You’ve seen Rich Wexler. He’s the bespectacled guy in the back of the club, tooling around with a few DVD players, adjusting the projector, confabbing with musicians pre-set. Vintage film and video connoisseur, projectionist, VJ, artist, theme-party giver, actor, grassroots community organizer, impresario -- whatever you want to call him, the list of his gigs around town keeps growing. One day it’s Handmade Films for Spiral Q Puppet Theater, another it’s sing-alongs and film screenings at William Way Community Center or Pornaoke with Psydde Delicious. The man does it all. Mostly Wexler does it in the persona of VJ Large Marge and under the auspices of Sherman, a community arts organization he founded in 2001. Among the many enterprises Sherman has launched, one of the most dynamic is one in which Wexler projects vintage film and video images behind a band while they perform. He’ll either confer with the band about what types of images they’d like to play in front of, or he’ll use his own instincts about the band’s character and sound to choose the visuals. In the last month alone, Wexler’s celebrated Sherman’s third anniversary, projected images for 10 bands over eight hours at the Rock ’N Roll Carnival at the Rotunda, and started the process of getting nonprofit status for his organization -- not to mention his dream of opening a community arts space somewhere in West Philadelphia in the next five years. Let’s make some room for Large Marge, shall we?

Rich Wexler: I am a collector at heart. I’ve always collected old photos and started to collect people’s home movies a while ago before even doing projection work. I still have my bar mitzvah and high-school plays on VHS. One time I bought $100 of unseen Super 8 home movies. They are beautiful to watch. Most were from the ’70s so I started watching them and putting on Seals and Croft and Bread, and it was a really nice mix.

RW: I try to not go too mainstream. I don’t want to be the guy who shows scenes from Starsky and Hutch. I may go for TV shows, but more obscure funny ones. One of my favorite ’60s pieces to show is a short film called Reflections of Love that’s an extra on [a DVD of] a film called Wonderwall. If I’m doing a ’60s or ’70s night I really love to show old Scholastic films. There is a series called Educational Archives. They are old educational films with themes such as sex or religion, etc. I also love to show Gimme Gimme Octopus, for ’60s music, which is this Japanese version of Pufnstuf but much more surreal and violent.

RW: I will attempt to get a CD and listen to music so I can match it up. Ö Sometimes I will just try to match the speed of the music to the speed of the visuals. I was doing a job for the Marvelous Binary, a monthly electronic show with Charles Cohen. I needed random colors and couldn’t find anything that fit so I just zoomed some random film and slowed it down on the DVD player and it worked really well. Sometimes I’ll go for some obscure connection or visual gag. Ö I have done visuals for a band called The Ultimate United Givers of Themes. They are currently my favorite local band. They do songs about films, including songs about Gosford Park, Nosferatu and Indecent Proposal. I chose to project these old B-movie coming attractions and it worked really well.

RW: I guess. I try to do this for fun and not take it too seriously. I spend lots of time getting the right footage but I really like to improv the visuals. I have three DVD players set up and three monitors so I can usually always change to something, or find some footage while something else is playing. I find that the best synchs usually come when you’re not trying to connect things, or if you pick the visuals on some loose connection. Sometimes I’ll throw on the wrong footage and it works perfectly. Hey, if The Wall and The Wizard of Oz can synch up, anything can. I want to do some random screening of a film and music that have no connection at all and see how it goes. Something like Herbie Goes Hollywood and play Barry Manilow’s greatest hits to screw with the notion that art should be taken seriously. Sometimes if a band is awful, I will put on projections that will totally distract the people from having to watch it.

RW: Sort of. I do an imitation of Neil Diamond at times. I used to do musical puppetry called The Krimpets. The idea was to start a puppet rock band but it never really worked. I did get to open up for Sufjan Stevens and Brother Danielson (Danielson Famile). I did a puppet show parody of Jack and the Beanstalk because I know that Brother Danielson played in a giant tree costume. I also put a Jesus puppet in that show because they were supposedly an indie-Christian band. I also was involved with a performance called Olive on The Seder Plate. This was a political piece about the Middle East. I did visuals and some acting. I was in The Broken Hipsters and played a dog, a baby and a jerk boyfriend. It was confusing because I didn’t know if I should poop, poop or be a jerk. It is my intention to start a human- or puppet-based Broadway cover band called Avenue Jew. I really want to do more theater-based music work. We’ll see how it goes.

VJ Large Marge will project for Golden Ball, Fri., Oct. 22, 9 p.m., The Khyber, 56 S. Second St., 215-238-5888; for Pocket Lint, with Psydde Delicious, The Ultimate United Givers of Themes and LotSix, Mon., Oct. 25, 9:30 p.m., free, Tritone, 1508 South St., 215-545-0475. Large Marge Monthly Musical Movies will screen Bob Roberts Tue., Oct. 26, 9 p.m., $5-$15 sliding scale (no one turned away; proceeds benefit anti-Bush organizations), The Rotunda, 40th and Walnut sts. Visit www.gypsyboots.org.