If you’ve ever been to the Lake Theatre on a weekend, you probably remember being given a new name. You might have been called “kid” if you’re a senior citizen, “troublemaker” or “munchkin” if you’re young, “supermodel” if you’re a woman, or “bodyguard” if you’re a supermodel’s boyfriend.
If you were paying attention, your gaze was likely drawn to your ticket-taker’s pin-adorned shirt. One of the pins, a picture of Blade, the toughest vampire-hunter from the Marvel Comic Universe, would have told you the ticket-taker’s name, if you didn’t already know it: Mr. Weekend.
Mr. Weekend, aka Shawn Weakliss, 34-his name changes at night, “kind of like Batman,” he says with a laugh-has been taking tickets at the Lake Theatre for seven years. “I’m the only guy brave enough to work the weekend shift-the only one willing to do it,” he says. “I work the weekend shift and live to tell about it, just like Blade stays on his job when fighting vampires.”
Ticket-taking can be hazardous to your health. During the opening weekend of Dark Knight, Shawn ripped tickets so fast his hands got numb.
Bald and stocky, Shawn has a long face and his cheeks are muscular from smiling so much. His face and hands are always moving. He sticks out his tongue, closes his eyes, furrows his eyebrows, emphasizes a point with a shake of his head, and cracks the knuckles of a closed fist when ready to give a misbehaving moviegoer some “tough love.”
When he tells a story, he talks to imaginary characters all over the room, looking at them and pointing. He has many voices, channeling the gravity of James Earl Jones when talking about “responsibility” or playfully feigning the seriousness of a reviewer when evaluating the latest movies (see sidebar). He even has several laughs: the high-pitched “make it stop!” the groaning “I cannot believe he fell for that one!” and, accompanied by a swoop of his head and a pound on the table, the “sad and wrong!”
Shawn tells moviegoers jokes “until they’re busting in the gut.” Jim Boughamer, the Lake’s general manager, cautions him to take it easy on the jokes or else “the customers might have to go to the hospital.” But Shawn’s tales also come with a message. “My stories teach you a lesson, that what you do to others is going to come back to you,” he says. “Imagining yourself going through the same mess helps you focus on what you’re doing wrong or right. You think, ‘That could happen to me,’ and decide, ‘I’m not going to do it.'”
Just as his stories can be serious, Shawn can be a disciplinarian. “When I see kids sneaking in, I go into watchdog mode,” he says. “Sometimes you’ve got to be strict; sometimes you’ve got to get management,” he laughs. A few weeks ago, he kicked three kids out. They asked him, “You and what army?” He summoned six ushers, and they chased the kids away. “They never came back since,” he says.
Shawn is proud of his work at The Lake. His style is to “be a gentleman and a professional-and be yourself!” A good ticket-taker must “try his very best, no matter what, and bring his A-game and focus because you never know what might happen.” He’s had to “work his butt off” to get where he is, and he almost never misses work.
Working at the Lake Theatre, he says, has taught him about being responsible for himself. But he wants to be more independent, in part because of his difficult past. “I never was prepared when I was younger-for college or for real life,” he recalls. “I had to do it on my own.”
Shawn is the youngest of five children. When he was young, his family moved around the country often. Several family members, including his mother, died. When she passed away, Shawn recalls, he lost all focus. He struggled early in high school, and his older sister gave him a choice: Get your grades up or you’ll have to live on the street.
“No matter how rich or powerful a man you are,” he often tells others today, echoing her advice, “you are not successful without a good education.”
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While many of his friends were getting involved in drugs and gangs, Shawn took his sister’s advice to heart: He made the honor roll and was twice named the student of the year at Cregier Vocational High School on the West Side.
But it wasn’t an easy path to the Lake Theatre. Shawn didn’t have money for college, so he worked at the Dominick’s on Lake Street for three years. After losing that job in 1996, he was unemployed for four years until he started working at The Lake as an usher in 2000.
Life’s difficulties have made him a believer in karma. “Every time I got into a fight, lied, cheated or stole, I’d get the worst,” he says. “Good acts brought good, and bad acts brought bad.” He tries to help others by taking in groceries, finding lost cellphones, and helping children find their parents.
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Shawn finds the rules of karma also apply in the pages of his biggest enthusiasm-comics. He connects the stories he reads to his own life. As a child, he didn’t like to read much. His teacher saw that and gave him a few comic books, including the Incredible Hulk. Shawn related to the Hulk’s anger. The superhero had a difficult childhood, too, and let off steam through his alter ego.
Like The Hulk, and many other superheroes, Shawn has a second identity. For the past several years he has been writing a comic book about a character named DMS, a former ticket-taker who navigates the twin worlds of reality and comics. The superhero’s parents die, and he tries to make his oldest brother and sister pay for their crimes. “It helps me sort out and think through things,” Shawn says.
An important presence in Shawn’s turbulent family life has been his sister. “She has been looking out for me since I was six and always made sure I had a place to stay and something to eat,” Shawn says. “My sister and I are kind of like Abbott and Costello, or Moe and Curly of the Three Stooges,” he says. “Let’s just say, every time I do something wrong, she calls me names.” He’s been living with her since he was 18, now in Maywood, but wants a change.
Shawn thinks sometimes about moving out on his own, maybe to Nashville, Tenn., where a friend lives. “It’s going to be hard,” he says, “but I’ve got to learn how to do this on my own in order to be responsible for my own good.”
Leaving the Lake Theatre, however, would be difficult. “It’s my second home,” Shawn says, “not just my second home, but my second family.” Despite longing for a move, he can see himself taking tickets for the long run. “I’ll do this till I’m old and gray, and can’t work anymore,” he says. “I’ve given my heart and soul to this job.”