My Movie History - Part 3: High School

A few years ago, I was thinking about my earliest memories of movies. Those thoughts developed into a post covering my "movie history." It quickly turned into too much for one post, so I broke it into chunks: the Boone years and the Star Wars years. I started the next chapter, but then I forgot about it and the draft lay buried for years. Finally dug it up and the history continues.

Sony Handycam

In 1988, my parents bought a Sony Handycam 8mm video camera. Of course the family used it to film the usual stuff, birthdays, vacations, graduations, etc. But it also was the beginning of a period of filmmaking which would become one of my biggest hobbies for the next five years. Dom, Steve, Burt, Damian, and I made many short films of varying quality, like Invasion of the Rats. And any chance I could get to make a video for a school project, I did. I made a video demonstrating Einstein's theories for my calculus class. And Steve and I made a video for our senior externship project at McKean and Associates.

My best work with the Handycam would happen in college. More on that later.

The Perfect High School Job

My first job was a busboy/dishwasher. It lasted 2 weeks. I wasn't old enough to drive, and it was quite a distance from home. Not very convenient (especially for my dad, who had to drive me there and pick me up). My second job, not including a summer of cutting grass with my dad, was bagging groceries at Publix (grocery store). I held that job for the better part of my junior year of high school. Until I got the mother of all high school jobs: movie theater usher.

For anyone who loves going to the movies, what better part time job could you have than a movie theater job? Inverness had a brand new 6-screen theater (quite the upgrade from the small single-screen downtown). A band friend (he also played trumpet) worked at the new theater from the time it opened. I had put in an application and I would often ask him if he thought they were going to do any more hiring. Finally, one night we were seeing Star Trek V and Mike walked through the theater before the movie started. I asked him if I had a job and he told me to talk to Mary (the manager). I was so excited that I completely enjoyed what turned out to arguably be the worst of all the Star Trek movies.

After the movie, I talked to Mary and she offered me a job. I was in.

I started working at Citrus Cinemas at the start of summer of 1989, a blockbuster-packed summer with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Batman. It was a blast. I loved everything about it. The job only paid minimum wage, which at that time was somewhere in the range of $3.50 an hour. But I also got free movies, which for a high schooler in Inverness was a significant perk.

As the other ushers moved on to other jobs, my best friends took their places, until finally it was Dominick, Damian, Burt, and me working there together. The only thing better than a movie theatre job is working with your best friends. If Steve had joined us, it would have been perfect, but he already had a good job at the Crown Hotel.

I bought my first car with the income from that job. A silver 1979 Volkswagon Scirocco. $1000. I got a loan from my grandmother and paid her every month (plus interest) until it was paid off. It was a stick shift. The front fenders were rusted, but I fancied that it looked a little bit like the DeLorean from Back to the Future. I loved that car.

 

The Booth

At Citrus Cinemas, projectionist was a full-time position. Even though there were only 6 screens (rinky-dink compared to the big megaplexes that would blossom in the next ten years) they hired guys who only worked in the booth. That meant you got to wear street clothes and spend all your time tending to the projectors instead of dealing with customers. I expressed interest in learning projection and soon I was working booth more than usher. Spending hours upon hours in a dark, noisy room with no other people might sound like Hell, but I loved the chance to listen to music, work on homework, all while doing a job and getting paid. Sometimes I'd bring an alarm clock, stretch out on the floor, and take a short nap, the alarm waking me up before the first movie ended. Too bad the projection booth didn't have a comfy chair or small sofa.

Citrus Cinemas had curtains that rose before the movie started. The curtains were triggered by a little piece of metal tape we'd place on the film at a certain spot. The tape tripped a sensor that signaled the curtains to rise or lower. But the projectionist also had manual control of the curtains. At any time, with the flip of a switch, I could make the curtains go up or go down.

A metal bar went across the bottom of the curtain, and we discovered that if someone held on to that bar, the curtains, when raised, could lift the person all the way up to the top of the screen. "Riding the curtain" was only done in between movies, when we were cleaning the theatre (and it had to be a slow day, when patrons weren't waiting to come in. Someone usually stood guard at the door just in case).

One night, Burt and another usher named Dennis were cleaning the biggest house. Burt called to me while I was threading the projector. I opened the window and Burt told me to raise the curtain. I started the curtain and Burt held on to the bar, lifting off the ground. Dennis saw what he was doing and ran up to the curtain, leaped up and grabbed on. We had never lifted two people before. It seemed too risky. But the curtain couldn't be stopped in mid-travel. Once it was going up it had to go all the way up before it would go down again. I just shook my head and watched the two of them rise towards the top of the screen. But when it got three-fourths of the way up, the curtain suddenly stopped. Burt and Dennis called out for me to let it down. I flipped the switch and nothing happened. Flip, flip. I tried the switch over and over, but nothing happened. Burt and Dennis, hanging about 20 feet off the ground, yelled out for me to stop playing around, that they couldn't hold on much longer. I yelled back to them that I didn't do it, they must have broken it.

They held on for a little while longer, hoping that the curtain would go down. The alternative to them dropping 20 feet was for me to go get a manager to get a ladder (assuming they could hold on that long, which was doubtful) but then they'd be caught red-handed. Me as well. I told them they just had to drop.

Dennis went first. It looked like it hurt. He walked it off, but I could see the pain on his face. Then Burt. His feet hit the tiled floor and went forward, his butt crushing a board that ran along the bottom of the black masking below the screen. Limping and bruised, Burt and Dennis were off the curtain now, but we had another show that night and the curtain was a quarter of the way down. I kept trying the switch but the curtain was dead.

I called Mary and told her that for some reason the curtain in house 6 was malfunctioning. They had to cancel the last show of the night.

The next day, Dom and I worked the opening shift. Mary told us they were bringing in a technician from out of town to fix the curtain. Dom and I went into house 6 and crawled under the screen to look at the curtain motor. While checking it out, we found a circuit breaker reset button and pressed it. I ran up to the booth and tried the switch. The curtain went up all the way.

We told Mary that we fixed the curtain. We weren't quite the heroes that we'd hoped we'd be, but she was grateful that she could cancel the technician. Best of all, our secret was still safe. The last thing we wanted was some smart-pant technician telling her that the only thing to trip the circuit breaker would be pesky kids riding on the curtain.

We still rode the curtain after that incident. But never two at a time.

I worked at Citrus Cinemas till I left for Gainesville to go to college, a total of about 14 months. So many fond memories, though the assistant manager Jack nearly drove me insane. It was a good lesson in working for people who treat you poorly.

Needless to say, I saw a lot of movies in those 14 months.

Vivien

Back in 2007, I blogged about a new addition to our family. Vivien, a French bulldog. It was only my second blog post. That was a little over five years ago. And on Monday, as it eventually is with all living things, it was Vivien's time to go.

I don't really want to talk about it. But I need to. A little.

This is day 3 after Cristina and I watched Vivien take her last breath on our living room floor. She had been having some digestive issues for a couple of days, not able to poop to put it bluntly, and things took a turn for the worse on Monday. The vet came, we made a plan, and life--if not Vivi's bowels-- was flowing along normally. He needed to get her hydrated, so we were giving her coconut water every hour. We had the deworming medicine ready to go as soon as she was able to hold down liquids. We didn't know for sure if she had worms, but there was a suspicion, so it was a reasonable course of action.

Never got that far. Though she seemed a bit more normal after the vet's visit, she died around 8:30 pm.

I don't want to recount every detail of her last few days. I don't want to remember her staring at her water bowl just an hour before she died, probably wanting to drink, but knowing she couldn't. I don't want my lasting memories to be the horrible, sinking feeling--surreal really--when it finally hit us that she wasn't breathing anymore. All that stuff is still fresh right now. Still an open wound. But I want desperately to remember the thousands of little moments that made having her in our life so pleasurable. I want the painful memories to fade, as they always do. The sooner the better. But I don't want to lose the happy memories in the process.

I never understood the kind of love a parent has for a child until I had my own. I think it's impossible to truly know that kind of love until you experience it. It's like skydiving. We can all imagine skydiving, we can picture it very clearly, understand what a thrill it must be, but if we've never actually jumped out of a plane, we can never truly understand what it's like to skydive.

Just about everyone has a pet of some kind. And everyone who owns a pet will eventually lose a pet. It's part of the deal. But you can never really know what it feels like to lose a pet until you've lost one. I've had lots of animals in my life. At one point during my childhood, we had several dogs and cats, hamsters, birds, goats, donkeys, and a horse. An abundance of animal riches. I should be so used to losing pets that it's easy to deal with. But losing Vivien has made me realize something. It's not just the loss of the pet that is so hard. The loss is magnified by having a family who is simultaneously experiencing that disconnection of love that occurs when the pet dies. I'm sad that my little Frenchie doesn't greet me at the door anymore, but that sadness is compounded by Alex's sadness that his dog can't snuggle with him, and add Bella's intense, 8-year-old feelings of crushing loss, and Sofia's, and Cristina's. The collective impact is almost unbearable.

So I'm going to make a list. Whatever comes to my mind, in no particular chronological order or priority of importance. These are the things that if we weren't all still so sad, we could talk about at the dinner table with smiles and fondness.

• Vivien snoring. Sometimes so loudly we had to turn the TV up while watching a movie.
• Vivi trembling during car rides, despite our attempts to reassure her that she'd be okay.
• The ka-pow explosion of the dog door when Vivi would pass through it full speed.
• Vivi going outside on cool days and finding a sunbeam to stretch out in. One time I was watching her lay in the sun from the dining room. One of the kids passing through asked me what I was looking at. "Vivi," I said quietly, and she popped up and came inside. She had heard her name through the glass sliding door, through the back porch, and out in the yard.
• Vivi on her back in my lap, getting her belly scratched. She would let me do that for hours if I wanted to.
• Vivi loved being touched. Anytime, anywhere. If you were willing to pet, rub, scratch, or even just touch her, she was yours. Often I would scratch her belly with my foot while sitting on the couch, and when I stopped, she'd reposition herself so that my foot was in place to rub again.
• Any time I would be cutting any kind of meat in the kitchen, she would join me, hoping that I'd share.
• If I dropped something on the kitchen floor, like a piece of meat or cheese, I'd call Vivien. She'd come grunting around the corner from her favorite napping spot in the living room and happily clean up whatever I dropped. Snacks trump naps everytime.
• Vivi sitting when the kids had her food bowl filled and ready to put down.
• Ling Ling rubbing her head against Vivi. She was always very affectionate towards Vivi. On Vivi's last day, while the vet was checking her out, Ling Ling walked up and rubbed her forehead against Vivi's face.
• Putting my finger in the little dent above Vivi's nose. I liked to scratch it for her, since I knew it was a spot she could never get to herself.
• Vivi getting jealous when she saw one of us petting one of the cats. She always wanted in on that action.
• Vivi's terrible gas was not something to remember, but it was always nice to blame your own on her. She didn't mind.
• Taking Viv camping near Payson, Arizona, and going on a hike which turned out to be too long for her and having to carry her most of the way back.
• Watching TV and a dog in the movie barks and Vivi hops up with a return bark and runs out the dog door to investigate.
• Vivi snuggling with Alex or Bella.
• Walking by Bella's room and finding Vivi curled up on Bella's bed, which could only be accomplished by Bella putting her up there. She'd look at me with a guilty look but make no attempt to hop down.
• Vivi eating her food with loud slurps and grunts, and usually a loud belch afterwards.
• Bathing Vivi in the bathtub and when finished, trying to get her to shake off before I toweled her dry. She rarely shook for me.
• Vivi's little stuffed "squirrel" (I think it's actually some kind of Pokemon character). It was the only toy she ever played with. She'd play fetch with it, sit and chew on it, or lick it. Years of use, and yet it never lost it's tail or an ear, though one ear is dangling. We wanted to bury it with her, but when we were burying her, we couldn't find it. We found it a few days later and plan to put it on her grave.
• Vivi loved to lay on things. If there was a discarded towel, pair of dirty jeans, fallen pillow, that was what she would sleep on. She was even able to pull pillows off the sofa or jackets off of their pegs. We'd come home and find a jacket on the floor, now covered with dog hair, and a guilty-looking Viv watching us hang it up again. 

We'll miss you, Viv.