Art House Envy

I went to the movies over the weekend. At Night when movie theatres charge you more for a single ticket then the kid who sells you the ticket makes an hour, and to add an extra dollar to the evening, I went to an Art House. These are theaters that try to make up for the fact that only eleven people world wide are actually going to see this movie, by charging twice what it would cost in a regular theatre ,and by kindly making available very expensive cookies and flavored teas, ‘cause they are so Arty. The floor is still sticky and the bathrooms are unspeakable. Unspeakably arty.

The movie theatre I spent most of my Movie Theater career at had a theater or “house” set aside for “art films”, usually they were films made in Briton that were too terrible to air on the BBC channels and so were sold to the US market as Art Films. Object of Beauty was sold as an Art Film. John Malkovich and Andi McDowell and a statuette of indeterminate origin. I believe that the statuette was nominated for its role.

When I was working Movie Theater the various area chains had a deal worked out that let employees from one chain go to another chain to watch movies for free. Not the good movies, and only after so long that if you really wanted to see the movie ( or there was some threat that it may end up at your theatre, there is nothing worse then having to watch a movie at your own theater) you would have all ready paid to see it anyway, but, you could go free if you were willing to wait and weren’t really picky.

I hated the Art House employees. They were so snotty about their theatre. They showed Cinema, they had foreign language films, Classics; They didn’t wear bow ties or sell milk duds or coke, or work for an evil corporate chain they wore black tee shirts and sold British candies and designer popcorn and fancy coffees and belonged to a co-op . Bastards.

When they wanted to see 101 Dalmatians for free, they certainly got over their evil corporate chain issues and into line to buy milk duds and coke fast enough. Hypocritical bow tie bigots.

And I don’t even want to go into the distaste that employees of dollar shows were held in - Eww, Old - er movies! Bad prints! Ewww. Video store clerks were even lower on the food chain because their movies were little the actors shrunken, the stories withered. Sloppy seconds. They were Movie Pimps.

But I loved the art houses. They were pretty and yellowed. They had a café and sold beer. They had Casablanca on the big screen. They had practical curtains across the screens!. So much cooler then my mall bound theater. Their patrons were also better then our patrons. They didn’t come dragging sticky children or endlessly ask for change for the video games. They had smart people who had intelligent discussions about the characters motivations and the cinematography and comparing and contrasting this film with the directors earlier works in Rumania. They did not hang around the video games afterwards and talk about whether or not they saw that girls tit in when they were in the hot tub with the golden retriever.

They didn’t have to sell Disney™ toys for movies they didn’t even have, or pretend they thought that that Tom Hanks movie with that dog was anything more then a waste of good film stock. I bet they never got yelled at by rednecks who didn’t understand the concept of Tax or chased twelve year olds out of Truth or Dare.

They probably had long, interesting conversations with film students and Cinema Buffs, they probably had time to watch their own movies, and they probably never smelled like popcorn drink syrup I bet they never slipped on spilled popcorn topping during a rush, because they never got huge crowds or big movies. How dare they hate their jobs as much as we did. No Bow Tie wearing bastards probably got paid more too.


Go See Lost In Translation!!!!