I don’t really go to the movies now, but when I was young the movie would restart in about 10 minutes after the last one ended.
We used to constantly go into the movie and then stay after and make up what we missed. There was never an issue with this. Of course this was the 70s and early 80s
Oh man. I just had a freaking epiphany. I’m too young to have walked in halfway through a movie and then stayed for the first half of the next screening, so I’ve wondered for a long, long time where the ubiquitous phrase “This is where I/we came in” comes from. You have no idea how relieved I felt when I read your post. You know that feeling when a previously inexplicable chunk of life suddenly makes sense? No? Well, that was what it was like anyway.
Well, the theater workers may not give a shit, but the theater owners do. 
I’ve never heard anyone say “This is where I/we came in” regarding a movie.
You know that feeling when someone says something is an “ubiquitous phrase” and you feel like either you or them must be from a different planet? That’s what it was like when I read your post. 
My best friend and I were real Star Trek (TOS) geeks when we were in high school. Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out during our freshman year in college. We had gone away to different colleges, but, IIRC, the movie was released during our Christmas break.
When went to see it on opening day in the Capri theatre in Charlotte. It had been so long since we’d seen any new Star Trek, it was a huge thrill to us at the time. After the movie ended, we both went to the bathroom. (A full bladder wasn’t going to make either of us miss a moment of the long-awaited movie!)
After we finished up in the bathroom, we stepped back into the corridor — and both immediately realized that there was nothing to stop us from going back into the theatre and getting an instant second helping, since we were already past the ticket-taking place. We had the same idea at the same time, giggled like idiots, and went back in to see some more Star Trek.
It makes one question all the box office figures or at least whether one can judge the popularity of (old) movies based on box office takings.
You know that feeling when someone implies you’re from a different planet and you want to ask them to step outside and show them what the Marquess of Queensberry was on about but you can’t 'cause the whole thing happened on a message board and the person in question might as well be in another galaxy far far away, so you have to take out your frustration through some marathon all-night cooking?
Well, reading your post was nothing like that.
When I was a kid, we still had one theatre doing this on Saturdays. You’d have: a Feature, a B film, a cartoon, a newsreel, a serial episode, a raffle, and a sing-a-long. :eek:
When I was a kid in the 1950s we never checked the movie timetables. We would just go in at any random time on Saturday afternoon, then sit through at least two or three showings. These were usually Godzilla-type movies, so it didn’t make much difference. It was quite a revelation when I found out that newspapers published timetables, and that you could actually plan to see a movie from the beginning.
I was in high school when Star Wars came out and I knew the girls that worked at the theatre. I didn’t pay to get in, and when they came by to clean up between screenings I just smiled and waved as I sat in my seat. Later, when the second Star Wars movie came out, me and my friends figured out that one could just stand around in the lobby and/or bathrooms till the second screening was about to start.
This is why, when there are sold out shows, people come screaming at managers and say, “I can’t find a seat!”. It can be really trying when you know that you only sold 90% of the seats.
I don’t think the Star Wars thing is true. I don’t think Lucas was doing radio interviews on the first day of release, especially since it was a suprise how popular the film was.
Part of the lore of Chicago, one of the things that every Chicagoan learns growing up, is how John Dillinger was set up and shot while walking out of the Biograph Theater after seeing Manhattan Melodrama in 1934.
For the longest time this story bothered the hell out of me. Why would anybody set up a guy to be shot while exiting a crowded theater, when innocent bystanders would be at maximum risk of getting shot?
Then my parents explained to me that movies didn’t have published show times in the 1930’s, so it was perfectly normal for his girlfriend to lead him out in mid-movie, not as part of a mass exodus, at . . . yes . . . the point where they came in!
My mother also told the story of how she once arrived at the theater exactly when it opened, confident that for once she’d get to watch the movie from the beginning. But no . . . they just picked it up at the point where they had cut it off at closing time the night before. End of the movie, then a newsreel, then a short subject, then the start of the movie . . . this was considered normal at least until the 1950’s, and possibly later.
Which dovetails nicely into a pet peeve of mine. When going to the movies, get there early or don’t get there at all! There is nothing more distracting than some numbnut wandering around looking for a seat and then, upon spotting one, tripping over a whole row of people trying to get to it.
The Star Wars anecdote about the kid watching it six times on opening day seems to be true; the same story was told in the book Empire Building, an unofficial look at the development of the first three movies.
IIRC, it wasn’t Lucas on the radio interview, though, but someone else on his production team.
I saw 2001 the first time at the Capitol in New York, where it opened, where there were specific seatings. I remember thinking it very strange. When it went into wider distribution, I sat through it twice (or three times, I forget) also. I wasn’t stoned either.
In the '60s there were schedules - but that was for your convenience. You could go in any time.
Yep. Most cinemas I’ve been in have only one guy collecting tickets, at the front. After he tears your ticket, you go into whatever screen you like. if you missed a sold out screening, just get a ticket for some other show and walk into the film that was sold out. just get there before the actual paying audience. head straight for the film, dont wait around at the concession stand. Then the actual paying customer cant get a seat. Most shows in my local fleapit dont have assigned seating, so you’re away on a hack. This, however, is the act of a true knacker.
Anyhoo, after the movie is over, just mill around outside or in the john. Then mosey into another screen. None of the poindexter ushers give a fiddlers.
I think the only thing that stops people from pulling the Multiplex Shuffle here is that there are almost never two films worth seeing showing at the cinema in any given time period…
Here in NYC, where movies cost $10.50 a ticket and they actually harrass all paying customers at the entrance about outside food and cameras even worse than the airports do, I absolutely will not go out to a theater unless there are three movies in a row which I want to see. The AMC on 42 St between 7th-8th Ave and the Loews in Union Square are both set up with multiple levels of theaters, so you can’t even leave half of the screenings without having to go down the stairs through multiple lobbies, and aside from Friday and Saturday nights (which I never attend anyway) there is nobody standing around to double check ticket. Some readers may call me a thief, but I just want my money’s worth.
As you can probably guess, it’s been a LONG time since I’ve been to a theater simply because there are never 3 movies playing at once worth seeing, even if for free.
Yup. When the first Star Wars came out, I saw it at least 90 times. I’d ride my bike down to the theater, pay my admission and sit there all day, watching it over & over & over. The theater people didn’t kick you out in those days.
I saw Star Wars twice on the second day it ran. I paid once and sat through two showings.
It was pretty common practice, back in the 1960s and 1970s, to stay after the show and watch the beginning of the next one, if you’d gotten there late and missed the beginning the first time. I sat through The Lost World a second time just to see the dinosaur hatch out of the egg. My little cousin insisted on sitting through part of Mary Queen of Scots at Radio City Music Hall, just to see Riccio get stabbed again. (We had different priorities). As folks above have noted, they didn’t kick you out between shows back then.
I heard that the 24 hour cinemas in San Diego were popular hangouts for sailors when their ships got it. Any time of day or night you could pay and stay as long as you wanted. If nothing else, you could catch up on sleep in a dark, air-conditioned room.