Serving Celebrities: The Complete Collection Read Online Free PDF Page B

training was about the festival rules and procedures. One morning is dedicated to what to do when and if Robert Redford shows up for a screening at your theater. The festival management will go out of their way to say that “Bob” wants to be treated like everyone else, even though Bob’s personal body guard gives a short talk about what Bob likes. The festival’s operations will call the managers of the venue and alert you to Bob’s upcoming arrival. The managers of the venue will then rope off the amount of seats that Bob requests and keep them empty. The seating of the theater will happen as usual but the screening will wait until it’s time to seat Bob and his party. Bob’s body guard tells you that Mr. Redford will have a ticket and sit with the rest of the audience. The lights are turned off and the film isn’t to start until Bob and his friends are seated, so the other guests in the theater won’t be aware that Robert Redford is watching the film with them.
    “It was no big deal,” the festival theater management would tell you. Until Bob actually shows up for a screening, then all the theater management would appear and hide in doorways and dark corners, like government spies, making sure that everything went smoothly. I had worked a few “Bob” screenings and most went smoothly. One isolated incident; I had refreshed the ticket takers on the procedure of taking Bob’s tickets to make sure everything went according to the book. One of the ticket takers asked me what to do if he didn’t have a ticket -- I confirmed that he would (at least, that’s what I was told).
    The big moment comes; we’ve got a theater full of people wondering why they are sitting in the dark so long, when Bob shows up with a couple of friends, after waiting in his tinted-window SUV outside, with his bodyguard. Bob makes his way through the empty lobby and to the theater. All the theater management is carefully hidden with only me, my manager, Jane, and the ticket takers at the door. Bob steps up to the ticket taker who asks him for his ticket and he good-naturedly checks his coat pockets, followed by his pants pockets and comes up empty. “I don’t have ticket. Can I still come in?” he asks, with that familiar sheepish smile of his.
    The ticket taker glared at me for instructions of where to go from here. I turned to my boss, who glanced over at the corner where the operations manager was hiding. The theater ops manager quickly ducked out of sight. Bob coolly said, “I built this theater, can I come in?” I quickly said, “Sure, let him in.” The ticket taker let him and his party step by, while angrily staring at me. Bob and his friends were led to their waiting seats.
    The ticket taker was all upset for some reason. She kept repeating, “You made me ask Robert Redford for his ticket and he didn’t have one.” I tried to reason with her, “You got to ask him for his ticket. Most of the volunteers at this festival will never get to talk to him.” “You made me ask him for his ticket and he didn’t have one,” like this was the end of her career in film. There was no harm done and my bosses seemed pretty happy about how it went.
    Later, during the screening, I was filling another theater when Bob is suddenly standing in front of me, “Where is the men’s room?” he asked. Oh, when you didn’t have a ticket you built this theater, now that you can’t find the men’s room I’m so important -- you would think if you really built this theater, you would know where the men’s rooms are. I said, “It’s down the hall, the third doorway.” Bob hustled off down the hallway to the men’s room, trying to blend into the crowd that was openly staring at him. I got to talk to Bob twice in one day.
    That was a good Bob screening… In 2006, I was again at Sundance, at the same theaters, doing the same job. The only thing that was different, was the theater operations managers had changed. Like most organizations that