Page 35 - CinemaRecord #83

My Classic Years

By Russell O'Regan

ere are some snippets about my In 1986 a friend of mine, Jose Louis Ponte, who had operated the Nats
H12 wonderful, slogging years at Restaurants in Hawthorn East and Malvern, approached us with the
the Classic Cinema. proposal that he open a restaurant in the large area to the left of the foyer.
This space was a remnant of the original walk-through foyer to the
In 1984 I was employed at Filmways auditorium, now just a storage space. Jose aptly named it Cafe Flicks,
when Mr. Alan Simpson, formerly and it became an elegant place to dine before or after the evening
Head Programmer at Village Cinemas, sessions.
approached me and said that he had
received an offer from the Jewish As time went on, the film company policies began to strangle our
Cultural Society, Kadimah, to take flexibility, making it difficult to make a profit. In 1990 I became the
over the lease of the Classic, because sole lessee, but attendances were slowly dwindling, and if I made an
the current lessee, Geoff Wilcox, error of judgement and selected a first release which bombed, I was
wanted out. At the time Alan was running the Trak Cinemas Toorak thousands of dollars down the drain.
within the Village Group. He knew that if he took on the Classic, he
could be accused of ‘conflict of interest.’ So he left Village, and we The answer was obvious: the cinema needed more screens. On paper
formed a partnership. We closed the cinema for a week as it was filthy. the arrangement looked perfect: the owners kept faith with their
I nearly threw up cleaning the gent’s toilet. members by providing cultural activities involving both live
performances and films, while for the majority of the time the lessee
The screen was on the stage wall some 7.5 metres from the stage curtains runs a commercial cinema. The building buzzes with activity. The reality
so we installed a new movable screen, and upgraded the projectors and was that a cinema cannot generate revenue with gaps in sessions on key
lamp-houses. Kadimah paid for re-carpeting of the auditorium and for nights. I was struggling to keep up with the rent, and my box office
the upgrading of the projectors with xenon lamp-houses. takings were badly damaged when Kadimah staged their revues.

We ran double feature re-runs for a while, but the one-feature policy Cinema and live performance could have worked together with more
was beginning to take over, which we adopted with some difficulty. The screens, but it was not a Kadimah priority at the time. To make ends
Dendy Brighton closed to be twinned, and it became far easier to obtain meet, I was living in the cinema and running six sessions a day. Such a
first release films, although having to run the same feature four sessions routine is not conducive to health and well-being. But the cinema
per day limited profits somewhat. business is a seductive mistress, and I would not have missed those
Classic years for anything. H

Who would work at the pictures?

Selected extracts from Steve Maggs’ self published book

A regular routine with the phone calls were people who did not know what to ask for before they called. It
often took two or three calls before they received the necessary information. For example, "What's on tonight?"
I would then give them this information and they would hang up. A minute later they would ring back and ask
something else such as, "How much is it to get in?" After being given this information, they would thank me and
hang up again. Within seconds the phone would ring. "It's me again. The 6.30 session. Is that at night time?"

Patrons often panic after leaving the theatre to visit the Candy Bar when they realise that they do not have
their ticket half with them. They assume that I will not re-admit them to the theatre. It is common to be asked
whether they can go back in without their ticket, or to be asked if I remember them coming out. The silliest comment I had was when a patron
visited the candy bar and had her arms full of popcorn, choc tops and drinks. I walked to the theatre door to help her. She thought that I was chasing
her for her ticket. She looked at me and asked, "Do you want to see my butt?" I knew what she meant but I took it as a joke and informed her that
it was not necessary.

Sometimes people can find the location of the theatre, but not the actual entrance. One afternoon a little old lady was found trying to walk
through the mirror to get into the Lounge. We referred to her as “the geriatric Alice through the looking glass.” Another little old lady could not
get into the Hayden Cinema. She walked through the doors, but did not turn left and walked along the passage instead. She pulled back the decorative
curtain that is against the wall, took a step forward and went face first into a cement wall.
Shallow Grave was a black comedy about hiding a body. We always warned people who were not sure about the film that it was very black and
might not be to their tastes. One couple came out of this film after 45 minutes. These people had been given an accurate description of the film by
an usherette. They came back to me in the box office and told me it was too violent. I reminded them of our warning. I was then asked to define a
black comedy. After doing this, they understood that we were not trying to mislead them in any way. They thought a black comedy was a comedy
with black people in it. Maybe she was expecting “Shallow Grave Meets The Cosby Show”.
There were no computers in cinema box offices at that time. Each cinema had a different coloured ticket. One day a lady came up to me with
the wrong ticket for the cinema I was ushering. I asked her which film she wanted to see. "This one", she replied, pointing at my cinema. "Are you
sure you don't want to see Smokey and the Bandit Part 3?" I asked. (Her ticket was actually for that film). "No", she said, "I don't smoke." Who
can understand the reasoning behind this answer? Perhaps she did not understand my question.

Another usher once encountered an Indian lady who had a very strong accent, and found her very hard to understand. "Could you please
tell me where de boot is?" she asked. Leon told her that he was not sure of her meaning. After getting quite frustrated and repeating the question
several times, she finally said, "You know. De telephone boot."

CINEMARECORD # 83 35