The Maintenance Shop bustles with the chatter of the lunch bunch. Victor Roman sits across a circular table talking about his job as director of SUB Films. Every weekend, Roman brings you the $2 flicks and free popcorn in the Pioneer Room. So don’t worry about sneaking a soda in or hiding candy in your purse. It’s all good.

Justin Kendall: As director of SUB Films, what are you responsible for?

Victor Roman: The first thing I have to do is I have to have a committee because I can’t do this on my own. Usually eight to 10 people. At the end of the semester, we have a banquet. We have a list of about 80 movies that everyone picks, 10 each, and we go through them and choose which ones we want to put in for the next semester and which ones we don’t want to show.

What I do is take those and I call the film companies and get prices and what formats are available. Then I choose which ones based on the pricing and availability and schedule it.

JK: I wondered if it is solely on you to choose the films.

VR: I have a lot of power as far as deciding what films that we show. I could decide all the films, but it’s kind of like I would be leaving the committee out and I need them as much as they need me. I tend to make it more toward `they get the movies they want,’ and `I get an equal say as they do’ in what movies get shown and what movies I would like shown. Usually I do get a couple of movies I like in there.

JK: Are newer movies hard to get?

VR: Not really. Just really expensive. Honestly, my policy is that I don’t like having too many mainstream movies. If it’s in the theater, you can see it in the theater. We want to get the movies you can’t see in the theaters or haven’t been in the theaters for a long time.

JK: And you get free popcorn.

VR: Yeah. That’s one of the things that we’re pretty proud of, I guess. Our committee members make the popcorn and certain ones make really good popcorn and certain ones don’t. If everyone doesn’t have [popcorn] that wants it by the time the movie starts, I’ll stay out in the hall and keep making it. It’s just popcorn, but I want people to really enjoy the movie. I want them to feel like they’re being catered to. They paid for it. They deserve it.

JK: What kind of movies do you like?

VR: The movies I like a lot are ones I can relate to really deeply and that kind of make me change my whole point-of-view a little. It gives me a freshness in the way I look at things. It gets me out of the dull routine of the weekday. I haven’t seen any movies like that lately. I like looking for movies that kind of affect me and kind of help me develop my identity and understand myself.

JK: What are some of those movies?

VR: “American Beauty.” I know that it’s kind of a cheesy pick because it was very mainstream and everyone was very excited about it. I didn’t see the movie until it was re-released, but it really made me think about things, I guess you could say.

I’m sure a lot of people have said that, but I felt like I related to it. One reason, I guess, is the son whose father turns out to be a homosexual. That made me just be shocked, and yet made me look at it from another point-of-view about the whole internal being in the closet, never coming out, being angry toward other homosexuals when you are one.

That’s where it touches me, and that’s something that I went through and that movie can relate to me in that sense.

The rest of the movie has to do with kind of being lost and confused and I was going through a period of that. In the end, the main character finds that everything he wanted was what he had already and that’s kind of what I had to see. So it became kind of a part of my life. The movie didn’t, but the idea. I took it in and thought about it.

Also the ideas of death that it had where your life flashes before your eyes for not just a second, it’s an eternity. Taking all these things from sexuality, religion and life in general really got me thinking. I think a lot of my ideas and beliefs, some of them, are actually based off that movie. It’s really weird, but that’s the kind of affect that movies have on me.

JK: Are you a big movie buff?

VR: I try to be. I don’t have a lot of free time. I go through periods where I’ll watch a lot of movies, and then I’ll go through periods where I don’t watch them at all because I don’t have enough time.

Last year, I was. I’m from Southern California, so when I moved out here, it was a big change for me. I had no friends. Everyone else was really connected, and I was totally alienated. Also, I wasn’t out. So that was another thing I had to deal with. I think a big way that I got out of it was by watching movies. I watched movies like every night. I saw a lot of movies that really made me feel not so alone and not feel so disconnected and gave me confidence. So I’d say that sometimes I’m a buff.

JK: Do you have an all time favorite?

VR: Actually I do. It would be “Chasing Amy” by Kevin Smith. I’d seen all the other Kevin Smith movies in high school, and I liked them. They were funny, but they didn’t really connect with me. I finally saw this movie something like my junior or senior year and it had a lot to say to me. I had seen gay people in movies before and I didn’t relate that much. I was interested in it because I was closeted and my family didn’t know about me, and so it was kind of a small outlet.

But this movie . was about sexuality in general. It’s a girl, who is a lesbian, and she meets the right person, which happened to be a man. It helped me define myself greatly, especially my sexuality, because that’s what I was looking at. I like girls and I like guys and I didn’t want to limit who that person is that will end up being my match based on sex. The main character, the girl, says in one scene that she became a lesbian because she didn’t want to limit herself to just men. And that’s exactly what she ended up doing, except she limited herself to just women and it ended up being a guy that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

That was the first movie that I ever bought, and I watched it several times. I showed it to my friends and also we’d talk about issues within it about sexuality.