While there is a certain nostalgia for the grittier era of 1970s New York City, particularly when contrasted with the increasing gentrification of the city, it’s worth remembering it was hardly a paradise. Crime was rampant, the city could be incredibly dangerous, and not even the sanctity of the cinema could keep you safe.
Author Don Winslow (“The Force,” “Savages“) knows this quite well, and in an interview with The Village Voice he shared what he witnessed working in movie theaters at the time, and it goes far beyond talking and texting during the film:
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I could tell you so many stories. The first night of my job there was a guy ululating in the balcony, and we had this usher who was pissed that he didn’t get my job, a huge guy from Avenue U in Brooklyn. He said, “What should I do with this guy?” I said, “Throw him out.” And the movie showing was Mel Brooks’ “High Anxiety,” which has an irony to it. I’m standing in the concession counter, and I see a body just come, boom! Down from the balcony. This usher had grabbed him, dragged him to the railing, and bench-pressed him over it. And he comes down and he says, “I did what you told me to do, I threw him out.” And there’s dead silence in this theater right now, during a Mel Brooks movie. I think, “Man, I’ve had this job for, like, seventeen minutes and I’m gonna get fired.” So I — this is awful, man, I’m confessing a felony to you — we dragged the guy out into the alley. And I woke him up and I said, “Man, you’re lucky. You know, if I see you again, I’ll have him kill you. Now get out of here.” And I never heard about it again, and I got to keep my $105 a week.
There were brawls. I had guys die. You know, the show would end and someone’s still sitting there and then you realize they’re never getting up. I had a projectionist die one time in the booth. I heard the crowd booing, and then the movie’s off the screens. This is when there were carbon arc projectors, so a lot of times these projectionists would just fall asleep or they’d be screwing somebody up there and they’d forget to change the carbon arc. So I go up there…and the guy’s dead on the floor. I called the cops, and then I thought — this is how sick you’d get after being in New York for a few years in those days — I thought, “This is my big chance to actually shame a New York audience.” So I went into this theater and I looked at them, I said, “I’m very sorry for the inconvenience. The projectionist has passed away. We have someone going up there now, and your film will be on shortly.” And they booed me!
In the Times Square movie theaters, man, everything, everything you could imagine. The ushers were running prostitution services out of the storage closets. There were shootings and knife fights, and there was some nut that would get on the roofs of these buildings and toss cinder blocks off, so if you went into the alley, you’d walk with your back firmly pressed to the wall, hoping the trajectory of the cinder block would go over you. There are things you can’t print that went on in there.
Holy moly, that sounds insane. If Winslow needs inspiration for his next book, I think he’s just found it. His latest, “The Force,” is now in stores.