Friday, March 28, 2008

Meet the Browns - 4 Tubs

I've got some pictures I'm going to post on the website soon. However, I will admit that it isn't as bad as I had thought. Perhaps my writing on Tyler Perry's website and asking his fans to be more responsible had some impact after all. Maybe the word is getting out. Maybe you're passing this site on to your friends and they are conducting themselves accordingly.

You've got to love Tyler Perry, even if his movies all focus around the same themes. Meet the Browns is the first big screen introduction of David and Tamela Mann, who played the same roles in the stage play Meet the Browns. David Mann is simply funny. Tyler played up the movie by having "Mr. Brown" appear on recent episodes of House of Payne. And Tyler does a cameo in Meet the Browns to set up his new movie, Madea Goes To Jail, due out later this year.

Meet the Browns had no competition last week, except for Horton Hears a Who. This week it will go up against 21, but should still pull a strong second, if not retain it's first place at the box office. Meet the Browns would have gathered more market share if it hadn't opened on Good Friday when people were traveling out of town. It's also Spring Break season, so people who might have normally gone to the movies are out of town. It might also have done better if there were other movies worth the $9-12 bucks it costs to get in. Whenever people see a lot of cars in the theater parking lot, they seemed compelled to stop and come watch a movie themselves.

Here's my take on Meet the Browns: It's funny, touching, and has . Many of us can identify with the single mom who has no money for groceries, has her electricity turned off and loses her job in the same week. She's got three kids, thankfully good ones, to raise. Just when she doesn't know where else to turn, she learns that her biological father has passed away and she's inherited his rental property - a dump; but her family and a suitor come to the rescue and turn it into a beautiful home just because she's family. Family is important to Tyler Perry, as it should be to us all. Who knows? With all the baby boomers about to retire and there already a shortage of quality long term care facilities, we may see parents moving in with their kids rather than the other way around.

Go see the movie, laugh, wipe your tears, and take your trash when you leave. The ushers, and Tyler Perry thank you for your business.

Monday, March 17, 2008

The World Outside the Theater

Sometimes (most of the time) I get so focussed on the little things at work that I lose track of why I'm doing it. I spend most of the time thinking about all the work that isn't getting done around the house or counting down the hours until I get off and can rest my feet; and then something happens to put things into perspective.

On Saturday, my daughter's best friend's dad died suddenly of a heart attack. The family was working a charity and the dad (I choose not to name them in respect for their privacy) was working with some small children when suddenly he collapsed. An ambulance was called and it left fifteen minutes before my daughter showed up to help her friend. I happened to call about the time that my daughter learned that her friend's dad had died. She was so distraught that she hung up on me. When I finally reached her a couple hours later and heard the news, my daughter was (and still is) in shock and grief over her friend's loss.

My daughter's friend is the sort of young lady that any parent would be proud of. She's intelligent, mature, beautiful, and has an amazing character. I'm so grateful that Laura chooses this young lady as her best friend. I'm also proud of my daughter because she is of similar heart. Yesterday she spent hours trying to find a movie that she enjoyed with her friend and her dad. She bought some candy, drove over to be with her, and the two walked by the pond where the father would walk with his daughter. He was a good man, a great father; and it's a tragedy that he was torn from his family before he could see his daughter in her prom dress, or watch her walk across the stage at graduation, or walk her down the aisle at her wedding.

My daughter said, "It's not fair. Why did God take him when he was doing good work?" I suppose it's all in one's perspective. My response was that God hadn't taken her friend's father - He'd caught him as he fell and He saved him. This doesn't mean much right now - the grief is real and it hurts so bad that it's hard to breathe. People always want for something comforting to say to the family who just lost a loved one - but there are no words that will accomplish what that family wants. This Sunday, we will celebrate the resurrection of Christ, but this family will wonder why God - who can do anything - won't bring back their husband and father. It's only later, when the grief is under control and the family is able to remember the good times with their loved one that words will help.

Part of my daughter's distress is the realization that she will someday face losing her own dad. She sobbed, "I don't know what I will do if something happens to you." The thing that most people who lose a loved one express is that they didn't get a chance to say goodbye, or they wish they had one more day, even one more hour, to be with the person they lost.

We all get those emails that tell a bittersweet story of loss and the importance of saying I love you every chance you get. In that light, I've decided that my daughter won't have to say that when I'm gone; although she will. But from now on, when we speak to each other every night over the phone, I'm going to be sure to tell her how proud I am of her and how much I love her. This is the beginning of a long goodbye. We're going to treat our time together like it's our last time together. Maybe we'll start a diary and record what we did each day: watched "August Rush", dined at Olive Garden, climbed to the top of Chimney Rock". We'll take more pictures and videos; spend time talking about her dreams and goals. When I leave, I want nothing unsaid that needed to be said, nothing undone that was within my power to help make her life better, no promises unkept, no disagreement unresolved.

Getting the news of a good man's untimely death cleared my mind from how much my feet hurt and how angry I was at thoughtless people. I am blessed to be alive, to be able to work and earn a living. I'm blessed to already have been given a decade and a half more than my daughter's best friend's dad. I'm blessed because when it is my time, God is going to be there to catch me too. We'll both watch from Heaven and be quick to point out to God when our little girls need His help. We'll try to whisper to our girls when we think they're making mistakes. No man is good enough for our girls, but we want them happy. We want our wives (I've got one coming) happy and taken better care of than we were able to provide. Death can't destroy love and separation is not forever.

My prayers are for this family and with my daughter as she grieves for them.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Theater Employees

Our theater hires an assortment of odd characters - myself being the oddest. I'm also the oldest. Most of our employees are teenagers - juniors and seniors, some high-school drop-outs, and a handful of employees with some sort of learning disability. There are some younger adults, who like myself, work at other jobs; some are in the restaurant business, others in dry cleaning or retail. Since only the two full-time managers get 40 hours a week, a second or third job is a necessity.

As soon as I walked in last night, a female employee rushed over to show off her new hickey. She's madly in puppy love with a teenage boy who works both concessions and usher. They've been a couple now for almost a month, so it's pretty serious.

There is one employee who's autistic. He's also lazy. His mom insists that he's capable of doing more, but management is afraid to ask him do more than tear tickets. When a manager has asked him to count the tickets, he claims he can't count; nor can he use Windex to clean the doors when there's a lull in theater traffic. I agree with his mom, this kid is more lazy than disabled. He's always waiting for me to arrive so he can leave. I'll refuse to relieve him though until he counts his tickets. The other day he moaned, "Why do you put me through so much misery?" I wonder who's going to take care of him when his parents are gone. In the meantime, this 'special needs' employee spends his four or five hour shift walking in circles and swinging his arms, which is more exercise than some of us get.

Then there are three rather plump ladies that do nothing but work the box office. There's one in particular who gets a lot of complaints because she does a lot of sighing when she has to put down her puzzle book and actually sell some tickets. The box office people are isolated from the rest of the theater staff, so we don't really know them as well as we know one another in concessions and usher.

The GM keeps threatening to train me in concessions. I don't mind the work, I just can't see to read the little buttons on the screen. Every size of popcorn, soda, and every item of candy has it's own button. I'll have to wear my reading glasses to see the monitor and will spend a lot of time wiping the popcorn oil from the lenses.

There's one usher who's a pretty good worker, when he's not talking to customers. He has this habit of asking people leaving the theater, "So, from one to five stars, how many would you give this movie?" The customer will answer 'Three", and the usher will say, "Really?! Gosh, I would have given it a 3 1/2 stars. You know this film was produced by Miramax and they're only good at putting out movies that include a lot of sex. The best film makers are the French, yada-yada-yada." By the time he finishes talking to the customer, I've cleaned the theater and we're on to the next auditorium where he grabs another unsuspecting customer and goes through it all again.

We have another employee who really doesn't want to be there. He spends most of his time texting. Theater rules are that employees leave their cell phones either in their cars or in the locker in the breakroom. This guy claims that he sends and receives over 10,000 text messages a month. His thumbs are flat as pancakes.

Managers earn their money at the theater. They back up the box office and concessions when we're busy, help clean the theater, inventory every cup and bag and candy bar every night, run the projectors, make the schedules, build the movies, unload the supply truck, and put up with us employees. I used to think I wanted to manage a theater, but after watching what these guys have to do and the late hours they have to work (as late as 4 in the morning), no thanks.

My favorite manager is a Pakistani. He only works on Saturday nights. He's my age, so we get along really well. We both gripe about Hillary and how the Republicans are no different from Democrats anymore. We're leaning towards Obama because at least he admits he's a liberal. He's a Muslim, I'm a Christian - which must come as a surprise to other Christians who read this blog. Sometimes we talk about our faith. He says, "You American Christians are fucked-up. You claim you follow Christ but you really follow money. All you care about is your big homes, your cars, your credit. What about the poor and hungry that Jesus told you to take care of?" I can't argue with him - he's right. He lives a simple life, hates debt, despises the excesses of Hollywood and people who look to actors and athletes as heroes. Despite our differences in faith, we're in agreement with how far America has fallen when it comes to being a nation the world should look up to. And in spite of our problems, he still loves America - just like I do. Late in the evenings, when we're both tired from cleaning theaters, my manager friend will tell me to take things slow - "Go do theater checks while we clean the rest of the auditoriums - take your time."

It's relationships like this that make cleaning up behind thoughtless people bearable. We don't have to like or get along with every person we work with, but we share a lot of the same experiences - even the same values. Anyone who works in a service industry will tell you it's a thankless job. People expect perfection but aren't willing to pay for it or give it the respect it's due. It's not a bad thing for a young girl to look at me as some father figure; or some teenage boy to learn a work ethic from 'the old guy'; or for a special needs kid to be challenged, or for a Muslim to consider a Christian as a friend. My feet may hurt, it may be hard to bend over and pick up a dropped ticket, but I'm blessed to be able to work and to have relationships with people I wouldn't have otherwise met.

Remember as you enter a theater that the people who work there have their own dreams and troubles. The person who tears your ticket may not be the brightest youth you've met, but he's qualified to tear tickets. The girl with the hickey isn't a slut, she's an honors student. The black guy who wants to know how many stars you'd give the movie likes Asian girlss and French cuisine and works full-time at Dairy Queen - he does the best he can. And if you see a couple of older guys cleaning the theater, grab a broom and help out.

Monday, March 10, 2008

College Road Trip - 5 Tubs

I was on door duty between sets on Saturday. A rather unattractive woman with a German accent came in with her husband who was in a wheelchair. She handed me one ticket and when I asked about the ticket for her husband, she gave me this line about he didn't have to pay because he was in a wheelchair and did not take up a seat. I explained to the lady that he was paying to see a movie, not to rent a seat; she insisted that she'd never had to pay before - but we hear these excuses all the time and if he wanted to see the movie, we were going to need a ticket. About that time a wind storm, with wind gusts up to 50 MPH knocked out power to our theater. It was out for about an hour and a half. We had to clear the theater, auditorium by auditorium, with two managers going around giving everyone a rain check for a later movie. It went pretty smoothly on the east side of the building, but the fans in College Road Trip were less than understanding; in fact they were downright rude and extremely messy. One can forgive the mess - their show had just been interrupted and they'd spent all this money on concessions only to get half way through the movie and have it quit on them. What we won't forgive is the rudeness and the refusal by many of the people in College Road Trip who, rather than waiting inside the auditorium as requested, flooded the lobby and hindered others from getting their rain check as quickly as might have been possible.

One bitch - there's no better word for her and God knows she's a bitch - demanded double rain passes for her and her spawn due to our inconveniencing them. She pushed past others who were patiently waiting and started accusing the manager of causing the power failure. I'm surprised she didn't accuse George Bush - he gets blamed for every other act of nature.

When the power came back on, the movies picked up where they left off, because you can't just reverse the projector and rewind the film. It has to play out onto a platter, which is then lifted and taken to a separate table where another machine rewinds the film for the next showing. So once the lights were back on and I could see how to clean the theaters, I went into College Road Trip to clean up after The Bitch and other impatient patrons. It took me 45 minutes to clean that auditorium. Three trash containers were overflowing and I filled two more 45 gallon plastic bags with trash left by the movie-goers.

The thing is, regardless of whether the power had failed or not, these guests were not going to take their trash with them anyway. That's the quality of our audience that is attracted to this sort of film. In two weeks, Meet the Browns will open, and I predict right now that the same people are going to completely trash the theater. If they don't, I'll quit my job at the theater. Past experience has taught us that G-rated movies and movies that attract a predominantly black audience will require twice as many ushers and twice as much time to clean as any other movie being played at the same time. It's not a matter of racial prejudice, it's just the way it is. Even our black employees dread this sort of movie and some are already planning on calling in sick when Meet The Browns opens on Good Friday.

College Road Trip is a pretty tame family movie, starring Raven and Martin Lawrence. It's about a dad who doesn't want his little girl growing up and moving away. His job is to protect her. Raven's character wants her freedom and for her dad to trust her to make the right decisions in life. Donny Osmond and his on-screen wife are the token whites who are portrayed as being obnoxiously positive. CRT would have made a better made-for-TV movie than a big screen release, but that's not going to stop fans of Martin or Raven from throwing hard earned money away along with a ton of trash. I hope I'm not working when The Bitch or the German woman returns with their raincheck.

I wanted to write more positive stories about theater patrons and the movie industry in general, but there's little I can say positive about the kind of people who first demonstrate their total lack of respect for others and who think that their color or disability or other 'difference' makes them better than the rest of us.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

The Orpheum Theater

I suppose I got my love of movies from my dad. He would take my brother and I to the Orpheum Theater on Saturday nights. There seems to be an Orpheum theater in most cities. The name "Orpheum" for an entertainment hall comes from the Greek myth of Orpheus, whose music and poetry were so compelling that even the Gods were mesmerized. The word "Orpheum" means "house of Orpheus" or"place of Orpheus." Our Orpheum Theater in Oxford couldn't exactly be called an entertainment hall or mesmerizing - but it was the only choice we had other than the Starlite Drive-In - also a popular name for outdoor theaters.

My first memory of a movie was King Kong, the original black and white version. When I was growing up it wasn't uncommon for movies to recirculate, thus about once a year we'd get movies like The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, and King Kong. All I remember as a boy of four or five was the gorilla's head filling the screen. I was so frightened that I got down out of my seat and hid behind the seats in front because I thought Kong was going to break free of that screen and come inside the theater and eat us. My younger brother laughed at me cowering on the floor. You probably think it's funny too.

The Orpheum was segregated when I was growing up. Blacks viewed movies from the balcony. They had their own entrance and were denied the use of the bathrooms, which happened to be located upstairs. There was one toilet for the men and one for the women. The doors were secured by a latch that had obviously been kicked out several times because the wood was torn and you could actually see if someone were inside the bathroom through the crack. I would hold it until I could pee in the alley once the movie was over.

The Orpheum offered one size of popcorn and one size of soda. The popcorn came in a box that was probably filled the night before; and the drink choices were limited to Pepsi, 7-Up, or orange soda. There was a bigger variety of candy than you find in theaters today. We could even buy pea shooters - a straw and a bag of small beans, which we'd use to shoot other kids and black people in the balcony. They had the advantage of height though and we'd spend a lot of time dodging spitballs and beans.

On Saturday afternoons when my mom was tired of having us running around screaming and getting in the way of her work, she'd send my brother and I uptown to my dad's store where he would give us each fifty cents for a movie. That half dollar would pay for a child's ticket, popcorn, soda, and candy. Adults had to pay $.35, so we always lied about our age once we turned 12 and were subject to the cost of an adult ticket.

The Orpheum only had one show per night during the week, plus a matinee on Saturday and Sunday. There were three employees: The owner who sold concessions when he wasn't running the projector, and two teenagers to sell tickets and concessions while the owner was upstairs in the projection booth. Sometimes the owner would open the theater on a weekday when a new Disney movie would open. I think it did it just for our school, which was an orphanage. We'd march the four blocks from our school to the theater. Since I was a 'town' student and didn't actually live at the orphanage, my mother would give me a quarter to pay for my ticket. But since the owner didn't know me from an orphan, I'd use that quarter for candy and popcorn.

It was in the Orpheum theater that I first saw 101 Dalmations, Bambi, Old Yeller, and my favorite Disney movie, The Swiss Family Robinson. I would daydream about being shipwrecked on a tropical beach, eating bananas and coconuts, and running barefoot through the sand and surf. As I grew a little older, I looked forward to the teeny beach movies starring Annette Funicello and Bobby Darrin. And since I was a huge Elvis fan, I never missed one of his movies, starting with his Love Me Tender western up through his beach movies in exotic locations like Florida, Hawaii, and Mexico.

The Orpheum is where I saw my first naked lady - Pussy Galore painted in gold in Goldfinger. James Bond became my hero - the girls, the guns, the money and exotic locations. I had other heroes in movies as well: John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Audie Murphy, Jimmy Stewart, Elvis Presley - all American heroes in my book.

By the time I was drafted into the Army, the Orpheum was playing movies like Midnight Cowboy, The Wild Bunch, The Good The Bad & The Ugly, Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, Billy Jack, Walking Tall, Alice's Restaurant, and The Love Bug. This was during the Viet-Nam War and blacks were demonstrating their equality by sitting downstairs with the white folk. Lots of whites would leave the theater if a black sat in the white section, but times were changing. So was the theater.

The manager's hair had turned white by now. The teens who used to sell tickets and concessions were still there, they were just older as well. White kids started sitting in the balcony so they could shoot spitballs down on the blacks. Ticket prices had risen to fifty cents, popcorn was a quarter - for the same size box. The fire escape on the side of the building collapsed under the weight of several town drunks hiding in the alley between the theater and the Nationwide Insurance building.

I left Oxford for the Army in 1971. It would be two years before I would return, after my tour in Ethiopia and subsequent stationing at Ft. Bragg. The theater was closed for rennovation; but it would never reopen. For years the building stood empty and neglected and residents would have to travel to Durham or Raleigh to see a movie. By then there were cineplexes - theaters with two or even three auditoriums.

Today the Orpheum sign still sits above what used to be be the entrance to the theater. Now the Orpheum has been divided into offices housing lawyers and real estate agents. Not many citizens of Oxford remember the Orpheum in it's glory days, with neon lights and light bulbs that lit up half a block on Saturday nights. I wish I'd been around when they tore out the seats to make room for the new tenants. I'd like to have had that wooden seat behind which I hid from a roaring giant gorilla.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

The Other Boleyn Girl - 4 Tubs

This has been the most popular movie since it opened last Friday. Like most chick-flicks, this one attracts mostly women. Unlike most chick-flicks, these women are sows. A movie like 27 Dresses attracts the younger, more fit, more attractive female audience; The Other Boleyn Girl attracts women who've lost the battle with age and beauty and now they don't care how they look or how big a mess they make. Many of them sport perpetual frowns and no doubt, many are some unlucky guy's ex-wife.

The Other Boleyn Girl is a bit of a surprise as far as cleanliness goes. The story itself is old. The girls are more concerned with family status and power, but the king is only concerned with producing an heir to his throne and has no intention of sharing power. He is selfish - big surprise from a king, and takes what he wants for himself and when it appears it will cost him, he chops off some heads.

I like actress Natalie Portman (Star Wars), even as a bad girl. She's as good at speaking the King's English as she is portraying a pregnant Southern belle who gives birth in a Wal-Mart store.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Vantage Point - 3 Tubs

Vantage Point is about 8 different perspectives, but only one truth...if there is such a thing. Of course you know my perspective on movie-goers. I understand, but disagree with the perspective that customers have a right to leave a mess just because they pay more to go to movies than they used to, or because they feel they've been ripped off by Hollywood; or because theater staff is paid to clean up behind them (there is no excuse for trashing someone else's property). Perhaps there is another perspective someone can come up with concerning the way people treat theater property, as long as it's not some conspiracy theory or politically correct crap.

I've only seen the first 20 minutes of this movie. The rest of my break was eaten up by the thirteen minutes of commercials and previews. Bad timing on my part. What I've seen has been good, although I've heard that Vantage Point is another one of those movies portraying America as evil and deserving of the hatred of the rest of the world. I don't share these opinions; in fact I'm proud of our country and will probably continue to be proud even if Hillary wins the next election. I've heard that Hillary's not a big tipper when she's out on the town. That's too bad for the waitress who has to bust her butt giving Hillary the special VIP treatment, but I wonder if Hillary wouldn't make as big a mess in my theater as say an epileptic patient trying to hold onto a tub of popcorn while experiencing a seizure. I've heard from reliable sources (Chelsea's former body guard) that Hillary is quite capable of pitching a fit. Not that Hillary has anything to do with this movie, I was just chasing a rabbit....

Vantage Point is reasonably clean because most of it's viewers are educated adults who have some idea of what's going on in the world outside of what they read in the National Enquirer while standing in line at Wal-Mart. I have nothing against Wal-Mart - I buy my groceries, change my oil, and get my hair cut there; but Wal-Mart caters to the people who can't afford to shop at the mall. It's the mall shoppers who are neater than the Wal-Mart shoppers - IMHO. You may have another perspective than I do. Someone else may wonder what Hillary and Wal-Mart have in common with this movie, and the answer would be irresponsible people who think too highly of themselves.