water on a soft paper towel would be the first thing to try. Depending on your nerves, you could try a weak degreasing solution, such as weak spic-n-span or tsp. Weak is the watchword. Dilute to 1/4 recommended strength. You don't want any strong chemical reactions. Scrubbing of any sort will ruin the surface so you can only blot straight against the screen with very little pressure. If the problem is something on the screen, you may remove it. It the handprint scrubbed the screen, you may be screwed.

Big Al's comments about screen life were huge generalizations. In some instances, yes, he was right. A theatre with bad HVAC and roof leaks can destroy a screen in a few months. Other theatres might have screens that remain clean for decades. Matte white screens can last much longer than gain screens.

A toast to Big Al, probably negotiating right now for a contract to keep the sky clean.

You are right, Al was one of those people who immediately made you feel comfortable....and for a New Yorker and a Brooklynite New Yorker at that, that's quite a task; we don't take easily to fast friendships.

I stayed with him the whole five hours, swapped theatre war stories and by the time the sun came up, the two of us were sitting on the loading dock drinking coffee, I felt I had made a good friend in just that short amount of time and one of the few colorful characters left in the business.

What amazed me was how he would clean a section of the screen and wait for it to dry, then look at it with a knowing eye that only comes from years of working at his craft. He would pause and say, "nope, it ain't there yet," and go back and respray his "secret chemical compound" and do it again. He wasn't looking to see if I, the client, was happy -- hell, he knew I didn't know sh*t from shinola about cleaning a screen. He could have lifted that heavy "screen mop on its 20ft pole, done it once and said, "there, it won't get cleaner than that." But instead he was evaluating his own work and measuring it against his knowledge. He cleaned on section over and over again....I got tired just watching him. How many people today do that? He was quite remarkable and I was so impressed that I told everyone the next day in the office what a experience it was meeting this great old guy all the way from Texas, come to clean our screen!

You can imagine how shocked I was when I called the company just a few weeks later and found out the sad news.