It’s movie night in Vicksburg and tickets are hotter than the popcorn machine.   ///  While it’s not midnight madness in the literal sense, Saturday nights are a rush that keeps Savannah Pritchard and friends at Wilcox Theaters inside Vicksburg Mall on their toes.

“You have your busy shifts, your 3 o’clock, the 5 o’clock, the 7 o’clock,” Pritchard said. “The 7 isn’t too bad. At 9, you have to deal with the rush of kids, which can be overwhelming when you work the box.”
A huddle of young adults rushes the ticket box and obscures any view of the theater’s entrance. It’s an intriguing marquee of movies on this chilly weekend, which happens to be opening weekend in the U.S. of the Oscar-nominated hit “American Sniper”.
“Warner Bros. decided to go with a wider release on it,” owner David Wilcox said. “It’s good to have a January that has a few sleeper hits. We’ve had about 400 people during the day today.”
Pritchard, 22, a four-year grizzled vet of the movie theater, isn’t too fazed by the mass of humanity that takes over this movie house or any other on a debut weekend.
“Saturday nights are the busiest,” she said. “They’re the most stressful. You have all the kids out, not always very well mannered. I work Fridays during the day. The football season helps, but it’s Saturday nights that are busy.”
She and co-workers Janaeya Washington and Mary Mullen, along with Brittany Evans, keep moving the movie munchables and play a little enforcement on the side.
“Large popcorn? Will that be all for you?” is the line of the night behind the counter, to accompany the aroma of buttery goodness wafting through the lobby. A customer whose buddy left the house too late finds out he can’t make up for missing time.
“We missed the first 20 minutes. Y’all give refunds?”
“We can’t do it like that,” Washington responds, smiling through and through.
Mullen stops what she’s doing when she spies a group of tweens crowding a bench. The lobby is no place for loitering, she reminds them.
“If y’all are done, go to your movie,” she said.
It’s the bottom of the hour and the lobby empties as fast as it filled. Time to put away the service smiles, whip out the mop and start the back end of this mad dash of a night.
“The best part about the closing shift? Going home!” Pritchard said, giving the heavily-tracked floor a good once-over.
What’s left of the popcorn is taken out and the machine given a wipe-down. Pritchard remembers when she’s felt the rush from both the ticket box and the concession stand.
Pritchard and her co-workers make their way to the exits in short order, by barely 10:45. To the crew, it means they’ve worked a four-star Saturday night.
“Time to hit that mop, go home,” Pritchard said.