Sex, drugs and Gandalf: Confessions of a movie theater employee

Some jobs immediately ingratiate you to anyone who has a shared experience. Working at a movie theater is one of them.

I worked at movie theaters from age 14 until I left college, starting as a lowly usher in Sydney, Australia, and ending up as the senior manager of a theater in North Carolina. The settings couldn’t be further apart, but they shared something in common: Movie theaters are weird-ass places.

What better way to kick off Oscar weekend than to revisit some of my most cherished behind-the-scenes movie memories?

When there are two ushers on duty, you usually split responsibilities: One person stands at “drop” to tear the tickets; the other roams theater to theater cleaning up after shows and making sure everything is in working order.

In Sydney, I worked at a 16-theater cinema that had three levels. On these kinds of nights, you have to find shortcuts wherever possible if you’re working alone. Thankfully I knew I could avoid Theater 14 all night. Just one ticket had been sold to Hannibal all day, for the first showing — and nobody else had been in there. No cleaning, no checking — just let that thing roll.

It was the end of the evening, just past midnight, and my last task of the day was going to each theater to see if anything needed attention before we closed.

I finally made it to Theater 14, and I heard a small voice:

“Hello? Hello. Sir? Sir, I’ve been here all day.”

An incredibly nice woman in her 80s was sitting in a wheelchair about midway up the theater. Now, the only way to get into the theater if you were in a wheelchair was to be brought through the elevator behind the screen. It turns out the morning security guard took her into the first showing of Hannibal, which started at 9:35 a.m., and forgot she was in there.

This poor woman was stuck in a theater, unable to get out, forced to watch FIVE STRAIGHT SHOWINGS OF Hannibal. No meals, no bathroom breaks — just Hannibal over, and over, and over again.

Naturally, I freaked out. I felt awful for this poor woman, and it had fallen on me for slacking off and never going into the theater. This woman was so kind she asked if she needed to pay for another four tickets. The manager gave her 10 free movie passes and paid for a cab to get her home.

Everyone was so mortified they forgot to reprimand me for never checking the theater.

Movie sex happens. I’d estimate I’ve broken up no fewer than 30 amorous couples over the years. One time it was no fewer than 12 people all participating in a back-row sex line that extended from one end of the theater to the other. It comes with the territory — pun absolutely intended — but I never imagined having to break up a couple in the front row during a sold-out showing of The Passion of the Christ.

Until I did.

When this kind of situation happens, managers are drawing straws immediately. Nobody wants to deal with breaking up theater sex, especially in a case like this. When we received word about the situation from an irate customer, it fell on me to do it.

Usually, movie sex is easy to spot. Back row, typically a movie on the last week of its run, so the theater is almost empty. Easy. For the most part, people were discreet about it. They didn’t want to get caught, so the second they saw you, they’d zip up and leave.

However, this incident was very, very different. This couple had no desire to be quiet or attempt to hide anything, which was made infinitely worse by the fact that The Passion of the Christ contains so much screaming during the torture scenes. So I’m in there, flashlight in hand, and it’s like finding a moaning needle in a haystack. Patrons are annoyed I’m in there with a flashlight disrupting the movie, but finally, I see a woman waving her arms in the second row, along with the movie-sexers right in front of her.

I say, “excuse me.” No response. I cough. Still no response. Their sex sounds and Jesus’ screams intertwined in a macabre symphony I will never forget.

At this point, you have two choices as the sex breaker-upper: Physically tap someone to get their attention, which is gross — or get right up on them with the flashlight so it’s impossible to ignore. I went for option two. They still didn’t stop.

Finally, I poked the woman on the back with the flashlight, and she turned around as if I was the disruptive one, having the audacity to break up their coitus. They left and asked for a refund on the way out.

This happened relatively early into my theater-working career, so please don’t judge. I’ve decided to redact the name of the fairly famous actor I almost murdered because 1) I’d rather not revisit this in the public forum, and 2) I almost killed the man.

The theater I worked at in Sydney is where all the major Australian premieres took place. Working a premiere night was always fun, because while the stress was high and everyone was trying to be on their Ps and Qs — it also gave you a chance to see movie stars, which was especially fun for a 16-year-old movie nerd like me.

This was one of those premieres, but first, let’s back up two weeks:

It was an exceptionally slow weekday afternoon. Overstaffed for nobody. I was working concessions and tasked with staying in the back making Choc Tops all day. A bulbous scoop of vanilla ice cream coated in thick chocolate, the Choc Top is an Australian movie theater institution and we were tasked with making dozens of them in advance to prepare for busy weekends.

There I was, making the cones, while my coworker Justin popped popcorn. Then, the dares started. “Make the next batch of popcorn with double salt,” I’d say. “Quadruple-dip the next cone,” he’d retort.

Then it got bad.

“Put that plastic Gandalf figurine in the cone,” Justin said, gesturing to a toy that came with the kids meal he had for lunch. Trying to maintain my composure while laughing, I crafted the scoop of ice cream around the 1.5-inch Gandalf. I dipped it, wrapped it, dropped it in the deep freeze and didn’t think about it again.

Fast forward to premiere night. It’s a big movie we’re all excited about, and three of its biggest stars are at the theater. Ten minutes into the showing, we’re cleaning up the concessions stand, and I’m the lone cashier.

“Excuse me,” says an unmistakably soft baritone voice, “I found this in my Choc Top.”

It’s [name redacted], standing there holding the Gandalf figure. And it’s funny — so, so funny — but I can’t even begin to laugh because I’m terrified of what will happen if my managers find out. I had to think of something fast.

“Oh, that means you won a free popcorn,” I say, handing him a large bag.

“I appreciate that, mate, but you should really tell your managers this is a crap idea. I almost choked on the bloody thing. Could have killed me.”

I told him I’d pass along the message.

I’d done it. I had made it to senior manager of a theater in North Carolina, and this was my first Saturday opening by myself — a slow and easy morning before the next manager arrived — or so I thought.

This was a time before digital projectors, and physical movie prints were moved between theaters all the time as a way to optimize the houses. Busier movies would get bumped into larger theaters; underperforming movies would go down.

On this particular morning, around 40 parents and children had gleefully arrived at the theater to watch Martian Child. Little did I know the general manager had ordered a print move the night before, but failed to update the movie schedule to make sure people ended up in the right theaters.

So I’m standing in the lobby at 10:40 a.m., pleased with how we handled the first rush and shooting the shit with the employees. I see a grandmother walk out of Martian Child. Then a mother, then another, then one in tears followed by a father who looks like he’s ready to punch me.

I can’t recall everything they yelled, but one stands out in my mind:

“HOW DO I EXPLAIN THAT TO MY KIDS?”

It turns out Martian Child had been far busier the night before and We Own the Night had been underperforming. If you haven’t seen We Own the Night, it opens with an extended sequence of Joaquin Phoenix going down on Eva Mendes. Parents who brought their kids to see a tale about a child who believes he is from Mars instead learned the effective way to perform cunnilingus. Probably a good life skill, but parents and grandparents were furious nonetheless.

I tried to explain what happened, but nobody wanted to hear it. I gave everyone refunds and two free movie tickets, which got me yelled at by my general manager. Even though she screwed everything up in the first place. I never trusted her again.

Being a good manager requires understanding your staff’s strengths and weaknesses on any given night.

At 9 p.m. on a surprisingly busy night, I asked an employee (who we’ll call Jane) to clean the popcorn popper. This is usually a task that takes 20-30 minutes, but I wanted a deep clean before the weekend and gave her plenty of time to do this.

“Absolutely Mr. Dator, I’m just going to take a quick break, then I’ll get to it.”

I went back to my office to count money and prepare for the end of the night. Shortly before 10, I received a call.

“You need to come look at the popper.”

Little did I know that Jane used her break to run outside, see her boyfriend, and do three rails of coke in the parking lot. To her credit, Jane listened to me and deep cleaned the popcorn popper, but what I didn’t know was that she was going to take it apart. All of it. Like, every single piece.

Springs, screws, nuts and bolts. Kettles, sheet metal, hinges and flanges — all strewn across multiple countertops and polished to perfection. Jane hadn’t just cleaned the popcorn popper; she dismantled it using borrowed tools from the projectionist’s booth.

I called my general manager, who brusquely told me to “get it back together.” It took seven hours to reassemble it. I finished at sunrise and had to be back at 10 a.m.

At least the popper was clean.

Sometimes the most shocking things happen when you least expect it. This happened to me in Sydney during an otherwise quiet night in the box office. I was bored, playing Snake on my Nokia 3310 when a man came screaming past me, both literally and figuratively. He was yelling that the FBI was chasing him, a curious choice considering we were in Australia.

His screams echoed through the cinema as he ran upstairs and right above me in a cafe area that overlooked the entrance. Security was in pursuit, trying to figure out what was going on, but little did any of us know the screaming man had taken an immense amount of PCP shortly before his arrival.

The last thing I heard him say was, “Get away from me!” before he jumped from the balcony and landed right in front of me onto the tile floor — instantly shattering his tibias or fibulas, maybe both, in multiple places.

All I could do was call the ambulance. Another manager had to mop up the blood. I hope that guy is OK.