To think I deluded myself into believing I’d be able to write at least one of these newsletters during Noir City Seattle. Years ago, maybe. But not after taking on cohosting duties. Too much research to do, too many rehearsals to run through in my head. And this year’s festival threw a few extra curveballs.

The gremlins started early, rearing their heads on the opening night. Partway through a performance by the Dmitri Metheny Quintet before a packed house, the sound system began acting up. Master of ceremonies Eddie Muller had to deliver his remarks sans microphone, so he skipped his State of the Union address. I was disappointed; I’d heard how this stem-winder had gone down at the Bay Area version, and I’d been looking forward to it. Capping his commentary at “We want our noir onscreen, not in real life,” he cued up the first film in a weeklong series celebrating the women of film noir, many of whom are celebrated in the upcoming reissue of his book Dark City Dames. But the sound issues also plagued the movies themselves. SIFF, the organization that hosts Noir City Seattle, ultimately made the difficult decision to reschedule both opening night features—which would affect your humble narrator—as their tech team labored through the night to fix the problem.

But the gremlins worked overtime, too. The opening holiday weekend schedule was slated to be entirely 35mm prints, which are shown using two projectors so that the reel changes are seamless. SIFF had been prepping for this challenge at Noir City’s new home, the SIFF Downtown, as the SIFF Egyptian is being renovated in the wake of flooding. During Saturday’s first screening, one of the two projectors malfunctioned, threatening to damage a print of The Sleeping City (1950). SIFF swiftly shifted to a digital backup, then announced that, out of an abundance of caution, they would continue in that format for the rest of the weekend. A few celluloid cinephiles were dismayed, but the festival faithful responded with patience, good humor, and compassion. That resilience would be the spirit of Noir City as the rest of week played out without incident … for the most part.

The opening night double bill was pushed to Presidents Day afternoon, by which point Eddie had blown town, so I stepped in to handle introduction duties on those two films as well. The Narrow Margin (1952) was easily the film most singled out for praise by the audience, this pitch-perfect B-movie set mostly on a train being new to many. The proximity of the theater to Chez K meant I could dash home to don my birthday cocktail shirt before queueing up Hell’s Half Acre (1954), a Hawaii-set tiki noir. I doubt Eddie would have lavished as much attention as I did on one particular credit, but then he’s also written a cocktail book, so who knows?

Rosemarie joined me to sing the praises of song-and-dance man Dick Powell as the first-ever Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet (1944). But then the gremlins had one last glitch in store. The digital backup of My True Story (1951) wasn’t of sufficient quality. SIFF still had the 35mm print, which could be shown on a single projector with a five-minute break at the end of each reel. It was the shortest film in the festival, so even with three breaks the running time would clock in at under ninety minutes. Pretty much the entire audience stayed to see actor Mickey Rooney’s surprisingly slick directorial debut, showcasing Helen Walker (Nightmare Alley) as a parolee drawn back into her old life to execute a completely daft heist. Much of my intro was about Bernarr Macfadden, the crackpot media mogul obsessed with physical culture as a cure for all bodily ills, who turned bogus “confession” rags like True Story into an empire that included the New York Evening Graphic, the most tabloid tabloid in the city’s history. In 1936, Macfadden even tried to ride this toxic swill of sensationalism, pseudoscience, and selective truth all the way to the White House. Somehow, in that information-poor age, the public figured out how to prevent that from happening.

The rest of my responsibilities included an embarrassment of masterpieces: the elemental noir Raw Deal (1948), with John Alton’s stunning cinematography; Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956); the definitive B-movie nightmare Detour (1945); and Billy Wilder’s scathing and still-relevant Ace in the Hole (1951). Rosemarie joined me to co-present a new 4K restoration of Phantom Lady (1944), a movie we’ve been lucky to introduce alongside Eddie on TCM’s Noir Alley, so once again we were able to highlight the career of Hitchcock protégé Joan Harrison, one of only three women producers in Hollywood in the 1940s, as well as delve into the curious case of costume designer Vera West, whose suspicious suicide in 1947 included a note referring to a fortune teller and twenty-three years of blackmail. I did what I could to prepare the audience for The Long Wait (1954), a batshit Mickey Spillane yarn featuring both amnesia and plastic surgery, capped by an extended, stylized bondage fantasia that looks like Orson Welles directed a chapter of Sin City (2005). As I told the audience, the movie is great but it’s not good, a distinction they immediately understood.

In the end, we pulled the caper off. Eighteen movies on the docket, and despite snafus aplenty we screened every one of them. In light of recent events, it’s getting all too easy to dub anything an act of resistance. I’m already leery of routine activities being lumped under the rubric of “self-care.” Now some are branding them as nose-thumbing the powers that be. But at a time when the United States government is being haphazardly dismantled by hollow-souled attention whores whose only plan is to induce fear, ignoring them in favor of being in community with like-minded people who believe the past has lessons to teach not only feels healthy but defiant. I miss the festival already.

Rosemarie and I did a SIFF Tiny Mic Interview on opening night, when the lights hadn’t yet been properly balanced. I assure you, we’re not usually this pink. And feel free to make a donation to the Film Noir Foundation to contribute to its mission to preserve and project classic noir.