Danny counted his money for the third time since he joined the line.
21 dollars in his front pocket. It wes what remained of his pay from bagging groceries for $3.35 an hour.
School had been out for a week, and the year had come to June 12, 1981.
Danny stood on the tip of his toes to check the line again.
Today, it seemed like half of Orlando had decided to spend the evening at the movies.
The line started at the ticket office and wrapped twice around the building.
It went past a shoe store, a barbershop and a pharmacy. As for where it ended, he had no idea.
"Do you think there's room for all of us?" Michelle asked, also on her toes trying to see the front.
Michelle Hart, his girlfriend for four months and the one that picked this movie.
"It's a big theater," Danny said. "500 seats. I think."
In 1981, single-screen theaters were the norm, with only a few malls having cinemas with 4 or 6 screens.
Most neighborhood theaters showed one picture at a time. When it was popular, everyone stood in line and when movies were bad, the Theater would replay an old classic.
The proccess was simple, you paid three dollars, walked in and took whatever seat was left.
If you were late, you may even end up sitting on the front row.
Black plastic letters hung on the marquee.
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. The second R was crooked. Nobody really looked at it enough to notice.
Danny knew very little about the movie. That was the strange part.
Big blockbuster movies normally announced themselves for months.
Even now, the rules of the Blockbuster were already sort of explained on magazines.
Blockbusters required huge Advertising and wide commercial appeal.
Studios bought TV slots, full pages on the local Newspapers.
And send Actors on talk shows telling the same story over and over.
This one had a unknown actor, and a short trailer that Danny saw back in April.
A woman near the front fanned herself with the Sentinel's movie page.
The Indiana Jones ad took up a small box in the corner. No bigger than a car wash ad.
Yet nobody was lining up for the car wash.
"I don't need the story," said the man ahead of them, as ge held a little girl by the hand.
He explained to the girl patiently. "It's a Paramount picture. That's all we need to know."
Danny nodded. It was true for him too.
The name on a poster worked like a promise.
Danny couldn't help but smiled as he remembered the time he decided to save a few bucks and go to watch a movie by another studio.
In 1978, around 3 years before, he went to watch Superman but at the end of the day he decided to watch 'The Wiz' cause it was cheaper and the tickets were available. Unlike the Superman ones, where a line needed to be made.
He was relying on the name of 2 of his favorite artist, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross... it was shit.
People remembered the first time they saw the mountain before Jaws or Star Wars.
They remembered walking out feeling they got far more than their dollars' worth.
The studio had been on a streak for a decade now.
A movie from somewhere else needed to convince you.
A movie made and pushed by Paramount only needed a start time.
Even the ones that were not as good, were still interesting to watch.
"It's his movie, you know," Michelle said.
"Spielberg?" He responded, mentally counting how many people they had in front. They were close.
"Wait... Isn't this directed by Duke Hauser? He owns the whole studio."
"I know who owns it, Michelle. This is produced by Duke and directed by Spielberg, the guy from that Alien in the suburbs film."
"...I'm only saying I like his films. Should we just go somewhere else?"
Danny decided not to answer.
Duke Hauser bought Paramount in 1970 when Danny was 5.
And ever since then, he had grown watching Paramount fikms. Even now he still had a Omnitrix replica gathering dust on his closet from his time as a kid.
Every year at least a Hit. Thats what people said about Paramount and Duke too.
Of course the rumours around him as a person were the most interesting.
Every few weeks a new cover of Duke Hauser dining with an actress.
Duke Hauser going to Germany or appearing in Japan.
Duke Hauser buying another house somewhere.
Danny normally didn't looked at those magazines.
But it did happened that Michelle's older sister kept two People magazine images on the family refrigerator.
On one he wore a dark red suit with a black shirt, holding an Oscar on his hand.
On the second one he wore a emerald green suit with a script under his arm.
"Annette says he's the most eligible man in America," Michelle said.
"Annette says a lot of things."
"She's usually right about boy stuff."
Michelle's sister had her own history with him.
She read Jaws on a towel at Daytona Beach in 1978.
And she stayed out of the water for the rest of that summer.
The line shuffled forward, then stopped, then shuffled again.
A boy in a Star Wars T-shirt ran up and down the sidewalk, making laser noises..
At a quarter to four, a teenager in a red vest stepped out.
"4:30 show is almost sold out!" he called. "Last few seats! After that it's the 7:00 show!"
A groan rolled down the line.
A man in a tie leaned out behind him. 'The theater manager.' Danny guessed.
"Don't worry, folks, it's booked through Labor Day," he said, smiling at the crowd. "Nobody's missing out."
Danny understood why he looked pleased.
He counted heads behind him as far as he could see. '39, 40, 41.' He lost track around the little girl and started over.
Michelle held his hand, and squeezed his fingers bored.
At 4:05 they reached the glass window. The woman inside looked up over her glasses. "Two? Last pair for the 4:30. Six dollars."
He slid a 5 and a 1 under the glass and took the tickets.
"We made it," Michelle whispered and kissed him on the cheek.
Danny spent two dollars more on a bucket of popcorn and two Cokes.
The seats were already sort of full. Kids on parents' laps. Some people standing along the back wall.
Danny and Michelle found two seats on the third row.
A little window glowed at the back as the projectionist prepared the reel.
As the lights went down, the crowd settled almost at once.
A mountain appeared on the screen surrounded with stars.
The whole theater applauded.
A man in a hat crept through a jungle. A boulder rolled after him down a stone tunnel.
Near the end came a truck chase. A man dragged himself along the underside of a speeding truck over rocks and dirt.
Danny gripped the armrest.
"There's no way they did that for real," a man whispered two rows back.
Danny wasn't sure. In 1981 there were no computers in movies that could draw a truck.
If a man hung under one, a man hung under one, just with a camera crew behind him.
When the last scene faded and the music swelled, the screen went black. For a second nobody moved. Then the applause came.
People stayed through the credits. Danny stayed too, lisstening to the music play out.
That was until an usher came down the aisle with a broom looking embarrassed to be there.
Outside, the line for the 7:00 had already double. As they got out, a classmate yelled at them from the line.
"Is it good?" she asked.
"Go," Danny said. "Don't even ask. Just go."
He heard himself and grinned. That was how a movie spread in 1981. A friend just told another friend to go and the line grew by itself.
"Did you see the sword guy?" Michelle said as they crossed the lot.
"He just shot him."
"He just shot him!"
They were still laughing when they reached the Buick.
"I'm starving," Michelle said.
"I know where we're going," Danny said.
Chuck E. Cheese. sat at the edge of a shopping center, around 15 minutes away.
On the radio Kim Carnes sang "Bette Davis Eyes."
Michelle sang along, a little off key. Danny turned it up.
At a red light, he remembered the other loud thing from this year.
In April he and his father stood waiting for Space Shuttle Columbia to lift off from Cape Canaveral with family, friends and beer.
The first shuttle ever to fly and most of Florida watched it happen together.
Tonight it felt a little like that.
Hundreds of strangers cheered the same thing at the same moment. Nobody needed to be told to.
The parking lot was already packed with cars, and bicycles.
For some reason, a boy in a Cub Scout shirt sat on the curb in tears.
Danny got out of the car, and Michelle threw him a look that said 'Ignore it.'
The noise hit them as soon as they entered, dozens of kids shouting and running around. Somewhere underneath all that sound, a banjo.
At the center of the room, a mechanical band performed on a stage.
A human sized Rat in a derby hat sang into a microphone.
A dog in a vest strummed a banjo.
Their mouths opened and closed a half-second behind the words. Which only made it better.
Danny loved this place since he was thirteen. Now it was mostly an excuse to spend two hours with Michelle somewhere nobody asked them to leave.
He ordered a large pepperoni, two sodas and found a table near the stage.
Traded three dollars at the counter for a handful of tokens.
The cashier slid them over in a little paper cup.
A birthday party filled the table on a corner away from theirs. Ten kids in paper crowns. Through the loudspeakers, the Rat wished a girl named Kelly a happy 8th birthday.
The pizza arrived hot and a bit crooked with oil pooling in the pepperoni.
They ate with the Rat singing over their heads. Michelle took the last bit of crust off his plate without asking.
"I thought he'd never get out of that snake room," she said.
"He was kind of a mess the whole time," Danny said.
"I liked the actor. Has he been on anything else?"
"Not that i have seen... maybe he got through on luck."
"That's the best kind of actor," Michelle agreed, as she stole his soda.
___
I was supposed to write an arcade scene of them... but i think this condesed version is way better. I will try to incorporate more outside POVs in the future.