I was relief managing one of our theatres when Walt Disney's Flubber came out. This theatre is in a town full of "free-thinking-herbalists". I mean, I would often get puffs of pot smoke through the box office window from people walkin down the street takin a quick puff. What I didn't expect was some woman taking hits in the MIDDLE of a SOLD OUT auditorium (295 people!!) I shoulda called the cops, but I was just SO shocked that she'd have the nerve to do it, I just walked in and pointed at her. I was like "WHAT?! What ARE you DOING? Are you NUTS?!"

My reaction was quite similar when some guy just popped open the four corners to a snap-lock poster frame and proceeded to steal the Crow: City of Angels poster out of it. Whean I heard the poster frame snapped shut (what a nice theif) it registered to me that the guy (1 of 10 in the theatre that day) just took down that poster. I rounded the corner just DUMBFOUNDED and again... "What?!?! You didn't think? Did you? Did you THINK you'd just take that off the wall?" Again -- I was just too damn amazed to kick his butt out.

I'll post more as I think of them. This is a fun topic.

Another incident occured one night when he was down stairs checking the auditoriums. The theater was empty at the time. Suddenly he heard this loud bang from upstairs. He ran up to see what the noise was but could not find anything turned over. When he was about to exit out of the booth he turned and looked and noticed an old wooden handled ice pick in the center of the booth floor. REAL SPOOKY!

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

"Triumph of the Will" is one SCARY movie! You watch it, repulsed at the efficiency of Hitler's propaganda machine in 1934 and what it would lead to, but admiring the virtuoso filmmaking of Leni Riefenstahl:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0025913

Images from this film have influenced many films, including "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (the book burning rally), and the "Lion King" (the Hyena troops marching before Scar).

Ms. Riefenstahl was a complex character. She never wavered in her blind support of Hitler, but you sense her admiration for Jesse Owens and other non-arian athletes in her filmmaking of "Olympiad".

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

The projectionist at the Roma Drive-in Theatre, Roma which was situated in the south west of Queensland in Australia missed a change over completely one night. A snake had decided to slither into the projection room and was happily coiled up inbetween the projectors.

While walking on these catwalks, I spotted a dirty old envelope up in the bar joist beneath the roof. I climbed up and grabed the envelope and put it in my pocket. After the inspection I looked in the envelope and found eight mint condition "Joe Paloka" ink blotters which were distributed with WWII War bonds. There were also several unsold war bonds.

At a sold-out evening show of "ET" in a large 70mm auditorium, right before showtime, a pretty good-sized crab (like a tidepool crab) was spotted climbing up the curtains on a side wall, down front. People sitting near it freaked out. The theater staff had to delay the show while they tried to get the crab down by shaking the curtains. People sitting directly under the crab vacated their seats while this was going on, but the crab wasn't going to give in easily, so they started shaking the curtain very hard. When the crab finally came loose, it flew out into the middle of the auditorium where people were still seated. People were screaming and climbing over each other to get away from it. When the show finally started, there were some empty seats, so I guess they were so flustered they just left (probably with rainchecks).

This occurence happened about four years back whilst I was working for an all THX theater complex. As a matter of quality assurance coporate staff were encouraged to purchase movie tickets if we wanted to see a particular movie with in our theater chain. (odd no? we were reimbursed later as a normal procedure) The reasoning was that we were the eyes and ears amongst to ensure that service/customer client relation were adequate and thus purchasing the tickets were part of the client experience we were to be mimicking. I received a blank ticket that had the theater # and show time "hand written" I thought it was odd because I was not aware that there was a problem printing tickets although not part of my maintenace tasks however all maintenace personell seemed to know about the details with in everyones elses jobs. As I continued on I bought popcorn and soda at the concession stand and made my way to the ticket taker and noticed he held onto my "handwritten" ticket and never placced in in the ticket basket. <This was very odd to me>

The next day I went back to the same location and bought another movie ticket for the same showing and the same time as the previoous day. It happened again with the "handwritten" ticket and I noted the people involved and made a mental note as to their identities. Something smelled funny to me!

The following day I brought it to the attention of the operations manager as I thought higher management should know right away. The operations manager hesitantly told me that the printer had malfunctioned but that it was working well. With in a few days I returned to the theater on a sound service call and soon after I finished I made my way downstairs and observed the same thing happening again. I said "hmmmmmmm something stinks around here!"

Turns out there was a corruption ring that involved several candy girls/boys.........management <including floor supervisors> I thought there were still more people involved. It was peculiar that the operations manager of the chain and that the general manager of the theater were aware of the printers' "malfuntion" but somehow were innocent of any wrong doing!