I didn't work in a movie theater, but in college I was a concession stand employee and I remember making popcorn for 8 hours one day for a big football game the next day. I left with a loathing for popcorn that lasted a good while. I also got to make cotton candy but no matter how long I did that, I didn't hate it. Probably because as a child, I'd see cotton candy being made at fairs and child-me thought that was so cool, so it was almost like a dream job.
lol I can see that; don't know why I never got sick of making popcorn. Once we rented a cotton candy machine for a bday party and that was amazing for the whole neighborhood. We got the blue sugar *and* the pink
My popcorn and movie jobs were split into two separate experiences. In high school, I worked for a stand-alone popcorn shop (kinda like a TCBY, back in the day, but for popcorn). It was AMAZING! My hair, by car, my clothes... everything I owned spelled like popcorn. That or Big Red gum (a staple in my car because we--the cheerleaders--were always throwing packs into the stands at games--can you guess what color my high school's colors included?) I loved having to "quality test" every batch of popcorn and the unlimited free pop AND one free bag of popcorn each week. My first winter break of college, I was the cool college kid returning to fill popcorn canister that we shipped all over. "Oops! Over filled that canister. Guess I'll have to eat that spilled popcorn..."
Later in college, I worked for a video rental store. It's how my hubby and I met... (bonded over watching Uncle Buck on repeat in the store.) Somehow we ended up with every shift scheduled to work together. 🤔
John Candy! Sorry, had to get that out. He was amazing.
Video rental stores, now... that's a really nostalgic trip for me. I never worked in one, but I sure did spend an awful lot of time looking for videos (and the occasional Nintendo game) to rent.
Movie Andrews strike back! Cool stories, bros. (No cap, like, for real.)
Speaking of movie food, many years ago I visited Merida with my Mexican-American friend (her parents still live in Merida). We went to a movie theater there, and three things struck me:
1. How cheap the tickets were compared to Denmark.
2. How there were no assigned seats - you showed up and just picked your spots. (Also, the seats were insane: They could lean back until they practically turned into beds.)
3. The food menu. You could quite literally order entire meals, even exotic stuff like sushi...and they'd bring it to your seat.
Now that's movie food!
I never worked in a movie theater, but I did have a stint as a paper boy.
After that, a "bottle boy" in a supermarket (literally "flaskedreng"). I'd have to sor the incoming recycling bottles into plastic/glass, etc. And also help stock the shelves and move bottle crates.
The pinnacle of my young man jobs was KFC where I fried chicken for about 1 year during high school.
So I also know my way around prefabricated fast food.
Sitting down with an entire meal at a movie was really rare like 30 years ago, but I've seen a lot of theaters since then cropping up all over the place. Most US theaters will sell stuff like hot dogs and chicken nuggets these days, so they are starting to creep toward actual food, although the actual full service spots are still fairly rare.
Two thoughts occurred to me just now. The first one: maybe you could open one up! It could be gangbusters and a very successful investment.
The second thought, which actually occurred earlier, but I wanted to present it this way, is that maybe not since this is like the most American thing ever.
I mean, if we chewed the food up and spit it into straws leading into the customer's mouth while watching a movie, that might be a bit more Murkan, but still!
I too had the smell of popcorn "imbued into every pore," which was both amazing and awful. But I think Daniel wins. Having the scent of fried chicken form KFC follow our every move, invading your every belonging... BLECK!
My favorite (only?) International movie experience was seeing The Third Man in Vienna. Old B&W murder mystery right after WWII when the city is split into four parts under US/UK/France/Russia. It’s one of those things thats the same yet subtly different in another country - I remember being able to get good coffee. We saw it at night and then wandered around the next day finding where all the scenes were filmed.
My first job was pizza cook. So my hands smelled like onions and meaty pizza goodness for over a year.
But later I worked at the Laemmle Sunset 5 @ Sunset Blvd & Crescent Heights. It was an art house theater upstairs from Wolfgang Puck's famous restaurant and the Virgin Megastore record store. There was a coffee shop downstairs called Buzz Coffee that was true to its name. The employees used to bring us fully-punched punch cards for free coffee in exchange for free admission.
Being an art house, the indie and lower-budget films played at the Laemmle. So members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences had to see them in order to vote on them for the Oscars. So I "met" lots of industry folk. They were all super cool, too. 8 yr old Elijah Wood was on a date one Saturday and I sold him and his date popcorn and he was so polite and so sweet it was absolutely touching. People often brought their bucket of popcorn back and asked for a refund. It was lousy. Just a squirt of canola oil from a giant bag under the counter. The LA Times voted it Worst Popcorn in LA. I still ate tons of it.
I was working in the box office selling tickets one Saturday when a woman with long silver hair approached with her friend. Then Richard Harris came bounding up the escalator and tried to convince her to be in his new movie. But she kept saying No. After he left I sold her her tickets and told her she should've said Yes.
I saw Swingers about 5 times and talked to Jon Favreau several times because he and Vince Vaughn came in often to see how their movie was doing. I told Jon it was the only movie I'd personally ever seen where people always clapped at the end. And we were always standing in the back of the theater at the end, waiting to clean, so I saw the last few minutes many many times. And the audience always clapped.
Your celeb encounter stories are great! Some of those might make for some good Substack reading at some point.
I also worked at a pizza shop as my first job. One of my favorite memories is dipping my arm all the way into the giant sauce mixing bowl to really get the spices integrated.
You know it did! And, we were a retail by-the-slice place, so I learned how to pick up a pizza with my thumb and the plate making a kind of pinch on the edge of the crust of a slice. It was quite the art.
The Movie Cafe sounds just about as nasty as I would imagine a movie theater kitchen to be, maggots don't belong in foodservice. Stretching the already questionable nacho cheese sauce with water and corn syrup must have made for some horrible nachos, but customers probably didn't even notice.
Thanks for writing this up Andrew! I was in high school when I worked at the Chinese; one of my best friends got me the job and then we got some other friends and that made it a lot of fun. I bet it was fun working in the same place as your girlfriend.
The Twins are gone, blown up into 10 different screens in a mall adjacent to the Kodak theatre but the Chinese is still there. I wonder how they pull off the popcorn now.
*totally* unplanned I just finished my article for tomorrow and it was party inspired by some words you wrote about recently.
Hey, neat! Feel free to tag me in there if it's appropriate. I like the network effects here on Substack, and I think it makes everyone's reading experience just a hair better.
And, this was fun to read! I reread your spots a few times and ended up needing to crop just a bit for brevity's sake (I cropped my own stuff too). I think there may be more to say about my time at the Movie Cafe one day. So much happened and it was all a whirlwind of activity! But at least some of those memories are still quasi-fresh (they're "only" 25-30 years old at this point, right?).
you are tagged tomorrow for sure! I dig the web of connections here on Substack too. Nice editing; the only thing I missed was how ketchup ferments and explodes so I may have to memorialize that in a Note. That was before the Chinese at my first job ever. My sister the waitress got it for me. I was the host and I wore the best clip-on ties
The ketchup thing was good! I also wanted to keep the footnotes, but quickly got frustrated and moved on. I think the speed at which I publish is really important - like I have to enjoy the process every day, so I get pretty clumsy with some of my edits sometimes. Still, that might leave the door open for you to write about that some other time soon, or at least that's generally my hope.
Ever see any of the stuff I've written with Brian Perrine? He's the chef up in the Pacific Northwest, and we bonded over restaurants and sci-fi.
Ha! I don't mind the footnotes personally, but just never got into the practice of particularly scholarly writing practices. Too slow for my impatient brain!
One would sincerely hope, but I'm sad to report that this wasn't the proximate cause. Bad management was the culprit all around, and the place just ran out of money.
I didn't work in a movie theater, but in college I was a concession stand employee and I remember making popcorn for 8 hours one day for a big football game the next day. I left with a loathing for popcorn that lasted a good while. I also got to make cotton candy but no matter how long I did that, I didn't hate it. Probably because as a child, I'd see cotton candy being made at fairs and child-me thought that was so cool, so it was almost like a dream job.
lol I can see that; don't know why I never got sick of making popcorn. Once we rented a cotton candy machine for a bday party and that was amazing for the whole neighborhood. We got the blue sugar *and* the pink
Dang, I want cotton candy now.
My popcorn and movie jobs were split into two separate experiences. In high school, I worked for a stand-alone popcorn shop (kinda like a TCBY, back in the day, but for popcorn). It was AMAZING! My hair, by car, my clothes... everything I owned spelled like popcorn. That or Big Red gum (a staple in my car because we--the cheerleaders--were always throwing packs into the stands at games--can you guess what color my high school's colors included?) I loved having to "quality test" every batch of popcorn and the unlimited free pop AND one free bag of popcorn each week. My first winter break of college, I was the cool college kid returning to fill popcorn canister that we shipped all over. "Oops! Over filled that canister. Guess I'll have to eat that spilled popcorn..."
Later in college, I worked for a video rental store. It's how my hubby and I met... (bonded over watching Uncle Buck on repeat in the store.) Somehow we ended up with every shift scheduled to work together. 🤔
John Candy! Sorry, had to get that out. He was amazing.
Video rental stores, now... that's a really nostalgic trip for me. I never worked in one, but I sure did spend an awful lot of time looking for videos (and the occasional Nintendo game) to rent.
“Take this quarter. Go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face.”
Savage and classic!
Movie Andrews strike back! Cool stories, bros. (No cap, like, for real.)
Speaking of movie food, many years ago I visited Merida with my Mexican-American friend (her parents still live in Merida). We went to a movie theater there, and three things struck me:
1. How cheap the tickets were compared to Denmark.
2. How there were no assigned seats - you showed up and just picked your spots. (Also, the seats were insane: They could lean back until they practically turned into beds.)
3. The food menu. You could quite literally order entire meals, even exotic stuff like sushi...and they'd bring it to your seat.
Now that's movie food!
I never worked in a movie theater, but I did have a stint as a paper boy.
After that, a "bottle boy" in a supermarket (literally "flaskedreng"). I'd have to sor the incoming recycling bottles into plastic/glass, etc. And also help stock the shelves and move bottle crates.
The pinnacle of my young man jobs was KFC where I fried chicken for about 1 year during high school.
So I also know my way around prefabricated fast food.
Sitting down with an entire meal at a movie was really rare like 30 years ago, but I've seen a lot of theaters since then cropping up all over the place. Most US theaters will sell stuff like hot dogs and chicken nuggets these days, so they are starting to creep toward actual food, although the actual full service spots are still fairly rare.
I don't believe I've seen a single movie theater here in DK that does this. It's all still just popcorn and candy. The Americas live in the future.
Two thoughts occurred to me just now. The first one: maybe you could open one up! It could be gangbusters and a very successful investment.
The second thought, which actually occurred earlier, but I wanted to present it this way, is that maybe not since this is like the most American thing ever.
I mean, if we chewed the food up and spit it into straws leading into the customer's mouth while watching a movie, that might be a bit more Murkan, but still!
I'm not sure about my Danish food-movie-place, but your very last sentence is a business idea waiting to happen!
Presumably, this is already in your brain's wheelhouse: https://youtu.be/1hj_7U40z5I
What documentary is this?!
(Kidding. But Idiocracy had some great takes.)
I too had the smell of popcorn "imbued into every pore," which was both amazing and awful. But I think Daniel wins. Having the scent of fried chicken form KFC follow our every move, invading your every belonging... BLECK!
It's a fate I'd wish upon a mortal enemy…
Remind me never to upset you 😂🍗
My favorite (only?) International movie experience was seeing The Third Man in Vienna. Old B&W murder mystery right after WWII when the city is split into four parts under US/UK/France/Russia. It’s one of those things thats the same yet subtly different in another country - I remember being able to get good coffee. We saw it at night and then wandered around the next day finding where all the scenes were filmed.
Being able to immediately go and find spots from the movie you watched the day before actually sounds like a lot of fun.
My first job was pizza cook. So my hands smelled like onions and meaty pizza goodness for over a year.
But later I worked at the Laemmle Sunset 5 @ Sunset Blvd & Crescent Heights. It was an art house theater upstairs from Wolfgang Puck's famous restaurant and the Virgin Megastore record store. There was a coffee shop downstairs called Buzz Coffee that was true to its name. The employees used to bring us fully-punched punch cards for free coffee in exchange for free admission.
Being an art house, the indie and lower-budget films played at the Laemmle. So members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences had to see them in order to vote on them for the Oscars. So I "met" lots of industry folk. They were all super cool, too. 8 yr old Elijah Wood was on a date one Saturday and I sold him and his date popcorn and he was so polite and so sweet it was absolutely touching. People often brought their bucket of popcorn back and asked for a refund. It was lousy. Just a squirt of canola oil from a giant bag under the counter. The LA Times voted it Worst Popcorn in LA. I still ate tons of it.
I was working in the box office selling tickets one Saturday when a woman with long silver hair approached with her friend. Then Richard Harris came bounding up the escalator and tried to convince her to be in his new movie. But she kept saying No. After he left I sold her her tickets and told her she should've said Yes.
I saw Swingers about 5 times and talked to Jon Favreau several times because he and Vince Vaughn came in often to see how their movie was doing. I told Jon it was the only movie I'd personally ever seen where people always clapped at the end. And we were always standing in the back of the theater at the end, waiting to clean, so I saw the last few minutes many many times. And the audience always clapped.
Good memories.
Your celeb encounter stories are great! Some of those might make for some good Substack reading at some point.
I also worked at a pizza shop as my first job. One of my favorite memories is dipping my arm all the way into the giant sauce mixing bowl to really get the spices integrated.
I bet it felt cold
You know it did! And, we were a retail by-the-slice place, so I learned how to pick up a pizza with my thumb and the plate making a kind of pinch on the edge of the crust of a slice. It was quite the art.
The Movie Cafe sounds just about as nasty as I would imagine a movie theater kitchen to be, maggots don't belong in foodservice. Stretching the already questionable nacho cheese sauce with water and corn syrup must have made for some horrible nachos, but customers probably didn't even notice.
Oh dang, that was a brain fart/typo! It was corn starch, not syrup. Still gross, but at least it kinda makes sense!
And yes, this place was fn gross.
Thanks for writing this up Andrew! I was in high school when I worked at the Chinese; one of my best friends got me the job and then we got some other friends and that made it a lot of fun. I bet it was fun working in the same place as your girlfriend.
The Twins are gone, blown up into 10 different screens in a mall adjacent to the Kodak theatre but the Chinese is still there. I wonder how they pull off the popcorn now.
*totally* unplanned I just finished my article for tomorrow and it was party inspired by some words you wrote about recently.
Hey, neat! Feel free to tag me in there if it's appropriate. I like the network effects here on Substack, and I think it makes everyone's reading experience just a hair better.
And, this was fun to read! I reread your spots a few times and ended up needing to crop just a bit for brevity's sake (I cropped my own stuff too). I think there may be more to say about my time at the Movie Cafe one day. So much happened and it was all a whirlwind of activity! But at least some of those memories are still quasi-fresh (they're "only" 25-30 years old at this point, right?).
you are tagged tomorrow for sure! I dig the web of connections here on Substack too. Nice editing; the only thing I missed was how ketchup ferments and explodes so I may have to memorialize that in a Note. That was before the Chinese at my first job ever. My sister the waitress got it for me. I was the host and I wore the best clip-on ties
The ketchup thing was good! I also wanted to keep the footnotes, but quickly got frustrated and moved on. I think the speed at which I publish is really important - like I have to enjoy the process every day, so I get pretty clumsy with some of my edits sometimes. Still, that might leave the door open for you to write about that some other time soon, or at least that's generally my hope.
Ever see any of the stuff I've written with Brian Perrine? He's the chef up in the Pacific Northwest, and we bonded over restaurants and sci-fi.
no; i’ll look for it. Goatfury doesn’t do footnotes. I’ve been trying to wean myself off of them but sometimes I must. Tomorrow’s bit has 1
Ha! I don't mind the footnotes personally, but just never got into the practice of particularly scholarly writing practices. Too slow for my impatient brain!
I suspect the Movie Cafe got shut down by the Health Inspector....
One would sincerely hope, but I'm sad to report that this wasn't the proximate cause. Bad management was the culprit all around, and the place just ran out of money.