John Stewart 's Road to Recovery

On March 17th, 2018, our Paramount Theatre (Austin, TX) film projectionist of almost two decades and IATSE Local 205 member, John Stewart, suffered a stroke while preparing to screen the final film of the evening during the 2018 SXSW Film Festival. Fortunately, the Paramount staff and APD officers Robert Richman and John Noetzl were able to immediately contact Travis County EMS and assist in getting John down the 4 flights of stairs from the projectionist booth to Dell Medical Center within a matter of minutes. The good news is that their incredibly quick actions were essential to John’s encouraging prognosis and hopeful return to his theatre and Paramount family.

However, as you can imagine, there have been many challenges on John’s road to recovery including unexpected medical, housing and transportation expenses. The Paramount & Stateside Theatres were saddened to have to experience their 2018 Summer Classic Film Festival without their beloved film aficionado and main man in the booth. The Paramount Theatre and IATSE Local 205 have established this account to assist John as he navigates this journey and get him back to work as quickly as possible. Any donation -- or awareness you can help generate by sharing this link -- would be greatly appreciated.