STARTING TIMES WAIT FOR NO MAN . . . OR REPORTERS

Since the opening of Cineplex Odeon’s 18-screen Universal City Cinemas July 1, Calendar has been bombarded with complaint mail. Customers who wandered up the new Universal Complex “easy-access” ramp off the Hollywood Freeway that first month told tales of horror.

Parking was “a torture test.” Ushers were untrained and rude, patrons rowdy. “Rows of seats were jammed together like the back end of a 747.” Not enough chairs and tables in the cafe, and it sold only yogurt and espresso. Popcorn was bad. Interior decorations were “slices of purple pizza hanging on the walls.”

One letter-writer summed up: “A glitzy, neo-Deco, pseudo-opulent marble ant farm.”

Ouch.

A concerned Lynda Friendly, senior marketing veep at Cineplex Odeon, explained from the company hq in Toronto: “It’s not the letters we’re getting, it’s the letters that Calendar is printing!”

Now, she said, it was time to report the good news, that everything has been resolved and everybody would live happily ever after.

Cineplex boss Garth Drabinsky laid it all out in an interview with Outtakes: “People have to have a little patience. We’re writing the book for the first time on this.”

He displayed maps of the site and said that show times for the cinemas, the Universal Studios Tour and the Amphitheatre performances had all been staggered. Ideally, then, the crowd for an Amphitheatre show would already be in their seats by the time the 8 p.m. moviegoers arrived. And so on.

He concluded: “We’ve solved the problems.”

He insisted that the reporter get a bag of fresh popcorn with butter-butter. It was great, he said.

So Outtakes went to the movies.

Friday at 7 p.m. looked good. It took about five minutes to drive up the on-ramp, pay the refundable $3.50 parking fee and deposit the car. There were plenty of traffic controllers, those sweet young men in fluorescent vests waving little sticks in the air and distributing you down parking aisles.

It took three minutes to walk from the car to the ticket line. An usher going down the line refunded the parking fees, and the ticket seller asked again to confirm that the refund had been received. The ticket line was 23 people long and took just two minutes to get through. The employees were almost too polite.

At the cafe, we sipped a small cup of pretty good cafe au lait . If you ask me, they need more cafes like this in L.A.

The movie, “Dirty Dancing,” started on time. The seats were comfortable. The wall decorations didn’t look very much like pizza to me.

Only glitch: The sound seemed as if the projectionist were shaking a package of Jordan Almonds into the microphone. Several men got up angrily to see about remedying the problem. The sound interference stopped about a third of the way into the show and the audience applauded.

Getting out of the theater was no problem, either. It took an easy five minutes to get back down the road onto the freeway. Amazing.

The next night was not such a pretty story.

The crowd coming in for the 9:15 shows, combined with the crowd going out, was absurdly much. Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam were playing the Amphitheatre to a sold-out (6,251 seats) crowd. I again zipped up the ramp but. . . .

GRIDLOCK!

There was no way to turn tail and flee. I threw the car into neutral and bit bullets.

It took 35 minutes to find a parking place. Cars were crunched on the planter curbs three deep in some areas, and couples wandered down the lanes. For every car backing out of a space, there were three in line waiting to nab it. Tempers flared and screening times came and went.

No traffic controllers could be seen.

Finally, I saw the white reverse lights of a car backing out in front of me! Surely there was a God.

We had long missed the movie, so we loitered out front and asked questions of the help and half a dozen couples.

The patio overflowed. People were amazed at the size of the crowds, grumbled at the lack of parking. But they were mostly content with everything else. The crowds, once parked, were handled well. Nice selection of movies, and the cafe was good if not cheap. The popcorn was a hit.