Just about every time I see a movie at the Edwards Marq*E the ticket taker is this interesting fellow named - for purposes of this discussion - "Gavrilo." Gavrilo is of indeterminate European origin, though his accent leads me to suspect Slavic ancestry. He's in his mid-40s and looks like a cross between Eastern Promises vintage Viggo Mortensen and that big bastard Bruce Willis kills in the elevator in Die Hard 3. He has a flattop, meaty forearms, and a number of distinctly homemade looking tats, leading me to believe he's either:
1) A Soviet-era gangster on the lam from Jim Belushi and Arnold Schwarzenegger, or
2) Ex-Serbian Special Forces. His sentence for wartime atrocities? Working as the only guy over the age of 25 in an American movie theater.
Still, the dude says 'hi' to me and waves me in without question whenever I show up for a screening, and I suspect he'd do the same even on non-promo nights. I'm not too keen on testing that, however; because he remains, along with Not Suge Knight from Mission Burrito, one of the only elements of potential danger in my lame Wonder Bread life.
There is an older guy working in the gas station near my house who I was calling “Riceville’s Rutger Hauer.” He looks like Rutger Hauer, if he wore t-shirts that read “American by birth, Southern by the Grace of God.”
I can’t imagine the esteemed Mr. Hauer would be spending his time breaking the filters off Marlboros and smoking while sitting on a milk crate outside the Jiffy Mart. But I’ve never tested the belief. Because Rutger Hauer can be a creepy sunovabuck when he really wants to be, and there’s a small part of me that thinks he might be studying for a role. For these past three years.