Adventures in Running a Movie Theatre

PART THREE: UNIONS AND POPCORN

One of my duties was booking the films, putting two features together
that were r complimentary in one way or another. You're very popular
when you run a theatre. Your friends come by for free movies. I wsn't
there the whole time the theatre was open of course, eventually having
two managers do the location managing.

The projectionist is a key person of course, and this was at the time
when films were on film and shown on reels, with changeover. I soon
became unhappy with the projection we were getting. He was not
checking the focus often enough, or keeping the light balanced (arc
lamps back then.) He missed too many reel changeovers. On the very
first show on the very first day he started to show Saturday Night
Fever in Scope, which is was not. Grease was and he got the two mixed
up. We shut it down and started again. Not a good omen. I decided to
call in his union boss after a few days with no improvement. It was
obvious he was unmotivated and felt protected by his union. I arranged
for the union boss to be brought to me and not be allowed to go to the
projection booth on his arrival.

I sat in the back with the man from the union and he could not deny
the missed changeovers and bad focus for long periods. I didn't have
to get tough as a result, but was prepared to if I had to. We didn't
put in all that work just to have some lazy union jerk harm it. The
man then went upstairs and after a while came down and told me there'd
be no more problems. And thee weren't, which puzzled me- why the
problems in the first place? All it takes is a little effort.

A lot of effort went into our popcorn. I decided we'd have the best
theatre popcorn in town. We studied what made good popcorn and went
about getting the best equipment and ingredients. Word got around and
soon we had people who lived or worked in the neighborhood, bus and
taxi drivers coming in just to buy popcorn. Eventually we had to put a
popcorn machine in the large ticket booth outside so people wouldn't
have to go all the way in. I contacted a radio station and told them I
wanted to do a promotion where our one theatre would challenge the two
big chains to a popcorn taste test, with theatre patrons doing the
testing at the radio station. The chains could use the popcorn of any
theatre of their choice. They refused to take the bait.

Things were going well, until there was a bus strike. Being downtown,
our theatre suffered as people could not get downtown or even take the
subway with its nearby stop. After some months, our losses grew to the
point where, when an offer was made by an American concern to buy the
theatre and turn it into a nightclub venue, the offer was accepred by
the building's owners. Today it is called the Spectrum.

(end)