You show up, search the posting of ten titles and stand in line to buy your ticket. You grab some popcorn or nonpareils — something to have in hand as the movie begins — you’re flying through the lobby looking for the door that says “Anna Karenina.” Years and years of movie going have trained you not to be late.

In 1976, there were dozens of doors at the St. George Theater and other movie theaters, but the doors all led to a single screen. There was a curtain above that screen, and ushers too, amenities you’ve learned to live without since the days of the single screen movie theater. Quickly you take a seat, peel off your coat and hat. What’s the rush? The lights aren’t dimmed yet. But something’s on the screen.

Remember “Selected Short Subjects?” Cartoons? What’s up on the screen is tricked out to look like a movie, but it’s really Coca Cola. You’re a captive audience, you can’t scan through it or go to the fridge. You could go out and come in again, pay for more popcorn — you’ve eaten most of it already, and “Coming Attractions” haven’t even started yet. 

What is it about product advertising at the movies that seems so wrong? Movies are not television. They’re suspended reality, and the moviegoer in you is ready to surrender to the dream. Short subjects, like foreplay, served a purpose. They lubricated the imagination. If a movie is any good, the filmmaker Hollis Frampton used to say, it should make you forget your toothache, the balance in your checkbook, a love just lost. Short subjects got you ready to do that.

How can I suspend my disbelief, while a dopey couple collide in front of a polished steel fridge from Sears?  Note to self: Next time, bring something to read and noise-cancelling headphones. Buy extra popcorn. Here comes the first trailer — well it’s about time. 

I’ve been thinking about Roots lately. I’m one of a minority of Americans alive in 1977, who failed to watch even a single episode of the mini-series when it was broadcast over eight gripping nights. I couldn’t watch it; I had a failing theater to run. Based on Alex Haley's best-selling novel, Roots followed several generations of enslaved African Americans, beginning with the capture of a young man in West Africa, Kunta Kinte. Roots changed the way many white Americans thought about slavery, while at the same time legitimizing the family chronicles of many black families. Despite the fact that I missed the experience of viewing it as it aired, it affected my life — and the business I was failing at — profoundly.

Television, ironically, achieved over the course of those eight nights what we in our grand old movie palace had failed to do. We’d been trying to bring our white suburban and black urban audiences together under one wide dome to watch movies — not an easy feat in a neighborhood many white people were afraid to drive through. It didn’t help that, after winter set in, our beloved St. George Theater had no heat, thanks to a landlord who was actively trying to evict us. Then, in that most desperate winter — from January 23 through January 30, while Roots aired — we were for the first time completely vacant. Our scant winter audience, those few brave souls accustomed to sitting in their hats and coats in a cold auditorium, had stayed home in front of their own televisions.

VCRs existed, but they were toys of the rich, so when a program aired, you watched it — or missed it. And everyone knew that Roots was not to be missed, a game-changing event. The last night set a nationwide Nielsen Ratings record for the largest audience ever to view a televised show. That record would not be bested until 1983, when M*A*S*H aired for the last time. Roots was obviously the ultimate triumph of television over movies, that had been coming for some time, but it was much larger. Except for me, the managers and skeleton crews of other theaters, and whoever else was unlucky enough to work nights, everyone watched, as the forbidden story of slavery unfolded. A
scandal some years later, would call into question some of the details of Haley’s tale; was it fiction or non-fiction? But inaccurate or not, it was a story that needed to be told. I was glad, the morning after each of those eight nights, to hear our staff, black and white boys and girls who loved and trusted one another, buzzing about Roots.

On a busy Saturday afternoon in 1976, people were waiting between double features, eating popcorn and chatting in the lobby of the St. George Theater. We had sold enough tickets to almost fill the center of the ground floor,  with the promise of a week when me might actually make — rather than lose — money. Then someone yelled FIRE!

Several hundred people made it to the pavement in under sixty seconds.  I can still see the metal stool that the usher had been sitting on,  as it flew across the marble foyer and crashed into a glass-paneled door. 

There was no fire — it had been a prank. Remarkably, no one was hurt.  Our patrons who had fled so quickly looked at each other as they stood out on the pavement, laughed, and clambered back inside. Adrenaline stimulated even more concession stand sales — Coke, fresh buttered popcorn, Jordan Almonds, Charleston Chews. The second feature started, and it was as if nothing had ever happened.