The Sunday Memory Drawer - Walking Out on Movies

Movie fan that I am, I will stick out a stinker as long as possible.   You know those films.   The one that you start to hate by the end of the first reel and it actually goes downhill from there.   I know lots of folks who would get up and leave.   For the most part, not me.   I will grit my teeth and hope against hope that it will get better.

But there have been three movies that I never saw the end of.  Of course, one wasn't because it stunk.   Years later, I saw it on TCM and thought it was very clever.   But, trying to see it at the Loews Mount Vernon theater with its artist rendering above, well, that didn't work.   Indeed, it was the very first movie my mother ever took me to see.

Perfect entertainment for somebody my age.  And, oh, look, "it's colorsome."

So, on one warm weekday afternoon, Mom walked me down Stevens Avenue to Loews for the first of what would be thousands of motion picture experiences for yours truly.

Except...

I remember the huge and glorious edifice being empty.  It was the first show of the day and apparently even a colorsome movie like Tom Thumb wasn't packing them in just yet.   We made the long climb to the balcony, which was my mother's prime viewing location.  Why?  It was the smoking section.

I probably was in awe of my surroundings.  It was so eerily quiet.  But the hall was very pretty.  And the velvet curtain that faced us all.

Moments later, the lights began to dim.

Uh oh, what's happening?

The curtain slowly started to inch its way apart to reveal a huge white wall.  

Suddenly, this all didn't look so inviting.  I had no clue what was happening.  But none of it looked good.  And I reacted the way any well-adjusted child would.

I started to scream.

'WHHHHAAAAAAAA!   WHHHAAAAAAAAAAA!"

My mom was so off-put that she probably had to douse her cigarette.  What the hell was wrong with me?

"WHHHHHAAAAAAA!  WHHHHAAAAAAAAAA!"

If there was anybody else in the theater at that moment, I am sure they were complaining to the manager.  Can you shut that freakin' kid up?

Mom had no luck with me.  This freakin' kid wouldn't shut up.  I sounded like Lucy Ricardo on the umpteenth time that Ricky wouldn't let her be in the show down at the Tropicana.

There would be no Tom Thumb for me that afternoon. 

I think I stopped the histrionics several blocks away.  And re-ignited them  anew when Mom had her say.

"You've wasted my money, today, young man."

Young man?  Okay, I was four.

With a great flourish, my mother ripped apart the two movie tickets.  Wasted money, indeed.  The tickets were probably no more than fifty cents each.  Needless to say, the rest of my afternoon was spent in my room.  A just punishment for having squandered my family's fortune.

Not wanting to repeat the scream fest ever again, my mother got smart at how to get around my "dimming lights/curtain parting" phobia.  For the next two years whenever I was taken to the movies, we arrived ten minutes into the first feature.  I clearly recall one afternoon while we hung around Hartley Park just up the street from the RKO Proctors theater.  The show had started at 1PM.  My mom looked at her watch.

"1:15PM.  I guess we can go in now."

I eventually outgrew this nonsense.   But, in the case of the two other movies I have walked out on in my lifetime, I was better off screaming at the curtain.

You see that there?   Academy Award winning.   And it did win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.  Okay, I was a film buff.   This was something I needed to see one night with some friends.   

Of course, back then for people living in Westchester, New York, the only outlet you had to see foreign or art house movies was the Scarsdale Fine Arts theater. Sadly, I think it's a furniture store now.  But, back in the day, it was the "in" place to be for film devotees.   

I don't remember just how quickly "The Tin Drum" skidded off the tracks for me.  But, within the first half-hour, we were treated to a bunch of unlikable people set against the Nazi Holocaust.  With this annoying kid pictured above banging on his freakin' drum.

I hung out for a while.   But, then, there was the scene at the beach.   These characters started to eat live eels.  I started to feel vomit oozing up into my mouth.   I don't remember exactly what my friends did.   I got up and ran into the lobby for a gallon or two from their water fountain.

I was done with 'The Tin Drum."

Ah, and there was one other that had me beating a hasty retreat.  And, at first glance, you would wonder why.

I mean, come on, Len.  How can you go wrong here?  Jack Nicholson.  Meryl Streep.  Mike Nichols directing.  Nora Ephron writing.

By the end of the first half-hour, I couldn't take these completely insufferable people.  Interesting because it was allegedly loosely based on the romance of Ephron and journalist Carl Bernstein.   The histrionics on the screen were so annoying that I bade a temporary goodbye to my movie partner and headed to the lobby.

The good news is we were at Movieland on Central Avenue in Yonkers.  The lobby was full of video games.   I was not a video game player.   That night, I became one.  One quarter after another.  One Pac Man after another.   The time went a lot faster for me than it would have sitting back in that theater.

Indeed, I guess you can say my batting average is pretty good.  Walking out of two movies.   Technically being dragged out of a third.   Now there is junk I see to this day.   But I rarely walk out.   I think back to the day of my mom yelling at me after the aborted attempt to see "Tom Thumb."

"You've wasted my money today, young man."

Well, now it's my own money.  And I don't waste that so easily.

Dinner last night:  French dip panini at the Arclight Cafe.