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1976: Rocky KO's the Screen - Weird Adult Shows - Oddball Characters  

3/20/2014

 
PREFACE

Let's call this a fictional story. Now, with that out of the way one situation has been slightly altered for a more accurate feel and better understanding of the memoir.  The chapters are excerpts and semi-edited versions with an attempt at a PG-rated read. Any future book will, of course, be unabridged; and in parts will be an R-rated read that pulls no punches at a faithful legacy, a history if you will, of an era gone by. Most readers will certainly want all the details and ambiance of those times to be portrayed as they were- and they are and will be.  

The people's names in this memoir, unless famous, and place names, have been rewritten, but only just enough to conceal personalities, residences and businesses. The nicknames, though, have remained unchanged.  

It is the aim of this memoir to pay homage to those times, the town's characters and movies the theater played.

And last but far from least, to honor Pop T,  Mr B and Mrs. Dot

Dedicated to the GRACIOUS ONE


The first show from 1976 I remember is Taxi Driver. It was also a first time introduction to me of Robert De Niro as I hadn't seen any of the Godfather movies yet.  Martin Scorsese's film literally blew me away, and most others who saw it too.  "You talkin' to me?" Who can forget Travis Bickle in that mirror scene.  One of the seventies great releases.  The film certainly did very good box office biz at our Flick movie theater.

 Around this time  we began showing double feature late shows.  In the beginning these often consisted of horror movies from England starring those two late, greats, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.  Tales From the Crypt is one I remember.  A cult film now, The Wicker Man is another. The naked maidens running around the maypoles on one of the Scottish Isles, ahem, stands out in my memory for some reason on the latter film.

 A double feature I recall well because they were so outrageous and funny are The Groove Tube and Flesh Gordon. The former movie has hilarious and satirical skits on seventies commercials and television shows. The public service announcement by Safety Sam on the dangers of venereal disease near the end of The Groove Tube,  almost had the young folks rolling in the aisles from belly ripples, myself  included.

 The scene starts with a long shot of what appears to be a puppet of weird appearance seated on a park bench discoursing on the facts concerning the horrible scourge; then slowly the camera tightens up into what soon becomes apparent as ...well, let's just say something usually covered up by men's underwear -- which has the, er, "thing" up-side down, with strategically placed eyeglasses over bulging eyeballs, an elongated nose with one nostril, and a tapping cane held out by a fake spindly arm..

 The other film, made by the low-budget but interesting production co. Crown International was the 1974 release Flesh Gordon, and boy was it high satire on the old serials. It has love-making rays sent by the evil Emperor Wang, which pervade a commercial jet-liner in the beginning of the movie with the, ah, unsurprising chaos at Himalayan heights.

​ There's also a wonderfully suave and conceited clay-animated giant ogre -- conjured to life by Wang -- roaming about in the last reel, chasing Flesh, Dale Arden and the scientist guy.. One of the funniest lines in the chase has the giant ogre flipping the bird to Flesh while uttering " Up yours...Gordon". Both these movies have clips  that can be watched on YouTube. Cheap but charming is a good way to describe them, perhaps.

Pop T decided to do something cool for promo purposes with the late show horror films. To get patrons in the right mood, he hired a strange fellow we later nicknamed the Vampire Clown to lay in a white crushed velvet lined coffin set-up on some benches in the lobby. He then did a peculiar brand of Dracula shtick.
PictureVampire Clown
 The fellow and an assistant had had a little trouble bringing the coffin to the movie show. Seems after strapping the thing to the top of a car, the assistant, who was inside it, had risen like some reanimated corpse at a traffic light-stop, literally causing a little old lady to freak out and run off the road into something.

Vampire Clown was driving. The guy had a small, strangely shaped, oblong skull, which probably didn't help matters any. He was also around thirty years old,  with a slender physique that held within its midst  a sunken chest atop a bloated belly. The man's job at the show was to lie in the coffin with his handy fangs, cape, and make-up on, then slowly rise up and try to spook people. This worked well on the women and occasionally on their male companions, because he really was a strange-looking dude, even without the added freaky cosmetics he liberally applied from a big case.

Folks from his neighborhood told us that on a fairly regular basis, Vampire Clown would don his Dracula cape late at night and run around streets and yards, apparently thinking he was a neo-King of the Night or something. Nowadays, of course,  he would probably be arrested very quickly; but even with the oddball life he led back then, prancing through his neighbors' property past the witching hour, those people knew he was a harmless and kooky fantasist and just took it in their stride. Maybe some of them even got a nightly dose of humor out of his caped adventures before Mr. Sandman's arrival..

 One evening as we were talking in the lobby, he informed me that he was going to be interviewed the next day on the local radio station. According to him, he was president of an organization called Clowns International. Dressing up like a clown was his second favorite get-up after the Dracula one, so it seemed feasible to me. He was very precise about the time it would air and insisted I listen.  I did, in my car, but shut the radio off after ten or fifteen minutes of what I believe was an hour interview. It was simply boring is the reason why.

As a matter of fact, it was getting to the point of barely being able to stand him with his freakish ways.  For example: the man would not dispose of his deceased dog in a normal or accepted manner, but took it out in the country, placed the carcass under a thin layer of rubbish, and then checked on it daily at one pm sharp, every afternoon, with no exceptions, till its body rotted away to a pile of bones. One ride with him on his inspection trips was enough for  my nose to know it didn't want a second olfactory experience at the deceased doggy site.

Rather astonishingly, maybe not so surprising, I was to later discover there was no such thing as a real Clowns International.  He had invented the whole rigmarole up only to impress me.  The scary late show format wasn't doing all that great a business and only lasted maybe five or six months, after which it was goodbye to Mr. Vampire Clown.  He wasn't a bad or evil person, though, and I hope life worked out for him okay.

 It was around this time an event happened that made the front page in the town's daily newspaper.  Up several businesses in the strip mall there was a place Mr. Trimble liked to go and eat hot dogs during the day. You can count on your fingers the number of times he showed up at the cinema during the night. Anyhow, the place was called something like Floyd's Party & Pool Shop.

It was your typical seventies bar and snack place.  One weeknight after work, I went there to have a few tequila sunrises and play a little pool.  Being a teenager was no problem, as at the time the legal drinking age was eighteen in that particular state.  At some point, not long after arriving, a  fellow nicknamed Snake entered the establishment, walked right-up behind a friend of his, and then quickly put a .38 caliber bullet into the back of his good buddy's head. No Gimme Three Steps via the Lynyrd Skynyrd song for this poor fellow.

 The sound of the gunshot caused everyone to drop to the floor of Floyd's place like a big stone in water would fall - which is quickly.  Snake, appearing satisfied with his handiwork, calmly laid the Saturday Night Special  aside  and then sat down beside his former bro -- whose upper body was slumped over the counter -- and then asked someone to call the town's police for him.

While he waited he ordered up a Budweiser beer from a trembling female bartender. Scuttlebutt later had it that the reason for the killing had something to do about the deceased threatening to beat Snake up over one thing or another.  Other than gambling arguments, or getting caught red-handed having a fling with someone's wife or girlfriend, this was generally why these unfortunate life-ending events occurred for young men in that county and, along with drunken or petal-to-the-metal car wrecks, I suppose most other areas nearby and about as well.

Earlier in the year, an amazing gentleman named Mr. Boswell started showing up at the Flick.  He was from Memphis, Tennessee, on the mighty Mississippi, and was the former vice-president of one of America's largest movie equipment suppliers.  Bob Trimble had worked under him as a salesman and then later on as a district manager,  until the company folded in the industry wide shake-up and downturn of the  late '60s and early '70s.

Mr. Boswell was to later tell me what happened when he and the head of the company, a Mr. Greene, were going through potential candidates for a district manager position. Bob Trimble's name had come up, and, the president had said no way did he think he could do it, having a shortened leg from polio caught as a child, that gave him a limp, and from not finishing college as  he had volunteered for the army during WW 2 in his sophomore year. In the army he was  the Sergeant in charge of entertainment for the GI's in Selma, Alabama, and pretty much went straight to work for the company on being discharged.

But, Mr. Boswell talked Mr. Greene around and Pop T got the position. Once when I was helping the Trimbles clean out their basement,  I discovered business letters that had page after page of Mr. Boswell writing to Mr. Trimble this: congratulations Bob, number one; congratulations Bob, number one, on and on, month after month.  Pop T turned out to be the best damn district manager that company ever had. With that genuine golden smile of his, how could anyone ever say no? But of course, there was a great deal more to the man than just that.

At some point, before the company went out of business,  Mr. B had gone into partnership with Mr. Trimble and a few others in multiple drive-in and indoor movie shows throughout several states.  In 1976 I started to chauffeur Mr. B, as he preferred to be called, and Pop T, as we had begun to affectionately call Mr. Trimble, on their rounds of different places where the drive-ins and a few other indoor theaters they had a percentage in were located.

 On one trip it was just Mr. B and myself.  I asked him why he went into the theater owning business with Pop T.  His reply was, "Because Bob Trimble would never steal a dime!"  Admirable and true, but as I was to learn later on there were other reasons as well.  As a matter of fact, it was to become obvious as time went on, and I got to know him better, that he kind of looked on Mr. Trimble as the younger brother he never had.  He couldn't have chosen a more decent or finer sibling..

 Mr. B was a septunagarian at the time, a bit below medium height, and had a little paunch.  His facial features were somewhat like comedian, Golden Age movie star, W.C. Fields; a large nose with sparkling little blue eyes, and, with very little hair left on his head.  His demeanor was a cross between a lovable Dickens character and though I haven't seen the film yet, what I imagine is a bit nicer Gordon Gekko of the movie Wall Street.

 He was also a master showman who knew human nature well.  He delighted people by his simple but unique greeting gifts, like diamond nail files for the ladies, or anti-mugging whistles inscribed with "Bob Boswell thinks your great!" Mr. B's humorous antics and genuine interest in folks charmed nearly everyone he met. He eventually told me you always had to have a story behind these gifts when presenting them to people.

 But there was also a blunt side to him at times.  On his first visit to the Flick, he walked up to one young man working there at the time named Scottie, who had very long hair.  Mr. B. looked Scottie right in the eye, and right in front of everybody blurted out, "What kind of kotex (sanitary napkins) do you wear?"  Scottie, mad and embarrassed, disappeared for a while.  Mr. B. was definitely old school when it came to long hair and other such new fashion-like statements. Once, he talked about a dust-up he had in the sixties when he and a salesman went head to head over the salesman's refusal to wear a hat anymore on his business calls.

 After the box office disappointment of the youth- oriented horror and humor themed late shows, Pop T. decided to start booking a recently out of the closet genre of films: Triple X-rated. That is what they were called back then. These were a bit mind- blowing for the employees, as none of us, so far as I know, had ever beheld such sights before; indeed, haven't seen such things since in my case.

 To put it as delicately as possible, there were scenes with height challenged African pygmy men climbing up stepladders to make whoopee with bent over blondish Amazon-sized women in sun-dappled fields of wheat.  There was an enema given by a demented little doctor to a beautiful woman in a public bathroom (a close-up of the clean water egress was jaw-dropping by the way, more like a dam bursting), and so forth. As to the unforgettable restroom enema scene, it starred some bombshell named Desiree Cousteau in an Alex de Renzy film called Pretty Peaches, made in 1978 and considered a top classic from the Golden Age of Adult Films, which was roughly from the late 1960s through to the age of home video.


These adult films had a largely male patronage and did not do well at the concession stand (no surprise) or particularly well at the ticket counter. We had 365 upholstered rocking chair theater seats that on a good night, might have been a quarter filled to put it in to perspective as to how these kind of shows were doing. We also ran R-rated adult shows like the well-made and erotic Emmanuelle series starring the late Sylvia Kristel and, as a another example, a difficult to find one now made in Germany during the seventies called Madam Kitty, set during WW2. It concerned a working girl in the Madam's establishment who falls in love with a German officer turned anti-Nazi after experiencing the horrors done to the civilian population in conquered Poland. These films brought in more of the couples.

Superstar John "Johnny Wadd" Holmes was in quite a number of the triple X's.  Some were raunchy and poorly made like Peanut Butter Freaks or something similar, but some were actually well made and rather erotic. Holmes seemed a fairly decent actor in and of himself and might have done well in mainstream B-pictures as a character actor - if he'd toned down the hamming it up and got some training, that is. Eruption, made in San Fran and Hawaii by the legendary director Bob Chinn, is a good example of this, if my memory serves on the particulars. But Holmes career didn't go that way -- pretty much ending, despite a comeback -- with that involvement in the infamous Wonderland slayings, cocaine, prison time and, an early AIDS death.

There are several women performers I remember from those adult show days, and one of them was a lady named Jennifer Welles. Jennifer was rather remarkable when she entered these R  and X-rated movies in the mid-seventies; being in her forties, having an extensive background as a Vegas showgirl, New York actress, as well as a talented singer. Ms. Welles came across -- in many movies, to what today would be called soft-core  -- as a beautiful and charming person. She even had a scene in the aforementioned Groove Tube with a pre-SNL Chevy Chase. Most of her films were decently made, and she has no regrets concerning her career choice.

The lady abruptly disappeared in 1978 after what many consider her crowning triumph ​called Inside Jennifer Welles. For 35 years the rumors and speculations ran rife. Jennifer finally broke her silence in 2013 with a wonderful interview on the Rialto Report.  Seems a wealthy younger man, who was a major fan, made Jennifer an offer she couldn't refuse, so she married him into a life of luxury, for a while that is. He later left her for a younger woman just like Jennifer had told him that he would. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, that affair of his with the younger woman didn't last too long either.

One customer in particular continuously caused us trouble during these X-rated shows.  He was a smallish, thin, upper middle-aged man, who rode a bicycle and had a small  protuberance between his shoulders - hence, the nickname we gave him, Humpy. Did I just write small protuberance -- well, shoot a monkey. That's an old Southern saying meaning "damn it!"

By the way, this book is written like it was, and the '70s didn't have much PC. To state it bluntly, the guy was near being a serious hunchback. I don't know the proper term for the unfortunate condition nowadays, but the medical one is kyphosis; and I wish we could have been more charitable in nicknaming the fellow, but he was really rude and had a cynical attitude towards people and life. Humpy never missed a new adult feature, always eagerly arriving early on his bicycle-with-a-basket.

 He also had the bad habit of sitting in the chair nearest to the right side double doors, where every time someone opened those doors, letting a little light in, they caught sight of  Humpy - well, let's just say raising his flag to full mast for the rank and file.  When we asked him to desist from this behavior, or at least find a less conspicuous seat, his answer was always, "I pay my money, I do what ever I want!"

 Joel, the other co-manager besides myself, finally solved the zipper problem one night. He opened up one of the projector window's a little to the left of the offender's seat, and then reached out and poured a large cup of warm water down on Humpy's lap.  One problem solved as he moved down front and out of sight right away, and continued to do so in the future after that effective and disapproving little demonstration.

Another problem was that church groups had started picketing around the movie show marquee up by the busy street during the day; and that headache, along with the basic decency of Pop T., eventually put an end to these kinds of films. We soon discovered, however, two surefire late show box office goldmines called kung-fu and the often cheaply made but profitable films called blaxplotation. The African-American oriented ones tapered off pretty quick, but the kung-fu's continued their run until things like HBO and home video came on the scene.

​The two Dolemite movies starring comedian turned actor, Rudy Ray Moore, stand out in my memory on the Super Fly and Shaft type- genre. Clips of the first Dolemite movies and Rudy's most famous comedy routine, The Signifying Monkey, can be viewed on YouTube. These kind, and the karate ones, proved incredibly profitable for us and we ran the kung-fu ones until the new mass marketing technologies ended their reign. But my gosh, what a reign they had on our silver screen.

Carrie, a book by Steven King, came out in theaters that October and was an immediate smash hit.  This was Sissy Spacek's debut for theatergoers and what a great debut for the talented actor.  Probably anyone who's ever been picked on mercilessly at school could relate to this tale of a socially outcast girl with the power to fire things up when pushed too far.  The final scene at the prom is unforgettable, as is the film in general.  John Travolta even has a small part in Carrie's final humiliation and subsequent wrath.  According to wiki it's still the most popular Halloween movie for teenagers to watch as well. If the reviews are anything to go by, the recent Carrie re-make doesn't hold up to the original by a long-shot.

Other pictures the Flick played in 1976 were:  The Enforcer with Clint Eastwood (third in the Dirty Harry series); Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds; Smokey did big box office and was an audience favorite.  The Pink Panther Strikes Again (an absolutely awesome picture and probably the best in that series for laughs); Logan's Run (no television show or re-make in my opinion, will ever surpass the amazing original); and Swashbuckler with Robert Shaw of Jaws fame that tanked at the box office with a pirate chest 'round its neck.

 The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea starring Sarah Miles and Kris Kristofferson, was an unusual film; and there were some very explicit photos of the two stars in Playboy Magazine that year of 1976 to promo it.

 A Star is Born with Barbra Streisand did very good biz and the male lead was first offered to Elvis Presley. According to Ginger Alden, Elvis' last lady love, the real reason Elvis didn't take the part, was that he just couldn't dig why his character would commit to killing himself, and, during a meeting with Barbra and the producer/director, Jon Peters, the director yawned at the meeting,  with that act convincing the King he wasn't the right person to helm the production. Another rumor has manager  "Colonel" Tom Parker nixing the idea, much to the King's disappointment. (Could it be with what's coming out now about the "Colonel" holding Elvis in his power by some kind of evil Svengali-like hypnotic spell be the true answer?)

  And last but far from least was an unexpected sleeper at the end of 1976 that turned into a truly monster-sized seventies blockbuster; that film was, of course, Rocky. Nobody, except perhaps Mr. Stallone himself, expected this movie to do much business.  Pop T sure mined a record- breaking nugget of gold with this film pick. It's hard to remember how every one took Rocky on first viewing it; but the crowds built quickly as word of its charm and originality spread throughout the town.

1981: Remembering Raiders of the Lost Ark, Bruce Lee Kung-Fu, and Small Town Antics

8/30/2013

 
PictureCamera Lens from the Flick
The year 1981 was a pinnacle one for the Flick movie theater.  Right around the corner lay triple-threat competition, like multiplexing by the big cinema chain in town, video cassettes, and cable television.

The writing was on the wall but for the time being all was well.  Indeed, it was a superb twelve months for films we featured.

For the town, though, recession's ugly head was looming and that, combined with the other factors, spelled trouble ahead for the Flick's bottom line; not to mention  the change in movie going habits for those soon to be unemployed in the textile factories about.

Springtime started off with some decent films.  The Howling, directed by Joe Dante, one of Roger Corman's proteges, was the first of two very good werewolf movies released that year with the very latest in special effects. Once seen, it's hard to forget the fang shocks and the lady newscaster's heartrending howl on live television near the end of the story.

The Flick's employees and audience knew they were viewing something remarkable in the technology of picture making with the morphing werewolf scenes.  Scream Queen, Dee Wallace, who also starred in films like Cujo and E. T., had the leading role in The Howling and gave a good and highly emotional performance in it.

Nighthawks.  Now there was a show that started out with a bang!  This is not meant to make light of the bloody guerrilla war waged by the IRA in the period of United Kingdom history known as "The Troubles."  Sly Stallone took a break from making his Rocky movies and portrayed some kind of Interpol agent on the track of a psychopathic mercenary killer played by German actor, Rutger Hauer.

 The opening scene is unforgettable with Hauer placing a bomb near a beautiful female clerk in an English department store.  After her life and others are so cruelly taken, one can hardly wait for Sly to exact justice with extreme prejudice, which is exactly what Stallone's character does after a nail-biting finale. At least that's the way I remember it. In any event, the bad guy certainly gets his in the end.


Tall Tree Trailer Park & the Kung-Fu Late Shows ...

The Flick sat in the angle of an L-shaped strip mall with a break in the two lines apex for ingress and egress to the backs of the businesses.  To the right of the theater, about 150 feet away, was fifty or sixty mobile homes that made up what was then known as the Tall Tree Trailer Park.

This was a hard luck, blue collar place, and had a notorious reputation in town for violence and sexual abandon.
More than one lusty young fellow lost his life trying to escape an enraged husband or jealous boyfriend at Tall Tree. There were quite a few "lady" catfights at the mobile home park as well.

One unfortunate event is remembered quite well.  It went down like this: three teenage boys were having a spanking good time in a trailer kitchen, frolicking with some willing wife, but, the husband came home early from work and, the last boy going out a window got a back full of spine-busting, double-ought buckshot from the man's Remington.  The unlucky last lad out was DOA at the county hospital.

The kung-fu double feature late shows were still going strong in 1981.  My favorite martial artist was a Japanese guy named Sonny Chiba. This chap had some serious moves, like holding a steer's horn with his left hand, while hacking off the other horn with his right.  If the scene wasn't real, well, they were about ten years ahead on the special effects, or so it seemed. Actually, after watching a clip of the action on YouTube recently, it was mostly well-done effects, but obviously stayed in the memory anyway.

In another movie, Sonny is calmly reading the newspaper aboard a Boeing 707, when he and the other passengers are abruptly confronted by an armed Asian skyjacking gang.  Mr. Chiba bides his time, but at the right moment dispenses with these air pirates one by one, mano on mano, with some very realistic-looking martial arts moves.  That was one very cool scene by Sonny.  We can only wish he'd been on all the hijacked planes in real life.

The last I heard about Sonny was that he was some kind of martial arts instructor on Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill set of movies, and that's saying a lot about the then sixtyish man's skill and expertise, for sure.

There was also a big ta-do with the ratings board members over the horn-hacking film, and that was whether it should receive an R or an X rating.  Actually, most of these kung-fu pictures were fairly well made, with meaty and colorful plots and martial arts action.  Some were even set in the Middle Ages, for example.  However, there were a few that would have been better left in the film cans unspooled and spliced from six small reels onto our two large reels. Something that had to do with armless and legless kung-fu fighters is a good example of these types. I once checked, and sure enough, it was on many a list of all time bad movies.
​
A rather humorous thought is the ubiquitous number of Bruce Lee clones that came about after his passing; with names like Bruce Lei, Bruce Li, Bruce Ly and so forth.  Ah, never too much of a good thing for our late show patrons, who loved all these Bruce's dearly.  And no matter how many times we played the real deal Bruce Lee movies,  over and over it seemed like, they always did as well as the deceased master's, mostly Hong Kong and Taiwanese made, newly produced chop-chop copycats.

One of the greatest scenes in kung-fu film history was the fight between Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris. It's well worth watching --if present owners Miramax haven't taken it off-line in your country -- and goes by much quicker than its nine and a half minutes might otherwise indicate. It's also the only time I can remember Bruce showing much respect for a vanquished opponent sent out against him by the bad guy top dogs.

In addition, the generally boisterous and rowdy audiences ( when the over-used film would break, which was often, it was like the howling mob of the Roman Coliseum in that auditorium!) stayed quiet during and right after this battle between these black belt titans of the martial art's screen.  I reckon homage is the right word when you get down to it. Without meaning to be a spoiler, in real life the two were the best of friends, which, on second thought, shouldn't come as any surprise.

Skedaddling Romeos and Outstanding Tall Tree Citizens

One weekend night a couple of us were standing out in front of the place after the late shows had let out and all the theatergoers were gone, when suddenly, a young man came around the corner of the building running for dear life.  The boy's head was lowered in determined concentration and his arms where pumping like those old-timey train wheels with the connectors (or whatever they're called) used to; up and down, up and down, up and down. Sort of like motor pistons do in other words.

We had no more taken in the sight than a large group of people came running around the same corner chasing after the fellow.  These considerably older men, and a few women, appeared just as determined in overtaking him in their hot pursuit -- while holding onto baseball bats and garden tools -- as the youthful runner was in escaping from their wrath and bludgeoning weapons.

The young man, maybe eighteen or so, had a good head start on the trailer park posse; with all silence except for the sound of multiple feet pounding on pavement that soon faded away as they all disappeared into the center of the strip mall's now darkened parking lot, which was a pretty big lot by the way. No shouts or bellowing curses were necessary in this deadly serious, particular pursuit.

I remember thinking at the time, maybe this guy's finally been ambushed crawling into one too many bedroom windows, bearing baby seed to some willing maiden past midnight.  Of course, the whole thing could have been over something else, but the park was known for Skedaddling Romeos leaving their balloon-bellied Juliets alone and blue. And the park was also known for its very high rate of unwed teenage mothers. That's certainly how things went down at Tall Tree way back then, so was probably the reason for the startling late night chase. 

Pop T , the Flick's owner, had finally, maybe six months before, sent his wife, Mrs. Dot with the heart of gold, to the state capital's mental health facility, to be treated for her alcoholism.  Rehabs like we have today were generally unknown back then and mostly unavailable to all but the very wealthy or connected, you know, for celebrities like Betty Ford, Elizabeth Taylor, or even Cher's onetime husband, Southern rocker Gregg Allman.

While she was there getting help, Mrs. Dot made friends with a thirty-something white woman who was in the faculty for the same thing, and just so happened to reside at Tall Tree in a faded blue, less than stellar-looking mobile home.  The Trimbles had big hearts for the downtrodden, especially struggling African Americans, and always helped the less fortunate -- black or white -- whenever they could.

One afternoon I was taking a well-meant care package from the Trimbles over to the lady's trailer.  Little did I suspect an embarrassing situation was about to occur.  On entering the place I immediately caught sight of the woman's considerably older husband sitting  in a chair in the middle of their main room, conked-out from too much alcohol, wearing his rumpled-up postal uniform shirt.

Beer cans were strewn about the place liberally, and he was snoring a bit, chin on chest. He didn't look to be waking-up anytime soon either.  The woman herself -- who had short blonde hair and was rather attractive with her button nose, rosy cheeks, and bosomy charms -- had herself stretched out on the sofa.  Their daughter was a young teen, may twelve or thirteen years old, and she was inside the home too.

After I placed the canned goods and extras on the kitchen counter, the woman started up in a low voice saying "please".   I hesitated for a moment before leaving and  the pleases immediately began increasing in frequency and volume. The young girl was watching all this rather intently from where the hallway entered the main room, with a curious kind of look on her face. 

When it finally hit me what the lady really wanted with all the "pleases"  I pointed to her besotted hubby and said, "What about him?" more with the thought of defusing the dicey situation rather than further igniting it.  Her disgusted reply to this was "Aw, he ain't good for nuthin." However,  when it became clear to the woman that there wasn't going to be any hanky-panky with Your's truly, she began crying and that's when I beat a hasty exit, giving her a sympathetic look on the way out. 

Sadly, that's just the way it was at Tall Tree.

Movie Magic at the Flick

Since I'm not sure of the sequence in which our 1981 movies ran in that way back when summer, we'll just go through them in loose alphabetical order.

In the high times of the early 80s, the "Swingin' Seventies" were still pretty much alive and kicking. Issues like alcoholism were up for laughs just as much as anything else.

With that in mind, the movie Arthur is a classic with the late Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli starring.   Moore's performance as the bumbling and lovable, perpetually inebriated heir, was masterful. The talented comedian also won the Oscar for best actor in it. 

Sir John Gielgud's turn as Arthur's butler earned that gentleman a well deserved Oscar, too.  The recent remake -- if the reviews are anything to go by -- nowhere  near captures the charm and laughs of the original.

An American Werewolf in London is a most interesting and moody film directed by John Landis of The Twilight Zone infamy. Landis was and is, an extremely talented individual who had the tragic helicopter accident happen on the set of  The Twilight Zone that took the lives of actor Vic Morrow and two Asian children.
Whether the director and crew were indulging in the coke habit while filming the scene, as was later alleged in court, it didn't affect the quality of his previously made werewolf film any at all, even if they were partaking of the Big C during its production.

The film itself is one well worth watching for the ground- breaking man to beast transition alone.  Michael Jackson was so enthralled by it he hired Landis to helm his Thriller video.  It's also a great picture in and of itself and has a huge cult following.  It did pretty good box office biz  for us. It's one of those rare films that can take itself seriously one second and not so seriously the next. And it works perfectly by doing this.

Now to the big one of 1981.  And when I say big, I mean huge.  That movie, is of course, Raiders of the Lost Ark. When audiences got a first look at this magnificent opener to the Indiana Jones series, eyeballs nearly fell out. Now, even with the ending, that has the Nazi guy face-melting scene that might make someone's all time bad special effects list these days, it really was cutting edge for back then in 1981. In addition, there were few better opening scenes in a film with the rolling boulder coming after Indie, that I can remember.  This flick went on to be the world's top movie that year with almost $390,000,000 taken in at the box office.

The patrons, and we, the employees that is, were in a state of near wonderment and the show wound up doing blockbuster business at the cinema.  By the way, the auditorium rocked with laughter when Indiana Jones pulled out his revolver and gunned down the scimitar-twirling Semite. Remember that scene?  Perfect timing and comic relief that bit was.

More Fun in '81 ...

PictureA ticket booth from one of PopT's and Mr. B's ex-drive-in theaters.
Another film in 1981 was a James Bond one, For Your Eyes Only, which featured a lot of skiing and shooting. Roger Moore, as 007, avoids dudes on motorcycles and bobsleds that are out to get him.  He seemed to make a lot of funny faces in this one for some reason.  At any rate, except for the underwater part,  the movie is action-packed and has some amazing green-scene affects, as well as a disco-licious version of the Bond theme by the Americanized Scots singer, Sheena Easton . As an aside, the vocalist apparently pissed the Scots folk off with her Americanization back then.

We also showcased 1982's best picture, the Oscar winning Chariots of  Fire; but this foreign production about Olympic running with the cheesy Vangelis soundtrack didn't go down with Southern audiences too well, and there was no interest in watching it here at all.

Besides, the girlfriend and I were temporarily on the outs over something and life was too depressing to watch much of anything right then.

The 1980's Clash of the Titans is in many fan's and critic's opinion a superior film with the legendary Ray Harryhaussen's animation, in comparison with the 3-D 21st century version.  There are times when old-timey stop-motion trumps the newfangled CGI technology.  The original movie is charming, the later movie is not so charming; although the Medusa scene at the end is pretty cool, even as fast as it goes by.

A rather bizarre and frankly eerie feeling film is one called Southern Comfort, which I remember fairly well. Its plot concerns a National Guard unit doing maneuvers in the Louisiana bayou country, when the local swamp Cajuns take a deadly dislike to them for some reason.  The plot keeps you guessing right up to the end on who survives in this well-scripted, directed and acted, bleak thriller.

The last one that year was a clunker for the Flick as far as ticket sales went.  It was called Neighbors and starred Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi of SNL fame.  This picture had a rather dark humor about it and was a change of pace for these talented comedians, who switched their usual straight-man/funny-man roles for it.

1980: Sissy Spacek Sings - Travolta Goes Cowboy - Elvis at the Variety Club

7/19/2013

 
PictureBehemoth
1980 was a very good film release year for the Flick cinema.  In fact, if diversification is taken into account, it may well have been one of the very best.  It was also a pretty nice one for me personally, with a new girlfriend, a very nice two-week vacation, and a belated but much needed go at higher education at the local technical college.

Joel, the other manager at the Flick, saw in the new year by starting a romance with a girl from New Jersey, that quickly led to an engagement. Unfortunately, though, that relationship was to hit a rough spot down the road and had to be put off for a while. We'll certainly get to that intriguing little story in a bit.

Pop T picked four of the top ten blockbuster movies that first year of the new decade, with features that generally scored big, like Superman II, Stir Crazy, Private Benjamin and The Fog.  The latter is a creepy one with Adrienne Barbeau and a very young Jamie Lee Curtis.  It was directed by the talented and insightful John Carpenter.

The Flick also played Coal Miner's Daughter with Sissy Spacek and The Blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields, along with Smokey and the Bandit II starring Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, and Sally Fields again. This second outing of the Smokey series pleased and delighted audiences nearly as much as the first one had, even though  Citizens Band radio, or CB, and its driver "handles" were losing popularity by then, folks still, and probably always will, love fast cars and cowboy hats.

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One of Pop T's and Mr. B's old drive-in projection rooms.

Behemoth bested by Pacman ...

More great features were shown like Urban Cowboy starring John Travolta, with Debra Winger as his love interest, and the very first Friday the 13th with a debuting Kevin Bacon. There was Martin Scorsese's  Raging Bull starring Robert De Niro and Somewhere in Time with Jane Seymour, and the actor who became a Superman in real life, Christopher Reeves.

It was while Urban Cowboy was playing that our twenty-something, Neandertal-looking friend from the 1979 chapter called Behemoth (self-named by the way), came into the theater one afternoon to play some Pacman. This was the first of the new game machines Pop T had installed in the lobby, quarters split 50/50 with the game company.  After a while, Behemoth became highly upset when he wasn't doing as well as he wanted to on it.  Newbie employee Ricky added to his building rage by making the mistake of calling him no good at the game.

The normally unconsciously rude, but placid Behemoth, stopped playing at this and began to kick and spit on the newly installed dot gobbler.  When this action failed to alleviate his anger enough, he turned and stalked out of the lobby, calling Ricky and myself whores and bitches the whole time.  We thought, hey, it's over - until I spotted the crazed boy gunning his car straight for the pane glass doors at the entrance to the cinema that is!  

Fortunately for all concerned, he stopped just short of a catastrophic collision, then backed up a bit and roared out of the parking lot, cursing all the way with his window down.  Behemoth had been a very bad boy that day and was banned from hanging around the lobby for three months, after which he returned like nothing wrong had taken place or happened. Yes, we were pretty decent folk at the Flick I reckon.

There was only one other business in town that would tolerate his loafing and rambling on about movies like the 1959 monster film called The Giant Behemoth ( his favorite I suppose, since that's where he took his moniker from) and, Haley Mills in Disney's 1961 film Pollyanna, not to mention his never ending diatribes against women wearing pants. You've heard of chest and leg men, well, odd-acting Behemoth was definitely a dress man. He simply couldn't talk enough about his disgust with pants wearing women.

He'd get kicked out of one place for a while and then just go to the other one till they booted him out for whatever period of time.  Back and forth is what it was with the, ahem, lovable fellow. This semi anti-social dude could only get a job delivering newspapers and magazines to the convenience stores late at night, where there was minimal contact with the public; but, we really did enjoy and try to help the boy, when he behaved that is. And that was most of the time believe it or not.


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A Diamond nail file and an anti-mugging whistle Mr. B would present to many ladies when he first met them.

Spring films, Mr. B's antics and his Elvis recollection ... 

Steven Spielberg's film 1941 should have been a winner.  With Jaws and CE3K behind him, exhibitors had high hopes for this 1979 Christmas time release.  Starring Saturday Night Live star John Belushi in a World War 2 comedy/drama with the hottest director in town, it certainly had all the right ingredients for success. 

The movie had decent moments and taken on a scene by scene basis, it is a good film; but the scenarios just didn't fit as well together as they might have, and above all, Belushi just plain out wasn't that funny in it.  The people were expecting an Animal House hilarity but this one didn't deliver so the movie dive-bombed, badly. Before watching it on Netflix or something recently, the only part I could really remember well was the Ferris wheel rolling down on it's path of mayhem and destruction at the end.
Coal Miner's Daughter opened in March of 1980 and surprised even non-country music fans with its engaging story and singing.  Sissy Spacek was perfect in the role of Loretta Lynn and fully deserved the Oscar she went on to win.  The audience for it built quickly by word of mouth and the fact that Sissy did her own vocals was widely talked about and admired.  It was also a first glimpse by many of the actor Tommy Lee Jones, who played Loretta's husband Mooney Lynn.

Mr. B from Memphis paid one of his visits to the Flick around this time for another inspection trip to the drive-in movies he and Pop T had a percentage in.  I drove the two gentlemen as usual.  While eating out one evening at a Chinese restaurant, Mr. B began to toss bunched up napkins at a little girl sitting at a nearby table to elicit a reaction from her.

He could get away with this kind of behavior because of his venerable age, ever present suit and tie, and ability to quickly get across to parents the playful intentions behind his antics.  Remembering from previous chapters that Mr. B acted a bit like the 1930s movie star and comedian W.C. Fields, should help the reader imagine the napkin tossing scene if they're familiar with that great legend.

Mr. B always carried a flask of ten year old "Old Charter" bourbon in his coat pocket.  A favorite stunt he liked to pull in restaurants, after that first stiff drink, was to place the empty glass on top of his head, get up, walk around between the tables and diners a bit, then sit back down with the glass still atop his head. He'd then announce, "Yep.  I can have another one." I never once saw the glass slip off his nearly bald pate throughout those many years either. At expensive country clubs he liked to dance with young dates of mine, the few times there were any, and he'd finish up the night with a green Grasshopper drink. I never learned if those nightcaps had any alcohol in them or not, and still don't know to this day. 
Mr. Boswell had a good heart under the tough-as-nails Scrooge exterior, or maybe he was just hedging his bets for the hereafter, but I believe it was the former.  On second thought, I know it was the former. That will be explained fully in the last chapter of the Flick story someday. Later on, a few years after the Flick closed its doors for the last time, Mr. B and I went into business together; and that my friends, was a better business education on salesmanship than the technical college in town had ever been for me.

One time Mr B had me read a 1967 best-selling paperback called The Peter Principle. Actually I read it more than once. The premise of the book was that everyone eventually reaches their level of incompetence in business and work and can advance no further. To sum it up, folks would be much happier if they just stayed at their level of competence. From all I've seen and experienced in the business world, this book's revelation is spot on.

The Variety Clubs International is the main charity arm of the Hollywood movie business, or at least it used to be.  Mr. B  once held a high position in the clubs organization and the one in  Memphis was where he occasionally spent his evenings for relaxation and camaraderie. Mr. B intuited to me that every member was treated the same there, all being equals-among-men, and lady guests, too, so to speak.

Elvis Presley often showed up at the place to hang-out and shoot a little pool.  One regrettable evening however, a new Jewish doorman was on the job.  This pompous fool actually had the nerve to tell "The King" that he had to have a coat and tie on to get inside, which he probably didn't, being who he was and a regular member and all. The freshly-hired doorman had surely been told about Elvis dropping by on occasion, you would think.

Mr. B said Elvis stared at the guy in the face for a second, took a quick look around, then turned on his heels and left, never to grace the place with his presence ever again.  Needless to say, that was the doorman's last night of employment at any Variety Club.  Some people is all you can say about that guy I guess.  It's hard to imagine he didn't know who Elvis was. Nah, no way, he just wanted to play an ego- tripping Mr. Big-shot right then with the legendary lady loving megastar is what it was. 
Mr. B was rather fond of talking about how the folks in the movie business there in Memphis looked on Elvis as just one of the boys, granted, with great talent and singing ability, but definitely no superstar treatment ever afforded to the idol of millions.  Like I said before, everybody was treated equally at the Variety Club to hear Mr. B tell it.

And Elvis must have liked that kind of atmosphere at times, in places like the Variety Club.  He would also occasionally rent The Memphian movie theater in downtown Memphis after the regular shows were over, for himself and friends and sometimes dates; all to enjoy each others company in a public place, but privately, away from the admiring, autograph-seeking crowds.  As Forrest Gump so memorably put it, "It must be hard being a king." Well said, Forrest.
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Business partners with Mr. B

SUMMER SHOWS, LOVE IN THE PROJECTION ROOM, FLASHER COUSINS AND JOEL'S FIANCE'S REVENGE

Urban Cowboy did very good business with John Travolta as the blue collar cowboy and Debra Winger as his love interest.  It also featured Gilley's Club, the biggest nightspot in the U.S. at the time with its multiple bars and world famous mechanical bull, el Toro. In 2011 the two guys on the TV show American Pickers bought a beat-up looking original Gilley's Club piano for around $1300 and had it appraised for nearly $10,000. 

The ladies really liked Travolta in his cowboy attire and there was a definite uptick in our female patrons ticket buying for this movie. The rough shape that the American Pickers guys bought that piano, with its Playboy bunny rabbit logo, shows what a wild place the nightclub must have been back in those days, with dudes like Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley banging away on its keys.

If anyone had told us way back then that Friday the 13th was going to gross close to a half billion dollars in a dozen pictures over the next thirty years, we probably wouldn't have been surprised.  The first slasher in the popular series was made on a $550,000 budget and grossed nearly $60,000,000 the first time around -- whew!  The Flick got its fair share of that pie with a largely under thirty crowd.  Young folks just love to be frightened by movies like this and I suppose they could be compared with  thrill rides at theme parks in a way. The part where Jason jumps up out of the water at the end caused one of the biggest audience screams I can ever remember hearing at the theater.
Two other films in the summer of 1980 were Used Cars and The Blue Lagoon.  The former was a comedy starring Kurt Russell and concerned the internecine business wars between used car lots and had a great deal of humor and clever script-writing in it -- no major movie but it was fun.  Kurt can be a very comedic actor when the role calls for it as this one shows. 

The latter one had a teenage Brooke Shields and  blond Christopher Atkins cavorting about semi-naked on some paradisiacal island: it did only fair biz at the cinema, although it was the 10th biggest grosser that year over-all for the picture show industry. Also, the beautiful and blue-blooded Brooke went on to win a Golden Raspberry Award for worst actress of the year in the controversial film. Pop T and Mrs. Dot later met The Blue Lagoon boy and other young stars at one of the theater-owners' conventions and took photos of them, which they showed to the delight of all the Flick's employees. 

Joel and I both found serious girlfriends at this time.  Wendy was a curly brown-haired beauty of nineteen.  She and I were together for almost three years.  It was that magic time of a first love if you know what I mean. Wendy was built to please, with flawless skin and lovely, big brown eyes. We had a mostly magical three year relationship and even got engaged near the end of the love affair. More on how this progressed and turned out in the last chapter someday.  

On occasion we'd strip off a bit and make romance book-like erotic love in the projection or office room late at night with the door locked, which brings to mind the following event: Barry was a tall, skinny, long haired twenty-something, working for the Flick at the time whose older brother would often come by to be with him in the evenings.  These two country bumpkins were both a bit strange, to say the least.
The brothers had a young blonde female cousin they'd bring around who had supposedly once been a male, although I'm not sure about that.. In any case,  these two clowns liked nothing better than to surprise people by having their cousin flash her amazingly large and natural-looking breasts.  It gave then great guffawing pleasure to see the startled looks on folks wide-eyed faces, including mine once. Of course, after the time they pulled that on me and then catching them doing it again in the lobby, I told the boys and their cousin some other place would have to be their new bodacious ta-ta's playground. My oh my, what an era to be young, free, happily indiscriminately in the mood for love on occasion and, uninhibited with open doors.     
  
One night I went up the stairs to the projection room for something and found the brothers, one on each side of our lady flasher, loving and  kissing  their cousin up while she stood there looking bored, puffing on a cigarette, while watching some dumb movie.  Definitely surprised by this unexpected sight and a tiny bit disgusted, I then turned, shut the door, and let the rustic dudes go at it to their hearts content.

Although I didn't know it at the time, once when Barry thought I was mad at him over some little trifle - which I wasn't - he and his brother vandalized my Rally Sport Camaro in the theater parking lot late one night. They ran up to the office all innocence and concern to tell me about their "discovery".  Finding out through a secret informer some months later who the culprits really were, I confronted Barry on the cowardly deed after calling him upstairs for a sit down in the office. 

All the boy did was give an embarrassed, aw shucks, mule- in- the- brier- patch grin at this revelation.  The insurance company had paid for repairs and the situation had cooled for me ( which was the secret informer's intention all along in waiting to tell) so I let it go at that point.  After all, what could one expect from kissin' cousins who smooch and feel-up their transgender relative in a projection room anyway?

Joel rather quickly became engaged to his new girlfriend from up north.  He had a best buddy, however, who was very determined that Joel not get married so as to keep him in the group of guys that all  hung together. Most of these fellows were decent types who looked on Joel as some kind of super cool dude.  Joel was smart, personable, and no threat to potential women for them as he wasn't that kind of guy.  He also was thin , wore granny glasses, and had shoulder-length straight black hair.

Anyway, the friend's plan went like this: On the night before the wedding, he brought a cute little girl named Trixie to the theater. He'd picked her up somewhere (she was to became quite a hanger-on in the lobby and Joel's temporary love-gal) to tempt his best friend with. The chap's plan worked perfectly and Joel's fiance caught the two in bed together the next morning. As can be imagined, the wedding nuptials were angrily and quickly cancelled for the day.

The fiance got her revenge on Joel by attempting to sleep with all his many friends, and by golly if she didn't almost succeed with flying colors! Myself and one other dude being the only ones, as far as I know, to fully resist her unclothed charms. Some years back I heard they were now a happily married couple going on twenty years of wedded bliss. Guess all one can say to that is "...the things we do for love". Popular hit song lyrics back then.

The 1980 films of Fall ...

Superman  2 was released outside the USA in 1980 so will be included for this year. It did outstanding business and was a favorite with our moviegoers. The three bad Aliens expelled from Krypton before its destruction were perfect foils going up against the Man of Steel.

Although part two was filmed with the original, it still held up on its own very well. The recent comic book announcement that Superman has given up his U.S.citizenship, would have been unthinkable back then and still is for many fans today. Superman a casualty of globalization I suppose. At least Chris Reeves became a superman in real life after his tragic accident -- without giving up his American citizenship.

Christoper Reeves also starred that year in one of the most romantic movies ever made called Somewhere in Time. The picture did only fair business at the Flick but leaves a strong impression on the memory with its very sad twist-ending. That ending is superlatively poignant and is a strong favorite among love and romanced-themed movie aficionados.

Private Benjamin with Goldie Hawn was the 7th biggest film of the year with nearly $70,000,000 in total box-office receipts. Goldie was charming in it, but it didn't do as well at the Flick as we'd hoped it would. All I can really remember of it is Goldie wearing a helmet, looking cute, and crying in the rain. Besides, to be perfectly frank, at the time I was heavily occupied making-love to the girlfriend and beach music dancing with her half the night away at a local nightclub, two or three times a week.

Resurrection with Ellen Burstyn as a woman who survives a horrible car crash and emerges with the power to heal was an interesting and underrated movie when first released, but fell rather flat in ticket sales, even though she received an Oscar nod for her performance in it. Her career after the stunning shocks and blockbuster sales of The Exorcist didn't proceed like it maybe should have and some folks can't help but wonder if the talented actor didn't fall prey to the well-known Exorcist curse a bit.
Our three big Winter releases were Raging Bull, Stir Crazy, and Flash Gordon.  Raging Bull was a masterful movie filmed in black and white with a great performance by Robert De Niro as the middleweight boxer,  Jake LaMotta.  Someone recently told me that LaMotta's mature, or rather, middle-aged wife, posed for Playboy once and was one of the best centerfolds he'd ever laid eyes on in that magazine.

Martin Scorsese's tight direction may have been the prototype for this kind of historical hardcore pugilist film.  It did good box office as TV ads and word of mouth spread for no one had really seen this particular style of stark picture-making before. The fight scenes were not only quite realistic, as the film is in general, but very brutal for those days.  

Stir Crazy was a laugh riot with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder.  The part the audiences howled the loudest at was when the pair entered the jail with all the rough-looking cons, and the two saying "Yeah, we bad, we bad."  I believe we also showed Meatballs with Bill Murray around this time which was fairly funny as well.

Flash Gordon was a Dino De Laurentiis production with a surprisingly good soundtrack by the rock group Queen. Unfortunately, the movie was more camp than good science-fiction and after a strong start due to saturation TV advertising , ticket sales trickled off to near nothing the last week of its month-long booking.

However my friends, 1980 had been a good year all round for business and self. I even got a quick vacation in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. This boy was moving up it seemed, he just didn't know about some minefields coming his way in the future. But, all's well that ends well.

1977: Close Encounters with Darth Vader - Travolta Catches a Saturday Night Fever

6/9/2013

 
PicturePic taken at Theater Owners' Convention
Rocky continued on into 1977.  It was an unexpected 70's blockbuster if there ever was one.

 The Flick had previously featured The Lords of Flatbush with Stallone in it, but who could have guessed what was to come from this man?  Sly, to say the least.

 The story enchanted nearly everyone and it was most clever to have Rocky lose at the end.   "Adrian!  Aaaddrian!"  What an unforgettable ending  for audiences.

Theater owner , Pop T,  was very fortunate in his rotation picks that year,  and though there were a few stinkers, over all this was probably the best time financially the place was to ever see.  Added to the fantastic roll out of regular features, we finally nailed the correct venue for the Flick's late shows.

It soon became obvious after the kung-fu and blaxplotation pictures started that two pop culture phenomenon had been booked.  The double features were Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, at eleven-thirty p.m., and were generally at capacity seating or near it every night but Sunday.  The ticket price was two dollars and fifty cents a head at the time.

We fresh-popped our corn so that was a big draw, too. Our late show patrons often asked for extra buttery on their popcorn as they knew we'd lay it on thick. As a matter of fact, our fresh corn was so good we'd sell it in big bagful's straight out the door. Mr. Trimble once asked me what phrase we could use to promo that profitable sideline. I thought about it and came up with " Worst Popcorn in Town", sort of a reverse advertising psychology thing. Actually, I'd seen a peanut seller across town with that phrase on his store sign and got the thing from there. Pop T, with good sense, never took me up on that idea, though.

The audience for these late night movies was largely African-American.  One should keep in mind these were the "Swinging Seventies" and some activities were more out in the open than they are now.  The patrons enjoyed their pot and were constantly coming out to buy cups with ice for their booze.  When we would have a complaint about having to pay for the drink cups, we'd just say "... that's how we take our inventory"  which was true.

One time a young, blondish girl came to the late shows and left her purse behind with well over a thousand dollars cash in it, which was a lot of money back in those days. She  was a white woman from the nearby Tall Tree Trailer Park and rumored to be a hooker. We were decent enough to call her and let her know we'd found it. A couple of days later she comes traipsing into the lobby to retrieve her purse and then left without a word - no thank you, appreciate it, no nothing, not even a miserly five dollar reward. She's lucky she didn't lose it again at our place is all I'll say to that.

In comparison to how things are today, it's interesting to note that in all the years these late shows ran, not once (to my knowledge) were the police ever called, or a fight or serious argument break out, nor was there any attempt at an armed robbery ever made. The patrons howled like Irish banshees when the crackly film would break and melt on-screen but that was about it.

Those were the days of folding money and we often had quite a bit of it in the office waiting to be deposited at the bank's drop-in, which was at the top of the strip mall..  It may be hard to imagine in today's world, but we never felt the need to carry a firearm. It  really was  a different paradigm in this respect. Occasionally, though, with a blockbuster regular feature playing, we did have a police escort during a bank run as the little finance office next door to us was robbed about three times during my tenure at the theater. Maybe there's safety in numbers but it was something we just didn't worry about.

Tail kickers and belly flops 

I believe those action kung-fu and some of the blaxplotation movies were like a catharsis for people, as the plots were mostly about a brave hero arising from the oppressed, to do battle against and defeat wicked oppressors. At least that was the case with most of the karate ones. The last thing any of our patrons wanted was to be denied the Flick's kung-fu late shows, believe you me.  However, it probably would have been a different story had crack cocaine and bad stuff like that been on the scene back then. The blaxplotation movies, though, have been, then, and now, thought by many to not have been good role models for African Americans, as they sometimes glorified unsavory characters like pimps and drug king-pins. 

One flop that year of 1977, which if not mistaken is considered an all time movie bust, was called  Exorcist 2: The Heretic.  The picture's release was greeted with great excitement by exhibitors who expected the film to follow the original's success.  It's a classic example of the hit and miss nature of the business back then.  The thing was a total mess and any attempt at sitting through the whole two hours of it was excruciating.  We gave out quite a few free passes to folks who wanted their money back.
Another not so hot one was a George C. Scott movie called Islands in the Stream.  Now the late Mr. Scott has left us some mighty fine and outstanding film portrayals, like  Patton or A Christmas Carol, but this one is a different matter in my opinion.  One evening the other theater manager, Joel, was in the projection room with me overlooking a tiny audience when suddenly he pulled out a reefer.

Joel was the kind of guy dudes gravitated to as a friend, so he always secured the finest smoke around, naturally.  As mentioned earlier, it was a freewheeling era and almost all the peers I knew back then partook in varying degrees, myself included.  The effect of this most unusual grade, which he called Kentucky Bluegrass (if memory serves) caused us to somehow see right into a part of the film where Scott is emoting at the side of a stream.

It was unusual, this psychic connection, like we were there on the movie set - behind the scenes if you will.  Joel and I saw right through the silly arm and hand movements of George C's.  That, plus his lack of commitment to the character's inspiration, as he looks towards the sky and rages about something, really made him look awfully ridiculous.  The whole thing was hilarious and I can't ever recall gut-buster laughing more joyfully with a pal.

I stopped smoking the stuff a very long time ago and, of course, would never recommend it to anyone. If it's recreationally legal  or medically prescribed in someone's state, no problem with that here, but it's overuse does have a tendency to make one lazy on occasion, talk a blue streak for those predisposed to anyway, and can cause refrigerator- raiding, which might, of course, put on unhealthy fat-laden pounds.  It's beyond the scope of the story to go into much about the plant, so suffice to say, I never saw anyone hurt by it in those days, unlike the legal libations which destroyed lives quite regularly - by car wrecks, broken homes and other unfortunate stuff, as addiction or overuse of it still causes to happen today.  And I did read a well-researched and recent book on the plant that said natural cannabinoids are one of the healthiest substances for folks known to science.

Heavy breathing and a black cape 

Star Wars.  Another blockbuster-sleeper that no one on the exhibitor side had any clue would become what it did.  The audience for this picture started off moderate, believe it or not, increasing as word of mouth spread and TV adverts played.  Unlike today's fast food promotions, internet and all, back then the person-to-person "grapevine" was what could really push a movie into the stratosphere at the box-office, no pun intended.

George Lucas's vision startled and delighted most who saw it as no one had been exposed to this kind of picture making or special-effects before.  The audiences had great fun swaying in their rocking chair seats as the Death Star was attacked. Chewbacca, R2D2, Luke, Hans and all the rest were instantly memorable seventies characters and, the show wound up doing excellent business and went on to become the beloved and mighty serial, money-making heavyweight champion it has.

​Can you believe some of the top critics of the time dished the movie, with reviewers like Pauline Kael, of the New York Times, calling it "Exhausting". And John Simon of New York magazine with the  header: "Overwhelming Banality". Or how about Stanley Kauffmann of the New Republic's "Unexceptional". Others, however, had a different take, like Roger Ebert giving it a "Thumbs Up", and Charles Champlin's of the LA Times "Rip-Roaring Gallop". I liked it, but wasn't prescient enough to, say, cop about 30 or 40 different font original posters, which I could have done for a small out-lay. That would have been one awesome investment for the future, eh! 

It was at this time, because I remember Star Wars was playing, that a life- threatening situation occurred for me.  The wonderful and generous Mrs. Dot, beloved Pop T's wife, asked me if I would deliver a package to a friend of hers in a nearby metropolitan area the next day.  Unable to score a love bird for the night at a local nightclub, and not wanting to go home, or do anything really but stay up drinking, the following dangerous event took place.

I hooked up with a dude at the club as a friend, who appeared to be cool.  After the bar closed around two a.m., we went down to the river and drank a bit more and conversed like fools till sunrise.  To be perfectly frank about the whole thing, it wasn't a great time to be a good judge of  someone's character as is made plain in a minute.

Later, we went together to the lady's house to make the delivery for Mrs. Dot.  Mrs. Dot's friend kindly invited us into her home for coffee.  Unbeknownst to me, the jerk I was with took the opportunity, while sitting in the den, to steal twenty dollars from her purse when she went into another room for something.
 We left after forty minutes or so, and it wasn't long before he began to boast about his sneaky thievery.  I became upset with him--firm and directly, but not in a bellicose way, when suddenly, he pulled out a very sharp switch-blade knife and put it to my throat, all the while saying "pull over".  I did just that and we exited through the passenger side door of the Chevy onto the sidewalk. Things were beginning to look a bit dicey, to say the least.

So, there we were, in rush hour traffic, standing near a big city intersection in those pre-cell-phone days.  I managed to talk the maniac down after a time, and he lowered the blade, but it was a close run thing.  We got back in the car and proceeded on in silence before I let the creep out in front of a clapboard cotton-mill house. From then on out, this ol' boy always made sure to keep an unknown factor in front of him, never to the side or behind, unless it turned out to be a pretty girl or true blue male friend, that is.

​ The disappointed look on Mrs. Dot's face towards me when she found out what had happened was worse than the knife incident. What a fool I was to get in that condition and go to her friend's home, especially with that redneck loser. But I was the biggest loser fool of all and I've always so regretted letting her down. Naturally, this true lady with a heart forgave me.

A classic advertising bait-and-switch occurred around this time, too.  The late Farrah Fawcett was an iconic love-goddess in 1977, playing one of Charlie's Angels on TV.  Earlier, in 1970, she'd had a cameo role in vintage film star Mae West's campy movie, Myra Breckenridge.  In one short scene, Farrah wore a not-so-see-through nightie, with only her nipples showing, and briefly at that.  In the re-release, to capitalize on Ms. Fawcett's new found TV popularity, the movie had been advertised by distributors as "See Farrah Nude!"

 She was anything but naked, and boy were there some angry walkouts over it which we had to take the heat for.

Stacked shoes, sparkling balls and "Close Encounters" 

Two blockbusters that year were Saturday Night Fever and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  John Travolta's  portrayal of Tony Manero was remarkable, and even though the South was a bit different than New York City, people are basically the same when it comes to interpersonal relationships and the drama they can bring.  John Travolta's disco-dancing and the Bee-Gees music didn't hurt any, either.  The show did super business at the Flick and was an audience favorite.  

Pop T and Mrs. Dot later met Travolta at a "National Alliance of Theater Owners" convention.  They said he was a friendly and very likable person. One time, Mr. Trimble told me about running into an all but forgotten movie star and Playboy centerfold by the name of Valerie Perrin, when he was at a Las Vegas convention once.  Seems he was going into an elevator when the star was making an exit from it with a coterie of  beefy bodyguards, who fairly mowed everyone down making way for their VIP client. I doubt if Ms. Perrin has need of that kind of crowd-clearing protection these days.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out later in the year and cemented Steven Spielberg's reputation once and for all.  Jaws was no fluke.  The movie was utterly engrossing and fascinating.  The ending had some patrons spellbound and some came out of the cinema looking like a religious experience had happened to them.  It also was the only movie the Flick played that caused me to purchase a book on the subject.  The film did phenomenal biz at the theater and everywhere else it played.  

There are so many other things that could be included in this chapter but considering what an awesome year it was for films, we'll just continue on with some other great movie shows that we featured in 1977.  A Bridge too Far was an excellent and accurate war film about the tragic attempt by the British, Americans, and Poles to wrest a bridge from the Germans in Holland during WW2.
It had many big Hollywood names in it, like Anthony Hopkins and Robert Redford. A college teacher once told us that Mr. Redford had been quoted as saying something to the effect that "...the only thing stupider than the amount of money they offered me, would be if I had turned it down".

 Orca, a movie starring Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling, which was obviously made on the coattails of Jaws, concerned a vengeful Killer Whale taking revenge for its murdered mate. It was actually a pretty good picture with a lot of action at the suspenseful end.

The little known masterpiece Sorcerer, made by the director of The Exorcist, unintentionally fooled the theater owners and public into believing it would be in the mold of the original demon show.  It was a good suspense movie with imprisoned men who must drive trucks full of nitro across mountainous terrain to put out raging fires. The  film was superbly helmed by director William Friedkin but, it tanked like a rock in water at the box-office.  A fine performance by Gregory Peck in a show we played called MacArthur was purported to be the last movie viewing request of Elvis Presley.

Last, but maybe not least, is one called Damnation Alley.  It had actors like George Peppard, Kris Kristofferson, and Jan-Michael Vincent running around in some 12 -wheeled monstrosity trying to survive a nuclear apocalypse. The only  scene I remember well from it that came at the beginning, when two missile silo military types are at the controls happily discussing the finer points of their recent reefer smokes,  when that dreaded red-level alert comes in for a nuclear launch. One man is hesitant to participate in turning the keys for Armageddon, so the other erstwhile buddy does his sworn duty by pulling his service revolver and convincing him to do otherwise.

As a final thought on that year of 1977, yours true blew his one and only chance to see Elvis Presley perform live. In January or February of that year the black velvet megastar played at the big arena in the nearby metro area. Pop T and Mrs. Dot were going and kindly asked me if I'd like to go with them. As far as music went back then in the mid-seventies, it was rock and roll  albums, FM radio, and top 40 - that most of my generation liked, which didn't include such uncool and out-of-date singers like the King. 

Oh boy and ovay!

How I came to regret that misfire in later years. Hind-sight truly is 20/20.

1982:  Porky's Meets an Officer and a Gentleman with Tootsie

4/2/2013

 
PictureDrive-in Screen in need of repair
One of the more defining moments I remember from the early 1980s is the death of John Belushi.  I was at a yard sale with a nasty hangover, purchasing a child’s potty, for my girlfriend’s nephew's new baby, when I heard the news that Belushi had overdosed.  It was a big shock to many people and widely talked about.

He died from a devilish mixture of cocaine and heroin called an eight-ball, the former of which, was really starting to be felt in the town the cinema was in, and the nearby rural countryside, too.  At the time, only a select few knew there was a true to life, Dixie mafia-like group of people running a ring of the Big C.  In some ways, they weren't a group all that different from the good ol' boys that used to surround Elvis Presley.

This was an eclectic mix of criminals.  The ring included a brother of one of the ubiquitous night-club owners in town written about in the 1978 chapter. (One owner I knew fairly well, and liked. He would often bring his family to the cinema.) Others in the group included a European lady who owned a beauty salon in the same strip-mall as the Flick, and a heavily-corrupted and prone-to-partying, DWI lawyer.  Later on in the 80s, their profitable enterprise came to a crashing halt when one of the bunch was having their expensive auto serviced and a secret compartment inside the vehicle accidently came open.  Out tumbled a kilo of damning evidence.

One was caught, and a few days later, many being were sought.  There were some heavy duty prison sentences meted out down the road to a few of these people.  It was that big.  Several of those involved, that escaped the initial take down, were later arrested and even charged with a murder. The charges were dismissed for some reason or another after they were paraded before the public by a court arraignment that got shown on the TV news. At least their embarrassment and discomfort showed, who knows if any of them were contrite.

That March, the sleeper hit Porky’s came out.  In a certain way Porky’s was an Anti-Animal House.  Whatever  movie innocence was left over from the previous decade was quickly fading, and this somewhat real to life, but exaggerated film is proof of it.  The humor was a bit cruel and caustic in  some scenes, and it had nowhere near the charm of Belushi’s breakthrough movie in my humble opinion.  Still, it struck the funny bone with audiences and went on to be the fifth biggest money-maker of 1982 at $105,000,000.

An interesting result of the film’s success was that the relatively unknown actors demanded, and got, a substantial pay raise for Porky’s II.  Nice, considering they were paid a pittance for the first one.  The movie had its funny moments, like when the boys find, or make, a hole into the girls’ showers and, one is talked into placing his private parts through it, only to have the ogreish-female gym teacher grab hold and pull with all her might. The theatergoers thought that scene was funny indeed.  Ouch! 

 The fancy country night-club scenes at Porky’s were fairly accurate for the time,  too, especially in parts of the Deep South; except for maybe the huge fake pig, with the massive scrotum sac, advertising the place out front.  The money-eyed, big exhibitors in town, with their two movie cinemas, had pretty well gotten things down by this time as to what was going to do blockbuster business and what wasn't; and every three months, when the future releases were divvied up between us and them, they were beginning to get more and more of the winners.  But, a few sleeper films still slipped through their fingers like this one.

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A camera lense used at The Flick.
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Life in the cinema, and a movie ... 

Since I only remember four, or five, movies from 1982, this will be a good time to look again  into the life of the Flick’s employees and owner some more. When I started attending a technical college the previous September, Joel ( the other co-manager besides myself) and Angie began taking a newly offered, one-year course in something to do with behind the camera production side of film-making.  Down the road, Joel would actually make a career for himself in this profession.  I really don’t know what happened to Angie, but do hope she has a happy life.

Employee Ricky, who was said to be the biggest Judy Garland fan in the country at one time, had a most remarkable experience with Pop T. around this time.  This incident shows the remarkable decency of our boss.  A deadly and ubiquitous 70s and 80s drug, making the rounds at the time was the potentially  deadly downer Quaaludes, or ludes, as they were often called.  Ricky became addicted to them.
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Pop T on left - Mr B on right
One Saturday afternoon, while thoroughly blitzed, during a children’s matinee, he ousted himself in front of Pop T. by talking gobbledygook about Judy Garland, or maybe it was his new obsession, Pat Benatar, to the mini- moviegoers and their parents at the concession stand.  I was there, sitting beside our boss and Mr. Trimble asked me if Ricky was on anything.  It was really getting bad with the boy, and I told Pop T. that I thought he was.  Ricky got fired right away and Mr. Trimble then drove him home.

Here’s where the beautiful essence of our boss came through.

Pop T. told Ricky that when he straightened himself out, and quit the poison, he could have his job back, which Ricky did. Pop T even offered to pay for any medical or other help Ricky might need. However, Ricky was back at work in a month or two, lude-free on his own hook.  Ricky's father wasn't the nicest pap to his son and I believe he looked on Pop T as a kind of surrogate father and truly loved him from then on out.

As a matter of fact, several years later, he was the only one to be with that wonderful man when he passed away. According to Ricky, his last words were to ask if his family was alright. No person is perfect, and no one bats a thousand, but Pop T came pretty close to it; and there wasn't a bad bone in that brave man, believe you me.

Pop T's wife, Mrs. Dot was a colorful lady that did the accounting for her husband's theater and investments. She also had the bad misfortune of growing up in the Great Depression years in the South. Her family ran a county home for the destitute during those times and the sights and sorrows she saw as a young girl must have left a deep impression on her psyche. One thing I believe that came from this was her lifetime devotion to befriending and helping people in need, especially African Americans, who were at the bottom of the totem pole back then.

Unfortunately alcoholism ran in her family, too, and later on she was to fall prey to it, not just because of the family situation but other reasons as well. She was an out-going lady and loved taking bags of the Flick's fresh-popped popcorn around to folks and business's to give away free of charge. Mrs. Dot also enjoyed inviting some of us from the theater over to her home for dinner and then spoon-feed us things like buttered crabmeat and garden fresh Romaine lettuce. It was a bit embarrassing but lordy was it tasty stuff, bless her departed heart. A lot of people turned their backs on Mrs. Dot because of her drinking -- which did cause Pop T and his children a great deal of grief and pain, but I saw the real lady underneath the sickness and grew to love her.

As promised previously, here’s the rest of Mr. B.’s stories I can remember about the celebrities he knew, except for the Elvis one, which was told about in the 1980 chapter.  On being asked about Golden Age movie producer Sam Goldwyn one time, these were his exact words:

 "Oh, he was a fairy." [slang word back in Mr. B's day for homosexual or bi-sexual person. I had read Scott Eyman's excellent bio on Goldwyn, which prompted the question, and there was nothing in it that indicated the man was gay or bi.]

 Regarding movie goddess Stella Stevens, he uncharitably said “She ain’t nothin’ but a Memphis whore.” [Could it be Mr. B felt this way because of the many movies Ms. Stevens played prostitutes in?]

On television star and comedian, Redd Foxx, he once remarked “He’s got the foulest mouth I’ve ever heard." [Well, he was a raunchy nightclub entertainer before Sanford and Son.]

He also revealed a brief and torrid affair with Frank Sinatra’s ex and one of Elvis' many girlfriends, dancer and actress Juliet Prowse.  According to Mr. B., the woman seemed sexually insatiable, and a bit on the kinky side. This remembrance reminds me of an anecdote he confided in me one time when it was just the two of us driving on an inspection trip:

During his early salesman days - which should have been in the 1930s but may have been later - he and another sales guy were in a big city out West somewhere. As they stopped at an intersection light, suddenly another car pulled up beside them and two attractive ladies then hollered though an open window:

"You two are the lucky ones, follow us!"

The ladies then took them to a hotel room and preceded to make wild monkey love with the two gentlemen. After the session was over, the men begged the women for their phone numbers, but, they refused all entreaties to this request. On being asked why, the women answered that this was a one time thing, and they were now going home to fix their husbands the best meal they'd ever had.


On a better note, he was good friends with comedian- TV star Danny Thomas, and contributed handsomely out of his multiple millions to Mr. Thomas’ many charities. Especially to the St. Jude's Children's Hospital;  and I also remember the time he told me about anonymously donating hardwood pews to some big Tennessee church. Mr. B had a big heart underneath the tough-as-nails businessman exterior, or maybe he was just hedging his bets for the hereafter, but I believe it was the former.  On second thought, I know it was the former, which will be fully explained about in the last chapter of the Flick story someday.

This would also be a good time to tell about Mr B's advice on becoming successful in owning a small business. One day the three of us, Mr B, Pop T  and myself drove to the small mountain town of Brevard, North Carolina. Mr B owned, and wanted to sell, the town's main street movie theater to an eager young married couple who were interested in purchasing it.

After the preliminaries and walk-through were over, he had them sit down to hear his wise suggestions on how to make a profitable go of it. First off, he told the couple not to hire anyone else for the foreseeable future: They should do everything themselves. The couple should fix-up a sleeping and kitchen area in one of the large storage areas upstairs, they should sell the tickets and concessions themselves, sweep the floors after the last show was over themselves, in other words be hands on together in everything they could, just the two of them- which of course would vastly cut down on their overhead. 

They took the man's suggestions to heart and purchased the place at a reasonable price. This hard-working couple had bought the movie with their life-savings in fact.. A year or so later I rode back to the town to see how they were doing. They were doing great and were well into the black with the business's finances. And still running things themselves with the now affordable extra employee or two. This couple had single-handedly revitalized that town's run-down and on the rocks movie theater. They had made their endeavor a winner!

Although this paragraph probably belongs in the unabridged R-rated version, I'd better strike while the iron- oh, you know what I mean, is very hot! On checking into the town's clean, downtown motel again, later on, with Wendy along for the ride this time- something suddenly pierced us on entering the room, like darts from two of the Roman poet Cupid's golden arrows- and right where they counted too. The blinds were only half-open, producing the kind of soft light those great painters of long ago liked when painting their portraits.

In other words, striped, natural-light bodies that were to cover our coming together in this canvas. We immediately unclothed in a gentle-like fashion, with Wendy on her knees, her upper-body straight, and her curly brown-haired source of lovely origin tilted to one side, facing me with her eyes closed in one of those take-me-I'm yours looks. I was behind her in the same way, my hands gently cupping and fondling her beautiful breasts as my lips kissed her creamy, porcelain-colored neck. We'll save the complete recounting of this unforgettable erotic coupling for the full book but it was one of those that can be rightly said to have been an erotic encounter a person may well consider their finest hour...as such things go..


On July 13, the two-year anniversary of our first meeting (we met on Friday 13th, on opening night of the movie Friday 13th, a proper omen as things turned out), my girlfriend attempted to force a reduction in  my partying after work by breaking-up with me.  She also tried to squelch the having my cake, and eating it too attitude.
The three-month split didn't stop her from using her lunch break to eat in the strip mall's parking lot and watch me at work during the day making up ads for the newspaper and stuff though.

 This was also the month a film that no doubt was anticipated to have only modest box-office potential was released.  That movie was An Officer and a Gentleman.  This flick not only went on to be many critics’ best movie pick of the year, but also the third most profitable film of 1982, at around $129,000,000.

It’s a great love story for one of the couples involved.  But, for anyone that’s seen this film, it shouldn't be hard to imagine it wasn't the best one to have playing around you, all the time, during a romantic break-up.  For anyone who hasn't seen the movie, I won’t spoil it for you, because it comes highly recommended, so I'll just advise that before watching it you make sure your love life is secure, and/or your self -esteem intact.   Although there’s no flying in the movie like Top Gun, it’s a much more true to life and grittier film than similar ones from the 1980s.


As a final anecdote from 1982, it was that year I was working-out in a nearby gym that was in a metropolitan area nearby to the theater's town. The  new gym was owned by an heir to a large food manufacturing company. This guy had an expensive car and a lot of capital, but still, was a decent sort of chap. Anyway, one day the scuttlebutt about the place had it that there was going to be a VIP visit in the next couple of hours. Sure enough, before long a limo pulled upfront and who do you think the VIP was but the Austrian Oak himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger!

Most of the guys in the place started following Arnold around like he was some kind of Olympic god, pawing his body and asking him questions. A few of us, really not predisposed to such worship, just stood there where we were and watched. One thing I can say, though, is that when Schwarzenegger walked close by me, his magnetic charisma was palpable. You could actually physically feel the energy emanating off him -- or whatever it was. The cult of personality was certainly alive and well that day way back when.

As to the gym-owning heir, he's probably president of his family's food snack company by now. I still enjoy his fine products to this day and haven't found a single wheat weevil in his tasty crackers yet! Still lots of jobs for local folks and that's a very good thing, in addition to the good snacks.

In December a movie was played that quickly became a classic. That movie was Tootsie starring Dustin Hoffman. Assuming most readers will have seen the film I won't go into its plot too much except to say Dustin, Jessica Lange, Terri Garr, Dabney Coleman, Bill Murray, Sydney Pollack and so many other actors did a bang-up job in this delightful comedy about gender switching. It did superb business for us and the patrons loved it.

1979: Every Which Way but Loose and Kramer vs Kramer on The Late Great Planet Earth

12/30/2012

 
PictureBehemoth
1979 began with Clint Eastwood's Every Which Way But Loose still playing to sell-out crowds.  Although we didn't know it yet, the exhibitor chain with two screens in town was in a few years to change the rules on how the new releases were picked.  With hindsight, it's easy to see they were never going to allow another year like 1977 and its movies Star Wars, CE3K, and Saturday Night Fever to slip through their fingers again if they could help it.

The rest of the movies we played early that year are nothing to brag about, with the possible exception of the Late Great Planet Earth, which was released around this time. It was heavily advertised on TV and brought the Christian and curious crowd into the theater in droves. It's interesting to ponder on and compare - if I remember correctly - its theme of emanate doom and gloom with what's being bandied about at the present time. The main images retained in my mind from this flick is a huge lava flow of burning, molten rock, and narrator Hal Lindsey's mustache.

Also, around this time, a new employee began work at the Flick.  His name was Ricky; a thin, brown-haired fellow, maybe 21 years old.  He bore a remarkable resemblance, in a masculine kind of way,  to Judy Garland; which was a good thing considering he was one of of her biggest fans at the time.  The great singer and star of The Wizard of Oz had passed away in 1969, and back then in '79, as I'm sure today, she had a massive cult following.  His big collection of memorabilia was even featured later on in one of the major tabloid papers. Once when I was helping clean out Pop T and Mrs. Dot's basement, I found an old shellac disc of Judy's songs from Meet Me in St. Louis. The Trimbles were kind enough to let me have it on request and I just turned around and sold it to Ricky for thirty dollars. He surprised me by paying that much for it.


Behemoth.  What can one say about the strangest hanger-on of all to ever pass through the doors of the movie theater. Pop T had installed the new video games in the lobby, Pac-man being the first, and this is what initially brought this oddball twenty-something in.  As I describe the self-named Behemoth, it is not done with any attempt at cruelty or malice. To put it bluntly, the man looked like a Neanderthal wearing badly mismatched contemporary seventies clothes.

 He was a bit heavy at medium height, with dark hair, black bushy eyebrows, and a lower jaw that reminded one of a boxer dog minus the fang teeth. His torso could have been original model for the  Pillsbury Dough Boy and, when walking, his gait was reminiscent of a duck waddling. Shock Jock Howard Stern would certainly have offered Behemoth an honored spot in his Wack Pack of unusual individuals if the boy had had the temperament for being the butt of hilarity at times, which he definitely didn't  - except for maybe one time told of in a minute.

Regular employees Joel, Ricky, Angie,  all of us, really, became quite fond of this outrageous misfit;  that is until the times he got a little too insistent discoursing on his favorite subjects: the movie The Giant Behemoth, and of all things, the Disney movie Pollyanna! The boy had a serious gripe about women wearing slacks and jeans and was forever pontificating on the wonder of Haley Mills and her dress in that 1961 movie. Sometimes he would sit beside me on the seats in the lobby and bemoan his fate at never being able to have a girlfriend.  I truly felt sorry for him when he was in one of these moods, and would do my best to point out the fact that there's somebody out there for everyone. The encouraging words were always too little avail with the dress loving Behemoth, however.

The absolutely funniest scene the chap ever caused happened like this: during one comedy movie there was about twenty people waiting in the lobby for the next show to start,  when Behemoth began questioning a young couple sitting next to him on a lobby bench, a little too insistently on, yes, you guessed it, whether they liked Pollyanna or not.  Seated right beside him on the other side, I began singing in a low voice what I could remember about that old song that goes something like, 'they're coming to take me away ha ha, they're coming to take me away'. The tongue-in-cheek one about a mental institution-type person. 

Behemoth immediately picked up on this and with his eyes focused straight ahead, and in a loud, somewhat baritone voice, started to sing the lyrics to that song perfectly, word for word. Now dear reader, recalling the appearance of our strange- looking fellow, you can imagine the reaction of the folks hanging loose in the lobby when the initial surprise wore off. Outside of the movie shows themselves, I've never heard a more spontaneous outburst of rib-tickling, rip-roaring laughter from a group of people in my whole life. Amazingly, for the one and only time I can remember, this didn't stop or bother Behemoth one little bit and he kept right on singing.  The patrons had actually gotten their ticket's worth of belly laughs right before plopping their fanny's down in our rocking chair theater seats!

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The Summer Hits

The summer movie season took off with a bang.  It's a peculiarly interesting fact that of the top ten films that year, the Flick got the two at the top,  and the big movie exhibitor company in town showed the other eight.
​Rocky ll was every bit as engaging and successful as its predecessor.  This time, of course, Rocky wins; but how could it have been any other way.  Either Rocky ll  or Kramer vs Kramer was our biggest hit of the year with the tail-end of Every Which Way But Loose a close follow-up.

 The franchise and sequels to Rocky had been successfully launched, although we were never to see another one.  I like to imagine this was a sop to Pop T, getting  Rocky ll,  for the eight top ten movies the big boys got that year.  I'm not sure in what fashion the changes were made later on, or in the way the new releases were chosen, but they hadn't figured out things completely yet so there were still many great movies ahead for us.

The second big feature that summer was a wonderful film called 'The Main Event'.  It starred Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal in a plot that had something to do with Barbra managing Ryan for a boxing match.  I don't really remember- except for certain scenes- exactly what the rest was about, other than the usual love angle, but it was fun to watch and did very good business.  Another one was 'Wanda Nevada', with a teenage Brooke Shields and a rather subdued Peter Fonda, which was somewhat less entertaining.

The previous fall I had met a girl, who for a year and a half became sort of a part-time girlfriend. Her name was Teresa.  She was lithe, with long, light brown hair, and an outgoing personality. To state the situation plainly, Teresa fell in love while I, though very fond of her, just wasn't ready to commit myself to anyone yet. It didn't help matters any that Teresa had some odd ways; for example, she absolutely refused to wear shoes anywhere unless there was no way around it, and make-up didn't exist in her grab-bag of female enhancements.

It's not that she wasn't a nice girl in many ways, it's just that at the time I wanted a woman-woman, not a shoeless tom-boy or neo-hippie. The only time I remember her putting on a dress was when she tried to convince me to shack up with her in some ratty, broken down trailer she'd  found somewhere. Bless her heart, that just wasn't going to happen.

We had many good times in our year and a half together, though, having free passes to the competitor's shows being one thing we had fun doing, kind of like a date. We were super surprised, a bit frightened actually, watching that creature pop out of the space traveler in Alien, as apparently some of the actors in the scene were too, not being told by the director exactly what was going to happen.. That's also the only time in a movie I can remember ever having to shield my eyes from something.

Two or three years after our last good-bye, I heard Teresa had become a Dead Head. She had started following the Grateful Dead rock band around everywhere( not that there was anything wrong in that mostly heart and soul scene), instead of pursuing her dream of becoming a veterinarian. It's my fervent wish that life treated her kindly, and any heart-breaks that were caused to her on my part (I never told her I was in love) was to come back on me full force before four years were out, when a woman I was in lust and love with left me.
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The end of the 70s

In November of the year the Iranian hostage crisis began. Because of the college in the county there were many male Iranian students around. Most of them became surly and started keeping to themselves, except for one friendly fellow who so wanted to be an American. An older, harder- looking Iranian student, working behind the counter of a 7-eleven convenience store, learned a tough lesson about southern manhood one night. As I came up to the checkout counter, I asked him how he felt about the situation with the hostages and this was his reply, "I think it's a good thing." I replied back, "Then why don't you go home." His second reply was in a nasty manner and was to be his last: "Because I want to stay and f*ck all the American girls I can." 

The words had no more left his mouth than a good ol' boy's huge fist shot over my left shoulder, from behind (I didn't even know the big guy was behind me), and landed flush in the center of the Persian dude's mustachioed  face. Both of us left the store lickity-split, and, I noticed on leaving, the Iranian's legs sticking out from behind the counter, jerking in spasms as he lay knocked out cold on the hard linoleum floor. He never saw it coming it happened so fast. I've always been a non-violent person unless attacked or defending someone, but can't say I'm not happy Mr. Foul-mouth got what was coming to him.

As the years went on I began to reflect on those Iranian students, especially on the friendly one who wanted to be a U.S. citizen. After those guys voluntarily left or were sent back to their county, it wasn't long before the eight year war between them and Saddam Hussein's Iraq broke out. Many of those fellows probably died or were wounded in those human wave attacks against fortified positions we saw about them making on our TV news.


The last film of the 70s the cinema played, was also somewhat surprisingly the top box office draw of the year in the U.S. This was especially surprising considering the subject matter.  Kramer vs Kramer was about divorce and a child caught in-between it all. It stared Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep in some riveting performances.  It was also quite engaging and as word of mouth spread it went on to do good business.  The film had an incredible box- office take of $106,000,000 in America alone and swept the Oscars the following March.

1978: Jamie Lee Curtis on Halloween and John Belushi Runs Wild in Animal House

12/30/2012

 
PictureSign from one of our Drive-in's. Can you believe some folks would still try and hide their children in the car trunk!
The start of 1978 was a lesson in the ways of love and the vicissitudes of life, not to mention the movie business. Speaking of the films the Flick played that year, they didn't quite start off with a bang. One of the first ones was called Blue Collar, starring Richard Pryor. As best can be remembered, it was about labor shenanigans in the then vibrant Detriot auto industry, which has a shocking scene where one of the auto workers ( actor Yaphet Kotto) is purposely trapped inside an area spraying-painting cars and comes to a most horrible end.

Two other shows the Flick ran early that year were, An Unmarried Woman, with the late Jill Clayburgh throwing up when she finds out her husband has cheated on her; and The Buddy Holly Story, which was notable for Gary Bussey's fine portrayal, as well as being the movie rock star Keith Moon saw the night he overdosed on sleeping pills. Neither of these films did much at the box-office and it was a lucky thing we had the kung-fu late shows still running on the week-end nights.

The so called sexual revolution was at it's pre-AIDs peak around this time and, with a liberal-arts college near town, that had a largely female student body(no pun intended), any guy with half a game plan often did very well in the love-life curriculum.  The legal drinking age was eighteen and several night clubs took advantage of this fact. Young folks just love to mingle, get tight, dance and sweat. At six feet and considered attractive by the ladies, I generally had a "date" - even a literal one, once every few weeks or so, but I was more often than not too inebriated to fully consummate anything. Being brain-washed about how evil, disgusting and morally corrupt sexually-transmitted diseases were as a boy probably didn't help the psychological processes any either. I had to be comfortable with a woman to have a full-course love session with her. A character flaw, maybe. But two things pounded into my head as a kid were the mortal dangers of heroin and yes...you guessed it, VD.

Besides, I really was inherently a I Only Have Eyes For You kind of guy and preferred to really feel something for a gal before going all the way. However, I did discover that no two women are built exactly the same. The lovely forms that nature has bestowed on the fairer sex come in all shapes and sizes and are as unique as snowflakes falling on a beautiful winter's day. Purple prose from Yours truly, perhaps, but oh so true.

Some of the nightclubs had a sideline going in the back after hours. These poker or what-ever games, where big money was won or lost, often drew a crowd of spectators. You  had to be approved, or rather trusted, to view or sit-in of course. I never played,  only watched and learned. It seemed the sensible thing to do at the time. There were pay-offs to the, ahem, proper authorities and only an occasional knifing or game of bullet tag in the parking lot to spice things up further.

The meaty bouncers kept order on the inside of the bars. These guys were mostly friendly if a bit book- challenged, but get one of them mad enough and they'd beat you into rubber, as I saw them do on more than one occasion. All in all, these nightclub owners made serious fortunes, until at some point in the 1980's the state legislators raised the drinking age to 21. A couple of "mysterious" night-clubbing fires quickly followed. Naturally the places were heavily insured.

Damien the Omen part two was a well made and eerie flick, with anyone getting in the way of the junior Anti-Christ's path to world domination being dispatched in unique and horrifying fashion. If you look into it deeply enough, you'll find this sequel may of had more of a curse on it than its famed predecessor supposedly did. Corvette Summer with Mark Hamil of Star Wars fame, I'm sorry to say, is totally forgotten in my memory for some reason, , except for Mark sitting on a car's hood and that may have been from the preview trailer.

Either the third or fourth biggest grosser that year was a Burt Reynolds feature called Hooper, which was about the lives of movie stuntmen. It's a singularly sad fact, that around this time, Reynolds, was voted top money-making star by the "National Alliance of Theater Owners Association" but, his career seemed to go down hill from there. It would seem Burt was a bit too cocky, even for what was probably the cockiest place in the world, Hollywood itself and the production side of the business. Just take a look or remember some of Burt's appearances on the The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson and you'll know what I mean. All in all, though, Burt seems to have been a good ol' boy from Florida who made good and was, and is, a decent fellow.


If there was ever a son of a sleeper ticket seller, National Lampoon's Animal House was a top candidate for the winner. This film is often considered the prototype "gross out movie" and it was the top box office film of 1978 bringing in $121,000,000 at the door.  The Flick got a decent share of those dollars, in addition to the employees having the pleasure of watching John Belushi and his sorority house buds raise hell.  The show was seriously funny and moviegoers were delighted with it from beginning to end. The ladder scene with Belushi trying to watch the undressing co-ed, and then falling backwards on to the ground, probably got the biggest laughs in the movie, but there were many, many, more. Now,  before we get to the last box office winner of that year, a couple of personal remembrances are in order. 
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During the showing of Animal House one night, there was the usual  good-sized gang of  co-manager's Joel's buddies hanging around the lobby after the last regular feature had started. One of these guys was known by the name of Big Moe. He was about 21 years old and wasn't the brightest bulb in that group of fellows, for sure; but what happened to him that particular night was little short of moronic. I noticed a stranger dude sizing us all up and, the next thing you know, he's chatting up Moe in private, off  from the rest of us a ways. It wasn't long till they both disappeared. A couple of hours later, during the late shows, Moe comes huffing and puffing into the lobby, with quite a tale to tell about the vanishing act.

Seems the mustached stranger had talked the big boy into unloading his Cessna full of pot straight into a van at the small county airport, while he, no doubt nervously, observed everything from a ways off.  When we asked Big Moe what the guy had given him for payment, the silly lug pulled out two skinny joints, giggling like a kid with lollipops. He was very pleased with this reward and even offered to share one with everybody. The rest of us, as can be imagined, were rib-tickled to the point of falling over each other with laughter about Big Moe's adventurous labor and regal compensation by the cagey pot smuggling pilot from out-of-town.

 I once heard secondhand about another little escapade of Big Moe's, too, so can only vouch for it as something he certainly would have done...not out of character for him in other words. Here's the scene: Big Moe and some of his friends pull up to a stoplight with a car in front of them that has a dirty rear window. With a look of childish glee on his baby-faced, 250 pound, six-foot something body, Moe hops out of the front seat and lumbers up to the back window of the car, and with his index finger writes "wath me" on it. Then snorting all the way back he returns to his bud's passenger seat. Name it and claim it is perhaps the best epitaph for that little story about Big Moe.

 Another time a bunch of us were headed over to Moe's mama's house for some reason. When we got within what must of been about a quarter mile of the place, we heard booming rock music coming from down the street. Mystery solved when we turned into her driveway, as that was where the racket was emanating from. I was the first one in the den and, lo and behold, but there was Moe lying there on the floor with two giant speakers pushed up tightly against his elephantine-like ears -- and obviously with no head phones on them at that. Needless to say, the hefty chap looked a little dazed and confused trying to stand up.

Yes my fine readers, it was dim the lights for real with good ol' boy Moe.

I was still chauffeuring Pop T and Mr. B on their trips to their empire of  indoor and drive-in movies in 1978. They owned or were partnered up with several others in maybe six or seven screens all around in a couple of different States.  These two gentlemen were not only wonderful men, but were also extremely interesting to hear talk about their pasts.  In Mr. B's case, he would often reminisce on the old days and about certain movie and  TV stars he knew or had met.  One time he began to talk about an old Hollywood story he experienced as a young man just starting out in the business with the theater supply company. 

It seems a group of the sales guys visited a house of ill-repute in Los Angeles where all the girls resembled the current  lady stars of the silver screen. This must have been around the mid- 1930s.  A Madam "Snares" had them pick a partner for the evening and then brought the ladies back in after the selections were made with bags over the girls' heads.  With a wink and chuckle, she then asked the boys to choose the woman they'd just picked out in the line-up.  Mr. B said not a one of them could do it, much to the Madam's cackling delight.

According to the book The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney that "Madam Snares​", as Mr B called her, may well have been retired movie actress Billie Bennett, put in place in a boardinghouse brothel off Sunset Strip in 1932 by MGM boss Louie B. Mayer and his right-hand man Eddie Mannix to service visiting exhibiters, sales reps, actors and such. Some of the girls were even surgically altered to look like the movie star women of the day. God what a place it must have been.

Mr. Trimble once shared with me something less amusing. He said as a boy growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, he more often than not went to bed hungry. Seems he lived in a large family and his father's furniture store went belly-up pretty early in the Great Depression years. No doubt the county relief fund ( remember, this was well before the social safety net we have today) was a pittance. To stifle those hunger pangs during the day he would sometimes roam the Civil War battlefield near Missionary Ridge, and find buttons and bullets and even the occasional unexploded cannonball.

Pop T had no vices, except, perhaps, he loved to eat. The man would greedily gnaw a corn-cob or T-bone steak down to the nub or marrow when we would be dining out on our inspection trips or at his house. Who can blame him though, after all that he went through as a half-starved young boy living in an era that very nearly saw America have another Revolution.

Sometimes coming back from these inspection trips we would start singing old songs like My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean , which was Pop T's favorite. These sing-a-longs were endearing and bonding for all three of us. I really grew to love those two gentlemen, I really did. They just don't make 'em like those two anymore it seems like. It was the end of an era when those two men and some of their friends and associates passed on, and that's for sure my friends.
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A good example of the hit and miss nature of the business in 1978 is the movie Halloween. Nobody expected this one to do much box office, which is probably why the big chain company passed on it, in that particular rotation pick period, and Mr Trimble snatched it up. Before Jason and Freddy Krueger there was Michael Myers, and boy did he ever scare the pants off of people.

It did very well for us, but we, nobody, really, had any idea that it was to spin into gold with the sequels, genre and stuff. The musical score, especially Mr Sandman, the unique lensing and early fall setting were all ingredients in this blockbuster's success. Not to mention Jamie Lee Curtis's awesome debut as Laurie Strode. Except for some clips over time, I only saw the movie when we played it and remember Jamie Lee's performance more than Jason's. Hat's off to director/writer John Carpenter and everyone else involved in it.
The second or third biggest film the Flick showed that year was also the last one featured. It was Every Which Way But Loose starring Clint Eastwood and an Orangutan named Clyde. Foul Play was possibly our third biggest grosser of the year and had that hilarious seduction scene with the late Dudley Moore and Goldie Hawn in it, however, this latter film had nowhere near the belly laughs Every Which Way did. Eastwood's interplay with Clyde, and his crazy but lovable mom (Ruth Gordon), coupled with the motorcycle gang that couldn't ride straight, trying to track Clint and his pals down, was a joyous and delightful way to end 1978 for the Flick.

1975: Jaws Makes a Splash With One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

12/30/2012

 
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JAWS! 

There it was in big block letters, underneath the movie cinema’s name: The Flick. Those were the four letters one day back in June of 1975 that just might have saved my bacon. After coming out of the seafood joint with the latest job rejection behind me - no hello, no nice to meet you, no application to fill out or a sit down interview, just a loud NO! The second the redneck owner saw me with my longish, dark brown hair was all he needed to see.  He had then turned on his heels and headed back to the kitchen from whence he  just come.  On walking out myself, feeling dejected once again, there were those huge block letters up there on that marquee, about to announce to me that my luck had finally changed. I just didn't know it yet.

Down there, way down there, across that big parking lot to the L-shaped strip mall, was a long line of people in what must have been the hundreds. The proverbial light-bulb went off.  If  jobs were to be had around this town, that had to be the place. So I sauntered on down across the big parking lot, politely pushing my way through the crowd at the theater's door.

On entering the place I asked the girl taking tickets if the boss man was around, but he was already heading my she said - wading through the lobby crowd as I turned to look.  As he approached, it was immediately obvious the man was a little on the short side, stout, but not really too much overweight. He also had an unmistakable limp. The sweat was forming around his thinning dark blond hair and his mien looked all business. It was to be a few days before I was to see one of the grandest, most genuine smiles to ever grace a human face.

As the first days and weeks passed, this middle-aged man was to turn out to be the Real McCoy of a wonderful human being; and add to that, a Southern gentleman, good friend and mentor to boot within that first year . Yes, as time went on over the many years to come, I discovered Mr Trimble wasn't perfect, who is? But he came about as close to it as a person can and that in and of itself was pretty remarkable.

The only time I ever so him maybe be unfair - possibly fooled by a jealous one into feeling in a bad way towards a relative he looked-up to as a boy...and man- was to come many years later and was a kinfolk despute concerning his older brother. Mr. Trimble was the kind of person that found it hard to see the thieving, back-stabbing, lying and concealments in others because he didn't possess those negative qualities himself. Not that he was anybody's fool, the man simply saw the good in people and more often than not forgave those who fell short.

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His name was Bob, Bob Trimble to be exact. At first he gave me that kind of look the other two potential employers had that day; but Mr. Trimble took a second glance and told me to come back tomorrow after lunch time. Sleep was very sweet that night; a little apprehensive and a lot of relief for this seventeen year old with no past to go back to -- thanks to a substance abuse and drinking situation in the nuclear family that had driven me away from the madness-- but suddenly with the possibility of some kind of future. One that was about to take this young fellow on a nearly eight year journey through a smorgasbord of people,  life, and movies he would never forget.

Up and and at 'em, bright and early the next morning, by noon I was ready to have the interview with Mr. Trimble and find out my fate. Driving down the little road from the duplex in a Ford Galaxy 500 my Grandmother Mimi had been so kind to help purchase for me -- I waved bye-bye to her and zoomed on off. The theater was crowded as it had been the day before. After arriving, there was  Mr. Trimble running interference in the packed lobby for that first day's show.

He then followed me up the stairs to the office cubicle inside the projection room. There he introduced me to the manager, Joel, a fellow not too many years older than myself. Joel was a slender guy, about medium height with long straight black hair, and a pair of intense but friendly green eyes behind some wire-rimmed glasses. Joel then finished up something and departed.

 For some reason, Mr. Trimble apparently had pretty much decided he was going to hire me right then and there to train as a co-manager. I suppose the unexpected success of JAWS had something to do with it, and, my first job at the age of 15 had been as an usher in a small-town theater, so I had some experience; at any rate, after filling out a short application and the tax forms I began my first day of work at the Flick. The starting pay was $109 a week- close to about 315 bucks today, which was decent starting money back in 1975),  plus all the buttery popcorn I could crunch into my tummy.

Speaking of popcorn, or concessions in-general, rather, was one of the first things I learned, and that is why they've always been so expensive - marked-up like they are in other words. The majority of a theater's profits often came from concessions and that is why they are high-priced, then and even more so now.

The theater held some 365 rocking chair seats and I had the unenviable task of stopping at a certain point to break the bad news to folks that there wasn't going to be any shark thrills for them at this showing as it was sold-out. The recommendation was to wait until after the first show started, and then come back and buy advanced tickets for another show that night. It was to go on like this for many weeks.

After the JAWS run was over, Mr. Trimble was nice enough to take all the theater's employees to the local barn dinner playhouse for some expensive eats and a funny floor show that descended from the rafters. I was really beginning to like this boss, a lot, and that's saying something compared to what had come before in any job, or life in general for that matter, and that's being perfectly frank about it. It had been a cruel world at times, with even a long stint basically on the mean streets of Atlanta, Georgia.

As a matter of fact, if I'd been able to get to the Fox Theatre on Peachtree Street one afternoon, I might have wound up working as a roadie-type or lord knows what for the big rock concert promoter, Alex Cooley. I'd helped him a bit the previous night, sans any compensation, with crowd control at a Lynyrd Skynyrd show and he'd told me to come back the next day for a talk about some real work. I couldn't make it, though, so life was to eventually lead in a different direction.

Mr. Trimble had originally gone into partnership buying the business with a man named Maximillian Hell ( sorry folks, I couldn't resist that pseudonym, which isn't too far off the mark anyway)  in late 1974. It didn't take long for Mr. Hell to have dreams of being a maker of independently- made movies, with maybe even his own studio ( like Southern legend Earl Owensby had, with more about that gentleman in the unabridged book.)

While making his first production called D. J. Redneck Miller or something similar for the drive-ins, the Flick's employees were even asked to show up and be extras in a restaurant scene. The director had me sit next to the young couple starring in the film but  pretty quickly told  me to get lost. ( Must have been my extra-long hair and not so chic clothes at the time, not exactly right for a pseudo-fancy restaurant scene, eh?)

Anyway, the independent movie must have run into cost overruns which Mr. Hell made up for by dipping into Mr. Trimble's part of the Flick's profits a bit. Mr. Trimble was a good man and instead of getting the law and courts involved, he  just allowed his soon to be ex-partner a chance to sell him his half-share of the movie theater at a reduced price. In retrospect, Maximillian would have done much better sticking to the exhibiter side of the business as things turned out for him rather as a maker of B-film producer dreams.

​At some point many years later, after we employees had started calling our boss Pop T in affection,  I asked him (for the one and only time) how much he had netted on JAWS. Thirty thousand  dollars was his clipped reply; that's well over a hundred thousand bucks today. As time went on, and I learned more and more about Pop T, and his alcoholic but good-hearted wife Mrs. Dot, I came to the conclusion that they surely deserved it all and then some.

 There was one other person besides Joel who was to work the next seven and a half years with me. Her name was Vicky and she must have been about twenty or so when we met. She had moved down south from Maine with the rest of her family, after their father had dropped over with the big one at an early age.

 I always felt sorry for her and her younger sister and even younger brother. However, I’m going to state it plainly: Vicky was not a sexy girl, which may have been one reason she lasted so long at the theater. Vicky had long, very frizzed-out mousy brown hair, she was also a little lumpy and only wore lumberjack shirts and blue jeans.  Her basic duties were to sell tickets and concessions..

Generally, after a show had started, she would sit in her chair next to the register and read paperback books. Occasionally Vicky would throw out a comment or two but usually would have to be asked to join in on any conversation. She grew on us all, and except for a time or two, when she was having that monthly scourge of a biological process women are prone to, we became right fond of her.


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Bob Trimble was an independent theater owner with one screen competing against a big exhibitors chain of two screens, in this medium-sized Southern town of maybe 30,000 people. Old Hollywood had finally crashed and burned around 1971 and a whole new paradigm in the movie business had opened up. The major production studios for some time had almost no idea in which way things would finally be sorted out for a proven and sure-fire way to proceed.

This small window of opportunity—roughly from about the mid-seventies to around the earliest years of the eighties-- opened the doors for filmmakers with true vision and passion to get in there and have their movies green-lighted, that might otherwise not have been made. Some of the greatest films in American history were produced during this time; the list of course is far too numerous for this first chapter in the Flick story to mention. But we sure got to play a lot of them at the theater.

The last half of 1975 was pretty mundane in comparison with what was to come. A parade of crazy oddball town characters like  Behemoth, Vampire Clown, Humpy were to come our way, and so many others whose outrageous antics and humorous doings entertained us all, most of the time that is; there was a great deal of real and pretended sex in those swingin' seventies too ( a largely female alumni at a local college in the county saw to that), and of course there was love and heartbreaks, gratuitous violence, Boss Hogg corruption, and life lessons in some ways more valuable than a university degree.

The two movies I remember from that first year are unarguably some of the first true block-buster movies of the post old Hollywood era: JAWS and ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. The latter film did a very surprising, near JAWS  like box-office, or so it seemed. Nurse Ratched could give one nightmares worse than that ol' demon Pazuzu did from The Exorcist. What an unusual and fantastic film One Flew Over...was, and is. Do they really make them like that anymore? If so, I sure haven't seen any- especially not with the lines outside the theater's doors like this one had.
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