A series for Lent.
I'm grateful for movies. My mother (a huge movie-goer) used to take me to the movies when I was a toddler. I used to wander all over the cinema in the dark, exploring, until I was thoroughly lost. Then I'd start shouting "mommy!" until the manager found me and returned me to my mother. I wish I could actually remember this!
When I was around seven, we were so poor we could only afford bug houses. The Skyline is the one I remember best. I think there was one called the Outspan as well (or was that oranges?) Anyway, the bug houses, or flea pits, were ancient and awful. The floor was flat so if anyone taller than a dwarf sat in front of me, I couldn't see. You could smoke during the movie, so the cinema was full of stinking clouds (I can't believe this used to be "normal"). There was always a double bill and the first movie was always a horror movie. A somewhat oversensitive child, I had the kind of bloody nightmares that gore-meisters would admire. A typical combination of movie would be The Murders on the Rue Morgue followed by Some Like It Hot. If you were lucky, you got something that had shown quite recently, only a year or two old. It was invariably a James Bond.
Needless to say this was before television (yes, there are countries in the world who didn't get TV until the seventies, believe it or not).
These days I hardly ever go to the cinema. Not just too expensive but audiences have changed. They have no intensity, no attention spans, no interest. They talk shit, eat constantly (well, they eat shit too, come to think of it) and play with their fucking phones no matter how many times an ad comes up and tells them not to.
I dream of having a home cinema in the basement. It'll only have one chair in it. Maybe two.
I'm grateful for movies. My mother (a huge movie-goer) used to take me to the movies when I was a toddler. I used to wander all over the cinema in the dark, exploring, until I was thoroughly lost. Then I'd start shouting "mommy!" until the manager found me and returned me to my mother. I wish I could actually remember this!
When I was around seven, we were so poor we could only afford bug houses. The Skyline is the one I remember best. I think there was one called the Outspan as well (or was that oranges?) Anyway, the bug houses, or flea pits, were ancient and awful. The floor was flat so if anyone taller than a dwarf sat in front of me, I couldn't see. You could smoke during the movie, so the cinema was full of stinking clouds (I can't believe this used to be "normal"). There was always a double bill and the first movie was always a horror movie. A somewhat oversensitive child, I had the kind of bloody nightmares that gore-meisters would admire. A typical combination of movie would be The Murders on the Rue Morgue followed by Some Like It Hot. If you were lucky, you got something that had shown quite recently, only a year or two old. It was invariably a James Bond.
Needless to say this was before television (yes, there are countries in the world who didn't get TV until the seventies, believe it or not).
These days I hardly ever go to the cinema. Not just too expensive but audiences have changed. They have no intensity, no attention spans, no interest. They talk shit, eat constantly (well, they eat shit too, come to think of it) and play with their fucking phones no matter how many times an ad comes up and tells them not to.
I dream of having a home cinema in the basement. It'll only have one chair in it. Maybe two.
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