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When I was trying to get a degree from the University of Northern Colorado years ago, I sampled a rich variety of boring jobs: dishwasher, truck driver, sign printer, typesetter, hay hand, construction laborer. So I was thrilled in early 1974 when I landed a new part-time job that sounded interesting.
I became the weekend manager and promotion director of the Mini-Flick, a movie house on the north side of Greeley. If there was any socially redeeming value to our movies, it was that showing porn films at the Mini-Flick provided a few jobs. There are some people -- I am not among them -- who believe that holding a steady job improves one's character.
Clarence Marty
Martin owned the Mini-Flick, as
well as Cinema 35, a similar outlet in Fort Collins. If
pornography provides vast profits to its purveyors, his
accountant must have been a wizard at sheltering assets.
Marty's mansion was a basement apartment next door to the
theater.
We were drinking coffee in there one Saturday morning, trying to figure out how to persuade more people to pay $2 a head to watch dirty movies. The problem with porn, unlike other vices, is that it isn't addictive. Once you've smoked a few cigarettes or started playing solitaire, you can't quit. But our patrons just wouldn't get hooked.
So we had to find ways to draw new customers. An advertising blitz was impossible. The Greeley Tribune wouldn't accept advertising for X-rated films, and I had lived there for 23 years without ever meeting anyone who had listened to the local radio stations.
We hatched a publicity scheme. It was an election year in a conservative county. The district attorney might see some need to say that Weld County would soon rival Sodom and Gomorrah unless he acted immediately. In his voter-pleasing anti-vice campaign, he could denounce the city's only adult theater.
If that occurred, we'd get acres of free publicity from the same stodgy newspaper that wouldn't sell us ads. Preachers and politicians would get on the bandwagon. People would be curious; we'd sell theater seats.
I went to see District Attorney Robert Miller, who
laughed when I explained our promotion plan that would
bolster his re-election campaign. I have real crimes to
worry about -- murders and rapes and robberies. Why would I
care what movies people go to?
So I never did figure out how to make porn attractive to more people. As for those who came to the shows, never did I sell a ticket to an old man in a rain coat. I saw a sprinkling of respectable types -- businessmen who had enjoyed stag night at the VFW hall, or trendy couples who just wanted to say they'd seen Deep Throat or The Devil in Miss Jones.
We attracted young customers, although many of them were
turned away because they looked under 18 and said things
like Oh, I left my wallet in the car
or I lost my
driver's license.
Most of the rest were fellow college
students. I liked them best because they devised witty
dialogue as the movie ran, hollering their lines to the
rest of the audience.
That was as interesting as the job ever got. I quickly learned why we didn't get many repeat customers. After you've seen two or three porn films, you won't see anything new in the next 200. That quarter, I got my best grades ever, because even reading Henry James in the lobby was an improvement on watching those movies. One night, the show stopped because the projectionist had fallen asleep.
Maybe the Meese Commission is right, and such movies cause the exploitation of women in an economy where working women get paid 64 percent as much as working men. Or perhaps pornography inspires a casual commercial attitude about sex in a society whose merchants use exposed skin to sell everything from blue jeans to computer software. Or it leads to mindless violence in a nation that boasts an arsenal of 10,398 thermonuclear warheads.
But as a retired panderer, all I can say for sure is that dirty movies cause boredom. As for those few poor souls who get excited by endless sweaty renditions, where would you rather have them -- in the theater or out on the street?
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