“With that stuff you get the wrong crowd, rowdy kids, and you have to devote too much time monitoring the balcony,” he says. Notwithstanding Pulp Fiction, Kouvalis prefers to avoid violent and foul-mouthed movies. But if it made money in America, it’ll make money for me. It can be the stupidest comedy ever made, it can be Dumb and Dumber.
INSURMOUNTABLE MEANING IN HINDI MOVIE
“If a movie has made money across the United States, I’ll order it. “Every Friday I look in the Tribune, where they show the top box-office grosses from the week before,” Kouvalis says. To lure his clientele, Kouvalis tries to secure mainstream films like Crimson Tide and French Kiss, but only if they boast a proven track record. They stay home all day, and in the afternoon or at night they go out to the movies. “A second-run movie is the cheapest form of entertainment you can have and still get out of the house. “People come in every week like they’re going to church,” Kouvalis says. The Patio aims less at attracting kids, the staple of the movie business everywhere, than the middle-aged and the elderly. “You’ve got to hope that every time you bring in a picture it’s the right one, and that’s not easy to do.” “If you have just one screen, like the Patio does, each week you have to try to put the best bullet in the chamber,” explains Brian Boylan, a booking agent. But Kouvalis, with only one screen, doesn’t have that luxury if a film can’t draw an audience. Most second-run houses today have several screens, so proprietors can hedge their bets by booking several different attractions. The Patio is a second-run movie theater, meaning it plays films that opened many weeks or months before. A guy like me has to stay in business and pay his bills. Yet there are many who think he’s entitled. Kouvalis can be testy and windy as the movie plays he can usually be found in the lobby delivering healthy doses of cracker-barrel philosophy. If he starts the movie late, it’s to ensure that everyone who wants popcorn gets a proper bucket with plenty of butter. If he refuses to offer small drinks, it’s to make his customers feel more important. It’s been restored lovingly by Kouvalis, who shows boundless enthusiasm for the place and the experience of going there.
The Patio is the last of the big-screen independents. There are only a trio of single-screen movie houses left within the city limits–the Patio, the Adelphi (which now shows Indian films in Hindi), and the Broadway (part of the powerful Cineplex Odeon chain). Most of the survivors have been sliced into several screens, following the trend toward multiplexes.
Out of sight is a Barton pipe organ, original to the theater.Ĭhicago was once filled with big, overdecorated movie theaters like the Patio, but they’ve evaporated as neighborhoods have declined and the motion-picture business has changed. There are ersatz boxes, a proscenium arch that lights up when the movie’s off, and an arrangement of inlaid petals fanning out from the screen. Globes atop pedestals and red bulbs in iron casings glow in the dark. The seats may be hard and uncomfortable, but the overall atmosphere is lush, “like a Spanish arena,” Kouvalis says. The auditorium is expansive–1,494 seats, including 424 in a section above the entry ramps that’s called the balcony. Downstairs the house lights dim amid surroundings that recall another era. What’s a few minutes out of your life?Īfter several minutes, Kouvalis relieves projectionist Louis Antonelli in the ticket booth, and Antonelli scurries up three flights to start Pulp Fiction.
0 kommentar(er)
