INTERIOR. AN OLD MOVIE THEATER.
(Kouvalis looks to his cousin, Louis Faklaris, who scoops out the popcorn and ladles on the butter. A high school girl hands up the drinks.)
We don’t have small. Small is associated with practically nothing. We serve
Whenever. Whenever. When I feel like it. It’s Memorial Day tomorrow, a day off. Relax. What’s a few minutes out of your life?
“Alex runs a mom-and-pop operation,” says Willis Johnson, owner of Classic Cinemas, a chain of suburban theaters, including the grand old Tivoli in Downers Grove. “He manages the building and fixes what’s broken. He sells the tickets and the Cokes. He’s improved the place. The seating’s still bad–after a two-hour movie, you know you’ve sat for two hours–but if it wasn’t for Alex the Patio would be closed, another old barn sitting vacant.”
Five minutes isn’t killing anybody.
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The Patio has one screening on weeknights and two or three on Saturdays and Sundays. Once Kouvalis experimented with a weekend matinee, but you could count the audience on one hand. Now he sticks to late-afternoon and evening presentations. Callers to the Patio phone line hear Kouvalis’s thickly accented voice announcing the week’s feature. If Siskel and Ebert raised their thumbs, he makes sure to mention it.
