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I was raised to respect punctuality. If I wasn't on time there was hell to pay.

Last night was my day off, in theory. One of our employees was sick so I came in to close the theatre.

Our schedule is such that all our films save one get out by 10:45 PM. The other film gets out at 11:30 PM. It has the last start time at 9:15 PM. 9:15 came and went without a ticket sold.

You all have had this happen to you.

9:25 two ladies come in and ask for tickets to the show that I am not running. I tell them that it is cancled and please come again tomorrow. They start whining and saying that they drove here from Petaluma which is 25 miles away. I relent and start the show at 9:30. This means that I am here one more hour on my day off.

Why is it that people can be on time for the train, plane and symphony but they are always 5 to 10 minutes late for a film?

I have to go. My staff is due here in one minute.

I agree totally. I was raised the same way and get almost hysterical if I'm going to be late for some reason (not my fault, of course). And the worst is Thursday night when film is due to be torn down. It seems to happen then more than any other time. BUT, I also feel that if I refuse to play a film that someone made the effort to come and see and maybe the next time they want to see a movie, they won't come back to us and that's just seems to be bad business, so IMHO, I think you did the right thing. It is really aggravating though.

Now don't you wish you ran 20 minute reels like in the old days. You could have started with reel two, which would have been just about right where it should be by the time they got in, purchased their refreshments (hopefully they did)and went in and sat down. They couldn't complain about missing the first reel as THEY were the ones that were late. And you could say...we always start right on time!

My barometer in situations like that is if they are regular customers. if they are regulars, I'll run it. If it's someone who I've never seen before, I go home.

When our local university, OSU, has a game, i hold off starting the film as long as possible because traffic becomes hell. But, generally, if it is runningint othe next show, the show starts ontime.

I think that in a society where we have pushed that the customer is always right they,the customers, have felt that they have the upper hand. Its like if they if you don't buckle down to there demands you've done them a great diservice. A sad statement to make I know but thats the way it appears to me.
By the way Large; people do miss trains, planes, ect. at times. But I get your drift.

Coach Don Shula of Miami fame (and the Uncle of a friend here) was in our area visiting a few years ago. He and his wife bought tiks for a movie at The Bayview Street Cinema in Camden. When they walked in, the six or so people in there took one look at him and started applauding. He and his wife could not believe it. They sat down and Shula says to one guy, "I can't believe everyone recognized me like that!" The guy says "I don't know who you are buddy but they said if we did not get two more people they weren't going to show the movie!"

I once drove down to the same theatre on a snowy night, okay we were on time, and they showed the movie for only me and my brother after a suitable amount of begging.

In Large's case I would have said...The projectionist went home. On the other hand.... I want to spread the best word possible about personal service and so we don't ever NOT show the movie even for one person. Better to have him waddling around saying how great we were than how bad we were.

Look on the bright side oh King of The Rialto: you made a couple of friends.

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Mike Hurley
www.bigscreenbiz.com