The Theatre Business Is Often Crazy

It's 7:35 AM as I write this. Why is that?

Well, we start on Wednesday, where 7 Harry Potter prints and 4 Walk the Line prints come in at 1:30 AM. Building a print requires nearly an hour of your time. Earlier, we got our print of Good Night, and Good Luck. Tomorrow, somewhere out there, a print of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang awaits to open at our theatre.

All of these prints need to get watched before the public sees them. So you have to coordinate that.

You have to move all the prints to their new homes. I work at a 27-screen theatre. You have to not only move the prints, but possibly be aware that there are some glitches that might not allow a certain print to play in a certain theatre, among other considerations, as you clean the projectors out for the night.

We have 10 prints leaving the theatre this weekend. Normally, we'd break every one of those down, but this is a different night because of the sheer overload of work that needs to get done. Watching the prints are a priority.

On top of that, we have to start our round of Thursday night shows. We hope several movies get no customers at all so that we can either break a print down early or move it early. People go to the stupidest crap on Thursday nights. You start a movie for two people who show up 10 minutes late for a Chicken Little. Or, like a couple of weeks ago, fucking Roll Bounce.

But throw this in the mix: A sneak of Yours, Mine, and Ours that we have to break down after the show, cutting into valuable after-hours time. The guy shows up before you're finished and claims that it should have already been broken down because it's supposed to be on a plane by 11:00 PM. These guys think that people actually believe that kind of bullshit. These guys are one wrong word away from being thrashed, and they don't know it. Most of the time, they manage to tiptoe the high-wire of not getting their ass kicked.

But wait, throw this monkey-wrench into the formula: I have to pick up Kiss Kiss at another theatre. A theatre that opened this movie just last week and are now getting rid of it. The same print we had in our possession during our own sneak and they picked up, I'm now re-picking up. I have to also put our brand of cues on the print so that the lights will go down. This eats up considerable time.

Oh, and you have a huge mess that accumulates during the entire day. Cans of now-empty reels need to be shelved, tons of papers need to be thrown away, instructions for the next shift need to be written and, hopefully, understood. And on top of that, I still have to watch a print. And your manager tells you that hourly employees can't get overtime, so next week's barrage of Thanksgiving releases will have to be covered by people who don't usually watch bullshit like In the Mix. And who, frankly, you can't much trust to watch a print right.

Anyway, that's why I write this early in the morning. I have some sort of third, fourth wind and some McDonald's breakfast leading the way. And when I go to sleep, I have to hear people outside of my apartment going to work, and cars honking incessantly. Please stop the madness...please...