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He's there by himself. In the middle of the day. He'd even rather go alone than with another guy. To escape from his life for a few hours.
By LANE DeGREGORY
© St. Petersburg Times, published June 27, 2002
In the center of the second row, he sits alone. Slouched low in the burgundy velvet seat. Black sneakers propped on the headrest in front. With a big bag of buttered popcorn and a large Coke on his right, a plastic bag with Pringles and Dristan tablets to his left. His face is folded into USA Today.
In the semidarkness of the theater, he's squinting at the sports section, waiting for the movie to start.
"I read the book, so I wanted to see what they did with it," he says simply. "I'm just trying to relax."
The theater is at BayWalk, downtown St. Petersburg. It's the largest of Muvico's 20 theaters, with seats for 416. On this cloudy Thursday in June, just after noon, eight other people are staring at the same screen.
The Bourne Identity starts in 10 minutes.
The man in the second row says his name is Ted Brownlie. He's 37, single, no kids. He shaves his salt-and-pepper hair to a stubble, shaves his tanned face smooth. His ice-blue eyes are intense beneath black brows.
He lives alone in a downtown apartment, a short walk from the theater. But he doesn't come here often, maybe once a year. When he goes to the movies, he says, it's usually during the middle of the day. Almost always alone. So the theater is more empty, more quiet. So no one distracts him.
This morning, before coming, he checked his mail, hoping a special package from Japan had come, and he stopped by the pharmacy. After the show, he says, he has to go to the grocery store and the gym. He has to start working out more, he says. By fall, he wants to be running 12 miles a day and swimming at least 3. He sells insurance part time and works for his landlord, repairing air conditioning, moving furniture, doing whatever needs to be done.
"I'm going to be a boxer, though. I'm going to be a great fighter," he says as the lights dim.
"I'm just waiting for my hornet juice . . ."
Then the screen goes black, and the suspenseful music starts pumping from the speakers. A storm is kicking up the Mediterranean Sea, and you're stuck on a fishing trawler, 60 miles from shore.
Just off the boat's bow, what looks like a dead man is floating face first in the waves . . .
A few minutes later, on the other side of the movie palace, a man opens the door to House 6. He's carrying a small Coke and a box of Cookie Dough Bites. This theater seats 252, but only six other people are inside, all sitting in couples, all down in front. So the man climbs 10 steps and slides into the center seat.
His black hair is chin length and braided, his smile broad and warm. He's wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt and blue flip-flops. He's waiting to see Windtalkers.
He's also alone.
"Well, I got the day off. And all my friends had to work. So I came here by myself," he says.
He says his name is Robert Harris. He's 30. He grew up in Tampa, and he used to teach English in Brazil, and now he and a roommate share an apartment in Shore Acres. His 10-year-old daughter, Bianca, lives in Michigan with her mom.
Harris sells Verizon calling plans from a shop inside the Pinellas ParkSide mall in Pinellas Park. He wants to go back to college this fall, or maybe next spring. He was studying history and anthropology at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. He'd like to get his undergraduate degree and go on a foreign dig sometime, or maybe work at a museum.
This morning, after sleeping in, he stopped by work to pick up his paycheck, then went to a Brazilian shop to buy food. After the movie, he has to pay his cell phone bill and figure out what to do for dinner.
He goes to the movies at least a couple of times a month. Often by himself. "It's better that way. I don't miss things. I can get totally sucked into that world on the screen. I even left my cell phone in my car," he says. "Sometimes, the world is just bothersome.
"But here, I can forget it all . . . at least for two hours."
Then the theater goes dark and machine guns start spitting on the screen, and suddenly you're hunched in a foxhole on the Solomon Islands in 1943, dodging grenades and shielding your head while war planes drop bombs overhead. And all around you, everywhere you look, men are shouting and sweating and screaming and shooting and dying.
Harris settles into his seat and takes a swig of Coke.
Others are here, too, adult men alone at the movies in the middle of the week, in the middle of a workday, escaping -- if only for a little while.
A 29-year-old whose family is in Georgia, who works at a credit union, took the day off to pay bills, clean his apartment and go to Wal-Mart. He finished his errands early. He has been wanting to seeWindtalkers.
A grandfatherly man juggling pizza, popcorn and an oversized soda gets to the theater almost an hour early. He doesn't want to talk to anyone. He's settling in for Insomnia.
They're all here, hanging out in the dark theaters, hiding out, killing time and relishing in other realities.
Sure, they could have rented a video and gone back to their house. They could have taken off their shoes there, maybe popped a cold one from the fridge.
But then the laundry would have been calling, the dishes still would have needed doing and the phone would have been ringing, or the landlord would have needed you or the roommate would have come home. And your boxing gloves would have been sitting nearby, accusingly; and your anthropology books would have been reminding you what you really should have been doing. And the world you were trying to escape would have come crashing down around you.
The illusion wouldn't have worked.
Plus, you wouldn't have heard those planes swooping over your foxhole in Dolby sound. Your seat wouldn't have been vibrating with the explosions. Blood wouldn't have splashed across such a big screen.
And without the rest of the audience to gasp, hold its breath and revel in the tension, too, you would have been even more alone.
"Watching flicks at home is nowhere near the same release," says the credit union worker, Darrell Wilson. "Whenever I've got $7 to spare, I'm gonna come to the theater."
Women seldom go to the movies alone, Muvico manager Laurie Parra says. They cart carloads of kids to see Scooby-Doo and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. They get away with girlfriends to watchDivine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.
But men seldom go to the movies together, Parra says. They take dates and wives. They go with their kids. But you're more likely to see a guy alone than with another guy, she says, even at Star Wars: Episode II and Spider-Man. "Look around," she says. "You just don't see it. Folks are funny that way."
By 2:45 p.m., 398 people have bought movie tickets at BayWalk.
Some of them will walk back into the light of day unchanged. Others will be moved by the movie, if only for an afternoon.
The Bourne Identity is over now. Windtalkers is winding down.
While Matt Damon was running through Europe trying to figure out who he was and the CIA agent was trying to find his super-assassin and some buxom blond was setting up computers and fax machines in The Bourne Identity, the man in the second row was thinking about Paris, his sister and putting someone in checkmate.
Ted Brownlie has never been abroad. But he has always wanted to go. Now that he has seen Switzerland, Germany and the islands around the Mediterranean Sea, he longs more than ever to see the world.
"I didn't think the movie was that good, really," he says. He finished the soda and half his popcorn. The unopened Pringles can sits in the bottom of the plastic bag.
"I guess I'd give it about a C rating. The acting just wasn't there," he says. He folds his newspaper and shoves up the sleeves of his baggy green sweat shirt. "But it wasn't a disappointment. No, not really."
Once, in Boston, his sister interviewed for the CIA, he says. But it seemed too dangerous. So she didn't take the job. After that, he says, he wanted to join. He fantasized about taking on high-powered criminals in faraway lands.
"But you know, you've got to know foreign languages and have all kinds of schooling and stuff for that," Brownlie says. "It was never really going to become a reality for me.
"No," he says, walking out of the dark theater, into the extra-bright lobby. "I told you. I'm going to be a fighter. I'm going to start getting up at 3 in the morning and doing 200 sit-ups and swimming laps at Northshore Pool and running and sparring at the gym.
"I've wanted to be a professional boxer since 1989. I've been training at the Fourth Street Boxing Club since 1992. But I've never had a pro fight. I don't have a manager yet. But the guy up at Fourth Street, maybe he could hook me up. He's always on TV and stuff, so he's gotta have connections.
"I want the lightweight and the welterweight and the middleweight championships all at the same time. I want to fight Bernard Hopkins. He's a Don King fighter," Brownlie says. "I really think I do have a chance. But I gotta get going. My timetable is getting past me.
"I'm 37 years old. And I'm white. That doesn't help."
While he was watching Matt Damon kick some serious CIA butt on the big screen, Brownlie was thinking, "I can do that. I move just as fast. And if that dude didn't have such a big gun on him, I could take him on, too."
Then the would-be boxing champ heads out of BayWalk into the rest of his life. He should be going to the gym, he says. But since his hornet juice still hasn't come, what's the point?
"I ordered it last week from Japan. It's supposed to give you incredible endurance," he says of the elixir he thinks will kick start his career. "Hornets can fly 70 miles a day. This is what gives them that stamina. It comes in a powder, $3 for a sample. So I ordered 50 packets. Spent $158, plus overseas shipping. As soon as that stuff comes, I'll be good to go. I'll really get working then."
But for now, he thinks, maybe he'll go play chess.
There's this guy from Romania whom he has already beaten twice.
He needs to defend his title.
On the other end of the movie palace, inside House 6, the man in the 10th row waits alone. Everyone else has left. Robert Harris is finishing his Cookie Dough Bites, watching the names of the re-recording sound mixer and assistant rigging lighting technician roll by.
The movie was about a squadron of American Indians who helped win World War II battles in the Pacific. They devised a code based on the Navajo language that the enemy couldn't break.
During the last 10 minutes of the film, at least 200 Marines -- and even more Japanese -- got blown up. Tanks were being bombed. Body parts were splattering across the screen.
"It was much better even than I expected," Harris says. "I mean, I was there the whole time, you know? It was like I was in the war, at the front, fighting and feeling it and working with them all there. But I was on the other side of the lens, you know? Safe, really."
He pushes open the theater door and steps into the light.
"I didn't have to go to war to be there."
Two of Harris' uncles fought in Vietnam. Another was in the Persian Gulf War. All through Windtalkers, he says, he kept thinking about them, what they must have gone through, how that must have felt. His mind traveled in other directions, too, back and forth in time, leaping between himself and his ancestors.
The movie inspired new trails of thought. Dug up unexpected questions.
"I really enjoy war movies. I guess it's a man thing," Harris says. "I mean, I hate when they try to put love stories into war movies. And this one didn't do that. I don't mind the guys getting blown up. That's what war movies are all about, right? I don't know why. But since the dawn of time, I guess, men have wanted to see fights and action. I don't do that stuff myself. I'm glad I never had to go to war. But I like being in it, to watch, you know?"
Harris had come to the movies, in part, to take his mind off the history books he should have been reading. Now, instead of paying his cell phone bill or going out to eat, he changes his plans. He wants to study after all.
"I'd forgotten that my great-grandmother was half Blackfoot Indian. After seeing all those Native Americans and the contributions they made to our country, I want to learn more about them. About my heritage," he says.
"It's still my day off, at least for a few more hours."
He walks out of BayWalk, returning to the otherwise ordinary Thursday, back to reality.
"That phone bill can wait," he says. "I'm going to the library."