Reel Talk: Show Business

 by Adam Riske and Sonia Mansfield

Sonia and Adam chat about their experiences working in movie theaters and video stores.

Sonia: I’m not just someone who loves going to the movie theater. I used to work in movie theaters, too.

I worked full-time at the movie theater to pay for college, which I attended part-time. That means I worked for a long time at movie theaters.

I worked at several different theaters, including Mann Theatres (when that existed) and Cinemark (back when they still had the Front Row Joe mascot), but they all had a few things in common:

• Customers would complain about the prices.
• Employees would complain about the uniforms.
• And there would be a small group of employees that really love movies.

I know that’s why I started working there. I spent a lot of my free time at the movie theater. It thought it would be nice to get paid to be there. Plus, I could see free movies, which made my meager pay seem so much more.

Adam, I know you worked at a video store. What made you want to get a job there?

Adam: I got a job at Blockbuster Video when I was 17 and entering my senior year of high school. Prior to that, I had worked at a grocery store, an office supplies store, and ONE WEEKEND at my local mall theater (which I quit because the work environment was terrible and I didn’t want going to the movies ruined for me). From what I remember, I was in to rent Go and saw that they were hiring and asked for an application. I just wanted a job where I was around movies. It was a no-brainer for them to hire me. I was a cool dude who could make that place into something hip. It was a great experience working at my local Blockbuster off and on from 1999 to 2003. I would go back to work there during college breaks and summer vacation for a few years. The environment was great, I got to talk about movies all day, my co-workers were not as cool as me so I was like prom king of that place, and I got five free rentals every week, which I used for new releases and to watch older titles in my first wave of knowing classic movies pre-1980. It’s still my favorite job I’ve ever had despite being in my current industry for 20+ years and at the same company for almost 15 of them. The only bad part about Blockbuster was it didn’t pay well at all, but I didn’t care. I was having fun and my parents were happy I was working and saving a little bit of money, which then all went to keeping Tricia happy. I should send her an invoice. We dated for 2 years, and she left me for a waiter at Medieval Times.

Among my Blockbuster Video era (era) highlights:
• Someone pooped in the store but not in the bathroom and I refused to clean it
• I threw a powdered donut hole clear across the store and hit a fellow employee in the head, resulting in the most satisfying powder poof anyone has ever seen in their lives
• I used to hide in the drop box and pull tapes out of people’s hands when they started to drop the tape in
• I set up an obstacle course in the store and got written up
• I made a construction paper “green mile” on the floor leading to the new release wall to celebrate the release of The Green Mile on VHS and DVD and was threatened with a write-up for it
• People used to hover over me to see if a copy of The Sixth Sense was returned as I emptied the drop box. This lasted for weeks.
• My store’s customer base LOVED Ashley Judd. She was like queen bee of actresses at that place.
• I refused to check out video game consoles because it was too much work and that’s not what I was there for - - I was there for movies.
• I would ignore customer’s late fees if the customer looked like they would get mad at me for asking.

What were the most totemic movies/experiences from when you were working at the theaters? Like, which movies played forever? Were there anyone people hated and got mad about? What were some of your favorite/least favorite things about working there?

Sonia: First of all, Tricia, girl, what were you thinking? A waiter at Medieval Times? He wasn’t even a knight? He probably won her over by calling her m’lady all the time. Her loss.

I really loved my movie theater job, too, for similar reasons. The staff was mostly people my age, and I got to be around movies all the time. I was a shy teenager, and the theater really helped me come out of my shell and find my people.

Some of my movie theater highlights:

• I got the people in a very long line for 1989’s Batman to do the wave.
• One of my favorite things was just a shift in which I ran the projection booth. That’s right, I was a certified projectionist, and I’d have entire shifts in which I did nothing but thread film through projectors. I loved the clicking sound that they made. So satisfying.
• Inspired by Dead Again, whenever a coworker would do something I didn’t like, I’d say, “This … is for you” and I would chase them with scissors.
• Some movies had really fun songs over the end credits, and the theater would turn into a dance party. I remember dancing with my coworker Dan to “Heartbreak Hotel” at the end of Postcards from the Edge and getting a round of applause from some customers.
• Another Dan story, because he brought out a carefree version of me … One night, Dan and I were closing the theater, meaning we had to stay until the last movie got out. It was a warm night, and we had the front doors open. Across the street from the theater was a fancy seafood restaurant that often hosted weddings. This night, there was a pretty loud wedding reception. We were both listening to the music and pretending we were there. Finally, Dan convinced me that we should bring the couple a wedding gift. We filled up a massive trash bag with popcorn and crashed their reception. The couple said they loved movie theater popcorn and invited us to stay. We had to get back to work, but we did stay for a dance I like to imagine that this couple has a photo of these random movie theater employees in their polyester vests and bowties gettin’ down on the dance floor to Kool and The Gang’s “Celebration.”
• A customer once asked me, seriously, if they needed to see the other Apollo movies to understand Apollo 13.
• A woman yelled in my face and poked me in the chest because her kids snuck into Nixon, when she bought them tickets for Ace Ventura 2. I told her, “The theater isn’t your babysitter. They snuck into Nixon. Are you afraid they’re gonna learn something?”
• We had a customer called “The Ankle grabber” who would crawl on the ground in an aisle and grab women’s ankles. The women would scream, and he would get up and run out of the theater. This happened multiple times, and we never caught him. We also had one we called “The Mad Whacker” and you can guess what he used to do. Gross.
• A brawl broke out in the lobby and someone smashed the Weekend at Bernie’s standee. One of my coworkers screamed, “Bernie noooooo!” We made fun of him for weeks.
• One time I lied to a customer and told him the 10 pm screening of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation was canceled, because I was so tired and wanted to go home early. I felt kinda bad about it. He was the only customer to come in for it. Also, it was February.

The summer of 1994 was the busiest movie season I can remember. We had The Lion King and Forrest Gump, and those movies sold out for months. This is before you could pick out your seats online. This is before you could even buy tickets in advance. You could only buy the tickets for that day, and we were cash only. Isn’t that wild? I was an assistant manager, and I spent my days basically doing crowd work, letting people in line to buy tickets know how full the theater was, directing people to the correct lines, answering questions, stuff like that. I actually lost my voice one day, and the manager assigned one of the floorstaff to be my voice. It was his job that day to repeat what I whispered to him. It was interesting to witness how customers would respond to what I was saying but it was coming from a man. They were a lot nicer to him.

Also, to answer your question, both The Lion King and Forrest Gump played at my theater for more than a year, which means I saw those movies countless times. And, I had to listen to the soundtracks for those movies for more than a year in the lobby. The Lion King, in particular, is burned into my brain. I have a real soft spot for that movie, and I could probably recite entire scenes from memory.

By the way, when I was working at this theater, my roommate was working at Blockbuster. We were either seeing free movies in the theater or renting them. It was the best of times.

Adam, did you have go-to movies that y’all would play in the store? When my roommate worked there, the corporate mandate was to play these weird compilations that promoted movies and music. She had Quad City DJ’s “C'Mon N' Ride It (The Train)” stuck in her head for months.

Adam: We were only allowed to watch real movies on Sundays, which was a shift I used to work, and the rule was it must be a movie from the Kids section. I remember we watched The Dark Crystal and a few other movies of that ilk. We felt cool. Like John Cusack in High Fidelity. It helped that our assistant manager, Russ, oversaw that shift and he would always get drunk the night before and hide in the office most of the day. He got fired for stealing DVD sell-thru copies of Erin Brockovich. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Our store manager, Gordy (yes, that was his name), blocked Russ from walking out of the store with his bicycle and was all “Open the backpack Russ” and Russ was like “Get out of my way” and then Gordy grabbed Russ' bike wheel like “Show’s over.” Gordy became like a folk hero after that. You would have liked him. He had a Kiefer Sutherland thing going. He didn’t say “Shit Fuck Dammit” like Kiefer in Mirrors but I did hear him yell “MutherfuckinshitBALLLLLSSSS!!” when a soda crate full of broken-down VHS covers (which we would repurpose for Previously Viewed Tapes later) fell off a shelf and spilled all over the floor. They were sorted alphabetically before the fall, thus the cursing from Gordy.

We used to play the in-store preview tapes all the time. They were usually an hour, and we had about three at a time to rotate through. They honestly weren’t that bad. They were kind of like friends after a while. I’ve looked on YouTube and eBay to see if any are available from the years I worked at Blockbuster, but I’ve come up short. I would love to rewatch them again. My favorite bit was being introduced to the Carl Thomas song “I Wish,” which I still love to this day. Fun Fact: When “I Wish” would be on and a customer would come up to rent something, I would pause the tape, so I didn’t miss any of “I Wish.”

Can we talk about Front Row Joe? Tell me everything about Front Row Joe. Did audiences like him? Which was the Front Row Joe video that stuck with you? I went on a run a few years ago where I liked watching Movie Theater Policy Videos on YouTube (no wonder I’m single) and Front Row Joe was a real find.

Sonia: RIP Front Row Joe. I don’t know if he’s actually dead, but he’s dead to Cinemark now. For people who don’t know, Front Row Joe was a cartoon short that would play before the movie. It usually featured a little cute song. It had a cast of characters, including Front Row Joe’s girlfriend, Popcorn Penny, and some jerk named Clyde, who talks all through the movie. Oh, and they’re all cats. I never understand the name.Only a psycho wants to sit in the front row.

You’d think that employees would grow to hate Front Row Joe, but we actually liked him. I think it’s because other theatres didn’t have anything like him. When you hit a milestone work anniversary you’d get some sort of Front Row Joe swag. I still have a magnet and a blanket with Front Row Joe on them. And, once a year, the Front Row Joe mascot costume would arrive, and someone would work a shift wearing it. You’d hang out in the lobby and say hi to people, stuff like that. You better believe I was first in line to wear it. It smelled bad in that costume, but it was fun to be silly with customers. And, of course, there was Front Row Joe After Dark. Oh, the things he would do when customers weren’t around.

It’s time to roll the credits. Thanks for sharing your Blockbuster stories with me, Adam.

Now we want to hear from y’all, readers. Did you work at a movie theater or video store? Share your stories. There really is no business like show business.