Although the Ireland plan has been in talks since 2004, contrary to all the press releases it has yet to happen. Also, it will be government funded. The installations so far are in government subsidized theatres only. I work for a company with Irish theatres and they are still talking.
The founder’s family sold Wometco Theatres to KKR in 1984 for peanuts. The company was a ghost of its past as the Florida leader. The Wometco logo disappeared from marquees soon after in spite of real estate holding company names.
The European Arts Alliance plan has yet to start and has distributors financing it through film rental, similar to the way Fox paid for Cinemascope conversions in the 50’s. This is the way it should be done in the U.S.
NO SENSIBLE EXHIBITOR IS PAYING ANYWHERE.
General Cinema entered the South Florida market by buying Loews theatres in the late seventies and doing overnight cheap twinnings. They did not even bother to re-align the seats. GCC, a company that stayed in business during this period thanks to Pepsi bottling profits had, without a doubt, some of the worse theatres in South Florida as a result. They built a few several United Artist clone shoebox multiplexes like Hialeah that lasted a decade before audiences discovered AMC.
Wometco and Loews were always the class acts in Florida. I know because I worked for ABC there.
The Ireland digital initiative is to be funded by the government arts council and has yet to happen. NO exhibitor in Ireland is paying. About 80% of the UK digital systems are also government funded. Do you think American tax payers will be happy to pay for digital theatres?
If you worked in South Florida in the late seventies then you would know that the major chains, ABC Florida State (Plitt) and Wometco were in serious financial trouble and for sale. Neither made it through the eighties. A combination of blind bidding, advance guarantees, bad films and dwindling audiences caused partially by VHS, made them unprofitable businesses. Only exhibitors with deep pocket survived the early VHS dip and it was the multiplex that saved the day.
There is nothing in the digital plan that benefits exhibitors and the “fat girls†movies are on youtube for free, where they belong.
You could turn that distib/exhib profit model upside down if you wish. Since distributors get paid over 50% of the total gross, their margin is always higher. Both sides have expenses and both are owned by investors who are greedy for profit.
Distributors buy cheap film stock because the product often lasts two weeks only on screen anyway. As for the notion of digital enhancing long run print wear, what long run?
When exhibitors overbuild, as in the case of the late nineties, the distributors take the opportunity to increase terms on the now competitive market and get higher percentages, making matters worse for their alleged partners. When distributors over-produce crap films, exhibitors find a way to get the films out there and make them work even when better films are available. (see BRATZ right now)
Digital is simply a distributor cost saving that does not benefit the exhibitor or the movie-goer in any way.
With the exception of National Amusements (Showcase) you will find that very few cinema operators own their buildings. One of Cineplex Odeon’s questionable practices was to sell off those they did own and report the sale as “income” during bad years and not letting stockholders know that this new income was the result of a permanent asset loss.
It was the lack of Ziegfeld ownership that kept Garth Drabinsky from twinning the place.
Slayak, I should mention that the midnight movie was social ritual with a very large regular weekly crowd who, although stoned, were rarely trouble. They often came to see the same films over and over again and always left WOODSTOCK after Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner. It was better attended on Friday & Saturday than most mainstream films were all week.
The STAR WARS groupies were younger and already a new generation. Although we did not have any special sound system the movie was still a huge hit. DOLBY did NOT make STAR WARS a hit.
The merchandising was trickling out in stores and not on sale at the theatre itself. By 1978 when JAWS 2 opened we had shark teeth keychains, earrings, bracelets and whole shark jaw sets on sale at the stand.
TheatreBuff, I think it was a matter of loss of faith in the business that lead to the fall in standards. Hollywood was marketing to adults only at awards time (that still happens), there was product shortage, and audiences were not buying what they were expected to buy.
Large theatres chains such as ABC and General Cinemas treated the theatres as loss leader cash cows for their other investments. Since film rentals was always paid late, the money came in handy in between and no one really found out just how bad the losses were for months. One blockbuster and all was forgiven. I don’t think anyone expected the theatre end to ever recover but multiplexes, better marketing studies (and ironically VHS) saved the day.
I don’t think audiences were any worse than in the sixties, there were just less of them and even less of the mainstream folk as well.
Ken, The Earl Carrol did show movies between shows in 1928-1930 including, ironically, premiering the film version of RIO RITA in 1929. It also may have showed films as the Casino in 1934.
In the mid seventies, if you were working for a theatre chain it was all about cutting costs and not reinvesting in theatres. The industry seemed doomed due to a move to alternative entertainment by the core audience and the over 30’s had been lost along with the hippie product of the late sixties, early seventies. With the exception of the occasional Woody Allen or Barbra Streisand hit, most audiences were young, reckless and rude. It was mostly about managing an unstable audience and staff in a crumbling building.
Here are some memories of my mid-seventies period as a manager around 1977 that may spark your imagination:
No cleaning between shows as there was only one usher budgeted at a time.
The cleaners quit every time we showed THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW at midnight.
An x-rated musical version of ALICE IN WONDERLAND stunned the crowd.
A seriously misinformed local cop threatens to close the theatre for letting kids in alone to watch PG films.
Due to the way movies were booked, Streisand’s A STAR IS BORN continues to plays forever even after holding-over was unwarranted. Staff sings along to the empty seats.
The head office threatens to fire any manager seen tearing tickets at the door and therefore violating the checks and balances that keep everyone honest.
Although it had been a critical and audience hit in New York for months, locals thought they had discovered ROCKY themselves.
The midnight show of THE LOLLIPOP GIRLS IN HARD CANDY in 3D turned out to be hard core porn in 3D! With the little red and blue glasses to boot. The local college students pack the place.
At this beautiful theatre that once showed SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, a double feature of TORSO and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.
Food coloring makes the popcorn green for St. Patrick’s Day
The odor of pot smoke permeates the auditorium so strongly at the midnight show that the senior citizen matinee audience the following day comes out stoned.
A pipe break in the men’s room floods the lobby on a Saturday night.
In spite all the movies above, the locals get upset at the dirty language in SLAP SHOT and the posters for NASTY HABITS .
A rat has moved in under the popcorn machine and runs out to fetch whenever popcorn is dropped on the floor behind the stand. The staff have named him BEN.
The new pizza slices have cheese that sticks to the plastic wrapper we cook them in but they sell anyway.
BLACK SUNDAY is coming!
BLACK SUNDAY is coming!
BLACK SUNDAY is coming!
BLACK SUNDAY is coming!
Two weeks later- BLACK SUNDAY is gone!
The promiscuous stoner girl working behind the stand has been forced to quit by her mother. It turns out she is only 14 years old and working with false I.D.
ANNIE HALL opens and the audience watches quietly but buys no popcorn.
Two doctors patrons get into a fist fight when they disagree on what first aid should be administered to a customer having a some sort of attack.
Our film buyer refuses too book Bob Marley’s reggae film THE HARDER THEY COME as a midnight show because she insists it is gay porn.
The midnight show of MIDNIGHT COWBOY comes in labeled wrong and the reels play in the wrong order with opening credits in the middle of the film. No one complains.
An usher finds a heart, a liver and part of a lung on the auditorium floor after the movie. Police are called and discover they are plastic replicas left behind by a local medical student.
A stoned-out midnight crowd fall asleep during Monty Python’s JABBERWOCKY. We have to go around waking them up after the film and sending them home.
The drive-in will get THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, A BRIDGE TOO FAR and THE DEEP this summer and we’re stuck with THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT and some kiddie sci-fi flick called STAR WARS.
New “Light in the dark footballs†(a flashlight shaped like a football) on sale at the concession stand. You can now play football at night!
A new ending for EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC on week two upsets a couple who actually came back to see it again. Tumbleweeds practically roll by during the second week.
A customer’s car has been swallowed by a sink hole in the parking lot.
SENSURROUND installed for ROLLERCOASTER makes STAR WARS unwatchable in the other screen. Head office couldn’t care less.
The dumb jock at the door who trips over his own feet when you call him has won a scholarship to Harvard.
The first five rows are closed in twin one due to a ceiling leak that dates back to the sixties.
A midnight showing of a film about VOLUNTEER JAM featuring the Charlie Daniels Band goes wrong when the good ole’ boys find themselves waiting in the lobby with men in high heels and fishnet stockings. Future showings are segregated with ROCKY HORROR people in the lobby and redneck rockers outside until the movie starts.
The Jolly Rancher candy bags on display do not have sell by dates but I can trace them on the inventory to 1972 without a new delivery.
The thin walls from the bad twinning effort make it possible to relive the light sabre battle during boring parts of NEW YORK, NEW YORK.
HERBIE GOES TO MONTE CARLO in Twin One. THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES TO WASHINGTON in Twin Two.
A man is caught masturbating during a showing HERBIE GOES TO MONTE CARLO.
During a showing of ROCKY HORROR a girl almost gets her eye put out when her boyfriend flung open their umbrella during the rain scene.
Police start monitoring the theatre roof with binoculars looking for drug dealing in the parking lot.
Head office orders budget cuts that require managers to tear all tickets the door during weekdays as there will only be doormen on duty during the weekend.
Negotiations go badly when the projection union demands a large increase per hour. The resulting contract forces the closing of weekday matinees and the resignation of the chief projectionists who no longer has a full-time job as a result.
Food coloring makes the popcorn orange for Halloween weekend. TORSO, CHAINSAW and ROCKY HORROR are all back.
A three way fight breaks out in the lobby when three men in drag all insist on playing the main FRANKENFURTER role in front at ROCKY HORROR. I am summoned to make the all-important decision.
A seventeen year old usher finds a bag full of “fat naked girls†porn magazines in the auditorium. He delays turning them in for hours. A gentleman in a suit comes in to claim them in the evening.
GREASED LIGHTNING with Richard Pryor gets re-released to “new†theatres so white people can see it too.
The first showing in twin one has sound problems. Someone stole the speakers from behind the screen.
The projectionist puts on reel of soft core midnight movie GUMS instead of Walt Disney’s THE RESCUERS for the first matinee of the day.
Six staff members fail to show up Saturday night, some calling in sick. Peter Frampton was live in concert that night.
The local Fire Departments visits ROCKY HORROR due to complaints that torch lighters are being lit up during the “Light at the Frankenstein place†number. Lighters are banned from all future showings.
Rattling in the seats of screen two during the movie turns out to be crab from the nearby swamp that somehow got inside.
What on earth could a KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE really be about?
A man has a tantrum in the lobby when an undercover policeman takes his quaaludes away and flushes them down the toilet. Back-up cops are stunned by the now lacking evidence.
An upset woman starts screaming when her toddler came up from between the rows with a used condom in his hand.
STAR WARS is back and people are starting to bring their own light sabres into the screen and we have to start confiscating them until after the movie due to complaints.
The midnight show fill up prematurely when someone removed the exit door hinges and let the crowd in for free.
The Jewish Defense League threatens to bomb the theatre for showing Vanessa Redgrave in JULIA. We ignore them.
The Jujy Fruits stick to the box and need to be slammed against the counter daily to loosen them up so people refrain from doing so during the film.
I start letting a motorcycle gang into the midnight show for free in order to “keep the peaceâ€. The local cops stay away.
LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR appears to be a seminal film that will become a classic with a timeless disco soundtrack and a social commentary on unfocused lives and promiscuity. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER appears to be kid stuff that will soon be forgotten.
VALENTINO is coming!
VALENTINO is coming!
VALENTINO is coming!
VALENTINO is gone! STAR WARS is back.
I think the laws are different now taking into account that almost all theatres are first run. AMC was mostly forced to sell those that monopolized a booking zone.
During the Cineplex Odeon buy, Sony’s stake in Loews became diluted.
When I worked for AMC all transactions ended in multiples .10, so no nickels or pennies were really needed for change and none need therefore be owed. This was done to speed up transaction time and make cashing up easier. If such a transaction such as the one above occurred, customer service instructions were to give the customer the benefit of the nickel.
My experience with 306 in New York starting in 1985 has no resemblance to anything you mention above. Unprofessional, inexperienced, unreliable and premadonna are words that would best fit most of the projectionists I dealt with.
A handful were among the best projectionists I have ever known and 306 would punish them if they stood up against their incompetent lazy brothers who passed the workload along and so often ruined the show.
They were also hourly paid and made more money than any manager possibly could for working less hours.
So we are agreed on the problem and disagree on the solution. We found that working with companies like AMC and Regal get the cause much farther that suing or giving bad PR. They can only afford to buy so many units and because people should not have to advertise their disabilities, there is no proof of actual use. When pressured, companies will move them along where poeple bitch the most and solve nothing.
Compares to other industries, cinema chains have been extremely cooperative. It is shame AMC is being targeted this way in Arizona because it makes impossible to gain their trust elsewhere again. Soon they will just do like Broadway theatres did and tell us all to f*ck off.
Keep thinking that way and you will win some battles but have already lost the war.
Most people will become disabled in some way before they die withoutt ever once associating themselves with disabled causes. THAT is AMC’s market. Ignore that economic fact and all other efforts are useless.
I have been working with disability groups for twelve years. What is your background?
According to MARQUEE Edward Sparks was General Manager for Paramount-Publix in Florida. He apparently named, what eventually became Florida State Theatres, after himself in the 30’s.
The way the law is written, if you can prove that the disability adjustment creates a financial hardship, you need not do it. No theatre can financially justify AD/subtitling because it is expensive and gets very little use. The law is hasty and poorly written and it hurts disabled people more than the targeted businesses, so getting companies like AMC to cooperate is crucial. That is what makes this group’s efforts so pathetically stupid. AMC is one of the few companies who installed them.
Since 90% of the people who use the system do not consider themselves disabled, AMC could remove them all tomorrow and gain financially from doing so. When the business gets slow, PR be damned. No other theatre chain will bother now.
These lawsuits are even more uselessly frivolous than the hot coffee contingent. This is equivalent to those who sue McDonald because they got fat. DONâ€T EAT AT McDONALDS! Why don’t disabled people rally around AMC’s competitor? Because they didn’t install them anywhere, that’s why. Where is that lawsuit? There is none because there is no law that says they have to.
These disability activists need a reality check and the ability to take control of their own lives and government instead of whining at easy PR targets like AMC. It is a short term strategy that makes it impossible for those who have made inroads with companies like AMC to get them to do the right thing in the future. The best message is to make the system pay off at the box office and they don’t, because for all the whining, most disabled people watch movies at home like everyone else.
Why didn’t they just drive to the other AMC and show financial strength or take on city hall and then someone might take this seriously. I bet you can hear tumbleweeds at the subtitled showings in Arizona anyway and this is all counterproductive posturing by a group that already sold out to their real enemy, City Hall.
By the way, Broadway show giving you a discount for sitting in a specific segregated place is the modern equivalent of the black peanut gallery. At many business you can go in the back entrance on your wheelchair. I am amazed you think this is just dandy and that this lawsuit is not frivolous.
The people in Arizona have bigger fish to fry. A cinema chain with accessibility in one site and not another is being punished. Their competitors who installed nothing are not.
Although their disability point is justified, the approach in Arizona is a stupid as it can get. If AMC removed AD/subtitling from all Arizona theatres they are off the hook, because the laws are written as clear as mud and do not address anything except wheelchair ramps.
Actions such as the one in Arizona ARE the reasons these systems are not being installed elsewhere.
My point is that only those who try to do the right thing get burned by short-sighted disability groups who undermine their own national efforts with local nuisance lawsuits against the very companies who try. The politicians who opposed the local city office elevator because it costs too much are then cheering them on against AMC and the disabled groups are actually greatful to them.
The exclusive reserved performance engagement of a film about a man in love with a pig. Ah, the sixties!
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Although the Ireland plan has been in talks since 2004, contrary to all the press releases it has yet to happen. Also, it will be government funded. The installations so far are in government subsidized theatres only. I work for a company with Irish theatres and they are still talking.
The founder’s family sold Wometco Theatres to KKR in 1984 for peanuts. The company was a ghost of its past as the Florida leader. The Wometco logo disappeared from marquees soon after in spite of real estate holding company names.
The European Arts Alliance plan has yet to start and has distributors financing it through film rental, similar to the way Fox paid for Cinemascope conversions in the 50’s. This is the way it should be done in the U.S.
NO SENSIBLE EXHIBITOR IS PAYING ANYWHERE.
General Cinema entered the South Florida market by buying Loews theatres in the late seventies and doing overnight cheap twinnings. They did not even bother to re-align the seats. GCC, a company that stayed in business during this period thanks to Pepsi bottling profits had, without a doubt, some of the worse theatres in South Florida as a result. They built a few several United Artist clone shoebox multiplexes like Hialeah that lasted a decade before audiences discovered AMC.
Wometco and Loews were always the class acts in Florida. I know because I worked for ABC there.
Lorenzo, you are not doing your homework.
The Ireland digital initiative is to be funded by the government arts council and has yet to happen. NO exhibitor in Ireland is paying. About 80% of the UK digital systems are also government funded. Do you think American tax payers will be happy to pay for digital theatres?
If you worked in South Florida in the late seventies then you would know that the major chains, ABC Florida State (Plitt) and Wometco were in serious financial trouble and for sale. Neither made it through the eighties. A combination of blind bidding, advance guarantees, bad films and dwindling audiences caused partially by VHS, made them unprofitable businesses. Only exhibitors with deep pocket survived the early VHS dip and it was the multiplex that saved the day.
There is nothing in the digital plan that benefits exhibitors and the “fat girls†movies are on youtube for free, where they belong.
You could turn that distib/exhib profit model upside down if you wish. Since distributors get paid over 50% of the total gross, their margin is always higher. Both sides have expenses and both are owned by investors who are greedy for profit.
Distributors buy cheap film stock because the product often lasts two weeks only on screen anyway. As for the notion of digital enhancing long run print wear, what long run?
When exhibitors overbuild, as in the case of the late nineties, the distributors take the opportunity to increase terms on the now competitive market and get higher percentages, making matters worse for their alleged partners. When distributors over-produce crap films, exhibitors find a way to get the films out there and make them work even when better films are available. (see BRATZ right now)
Digital is simply a distributor cost saving that does not benefit the exhibitor or the movie-goer in any way.
Distributors save millions by not shipping prints around the world. Digital systems do not run themselves. You still need a trained technicians.
The problem with bad sound is the result of cheap film stock purchsed by distributors cutting corners.
Exhibitors would be dumb to pay for digital when the public cannot tell the difference if the print is good.
The North Miami circa 1958.
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The LOEWS 170th Street Theatre marquee.
View link
With the exception of National Amusements (Showcase) you will find that very few cinema operators own their buildings. One of Cineplex Odeon’s questionable practices was to sell off those they did own and report the sale as “income” during bad years and not letting stockholders know that this new income was the result of a permanent asset loss.
It was the lack of Ziegfeld ownership that kept Garth Drabinsky from twinning the place.
Isabelle, MARIENBAD is on DVD and VHS and you can order it on amazon.com
You get a glimpse of this theatre as the Cinerama during the revolution scene in the Russian classic I AM CUBA.
I don’t think it ever was either.
Slayak, I should mention that the midnight movie was social ritual with a very large regular weekly crowd who, although stoned, were rarely trouble. They often came to see the same films over and over again and always left WOODSTOCK after Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner. It was better attended on Friday & Saturday than most mainstream films were all week.
The STAR WARS groupies were younger and already a new generation. Although we did not have any special sound system the movie was still a huge hit. DOLBY did NOT make STAR WARS a hit.
The merchandising was trickling out in stores and not on sale at the theatre itself. By 1978 when JAWS 2 opened we had shark teeth keychains, earrings, bracelets and whole shark jaw sets on sale at the stand.
There was a Lenox Theatre showing movies in 1968.
TheatreBuff, I think it was a matter of loss of faith in the business that lead to the fall in standards. Hollywood was marketing to adults only at awards time (that still happens), there was product shortage, and audiences were not buying what they were expected to buy.
Large theatres chains such as ABC and General Cinemas treated the theatres as loss leader cash cows for their other investments. Since film rentals was always paid late, the money came in handy in between and no one really found out just how bad the losses were for months. One blockbuster and all was forgiven. I don’t think anyone expected the theatre end to ever recover but multiplexes, better marketing studies (and ironically VHS) saved the day.
I don’t think audiences were any worse than in the sixties, there were just less of them and even less of the mainstream folk as well.
Ken, The Earl Carrol did show movies between shows in 1928-1930 including, ironically, premiering the film version of RIO RITA in 1929. It also may have showed films as the Casino in 1934.
In the mid seventies, if you were working for a theatre chain it was all about cutting costs and not reinvesting in theatres. The industry seemed doomed due to a move to alternative entertainment by the core audience and the over 30’s had been lost along with the hippie product of the late sixties, early seventies. With the exception of the occasional Woody Allen or Barbra Streisand hit, most audiences were young, reckless and rude. It was mostly about managing an unstable audience and staff in a crumbling building.
Here are some memories of my mid-seventies period as a manager around 1977 that may spark your imagination:
No cleaning between shows as there was only one usher budgeted at a time.
The cleaners quit every time we showed THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW at midnight.
An x-rated musical version of ALICE IN WONDERLAND stunned the crowd.
A seriously misinformed local cop threatens to close the theatre for letting kids in alone to watch PG films.
Due to the way movies were booked, Streisand’s A STAR IS BORN continues to plays forever even after holding-over was unwarranted. Staff sings along to the empty seats.
The head office threatens to fire any manager seen tearing tickets at the door and therefore violating the checks and balances that keep everyone honest.
Although it had been a critical and audience hit in New York for months, locals thought they had discovered ROCKY themselves.
The midnight show of THE LOLLIPOP GIRLS IN HARD CANDY in 3D turned out to be hard core porn in 3D! With the little red and blue glasses to boot. The local college students pack the place.
At this beautiful theatre that once showed SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, a double feature of TORSO and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.
Food coloring makes the popcorn green for St. Patrick’s Day
The odor of pot smoke permeates the auditorium so strongly at the midnight show that the senior citizen matinee audience the following day comes out stoned.
A pipe break in the men’s room floods the lobby on a Saturday night.
In spite all the movies above, the locals get upset at the dirty language in SLAP SHOT and the posters for NASTY HABITS .
A rat has moved in under the popcorn machine and runs out to fetch whenever popcorn is dropped on the floor behind the stand. The staff have named him BEN.
The new pizza slices have cheese that sticks to the plastic wrapper we cook them in but they sell anyway.
BLACK SUNDAY is coming!
BLACK SUNDAY is coming!
BLACK SUNDAY is coming!
BLACK SUNDAY is coming!
Two weeks later- BLACK SUNDAY is gone!
The promiscuous stoner girl working behind the stand has been forced to quit by her mother. It turns out she is only 14 years old and working with false I.D.
ANNIE HALL opens and the audience watches quietly but buys no popcorn.
Two doctors patrons get into a fist fight when they disagree on what first aid should be administered to a customer having a some sort of attack.
Our film buyer refuses too book Bob Marley’s reggae film THE HARDER THEY COME as a midnight show because she insists it is gay porn.
The midnight show of MIDNIGHT COWBOY comes in labeled wrong and the reels play in the wrong order with opening credits in the middle of the film. No one complains.
An usher finds a heart, a liver and part of a lung on the auditorium floor after the movie. Police are called and discover they are plastic replicas left behind by a local medical student.
A stoned-out midnight crowd fall asleep during Monty Python’s JABBERWOCKY. We have to go around waking them up after the film and sending them home.
The drive-in will get THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, A BRIDGE TOO FAR and THE DEEP this summer and we’re stuck with THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT and some kiddie sci-fi flick called STAR WARS.
New “Light in the dark footballs†(a flashlight shaped like a football) on sale at the concession stand. You can now play football at night!
A new ending for EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC on week two upsets a couple who actually came back to see it again. Tumbleweeds practically roll by during the second week.
A customer’s car has been swallowed by a sink hole in the parking lot.
SENSURROUND installed for ROLLERCOASTER makes STAR WARS unwatchable in the other screen. Head office couldn’t care less.
The dumb jock at the door who trips over his own feet when you call him has won a scholarship to Harvard.
The first five rows are closed in twin one due to a ceiling leak that dates back to the sixties.
A midnight showing of a film about VOLUNTEER JAM featuring the Charlie Daniels Band goes wrong when the good ole’ boys find themselves waiting in the lobby with men in high heels and fishnet stockings. Future showings are segregated with ROCKY HORROR people in the lobby and redneck rockers outside until the movie starts.
The Jolly Rancher candy bags on display do not have sell by dates but I can trace them on the inventory to 1972 without a new delivery.
The thin walls from the bad twinning effort make it possible to relive the light sabre battle during boring parts of NEW YORK, NEW YORK.
HERBIE GOES TO MONTE CARLO in Twin One. THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES TO WASHINGTON in Twin Two.
A man is caught masturbating during a showing HERBIE GOES TO MONTE CARLO.
During a showing of ROCKY HORROR a girl almost gets her eye put out when her boyfriend flung open their umbrella during the rain scene.
Police start monitoring the theatre roof with binoculars looking for drug dealing in the parking lot.
Head office orders budget cuts that require managers to tear all tickets the door during weekdays as there will only be doormen on duty during the weekend.
Negotiations go badly when the projection union demands a large increase per hour. The resulting contract forces the closing of weekday matinees and the resignation of the chief projectionists who no longer has a full-time job as a result.
Food coloring makes the popcorn orange for Halloween weekend. TORSO, CHAINSAW and ROCKY HORROR are all back.
A three way fight breaks out in the lobby when three men in drag all insist on playing the main FRANKENFURTER role in front at ROCKY HORROR. I am summoned to make the all-important decision.
A seventeen year old usher finds a bag full of “fat naked girls†porn magazines in the auditorium. He delays turning them in for hours. A gentleman in a suit comes in to claim them in the evening.
GREASED LIGHTNING with Richard Pryor gets re-released to “new†theatres so white people can see it too.
The first showing in twin one has sound problems. Someone stole the speakers from behind the screen.
The projectionist puts on reel of soft core midnight movie GUMS instead of Walt Disney’s THE RESCUERS for the first matinee of the day.
Six staff members fail to show up Saturday night, some calling in sick. Peter Frampton was live in concert that night.
The local Fire Departments visits ROCKY HORROR due to complaints that torch lighters are being lit up during the “Light at the Frankenstein place†number. Lighters are banned from all future showings.
Rattling in the seats of screen two during the movie turns out to be crab from the nearby swamp that somehow got inside.
What on earth could a KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE really be about?
A man has a tantrum in the lobby when an undercover policeman takes his quaaludes away and flushes them down the toilet. Back-up cops are stunned by the now lacking evidence.
An upset woman starts screaming when her toddler came up from between the rows with a used condom in his hand.
STAR WARS is back and people are starting to bring their own light sabres into the screen and we have to start confiscating them until after the movie due to complaints.
The midnight show fill up prematurely when someone removed the exit door hinges and let the crowd in for free.
The Jewish Defense League threatens to bomb the theatre for showing Vanessa Redgrave in JULIA. We ignore them.
The Jujy Fruits stick to the box and need to be slammed against the counter daily to loosen them up so people refrain from doing so during the film.
I start letting a motorcycle gang into the midnight show for free in order to “keep the peaceâ€. The local cops stay away.
LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR appears to be a seminal film that will become a classic with a timeless disco soundtrack and a social commentary on unfocused lives and promiscuity. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER appears to be kid stuff that will soon be forgotten.
VALENTINO is coming!
VALENTINO is coming!
VALENTINO is coming!
VALENTINO is gone! STAR WARS is back.
I think the laws are different now taking into account that almost all theatres are first run. AMC was mostly forced to sell those that monopolized a booking zone.
During the Cineplex Odeon buy, Sony’s stake in Loews became diluted.
When I worked for AMC all transactions ended in multiples .10, so no nickels or pennies were really needed for change and none need therefore be owed. This was done to speed up transaction time and make cashing up easier. If such a transaction such as the one above occurred, customer service instructions were to give the customer the benefit of the nickel.
This has been AMC policy since at least 1985.
My experience with 306 in New York starting in 1985 has no resemblance to anything you mention above. Unprofessional, inexperienced, unreliable and premadonna are words that would best fit most of the projectionists I dealt with.
A handful were among the best projectionists I have ever known and 306 would punish them if they stood up against their incompetent lazy brothers who passed the workload along and so often ruined the show.
They were also hourly paid and made more money than any manager possibly could for working less hours.
So we are agreed on the problem and disagree on the solution. We found that working with companies like AMC and Regal get the cause much farther that suing or giving bad PR. They can only afford to buy so many units and because people should not have to advertise their disabilities, there is no proof of actual use. When pressured, companies will move them along where poeple bitch the most and solve nothing.
Compares to other industries, cinema chains have been extremely cooperative. It is shame AMC is being targeted this way in Arizona because it makes impossible to gain their trust elsewhere again. Soon they will just do like Broadway theatres did and tell us all to f*ck off.
Keep thinking that way and you will win some battles but have already lost the war.
Most people will become disabled in some way before they die withoutt ever once associating themselves with disabled causes. THAT is AMC’s market. Ignore that economic fact and all other efforts are useless.
I have been working with disability groups for twelve years. What is your background?
According to MARQUEE, vol.30, its nightclub names included, Club Z, Club 1235, Deco’s, Club passion, Paragon and Glam Slam.e
The deco lobby was destroyed in 1979, then rebuilt somewhat in 1983 .
I finally found the Publix-Sparks connection.
According to MARQUEE Edward Sparks was General Manager for Paramount-Publix in Florida. He apparently named, what eventually became Florida State Theatres, after himself in the 30’s.
The way the law is written, if you can prove that the disability adjustment creates a financial hardship, you need not do it. No theatre can financially justify AD/subtitling because it is expensive and gets very little use. The law is hasty and poorly written and it hurts disabled people more than the targeted businesses, so getting companies like AMC to cooperate is crucial. That is what makes this group’s efforts so pathetically stupid. AMC is one of the few companies who installed them.
Since 90% of the people who use the system do not consider themselves disabled, AMC could remove them all tomorrow and gain financially from doing so. When the business gets slow, PR be damned. No other theatre chain will bother now.
These lawsuits are even more uselessly frivolous than the hot coffee contingent. This is equivalent to those who sue McDonald because they got fat. DONâ€T EAT AT McDONALDS! Why don’t disabled people rally around AMC’s competitor? Because they didn’t install them anywhere, that’s why. Where is that lawsuit? There is none because there is no law that says they have to.
These disability activists need a reality check and the ability to take control of their own lives and government instead of whining at easy PR targets like AMC. It is a short term strategy that makes it impossible for those who have made inroads with companies like AMC to get them to do the right thing in the future. The best message is to make the system pay off at the box office and they don’t, because for all the whining, most disabled people watch movies at home like everyone else.
Why didn’t they just drive to the other AMC and show financial strength or take on city hall and then someone might take this seriously. I bet you can hear tumbleweeds at the subtitled showings in Arizona anyway and this is all counterproductive posturing by a group that already sold out to their real enemy, City Hall.
By the way, Broadway show giving you a discount for sitting in a specific segregated place is the modern equivalent of the black peanut gallery. At many business you can go in the back entrance on your wheelchair. I am amazed you think this is just dandy and that this lawsuit is not frivolous.
The people in Arizona have bigger fish to fry. A cinema chain with accessibility in one site and not another is being punished. Their competitors who installed nothing are not.
Although their disability point is justified, the approach in Arizona is a stupid as it can get. If AMC removed AD/subtitling from all Arizona theatres they are off the hook, because the laws are written as clear as mud and do not address anything except wheelchair ramps.
Actions such as the one in Arizona ARE the reasons these systems are not being installed elsewhere.
My point is that only those who try to do the right thing get burned by short-sighted disability groups who undermine their own national efforts with local nuisance lawsuits against the very companies who try. The politicians who opposed the local city office elevator because it costs too much are then cheering them on against AMC and the disabled groups are actually greatful to them.
Morons indeed.