Lascaux caves, France You can get lost in a 2,678-seat movie palace: we knew it, and the younger patrons who didn’t want to go home knew it too. The balcony and loge were off limits — we hardly ever sold enough tickets to populate even the orchestra. But kids of a certain age — boys who are thirteen, fourteen — like to test limits. Exit doors in the balcony led to fire escapes. Although we weren’t using the balcony, the FDNY had forbidden us to chain these doors shut. So one kid would buy a ticket and sneak upstairs to let his friends, who had climbed the fire escape, in for free. For the most part, they’d hang in the upper part of the house 'til closing time, even bringing their own concession: beer and KFC. Pot-smoke drifted to the dome. On Friday and Saturday nights after the midnight show, you could hear them breathing up there, waiting for us to close and go home.
Addressing them directly was the best way to flush them out. Sam, the floor manager, who knew all the kids’ families, would stand center stage and call them by name, “You up there Randall? Wone be pretty… fi hafta come getcha...” “Nicky, hear me now. Doh make me tell yo Mama...”
Exit doors on unoiled hinges groaned, followed by the rapid slap of sneakers flying down the fire escape.
What did they want? How many Snickers bars can one adolescent boy consume? Or was it a night in the shadows back stage they were after?
The theater is a magic — even a sacred — space, a kind of human-made cave. Tired as I was at the end of a theater day, it was hard to go home, so who could fault a boy? It was, for all of us, our Luray Caverns, our Lascaux, the screen, a cave-wall waiting for the splash of pigmented light.
Addressing them directly was the best way to flush them out. Sam, the floor manager, who knew all the kids’ families, would stand center stage and call them by name, “You up there Randall? Wone be pretty… fi hafta come getcha...” “Nicky, hear me now. Doh make me tell yo Mama...”
Exit doors on unoiled hinges groaned, followed by the rapid slap of sneakers flying down the fire escape.
What did they want? How many Snickers bars can one adolescent boy consume? Or was it a night in the shadows back stage they were after?
The theater is a magic — even a sacred — space, a kind of human-made cave. Tired as I was at the end of a theater day, it was hard to go home, so who could fault a boy? It was, for all of us, our Luray Caverns, our Lascaux, the screen, a cave-wall waiting for the splash of pigmented light.
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