The Flick

Avery is described as an African-American college student who wears glasses and has an extensive knowledge (and love) of film. He takes his part-time job at The Flick as a means of nourishing his love of film, selecting this particular theater because it is one of the only remaining theaters in the area that does not use a digital projector.

Like Sam, Avery has a desire to build friendly connection—as he narrates to his therapist—but he also seems suspicious of such connections. His suspicions—and his depression—likely originate from his mother’s desertion of him and his father for a high school sweetheart she reconnected with on Facebook. Avery also seems to struggle with romantic and sexual expression, as is evidenced by an awkward Friday night encounter with Rose.

Avery is intelligent, articulate, and both formally and self-educated, in part because his father is a professor of semiotics. He is privileged, with a full-ride college scholarship, though he is taking some time off, possibly as a result of his depression. His financial situation is not as ideal as it seems to Rose and Sam. He implies that his father does not make nearly as much money as they suppose he does (possibly due to his single parent status, and/or a low, possibly adjunct teaching status), and his own employment is sustained through precarious circumstances equal to those Rose and Sam experience; for example, despite being an obsessively punctual person, Avery is late one day when he is unable to secure a ride with his father and is forced to take multiple busses.

As a young black man, Avery must navigate subtle racial tensions that Rose and Sam do not experience (and seem to negate, as these tensions are not always visible to white people on the surface). For this reason, he is initially wary of the “Dinner Money” scheme, accurately predicting that if they are caught, the manager will be most apt to blame “the black guy.” Upon the new owner’s discovery of the “Dinner Money” arrangement, Avery is particularly upset by his alignment with “the black guy” thief stereotype because it so clearly contradicts his conscientious, straight-laced personality.

As a kind of protest against their refusal to defend him, Avery performs a dramatically-heightened monologue (originally spoken by Samuel L. Jackson’s character from Pulp Fiction)in the voice of this “black guy” stereotype. Sam has been requesting Avery to perform this very monologue since Act I, impressed and amused by how well Avery delivers the part (though Avery initially refuses to perform this monologue for Rose, either because he feels uncomfortable with the stereotype, or with the request to perform for Sam’s benefit). 

Rose is a college student at the same school where Avery’s dad teaches. Like Avery, she is taking some time off from her studies. With her green hair, baggy clothing, and casual tales of drunk party antics, Rose appears to be much less straight-laced than Avery (or, at least, she initially desires to appear that way).

As the projectionist, Rose is both literally and figuratively a hierarchical step above Sam and Avery. She occupies an almost mythical position in the sound-proof glass booth, where she cannot be heard from the outside. Sam fetishizes her as a lofty and inaccessible romantic object—and indeed, she seems to encourage some degree of this unattainable image, encouraging Sam to believe she is a lesbian; however, when Sam confesses his feelings for her, she recognizes that he is in love with her projected image, and expresses her desire for him to get to know her.

Rose seems immediately taken with Avery, or, at least, her idea of who Avery is, complimenting his cool “European-looking” (ii) red sneakers. When she and Avery spend an evening alone together, she opens up to him, letting her guard down. When she attempts to make a sexual move during their Friday night viewing of The Wild Bunch, Rose seems hurt and distressed by Avery’s rejection, perhaps reading this as a deeper rejection of her true personality (rather than her projected inaccessible persona). Rose’s refusal to defend Avery against their new owner may stem, in part, from her pain surrounding this rejection. 

More of a symbol than a character, The Dreaming Man is a disruption to Sam and Avery’s cleaning routine in Scene Five of Act I, foreshadowed by Avery’s question in the play’s first scene: “What if people are still here? Have you ever had anyone like just sit here and refuse to [leave?]” (11) The Dreaming Man remains, sleeping, until the end of the credits, and has to be gently roused by Sam. Once he wakes up, he apologizes and leaves the theater.

Though his presence can be interpreted in many ways, The Dreaming Man’s lingering presence in the theater may gesture to Sam and Avery’s similar entrapment in their jobs at The Flick; tellingly, he is described as “twenty-six years old” (ii), between the reported ages of Avery and Sam. Herein, the theater can be read—simultaneously—as the literal theater, the metaphorical theater (wherein the workers perform stereotypes of their personalities), and a state of underwhelming underemployment: a kind of arrested development that is difficult to extricate oneself from in a state of both personal and economic depression.