Word: popcorned
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...hour and a half into Half a Sixpence, a horrifying word flashes on the screen: Intermission. Can it be that the spectator, already stupefied by an aimless plot, nameless characters and fameless songs, still has another hour or so to go? He does indeed. And what comes after the popcorn break turns out to be more of the same...
Just inside the lobby is the inevitable snack bar, but it gets little use, and the popcorn man doubles as ticket-taker. Since there are no inter-missions, and the coming attractions are the real show-stoppers, a trip to the snack bar or men's room means you miss a mile or more of skin. Two-bit milk taffy suckers sell the best...
...Change of Skin, the fifth novel by Mexico's Carlos Fuentes, is to approach it as if it were a long, pretentious art movie. It should be read passively, with a relaxed eye toward its techniques, composition, shifts in style. And there should be frequent trips to the popcorn machine. A cheerful open-mindedness is essential because, for all its gothic appurtenances, the novel is a free-swinging romp, a virtuoso performance by an urbane writer who exuberantly deploys a variety of literary tricks-and then plays tricks on the tricks...
...late 1940s. While some newsreels rented for as much as $1,000 a week in their heyday, theater managers now pay about $50 or less. The managers find it more profitable to schedule an intermission instead of a newsreel and give patrons a chance to buy popcorn and 200 candy bars...
Once inside, you survey your 10,000 fellows: M.I.T. professors, roving-eyed men, grandmas, unworkingmen, stiletto-heeeled tootises, and ordinary crowd material. They mill around the closed-circuit TV's, the long rows of betting windows, the beer and hot dog stands. They wander back and forth eating popcorn, spilling out to the open-air section by the track, crowding against the rail at the finish wire. Some flourish fistfuls of money, looking like scarecrows stuffed with green straw...