It’s A Suggestion Not A Review: Burnin’ Down the House – Part II

Dave Sikula, getting carried away again.

In our last thrilling chapter, I began to discuss how I nearly burned down Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

I was going to pick up by talking about waiting in line for movies. In these days of camping out days in advance to get into Hall H at the San Diego Comic-Con or to buy something useless on Black Friday, waiting for a few hours at a movie theatre may not seem novel, but in the ‘70s, it was. As I say, I was going to start with that, but I’m finding my memory isn’t what I think it is.

The first time I remember really waiting for a movie was either 1973 or 1974 for The Exorcist. My girlfriend at the time had read the book and really wanted to see it. In those pre-Jaws days, most big movies would open in limited release (like two or three theatres in the entire country) before moving on to smaller theatres. There were really only two places where every movie would play: Broadway and Times Square in New York and Westwood in Los Angeles. Now, of course, there are no movie theatres on Broadway or in Times Square (the multiplexes on 42nd Street don’t count … ) and Westwood, which once had more than a dozen theatres, now has only a couple.

The Exorcist was playing at Mann’s National, so we drove to Westwood on what I remember as a nice spring Sunday, and discovered that, not only was the movie sold out (in an 1100-seat theatre!), the show after that was sold out (and the show after that might have been sold out). We bought tickets for the first available show and got in line for the next five hours, which entailed going down one block, around the corner, down another, around another corner, and going way down a third block (there may even have been another corner and another block). We had no books, no newspapers, and no smart phones to distract us, no nothin’ except standing in line, talking to people about how we couldn’t believe we were going to wait this long for some stupid movie and how the McDonald’s across the street had jacked up its prices to take advantage of its captive audience. It was a change they denied, but was verifiably true.

Scene of the crime

(Now, I remember it as a warm late spring/early summer evening (as does my then-girlfriend) – and the same night that the LAPD and the FBI shot it out with the Symbionese Liberation Army to rescue Patty Hearst, but I don’t see how that could be, since that night was five months after the movie opened. The line was long, but not that long … )

As people came out of the theatre, they were either grossed out (these were more innocent times) or laughing (obviously high). The thing was, we had built a sort of temporary community in that line, with relationships, running jokes, and commentary, but that was broken up as soon as we hit the doors of the theatre. Ultimately, I thought (and think) the movie was pretty “meh.” It was okay, but more of a cultural phenomenon than a cinematic experience. My girlfriend, though, was so freaked out by it that she demanded that I take her copy of the book and get it out of her house (I still have it), and she got the willies when hearing “Tubular Bells,” the movie’s theme. Her mother got mad at me for taking her daughter to the movie, but then she was generally mad at me anyway.

Careful!

My next experience with waiting for a movie was with Star Wars in 1977. Now, I had known about the movie well in advance, having gotten a poster for it the previous year at some comic convention. (I sold that poster sometime in the ‘80s for something like $100; now it goes for more than $2,000.) The first show wasn’t sold out, but after that, you couldn’t get near theatres that were showing it. It opened wide; really wide. It was beyond huge.

When the second movie opened in 1980, it was with a midnight show at the Egyptian on Hollywood Blvd. I got there at 11:00 am and waited in line all day with a bunch of other misfits. People would walk by and ask what we were waiting for. We told them “the new Star Wars movie,” and they would look at us with either pity, confusion, or terror (or some combination thereof). Can’t say as I blame them. (When the third movie opened in 1983, I gamed the system. This time, there was a benefit screening the evening before the official midnight opening. I paid $50 [!] for a ticket [it was a worthy cause; pediatric cancer or something] and, after the movie, went around the theatre and gathered up a stack of the souvenir programs that had been distributed, then drove to the Egyptian and sold them to the suckers in line for a dollar a pop, more than making up the price of my own ticket.)

I can’t believe I found an image of the program

As is my wont, though, I’ve spent words to get us to the point where I’m just on the verge of my attempted arson, so I shall leave you, gentle reader, on proverbial tenterhooks until the next time, when I promise you, I will include breaking and entering among my crimes.

Confession is good for the soul, after all…

It’s A Suggestion Not A Review: Burnin’ Down the House – Part I

Dave Sikula, setting stuff on fire.

No, not this:

No real topic this week, but, rather a story. A tale from my misspent youth. If you want to see a larger moral in it, such is your right. None is intended.

On Facebook the other day (and don’t too many stories start that way?), someone in one of the groups of which I’m a member posted photos of her trip to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. It was apparently her first trip to the theatre, so I gave her a brief summary of its recent history (mainly the renovations it’s received). I concluded by saying “Remind me to tell you about the time I almost burned the joint down.” She hasn’t, but I figured this would be a good a time as any to immortalize that evening.

As I may have mentioned on more than one occasion, I grew up in Southern California, and while (once I was able to drive) a trip to Hollywood became an, at least, weekly occurrence, in the mid- and late ’60s, it was a rare treat.

When I was a kid, there were any number of movie theatres in Hollywood, most of which were first-run and reasonably glamorous, and (for the bigger houses like the Chinese, the Egyptian, the Cinerama Dome, or the Pantages) featured reserved seating for road-show presentations. You cut a coupon out of the paper (remember newspapers?), fill it out specifying a number of dates, and mail it in (remember mail?). After a couple of weeks, you’d get your tickets in the mail, and on the appointed night, turn up at the theatre, where the friendly uniformed usher (remember uniformed ushers? No … ?) would escort you to your seats.

I have five early moviegoing memories. The earliest would be in the late 50s on Long Island, seeing 101 Dalmatians at a theatre that combined a drive-in and a walk-in the same location. I remember spending most of the evening running inside and outside, comparing what part of the movie was playing on which screen. (These were, of course, the days when parents could let their kids run wild in outdoor public places and reasonably expect they’d be safe and back when it was time to head home.

You wonder why I turned out the way I did?

The second was a 1961 screening of Snow White and the Three Stooges. I was only five or so, but remember thinking it wasn’t very funny. (I love the Stooges, but this was not one of their finer efforts.)

Yeah, pretty much what you’d expect.

The third was later in ’61, not long before we moved to California. My parents took my sister and me into Manhattan so they could see Andy Griffith and Debbie Reynolds in The Second Time Around. It was at the Paramount Theatre in Times Square, a theatre that seated nearly 3,700 people and had (in memory) about 20 balconies. As with the Disney movie, though, I spent most of the evening running around and looking out at Times Square. I remember the billboards for Camel cigarettes (which featured a man blowing actual smoke rings) and Kleenex (with Little Lulu shilling for facial tissues) far better than I remember the movie itself. (Which, despite my love of old movies, I haven’t seen since.)

Times Square, circa 1960:

Is it any wonder I didn’t care about the movie?

The scene shifts to California. One of my favorite movies to this day is It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which was (and is) an epic comedy that featured virtually every comic actor working in Hollywood in the early ‘60s. Many people I know love this movie. Many people I know hate this movie. There seems to be no middle ground. Unfortunately, it had the bad luck to open just about two weeks before President Kennedy was assassinated, and the country really wasn’t in a mood to watch a four-hour comedy about greedy schlemiels. My most vivid memories about the evening were that it was the first time I went to the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood (which came to be a theatre I’d know very well) and that, when my father took us to dinner across the street before the movie, I managed to spill an entire glass of milk on my sister. That’s great stuff when you’re seven.

The Dome.

Okay, so finally moving on to the Chinese. I’m not entirely sure if the first movie I saw there was Mary Poppins or Thunderball, but I assume it was the former. Regardless, it began another long relationship with the theatre that has continued until, well, this year.

I’ve just realized that to continue this story will need more space to finish than is practical, so I’m going to leave it here – giving me both the necessary time and a topic for next time. So, until then, let me leave you with this cryptic preview: If you have a cold, don’t let your sister drive – unless you bring a flashlight.