Enter the Dragon – via the exit

When I was a teenager I took my new girlfriend to the local Odeon to watch Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon. About ten minutes in, a clear cel with a scrawled handwritten note was slid in front of the film, and projected over the feature, on the big screen, the note read: 'Would Mr. Scooterist please come to the Manager's Office in the foyer. Thank You."

I had never seen anything like this in any cinema before and to be honest, afterward wondered if I had imagined it, after a few long seconds the cel was pulled back off.

In a slight panic I moved swiftly to the Manager's Office as instructed, where I was greeted by a serious faced, middle-aged, Bryllcreemed fella, who, with one hand beckoned me to sit at his desk, offering the receiver of an old dial phone to me in the other, saying it's your brother...

I thought this was odd as, a) my brother was only 3 years old at the time and b) we had no phone at home. I took the phone nervously and put it to my ear.
"Hello?" I said
"Tone?" a familiar voice replied, "Is that you?"
"yes I replied, still not sure who I was talking to (it was not my brother that was for sure)
"Tone, give it five minutes then come down and open the fire exit doors on King Street, we want to come in"
I could hear giggling in the background of the call, obviously being made in a public callbox not a million miles away.
The penny dropped, it was Monkey, a local oik who at that time I had the misfortune to know, (we had bumped into him and some other malcontents on our way down the High Street earlier.)
I feigned a serious expression for the benefit of the manager standing to one side, looking concerned, all the while my mind was racing trying to manufacture an adequate reason for the call.
"Thank you for letting me know, I will be home as soon as I can" I said with all the seriousness I could muster, ending the call by placing the receiver back in its cradle and saying to the Manager:
"My mum has had an accident and I need to go home immediately to take care of my brother and sisters while she is in hospital" (forgive me mum, that was a terrible thing to say, but it was all I had at short notice and under pressure). The Manager offered to call me a cab but I declined and said I lived nearby so no need I could run home.

I left the office, went back to my seat and after a few minutes went through the Red lit Toilet / Exit doors to the left of the screen, crept down the horrendously echoey corridor and pushed open the fire exit bar, there stood Monkey, Teabag, Rups, and Windball, the unlikeliest paying cinema-goers you could ever meet, they flew past me and ran into the toilet en mass, I crept back to my seat in the stalls and sat there with my confused date, at this point she not knowing whether she should be concerned or annoyed.

Slowly and one at a time, with about a minute's space between, the motley crew came through the exit doors and skulked into different seats all over the first 15 rows, this was in the early 1970s, (in those days cinemas were empty most of the time) so my one action had increased the total audience by about 20% and a blind man would have noticed.

I sat there for the rest of the performance with my arm around the back of my girlfriend's seat, not moving for fear of actually touching her shoulders and ending up with muscular cramp.
I only got one kiss and nothing else. I did see the Manager in the foyer as we left at the end of the film, he looked at me with a mixed expression of slight confusion, sympathy and suspicion. I gave him an intense look, one that I had just learned from Bruce Lee.