On July 26, 1973, somewhere in the evening, „Enter the Dragon” premiered in Hong Kong. In Poland, „Enter the Dragon” hit the theaters on June 22, 1982, almost nine years later. The country was under martial law, so the authorities were looking for various ways to distract young citizens from politics, as their attempts with „Apocalypse Now”* hadn’t quite worked out. One of the more successful ideas was the List of Hits on Program III, which aired from April 24, 1982. The second was „Enter the Dragon.”
A ticket to „Enter the Dragon” cost 120 zł if you managed to buy one, and from a scalper, it was 400 zł if you didn’t. „Kurier Polski” proudly reported that a kilometer-long line formed in front of Warsaw’s „Relax” cinema, breaking the record for a toilet paper queue by 23 meters. The night before, a social queue committee formed there (in front of the cinema), equipped with five grid notebooks, four pencils, a fragrant eraser, a sleeping bag, and the determination „over my dead body.”
Times were different back then. „People of good work” tried to do what they did well. For example, one confectionery factory director refused to change the recipe for their products because it would lower their quality. Holiday homes were built for relaxation, and the ticket ladies…
The ticket ladies, when a film was rated 18+, enforced it strictly, without exceptions, and with a clear conscience. So, it was just as well that „Enter” had its communist entrance slightly delayed (upholding the proud traditions of Polish Railways, „The film is delayed by 4,733,640 minutes; the delay may not change”). Thanks to this strategic delay, I had some time, as a young sprout, to grow up to that magical, non-negotiable, desired (who wouldn’t want to be an adult and go to bed whenever they wanted, even an hour after the bedtime show!) adult number. Dang, but even though I felt ready and thoroughly mature, in practice, I was still a bit short of 18, and it showed… unfortunately. And now (then) the dilemma: How do you make an exit to enter „Enter” if you’re not 18 and there’s no entrance because the ticket ladies aren’t messing around?
Well, in the notebook (a brown one, made of paper-like cellulose, in a substitute package), you have to make some cold-calculated theoretical calculations to then turn them into practical actions so that you can later refer to higher, maybe even the highest authorities, which would make even the ticket ladies weak in the knees and faint on the floor, „You don’t know who my dad is!” In an attack of dyslexia and emotion, I chewed on a pencil, sketched a plan with mistakes and without diction, which I couldn’t read myself after a moment, spilled ink from a Chinese pen in my nerves, threw it all in a corner, and went to my mom.
– Mom, can I go to „Enter the Dragon”?
– You can…
– Oh, can I really?!
– You can… Leave here and never go to on this movie in your life, it’s a film for adults!
Is this how you treat budding youth, a future karate master, an expert in arts learned from „Świat Młodych,” a theoretician who wants to learn practice from the best? Really?! Oh, now I have no choice, if that’s the case, to get an exit to „Enter,” I have to go, call dad.
Back then, dear children (damn inflation), you didn’t just pull out your mobile phone „Memory five, Siara, and all clear.” You had to go with coins to the „Booth.” A green one, scribbled on, with broken windows „Telephone.” There was one nearby, so I snagged some coins from the unwilling sponsor’s wallet and went. Inside, a silver phone with a round dial and numbers, and a broken receiver. Well, it was to be expected. I could go to the next one right away. There’s another, and the receiver too… no signal.
On to the next, because you should never give up in life, and worrying is like rocking in a rocking chair – you feel like you’re doing something, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.
There’s a booth, a receiver, a signal, but in my nerves, I forgot to take dad’s work number, and there’s no phone book in the „booth” (if there ever was, someone probably took it and sold it for scrap to get a non-queue toilet paper allocation or used it as such). I go back home, prudently write the number on my hand and forearm with a Chinese pen (a burgundy one with a „golden” cap – an exception). I go back to the booth, call, wait 15 minutes for dad to be brought in from somewhere, and after 25 minutes:
– Hello?
– Dad, can I go to „Enter the Dragon”?
– You can… beep… beep… beep…
– Hello? Hello?! Hello dad, dad? Are you there?
He’s gone, already left. This guy doesn’t mess around, but… I got the approval!
In the evening, that is, in the afternoon, before 4 PM, dressed like an ostrich on Corpus Christi, and excited like a company on the Asian market, I go out, walk, and enter the cinema. „Entering” is a euphemism for „being pulled and dragged through a wild crowd of bestseller connoisseurs, future karate masters, cosmopolitans, and people of broad horizons.”
The ticket booth is to the left of the entrance, and from a distance, you can feel the atmosphere… people didn’t have time to wash after work. Besides, it’s not bath day, not Saturday, and „Old Spice” wasn’t used daily back then, because it was expensive and not yet invented in Poland. The crowd was like at a Ruch vs. Real Madrid match – billions, probably two. Ticket or die!
Pressed against the glass – waiting and pondering whether I’ll get out of this cut and together with the glass, through the window, or will I make it through the doors, with a ticket – I contemplate the fragility of glass and life and calculate what surface pressure and how distributed will keep both the glass and young me in one piece. After a long struggle, moving in the style of „on the celebrity” (like a pleco) and „Egyptian” (in profile), but not giving up and the merciful youngster letting me in, I finally bought, got, obtained! I have it!
I leave behind the desperate remnants of late unfortunates, those who still hope they might buy a ticket for 7 PM (not knowing that maybe they will, maybe even for 7 PM, but certainly not for this film) and through the lobby, I pack into the foyer. Ah… it’s elegant, glamorous, worldly. The rest of the audience, after having a few beers in the nearby park, entered the screening room with peasant-worker flair, and here you can finally breathe, the smell moved in with them. Plush-velvet ottomans stand grandly, posters of great PRL productions hang on the walls, slightly worn carpets lie at the feet, and the curtains are atmospherically drawn. The whole place creates an atmosphere of a great, almost like from „Raiders of the Lost Ark,” story.
I enter with shakes of adrenaline, excitement, and youth… Oh, it’s going to be something!
– Ticket…
– Here you go – and proudly hand over the ticket snatched from the jaws of death
– But this film is 18+!
– But my dad let me!
– But what do I care?
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*The attached photo, in case anyone didn’t know, is „Apocalypse Now” – a photograph by Chris Niedenthal, taken covertly in Warsaw on the second day of martial law, December 14, 1981
Pawla Mi 
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