The Flick

“Sundays and Mondays is Brian and Rebecca. But you’ll never meet them because you’ll never work Sundays and Mondays.” 

Here, Sam explains the permanent part-time status of The Flick’s theater workers, hinting at his own frustrations with the job’s lack of upward mobility. Sam’s character, in part, symbolizes the plight of the working class; with no money to fall back on and little education, it’s dangerous for them to leave the job they have. Often, however, there is also no chance of being promoted. 

“You have like a…that’s like almost like a disability.” 

When Sam and Avery discuss movies, Sam is impressed by Avery’s depth of film knowledge while acknowledging that something is a bit off about it, that perhaps through cinema, Avery is trying to fill an absence in his life. This implicit definition of “disability” continues to resonate through future conversations of illness, loss, and unfulfilled potential: a strong love or obsession that is used to cover up some greater lack. 

“So actually it like, it is dinner money. Because $8.25 an hour is not enough to live on.” 

Here, Rose justifies the workers’ “Dinner Money” tradition, in which the employees resell a few ticket stubs from each screening, explaining this scheme as a fair strategy for making back the money they should be paid. This scheme establishes the low-wage work culture of The Flick: because the job does not take care of its workers, the workers must get by through dubious (and untenable) means. 

“I don’t want any money. I’m not gonna like rat you guys out but, no, I’m sorry, I could tell he didn’t really want to hire a black guy anyway […]” 

Avery expresses that he does not want to go along with the “Dinner Money” scheme because he knows that if they are caught, he will likely be blamed because of his race.

“I guess I just want to say that, uh, Roberto…Roberto was Hispa—Latino? And uh nothing bad ever happened. Nothing bad ever happened to him.” 

Sam responds to Avery’s concerns about racial bias with a questionable justification that “nothing bad ever happened” to a former non-white employee, Roberto. However, the stilted nature of his explanation and his suspiciously-vague, past-tense phrasing suggest that perhaps something racially charged did happen to Roberto. In any event, these lines foreshadow that Avery will indeed be forced to contend with a racist work culture that denies racial motivation. 

“It feels so weird when I sold it to them. It’s like, I gave you that popcorn. I like scooped it out myself and put it in the bag and handed it to you and you paid me and said thank you. And now it’s all over the floor.” 

These lines are spoken by Avery as he and Sam discuss the philosophical differences between “inside” and “outside” food that theater-goers leave lying around for them to clean up. While Sam is more repulsed by the concept of “outside” food, Avery thinks it’s stranger to discard “inside” food, that this act is a commentary on patrons’ thoughtless dismissal of space and waste.

“I am grown up.” 

Here, Sam responds to Avery’s somewhat-naive question of what Sam wants to be “when he grows up,” suggesting the experiential and socioeconomic divide between Sam and Avery. While Avery knows he will “grow up” to work in a better job than his position at The Flick, he takes for granted that Sam is fifteen years older and does not have a college education (or the option of pursuing one). For Sam, this low-level position at The Flick is a “grown up” job.

“It’s just like different and that like scares you. People always freak out when like art forms move forward.” 

Sam speaks these lines to Avery as they debate the quality of new versus old films and new versus old film technology. After Avery explains that he works at The Flick because of his nostalgia for the film projector—and that he feels he couldn’t work there if the theater switched to digital—he and Sam argue over the merits of the 3-D movie Avatar. With this defense of the film, Sam suggests that some aspects of Avery’s love may prevent him from moving forward and progressing in time with the medium’s development. 

“Do Ezekiel 25:17! […] (to Rose) He does the most like incredible Samuel L. Jackson imitation. (in a bordering-on-offensive voice) ‘THE PATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHER IS BESET ON ALL SIDES BY THE TYRANNY OF THE WEAK’!” 

This moment furthers the kind of subtle, racially-charged micro-aggression introduced by the “Dinner Money” discussion. Here, Sam is essentially asking Avery to do an impression of a black man, and when Avery refuses—presumably realizing this—Sam does his own impression. This moment is also telling of Sam’s feelings for Rose, as he is attempting to use Avery’s impersonation as a means of connecting with her. Lacking the courage to approach The Flick’s elusive projectionist, Sam depends on this performative screen to gain her attention.

“So I’m up next. And suddenly I’m surrounded by all these shelves and on every shelf is every movie I’ve ever seen. And like some are DVDs and others are like old VHS tapes from like the 90s and some are even like old thirty-five millimeter reels, like movies I saw in the theater […] [e]verything is there. Like the Wizard of Oz, which is the first movie I ever saw. And like old Jim Carrey movies and the entire Criterion Collection […] and then they hand me the ISBN scanner and I realize, like, I realize that the way they decide whether or not you get into heaven is through, like, looking at all the movies you’ve ever watched or all the books you’ve ever read and figuring out whether there was one book or movie that you truly truly loved […] [a]nd we’re going past hundreds of movies. Really good movies. Movies I like really really love. And I start getting nervous […] and I think to myself: I’m going to hell. I haven’t truly like, loved or whatever in the right way, I thought I did, but I didn’t, and I’m going to hell. And then I’m on the last shelf of movies and I’ve already like completely lost hope at this point but then suddenly the scanner starts beeping and beeping and I look at the movie that made it beep and it’s like this old cruddy VHS tape of Honeymoon in Vegas […] [a]nd at first I’m like: what? My entire life can be represented by Honeymoon in Vegas? But then I’m like, wait, it doesn’t matter, I’m going to heaven. I must have done something right in my life because I’m going to heaven.” 

During a break in his theater-work shift, Avery relates an existential dream on a phone call to his therapist.This dream hints at a number of issues Avery deals with in his life outside of work, including his depression about living with his father, his coming-to-terms with an underwhelming and disappointing life, and his desire to connect with something or somebody. Though Avery begins his phone conversation with a discussion of his longing to make friends, his revealing dream—both aptly and ironically—situates his longing around movies, echoing Sam’s earlier suspicions that Avery’s film love may be a kind of “disability.” The fact that Avery converses with his therapist over the phone also bespeaks a strange kind of distant intimacy enabled by technology. This theme of technology as both a scrim and medium for its own breed of intimacy resonates in through a number of The Flick’s later scenes. 

“He’s basically like the—he’s basically like a third grader […] (a confession)I don’t know him all that well.” 

Here, Sam confides in Avery about his brother’s intellectual disability. Sam hints at his conflicted feelings toward his brother’s upcoming wedding, suggesting that he is uncomfortable with some of the ways his brother’s arrested development mirrors his own. His confession—“I don’t know him all that well”—dually insinuates that Sam feels guilty for a certain lack of intimacy with his brother (which stems from his brother’s disability), and that Sam may actually know his brother better than he believes he does, as the conditions of their lives in some waysresemble each other. 

“Sam’s face is no longer visible to Rose and Avery; he faces the movie screen and stares up at it, beseechingly.” 

In a moment of apparent connection between Rose and Avery, Sam’s body language reveals his secret longing for Rose. This longing is tellingly aligned with his gaze toward the movie screen, because, much like Rose’s film projections, a surplus of Sam’s fascination with Rose is not really about her, but rather a “projected” fantasy of who he believes she is. 

“When I like fantasize I just think about myself…Yeah. Like everyone else is blurry except me. I’m like totally in focus. And I look amazing. And everyone is like: holy shit. That girl looks so amazing.” 

When Avery and Rose are alone in the theater together on Friday night, she attempts to initiate sexual activity. Despite his desire to connect, Avery can’t seem to summon an interest in sex, explaining that he feels there is something wrong with him and that during sex, he would always prefer to watch a movie. With these lines about her own fantasies, Rose examines what she perceives as a deficiency in her own sexual perspective. She, too, experiences difficulty connecting with people long-term, focusing on an idealized image of herself that plays out much like a movie. Avery prefers to watch movies, while Rose prefers to imagine herself as a projected cinematic image. 

“I don’t get suicide. It’s like: aren’t you curious about what’s gonna like happen to you? In like the future? I’m just like so curious about my future.” 

In this moment, Rose naively responds to Avery’s confessed suicidal ideations. These lines reveal that Rose is optimistic about her future, while both Avery and Sam seem to harbor more conflicted (and decidedly less optimistic) feelings. This expression of curiosity hints that Rose has a privileged perspective, and that she likely has not experienced some of the disappointments her male co-workers have lived through (or, at very least, her disappointments have not damaged her self-image to the point of feeling hopeless about her future).

“And then—it’s weird—I didn’t even make the decision—but it was like—the second I thought, like—I give up—my body started moving and I like pushed the blanket off and like stood up and put on my uniform and like walked outside and walked to the bus and walked in here and made up some lie to Sam about why I was late and that was it.” 

In conversation with Rose, Avery confesses the extent of his depression and the ways it relates to his job at The Flick. Contrary to Rose’s expression of optimistic curiosity about the future, Avery suggests that he feels most content with his situation when he “give[s] up” and accepts his current life for what it is. In the broader context of the play, these lines can be read as an insight into the mentality of workers stuck in a haze of arrested development. They are not stuck willfully or against their will so much as without will, moving automatically through the duties of their day-to-day lives. 

“It’s like…it’s like I was dead or something. I was watching the world like go on without me…It all made more sense in my head…It was like a really good story in my head.” 

After returning from his brother’s wedding, Sam tells a long, drawn-out story wherein he accidentally left tamales under a movie theater seat, effectively becoming the very “asshole” he resents as a theater cleaner. His reflection—“it’s like I was dead or something”—echoes the kind of poorly-fated life Avery speaks to in his earlier description of “giv[ing] up.” He also hints at the performative quality of the story, suggesting a cognitive dissonance between the revelatory cinematic drama in one’s imagination—“a really good story in my head”—and the disappointment of its real-life telling.

“And it was like—everyone was acting so happy. Like trying so hard. Like oh this whole fucking charade is so fucking joyful. (pause) And it’s like the only actually happy people here are retarded! The rest of you are just miserable fucks.” 

Sam’s aforementioned disappointment extends to his brother’s wedding. He contemplates the labor—the “charade”—of pretending to be “joyful,” suggesting that the only people who don’t feel disappointed by their own pretense are effectively disabled. 

“Did she show you how to use the projector? […] Sam picks up a half-eaten bag of popcorn from his side of the theater, walks slowly across the aisle to Avery’s side of the theater, rips the bag open and then flings it gloriously into Avery’s area, popcorn showering everywhere.” 

In this moment, Sam simultaneously acts out in frustration over his unrequited feelings for Rose—and the attention she has shown to Avery, rather than to him—and his inability to rise up in his job, being repeatedly passed over by employees who haven’t worked nearly as long as he’s worked at The Flick. His act of scattering “inside” concession foodis a pointed gesture to their earlier conversation, when Avery explained that he found the “inside” food messes most distressing. 

“Because it sort of seems like it has nothing to do with me. Like me me…Like even now. It’s like you’re performing or something.” 

Rose responds to Sam’s confession of love for her by asking him what he wants to have happen now, explaining her suspicion that his affections lie not with her but with his projected imagination of her. Sam confirms her suspicions when he finds himself unable to even look at her. Sam idealizes her as an unattainable figure that both literally and metaphorically looms above Sam in the projector booth. Because of this, he finds himself unable to confront Rose as a real person.

“I was on it. For a little while. When I was a Freshman. But then my mom got on it because I was on it and she started reconnecting with all her friends from high school and then she reconnected with her high school boyfriend and they started writing each other letters and then she left my dad for him.” 

In this scene, Avery explains to Sam why he is no longer on Facebook: his mother left his father for a man she started talking to on this site. This conversation follows the play’s theme of technology’s influence on relationships and intimacy. Just as Avery prefers movies to sex and Sam prefers to linger in his projected image of Rose rather than look at her, Avery’s mother prefers this digital romance to her marriage. It is telling that Avery later explains that when his mother came to visit a year ago, he too found himself unable to look at her. 

“And this is our like—this isn’t like a job we have while we go to college. This is what we like—feed ourselves with.” 

When the new owner discovers the “Dinner Money” tradition, he blames it all on Avery, and Avery asks Sam and Rose to own up to their part in the scheme. Rose refuses to help and defends her decision, saying his position and status is different from her position and Sam’s, and that she and Sam need the money. While this explanation is partially true, it is far from the full truth, and it is basedin parton stereotypes and assumptions. 

“I been sayin’ that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just some cold-blooded shit to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this morning that made me think twice. (after a pause) Now I’m thinking: it could mean you’re the evil man. And I’m the righteous man. And Mr. Nine-Millimeter here…he’s the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be, you’re the righteous man and I’m the shepherd and it’s the world that’s evil and selfish. I’d like that. But that shit ain’t the truth. The truth is, you’re weak. And I’m the tyranny of evil men. But I’m tryin’ Ringo. I’m tryin’ real hard to be the shepherd.” 

Avery indignant that the new owner has aligned him with the “black guy”/thief stereotype and feels betrayed by Rose and Sam’s refusal to defend him. As a kind of protest, Avery delivers an explosive recitation of Samuel L. Jackson’s Ezekiel 25:17 verse from Pulp Fiction. His voice and affect are totally transformed as though to say: “you commanded me to be the black guy stereotype, so here it is.” 

“I just have this urge to like [...] I always just kind of want to touch it. Don’t you?” 

In the penultimate scene, Sam is shown training a new employee, Skylar, implying Avery was fired. During the training, Skylar touches the movie screen. Sam is disgusted by his act. Though this moment can be read many ways, it likely stems from Sam’s fear of facing Rose and his anxiety about transcending the metaphorical screen and its projected images.