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There are no heroes. There are no movie theatre ushers. Hi. I'm Amtu. I work at the Metropolitan Googleplex. Okay, Amtu isn't my real name and the Metropolitan Googleplex isn't the name of the theatre in the large American city where I work. I'm just a non-descript, anonymous person that you would see in a movie theatre, selling you a ticket, serving you popcorn, or sweeping up the leavings. An anti-hero. A non-usher. For those of you too young to know, there actually used to be men and women in uniform called ushers, armed with wand flashlights (that look like chopped off toy lightsabers), who would perform such duties as opening the theatre doors and door curtains (yes, theatre doorways had curtains, which prevented light from coming in to a darkened theatre via an open door), assist patrons in finding seats, and policing the theatre while the movie was running (loud conversation and food throwing was definitely not allowed!) However, the snack bar was a completely different situation. Anarchy ruled the concession stand. No orderly line here. It was an unruly mob that crowded the snack bar. The next customer who got served was the one who yelled the loudest. There also used to be union projectionists back then but that's another story. Well, the not so good economic times of the 1970's introduced the econobox multiplex. Movie theatre buildings that housed several (usually small) theatres. Old movie houses that were losing money were partitioned into smaller, architecturally hideous box theatres. And ushers? They all but disappeared. And eventually, the econobox multiplexes themselves began to disappear. It was a bad time for movie theatres. Then a guy named George Lucas made a film called "Star Wars" that came out in 1977 that at first showed only in theatres that had eight (preferred) or six track Dolby Stereo sound. Later that year, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", made by George's pal Steven Spielberg, came out. Both movies featured scenes, special effects, and sounds that could be appreciated best in a large theatre. Thus began the new movie and movie theatre renaissance, but one that sadly did not include the return of the usher. My own so-called career in the movies began in the early '90s. Prior to that, I had been writing screenplays on and off since high school but it never really went anywhere (I still have a pseudo-historic sword-and-sandal epic that never seems to get finished). In the late 80's I took the Dov SS Simens Ultra Low Budget Film Production weekend cram class (Let's get real here; there's no way you can make a movie well just by taking one weekend class. I haven't heard of any weekend class for fighter pilot training for people who don't know how to fly!). Finally I realized I had to get serious while I was still young (relatively speaking) and went to a film school in Los Angeles. While in film school, I found that directing actors was a bit off-putting ("But what's my motivation?"). The only reason I wanted to be a director was so that I could keep creative control of my screenplays. But not everyone could be a writer or director if for no other reason than the fierce competition (both in school and the real world). But it seemed that there was one area that was so arcane and unglamorous that few wanted to do it or had any good working knowledge of it, and that there was a demand for it. And so I went into production sound mixing and actually got paying gigs on short films while still in school. When I left film school, I had graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Cinema. Well, all the college degrees in the world don't amount to a hill of beans in Hollywood, if I may paraphrase Bogart. Certainly a degree is totally useless for a would-be screenwriter, except possibly for bolstering his low self-esteem. And sound mixing, as I would soon find out, seemed to be only one step higher than screenwriting ("Screw sound! We'll fix it in post!"). But at least I was getting paid more for sound mixing than screenwriting. However, for various reasons, I never escaped the low budget realm. And competition was fierce. Many productions were (and are) fleeing Los Angeles, even California for that matter, making it that much harder to find work. In the fall of 1999, at the urging (nagging) of an older relative, I went to work at a cousin's electronics repair shop. My cousin knows more about computers than many certified technicians and I learned a lot from him. Even so, I continued to work as a sound mixer whenever the opportunity arose. But as time went on, these opportunities became scarcer and scarcer. Not wanting to leave the field of motion pictures entirely, I applied for a job at the Metropolitan Googleplex and was hired in late April 2002. At least I could tell my film acquaintances that I was still in the movie business! It's often been said that the screenwriter is the lowest rung of the Hollywood ladder. It's not. The movie theatre worker is. While we may wear fancy uniforms (cheap, poorly sewn rags made in some poor Third World country), we are nothing more than glorified janitors, fast food workers, and sales clerks. And, sadly enough, most of us know precious little about movies. To be continued... About
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