Sleeping or dead...

[Frank Cox]

This hasn't happened in quite a few years.

One of the people who came out after the show said on his way by, "The last guy in there is either sleeping or dead".

So I went in to see what's up and there's an old guy who's not moving.

I tapped him on the shoulder. Nothing.

I gave him a shake. Still nothing.

Oh dear.

I gave him a really good shake. "Huh? Oh, how long has the show been over?"

Then he got up and left.

Years ago I had a chap who came here every Tuesday and never watched a movie. He would sit in the back and go to sleep and I would wake him up after the show and he would leave. But he wasn't nearly as hard to wake up as this fellow was.

[Leo Enticknap]

Back in the '90s, we actually did have someone pass away in their seat during a weekday afternoon show. The usher that afternoon told me over the radio that there was "another bloody credit watcher" in the auditorium, and therefore not to raise the house lights (this was an arthouse, with a strict policy that house lights were to remain fully down until the last frame of the movie, including during the credit crawl).

When the lights did go up she quickly discovered that this wasn't the case. She was a nursing student in her final year and only a few weeks from qualifying, and so was better able than most to cope with what she found (unlike 99.9% of the population, this wasn't the first time she'd encountered a deceased person, as her training included treating terminally ill patients and attending post mortems). We were later told that the deceased customer had undiagnosed final stage lung cancer, and this eventually caused heart failure. We were closed for the rest of that day, because the police needed to take statements and complete other formalities, which took a few hours. The incident was the front page lead story on the next day's edition of the city's local newspaper (they were still a thing back then!), which wasn't exactly great publicity for us.

This theater did attract "credit watchers," who sometimes liked to sit and discuss the movie for a few minutes after the lights went up. For a few weeks after that incident, the other ushers would sometimes ask either myself or the duty manager to go into an auditorium with them to check that if any customers remained, they were alive and well. In situations when I only had 6-7 minutes to clean and rethread a projector, this was added pressure, but obviously I always did so if asked. If I didn't have time, I'm afraid that I would use my "credit watcher eviction technique," which consisted of setting the fader to 7 and playing pink noise.

The film this happened during was Deconstructing Harry. It took all the self control I could muster to refrain from commenting that if I had to sit through a Woody Allen movie, I would likely lose the will to live, too.

[Ryan Gallagher]

We have quite a few credit watchers in our classic programming too, the credits were often shorter in the era of many of these films so less of a burden too.

But the REAL reason our historic venue has people lingering in the balcony, is that it was downright dangerous to walk anywhere up there with house at a credits level. You really needed at least house at half to be able to navigate if you did not possess very young eyes.

I'm hopeful the renovation and restoration work addresses this problem with some proper row-end, stair, and aisle path lighting.