Another time I walked in on two teenagers that were doing the horizontal lambada in an aisle while their friend contently watched the film.

Such was the case at a drive-in in Ottawa, Ontario about 14 years ago.

The assistant manageress had received complaints about someone playing their van stereo excessivley loud. Since the show hadn't started yet, and the usher was busy down front, the projectionist volunteered to go and talk to the guy in the van.

Let's see... The entire football team came to our theater to see, "All the Right Moves." During and after the film, all of them did doody in the same toilet. It looked like something out of "Dogma." We seriously consitered closing the theater, we were so grossed out...

I had to stop, "Pulp Fiction" for a guy who had a heart attack. It was during the needle scene. He was in the center of a row of seats. The owners got a little cheap, and put the seat rows really close together, so the EMS guys could not get a stretcher in; they could hardly get in themselves. It was really creepy: the EMS guys were zapping him with the de-fib while he's sitting up in his seat with his shirt ripped open. He died en route.

I had to stop, "Hoffa" for a guy who had an LSD flashback. He jumped up on the stage, and started to shout nonsense things: "Woody Allen's pregnent and the FBI knows. He's been there, I know....." Some idiot in the front row says; "Let's get out of here, he may have a gun." (There are 500 people in the theater.) Mr. Wackoo says; "A gun? You want to see my gun...?" He unzips his fly and pulls his thingy out and waves it around. Cops grab him, we give out about 500 passes, nothing really bad happens..

A patron waiting on line (outside) has a heart attack. I forget the film, but it was really busy, with a 'ticket holder' line and a 'ticket buyer' line, and several double-parked cars dropping off people on both sides of the street. Several people would not get out of the EMS guy's way, because they didn't want to lose parking spaces they were waiting for. The EMS guy's had to run about half a block to get to the guy. Luckly, the victim was OK.

Another guy died peacefully in his seat. No one knows exactly when, but he sat there for all 5 shows of, "Cutthroat Island" one Saturday. A girl-manager who closed, pushed him, thinking he was sleeping, and he fell out of the seat. She flipped out, and quit the next day. I said to two ushers who worked all day; didn't you notice he never moved? You just swept around him, or what!? They replied; we thought he just really liked the movie....

I've had people dance in the auditorium and on stage to the end credits of "True Lies" during its opening night, and I've had a film director insist after a test run that my Zeiss Favorit 70 projectors run at _at_least_ 27 fps, and that we need to do something about it before his film starts.

But my probably weirdest experience occured when I was answering the phone at the box office when things were really slow in the booth. The following conversation took place:

"This is the Draken theatre, Ari speaking. How may I help you?"
"Hi. Do you sell popcorn?"
"Yes."
<click>

I still have no good explanation for this one.

--Oh,well not TOO much goes on in our small town.

One night while I was managing Rocky Horror at the end of the film a couple of kids were saying "come on Bob, Lets go Bob." They hauled Bob out to the sidewalk and then came back in and called the paramedics. They worked on Bob for 20 minutes and took him away. I called my boss and said "oh well, at least he died on the sidewalk."

 |  IP: Logged

 |  IP: Logged

I don't remember the date, but DO know it happened the day the head manager came back from his one week vacation and the day I got to visit the emergency room. (Did I mention I got "severe food poisioning" according to the doctors and was out for almost a week?)

At another theater, they ran Independence day for 24 hours straight it's opening day (meaning the theater was open non-stop for 36 hours). The last show of the opening day was an 11PM show. Everything was counted, staff was sent home, the projectionist left and as I understood it the only people remaining in the building other than customers was a "supervisor" (not true management), regular employee and a rent-a-cop. Picture this, the guys are on board the alien space ship tapping into the alien computer system (miraculously enough Windows compatible!!!) and the countdown is going...7...6...5...4...3..poof, the projector shuts down! Now remember, there is no projectionist in the building, no manager in the building and several hundred pissed off people 10 minutes from finishing the movie at it's climactic point. My friend who was in the theater said a bit of a riot broke out when the announcement was made that they couldn't finish the show because there was no one who knew how to work the projector and all the managers were gone...meaning no refunds and no passes!