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

12/30/2012

Behemoth

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!

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.

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

Sign 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.