[Taking a brief recess from #1939TheMiracle Year]
I’ve written before about attending film screenings as part of my job. Both those in film industry screening rooms and those scheduled in theaters for press and word of mouth purposes. All of which I gained entree via my position as a film booker.
[The screening of “Star Wars” was one example of the latter kind, see this post]
Less than seven months later, my wife and I attended another film that was destined to be a ground breaking bit of cinema and another blockbuster. Our invitation was to the King Theater in Seattle on December 8, 1977 for Steven Spielberg’s latest picture “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
It was a familiar theater. It set right across the street from my former place of employment, the UA 150 and 70 (the site of our Star Wars viewing).
Dazzle – Din – Drive. A 3D trifecta in 2D, of sight and sound and emotion.
Eye-popping special effects. That moved you between suspense and wonder.
A sound track and score that surrounded and carried you along.
And a story with characters that swept you up in their struggle and longing.
It was clear that Columbia had a hit on their hands. Both from the evidence of my own eyes, and from the reaction of the crowd.
I had an encounter of another kind with CE3K after our move to Portland for a booking position with Tom Moyer Theaters.
But first, there was another switch to be mentioned. Within a year of moving down, my position was changed from that of a film booker to one in the accounting department. I was now responsible for paying the film rentals due to the studios – the biggest outlay of monies from the company.
Besides the normal activities of drawing up estimate and final payments, there was a whole lot of record keeping involved. And it was these records that were the point of my limited involvement with CE3K soon after this switch. Records that I myself had not created, for they hailed back a couple of years prior to my time at TMT. But now I was responsible for curating them. And it was in this new capacity that I was called upon to pull up the pertinent records needed by the lawyers in one of the lawsuits the company was embroiled in, which just happened to involve two blockbuster film titles.
It was then that I learned the curious details of this matter – when CE3K and Star Wars collided.
But more of that story next time.
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