Connections

The day before the blizzard that didn't materialize, a number of us noticed that there were no film titles on the marquee of the East Hampton Cinema. The only words were an advertisement for help, starting at $7 an hour.

Later that night, at a party, a number of people asked me what was going on. Could the theater be closed? Putting on an investigative hat, I came up with a scenario. The theater probably was closed because it had been sold to a new company that was trying to cut costs by firing old employees and hiring new ones for less pay.

My friends were alarmed. How could "they" close the movie house down when so many people were here for New Year's weekend? My friends had intended to go to the movies.

I jumped to this conclusion because l) The Star had only a few weeks earlier begun getting complete and accurate movie listings after a lengthy hiatus, which might be explained if they were coming from a new owner, and 2) because I knew the parent company, United Artists, had declared bankruptcy. I also knew the Loew's Cineplex Odeon in Mattituck was closed indefinitely and that the movie house in Greenport was a sometime thing.

Two nights later, on New Year's Eve, another friend confirmed my thinking. On Saturday afternoon, he told me, he had gone to the East Hampton Cinema but found it closed. When he called the Southampton theater, he got a recorded announcement of what was playing, so he headed there. But it was closed too. So I offered my scenario again.

Back at work on Tuesday, I was anxious to have a reporter write the story. It's big, I said, the talk of the town.

To my chagrin, the reporter learned that the movie houses had actually been open on the day the help wanted sign was up and, furthermore, that they had been open all weekend except on Saturday afternoon, and that was because of the impending storm.

There was no story at all, except perhaps this one: I, who am in the habit of telling others to check their facts, had let my imagination get the better of me. At least it didn't see print.

Helen S. Rattray