I met Prince once when I was 19. It did not go well.
My parents lived for a spell in Chanhassen, Minn. Prince’s Paisley Park is a big draw there. Back in the 1990s everybody in town had a story about seeing him. This is mine:

It was 1999 (fittingly for a Prince story) and I was working shifts at the Chanhassen Cinema. Prince used to pay $500 so he could watch movies there in the middle of the night. Usually the manager was the only one allowed to stay with him, but one night I was asked to cover.

There were rules: Turn off all the lights, stick a broom handle in the side door for him, set up the movie in his favorite theater with stadium seating. Oh and he had come in the week prior but The Green Mile had broken down. He wanted to start where the film had stopped.

Now mind you, this was pre-digital so this was an actual film reel threaded through a monster projector. So there was no fast forwarding, no pausing. I started the flick around midnight and stopped it at the point that I thought Prince wanted to begin at.

Then I waited in the dark. It was 3 a.m. when a limo pulled into the parking lot. Prince swept through the side door with a beautiful lady on one arm and a blanket under the other. They went into the theater without even glancing my way. I took that as my cue to start the movie.

Prince comes out and gives me some of his famous side-eye: "This isn't where I wanted the movie to start at." I stammered about not having seen The Green Mile before and said I would start another movie for him to watch until moving back to The Green Mile (pre-digital, remember).

I think I have it handled. About an hour later, after apparently going back to his original theater, Prince comes out and says, "Something is wrong with The Green Mile." I head upstairs and find the film reel spraying all over the place. It snaps and shuts down the projector.

I can't fix this. I am 19 years old, it is 4 a.m. and I have to go into a darkened theater and tell Prince that his movie-watching experience is over. I am probably going to get fired. I steel my nerves and head back downstairs.

I go into the theater and find Prince and his female companion at the top row of the stadium cuddling underneath that huge blanket. I stumble with my words: "I'm sorry, sir, the print is completely broken. It will take me hours to splice it all back together."

What followed seemed like an interminable silence as I looked at Prince, he looked at his lady, then I looked at his lady, then they looked back at me. "It's OK," he said. I shamefacedly beat a hasty retreat out of there.

I hid behind the concession stand. Five minutes later Prince and the gorgeous lady swept out of the cinema and get back into his limo. I head home at 5 a.m. and continuously ask myself if that really happened. I still shake my head. I still haven't seen The Green Mile.
FIN

So read this story by @_audreykennedy and maybe help out Chanhassen Cinema. Or your local theater. Or any small business struggling. https://www.swnewsmedia.com/chanhassen_villager/news/business/covid-19-threatens-chanhassen-cinemas-future/article_de434841-d3e7-5188-bf03-99e6ffbc8c6c.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share