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Anyway, all the old dears are in watching the lovely scenery of Florence in 'Room' when the changeover occurs and there in all it's glory was a shot of Syd Viscious biting the head off a rat.

Many Gin and Tonics handed out after that.

I had a loop of trailers (not on a reel, just looped) in my hand (I was moving them from the print on #2 to the new makeup), and was just heading down to the far end of the booth to #3 to get started. I heard a light dripping noise, and thought to myself "Jeez, the toilet must be overflowing up here. That'll be a beast to clean up". I turned around to look in the bathroom (right beside #2), and the dripping got VERY VERY loud. I hadn't even taken one step towards it when the ceiling over #1 gave way, and a huge torrent of water came pouring out.

I have never moved so fast in my life.

I tossed the trailers onto the platter of #2 (hoping they'd stay wound correctly, but the least of my worries at that point), and sprinted over to #1. The ceiling tiles over the amp and the sound unit (no clue what it's called -- has the DTS, the volume control, switcher from non-sync to optical, etc) were sagging down, and water was pouring out. And did I mention the CD player for the non-sync was right under the flow as well?

I swear, I nearly threw up. Images of cancelling all our shows in #1 (our biggest and only DTS-equipped theatre) for weeks danced through my head. I didn't actually vomit, but I think I may have invented some new expletives.

Long story short, we cleaned up all the water, put a bucket on top of the amp to catch the drips (which eventually slowed to a trickle), and called a roofer. All the equipment is (miraculously) unharmed, with the only casualty being a red switch that no longer lights up.

Later that same day (which was a very rainy one), we developed a leak in the roof over #2 which not only dripped into the booth, but ran down the wall in the back of the auditorium, and an old leak by #3 re-opened.
It turns out they had re-sealed around our 3 A/C units, to avoid any leaks like the one we had a while ago in #3. I think they may have forgotten a vital step in the process, which is to say actually putting down any sealant.

I managed to get that print made up in time for the first show, and the trailers I had tossed landed without unraveling. Unbelieveable.

Weeks prior to opening, the local tech. walked into the booth and discovered that bandits had completely stripped the booth of copper wire. That was the end and the DI never reopened.

Film continued to pile up on floor to the sound rack on one side and to the platters on the other. by the scene when "Jack Ryan" confronts the president film had piled so high that it began to to get sucked into the lower continuous feed sprocket. As more film got sucked into the Christie p35 it worked open the pad roller a little at a time until it was all the way open and would no longer rotate.

The last few reels were staticcy and the platter tried to throw the print, but it was held on by the brain. Half of the loop of the remaining reels was pushed past the platter wheel of the ORC platter system. I eased the rest through and saw that the film was basically intact. I went down to the auditorium where the manager was handing out re-admits and and said that if the patrons were willing to miss about 4 minutes of the film that they could see the end of the movie.

I had an usher help me move what had run through to a different platter system, pulled the 3 minutes of film that had spiralled up the feed out to the tree off, and threaded the intact remainder of the film to a new core ring.

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Anyway, he goes out of this booth to the next one to thread and start another house..

Meanwhile the takeup platter stops running and film dumps onto the still damp floor...

Sorry it took me so long to reply, but yes, the explosion was that bad. I wasn't exaggerating at all, as you can probably tell from others' stories.

We had 'twined' a theater, and installed new (natural gas powered) roof top combo heat/air conditioners. (The place was originally bulit in 1949, with a big old ammonia AC system, but they never included a vent for it in the booth.) The rear of one auditourium and the booth was shared by one new AC unit. The controlling thermostat was installed in the back of the auditourium, and had a cheap plastic 'lock box' on it.

There was a summer heat wave, and the cleaners must've decided they wanted to be cool while cleaning up. They used a screwdriver to reach into the lock box and push the thermostat "TEMP" lever down. Except they forced the lever so hard, they busted up the thermostat.

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