Anyone who knows me knows how much I love movies. My childhood was a splendid mixture of Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Woody Allen, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Last Starfighter, Willow, Raising Arizona, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and a million other titles. Growing up in the 1980’s and 90’s my family had cable but my heart always beat for the massive collection of videocassettes and laserdiscs we owned (that’s right, we owned laserdiscs, what are you gonna do about it?). I can still remember how giddy I was just to watch the television commercials for movies like The Rocketeer. When Dick Tracy came out, I owned the wristwatch and had the movie practically memorized. 1989’s Batman was like a religion and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were my saviors.
Weekends, while my mom was at work, my dad would babysit my sister and me. On those magical days, the three of us feasted on 7-11 hotdogs, Cheetos, Mountain Dew, and a steady stream of movies. Most kids my age grew up watching Stallone or Schwarzenegger blow people away, I grew up with America’s favorite neurotic Jew or the lads of Monty Python yucking it up. Hell, sex and nudity to my kid brain seemed to be the norm while ultra-violent action films came off as alien and forbidden; a cinematic fruit I would only later get to indulge in and enjoy.
Now that you know a bit of my history, doesn't it seem only natural that my first job would be working at a movie theater? It was my junior year in high school and I had just turned 16. Having not a lick of experience in the working world to call my own, I found myself being turned down for jobs left and right. Yet lo and behold, a massive new shopping center had just opened up down the road from where my family lived! And it had a multiplex, AMC 30!
I had to have that job.
I interviewed there twice before I finally landed a position. In those days, the theater was still coming into its own. With thirty screens, four of which were quite massive, the place showed a few big releases but mainly independent films. I was shocked to learn that we were to be one of the few mega-theaters around not showing Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace on opening day (a good move, in hindsight). I had to trek two towns over with my friends and coworkers to watch that stinking shit-fest before opening day. But none of that mattered, I had made it; I was working in a movie theater. Now I could know how Catholic Priests working in the Vatican felt!
Yet for a time, the job felt like just that, a job; I punched in, sold hot dogs and candy to morbidly obese moviegoers, cleaned up their filth and punched out. On occasion I even sold tickets to the drooling masses. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the job — I was good at it and it helped me pay for a bike and a three-week choir trip to Europe — but I didn’t love it or appreciate it. I got covered in sticky goo whenever I took the garbage out; and of course I was called a Mormon and taunted by drivers as I rode solo to work in my white shirt and black slacks (I eventually pinned a sign to my bike that told people ever-so-eloquently, “FUCK OFF, I’M NOT A MORMON”) but those were minor quibbles. I’ve got to say though, as far as first jobs go, it was pretty good. The job did came with some spiffy perks such as dollar hot dogs and free movies on my days off!
From time to time, management would ask for volunteers to sit and screen new movies before the release date to make sure the prints were good and clean. Of course I wanted to get paid to watch movies all night long; I was the first to sign up. I can recall the precise moment when I had my epiphany. It was during a screening of Disney’s god-awful Dinosaur, a movie no one but me dared to touch. While sitting alone in a massive theater, clipboard in hand, I started to take in my surroundings. The lingering scent of the countless buckets of popcorn and the flickering of the film had an intoxicating effect on me. Suddenly everything clicked and I realized that I wasn’t just working at some job. In that moment, I realized that I was an important part of the industry that I loved so much.
This is how I saw it; those who work in a movie theater in any capacity are part of the end product of a massive, multi-billion dollar industry. I suppose it’s not really the “end” anymore thanks to DVDs and Blu-Ray sales, but it is the first stop once the film is finished. When I sold popcorn, I wasn’t just selling overpriced food; I was selling a part of a collective experience. Every ticket I sold was a boarding pass to another world. Every theater I cleaned, I cleaned for those lovers of film such as myself.
We had a homeless man who came in occasionally on weekdays when the theater was nothing more than a ghost town. While my heart always went out to the poor vagrant, I took some small comfort in the fact that rather than drown his sorrows in booze or drugs he chose to escape into movies. My fellow employees complained about the smell, but I never did. He always picked a movie no one else was going to so he had a theater all to himself. I knew exactly why someone like that would choose to escape in such a fashion. Sure, I wasn’t poor and living on the streets, but when you’re a skinny, nerdy teenager who can’t get a date, you tend to escape a lot into whatever medium is at hand.
The other lesson I took away from my time at the theater was that movies are a special kind of collective experience. Sure, an individual can enjoy them, but the magic of a movie theater is that for an hour and a half or more, we are all smelling the same popcorn, laughing or crying together, and watching the same story on the same screen. While the delivery system has changed over the centuries from stage to screen, the gathering of people to watch a played-out spectacle is as ancient as the first stories told on the walls of caves with pigments and charcoal. While we may have traded firelight for the flicker of a projector, in that moment, we are all prehistoric, we are Greeks, we are Groundlings; we are an audience.
Sometimes I miss working at that theater. I miss endless Friday night premiers and sweeping up deserted theaters while dancing to the in-theater radio station. I miss these things but at the same time I don’t. I’ve moved on in life. The lessons I learned at the theater I’ve taken with me out into the great, wide world and beyond. I suppose what I miss more than anything is being part of the film industry, the last, little cog in a great, big machine; part of something I love on a personal level. We are all part of the audience, but only a select few of us will ever be a part of the industry, no matter how small a part.
I’ll be honest with you, every time I hand my ticket to an usher so that I might enter the domain of the silver screen, I hope deep down inside that they don’t look at their job as nothing more than minimum wage. I hope they see themselves as I once saw myself — an ambassadors of the cinematic world.
Until next time kids and cadets, keep watching the screen.
-Colin
(the Devourer of Worlds)
No comments:
Post a Comment