I was a movie nut from the time I was five. I could already read the movie ads in the New York Daily News and the New York Daily Mirror. On an given day, I could tell you what was playing at all the local movie houses around our home on South 15th Avenue in Mount Vernon, New York. RKO and Loews about ten blocks away. The Kimball about six blocks away in Yonkers. The Wakefield about two miles away down on White Plains Road in the Bronx. That was my cinematic universe and I lived to be in any of them whenever possible.
It got a little crazier. When I was in the second and third grade, if you asked what I wanted to be when I grew, the answer was a little scary.
I wanted to be a movie theater projectionist.
With all due respect to those who toiled in that profession, I could have had loftier aspirations.
I was so consumed that I looked to be a showman in my own house. Okay, with my parents' help. You see the game box at the top? I got this for Christmas when I was around six. Now I could have my own movie theater in the house.
I was a drive-in entrepreneur. Rolling little Matchbox into the tiny drive-in movie theater. They even gave you product to run. Essentially, it was those View Master slides. The small little light bulb illuminated the picture of Huckleberry Hound on the big...I mean, little...screen. This was a Remco toy and the light bulb was probably the same one used to make cupcakes in those Suzy Homemaker ovens.
You also had the same result as the bulb in those makeshift cupcake factories. When the bulb blew out, you were up shit's creek. Replacement parts were not easy. I'd look longingly at my dad for a solution.
"I'll pick one up the next time I'm in Japan."
I guess that was a no. The Remco Drive-In Movie Theater soon found its place to gather dust in the back of my closet.
The only problem in my house was that most walls were unavailable. There were pictures or ornaments adorning most. And, in places like the kitchen or the bathroom, the walls were tiled. Popeye and Mighty Mouse showed up with strange lines on their faces. The luster of Give-A-Show-Projector was extinguished quickly. And, of course, the light bulb didn't last much longer.
Several years past and I soon elevated to more complicated machinery. And the type of home projector that you could actually invite friends over to watch a movie.
I got my own 8MM movieola.
Hell, even I was impressed with this Christmas present. My folks must really trust me now. Plus it was an Argus product. Just like the camera that my dad used to take all those Technicolor slides of our last vacation or Thanksgiving dinner. My God, why don't we just put the RKO Proctor's marquee right outside on our front porch?
Of course, with such an advance mechanism, I got the usual parental warning.
"This was expensive. Don't break it the first day."
And I didn't. Break it on the first day, that is. But this device proved to be more complicated than I had bargained.
They gave you two short movies with this projector. An old Three Stooges short. Don't be impressed. It was one with Shemp, not Curly. And the other "movie" was the very last reel of an obscure Bud and Lou film called "Abbott and Costello Meet The Keystone Kops." Both were sound pictures any place but my house. With no speakers on my projector, I was a silent movie theater owner.
With this advanced projector, you didn't mess around with showing it on the wall. I was allowed to pull out the screen my dad used to entertain the family on holidays. The process of getting that blasted thing to stand up on the tripod took a half-hour all by itself.
And then it came time to thread the projector.
I'd invite my neighborhood friends up for an afternoon of movies at my "theater." And they would then be forced to wait. And wait. And wait.
I never could figure out how to load the film from one reel through the lens and onto the reel below. Once, the movie spilled out through the projector and onto the floor. It took me two hours roll the movie back up. Other times, I would rip the film and wind up having to tear off a piece as I attempted to thread the projector. What used to be a fifteen minute short soon became fourteen minutes long. Then thirteen minutes long.
The novelty of this torture wore off quickly. And I wanted to be a movie theater projectionist???
Opening my house to a movie audience was put back in my closet with the Remco toy and the Give-A-Show Projector and the Argus projector. But, technology intervened about fifteen years later. When I became one of the only folks in my crowd to own...
...a video cassette recorder. This clunky and heavy contraption cost about six hundred bucks when RCA first came out with their Selectavision. My college buddy, the Bibster, was actually the first to splurge on one of their things. He likely got his to time record New York Ranger hockey games. Oh, sure, I had my own "don't miss" TV shows. This VCR was a perfect way for me never to miss Valerie Bertinelli and "One Day at a Time." But, as the sales of this machine increased, so did the rise of another new innovation in our world.
The video store.
Imagine that? You'd go into one of these new outlets and scan the shelves. You'd drop your credit card on the counter as security in case you didn't return the movie and tape. Back in the day, a VCR recording of a feature film could set you back about seventy or eighty bucks. You'd take your movie home and then make sure to return it the very next day. If you were lucky, you could have it for three days.
The Len Cinema was back in business. You want to come home to my house and watch a movie? Let's go pick one out.
Back when, I had only one such video store available to me. It was all the way in Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers. Or, since I worked in Manhattan, I could rent a film at the big video store on the corner of Broadway and 50th Street. The convenience of having a movie at your fingertips was really incredibly inconvenient. But I didn't care.
For about a year, my best friend from high school, Danny, would come over on a Friday night to see what was playing on my VCR. We watched classics we had never seen before. We revisited movies from a few seasons back. We enjoyed our own private film festival.
I finally had that movie theater in my house.
When we cleaned out that home as it was being sold, I tackled that pesky toy closet of mine. And pulled out the "home" movie theaters of my past. I showed them to my father. He remembered.
"Yeah, those light bulbs sure did burn out fast."
Dinner last night: Teriyaki burger at the Arclight.
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