Stories from my Sketchbook . . .
I can’t remember what Peter Pan’s favourite place was when he was little (the indian camp?—the mermaid lagoon?) but I remember mine was always the movie theatre.
Some things never change . . .
Stories from my Sketchbook . . .
I agree with almost all of Dan Glickman’s statement . . . everything except the bit about the popcorn.
How anyone, given the choice, could choose popcorn over a big bag (oh well okay then—a big box) of deliciously-chocolatey-honeycomby-creamy-crunchy-Maltesers is, frankly, a bit beyond me. But, there you go—there’s no accounting for taste . . .
Allthough popcorn is not my movie snack of choice (it’s not even anywhere on my list) I do admit to a having a certain kind of fascination with the popcorny-popping process. I have often stood and watched (while clutching my coffee and maltesers and waiting impatiently for the cinema doors to open) the shiny little machine at our local Plaza Theatre do its popcorn-birthing thing. It’s kind of mesmerising to watch . . .
I can only imagine how much more mesmerising it would be to me if it were churning out yummy-scrummy Maltesers instead of popcorn . . .
Stories from my Sketchbook . . .
The Plaza Theatre (Laurieton) was originally built in 1959—the same year I was born—so it really can’t be a coincidence that it happens to be one of my very favourite places to spend my time.
It’s not one of those huge monstrous cinemas that hold thousands of people, with screens so huge you have to sit in the very back row just to see the whole picture (and bad luck if you get stuck in the front row as you will come away with a severely stiff neck from having to ‘scroll’ your head back and forth and up and down the screen to try and see everything).
Our little cinema is much cooler than that. It has only one main screen in the ‘Auditorium’ and one smaller screen in the ‘Deluxe Cine Lounge’, but the whole place is seriously fabulous—all red velvet curtains and gold brocade tassells, art deco statues and lights and old fashioned framed movie posters on the walls. It’s a step back to a more luxurious and decadent time. (It’s not old fashioned enough that you can’t still get all your modern day yummies at the Candy Bar—but just enough so that bad behaviour will not be tolerated. Woebetide anyone caught putting their feet up on the seat in front—David will be after you with a big stick . . .)
When I went to see the movie Deadpool I knew even before I went in that I was going to like it. And I was right. It was fast, funny, violent, hilariously profane and starred Ryan Reynolds. What’s not to like?
So I was happy. I had fun. But not nearly as much fun as the young man sitting four rows down on the left. This guy was having a seriously good time. At one point he was laughing so hard I thought they were going to have to carry him out on a stretcher. And it wasn’t obnoxious laughter either—he was laughing in all the right places—he just seemed to be having so much more fun than everyone else. And it was contagious. I think I spent at least as much time laughing along with him as I did at the movie itself.
Which made me wonder—would I have found the movie as amusing if I had been sitting watching it on my own at home—or even if that young man hadn’t been in the audience? Probably not. A shame really, because I’d like to be able to laugh like that more often, and I’m not really sure why I don’t.
It’s not like I never find anything funny. I giggle a lot. And probably even smirk, chuckle, snicker, titter, and maybe even snort (very unladylike, I know) on a fairly regular basis—but that real full-on, from-the-gut, makes-your-eyes-water-and-leaves-you-gasping-for-breath belly laugh . . . not so much.
But the thing is, you don’t really ‘decide’ when you are going to laugh, do you? Or what you are going to laugh at, or how hard you are going to laugh. It just happens—and often at the most inopportune moments. I’ve just read a blog where a man told a story of when he and his brothers were at their mother’s funeral and their grandmother unexpectedly sent forth a very loud and unapologetic burp, sending the brothers into fits of ‘quiet hysterics’ . . . (I guess they should be grateful granny didn’t fart—that might have sent the whole congregation into meltdown . . .)
But sometimes it doesn’t even take a granny-burp. Sometimes there is no obvious reason to be laughing whatsoever, other than someone else is already laughing and you seem suddenly, and inexplicably, incapable of not joining in.
Scientists think this ‘contagion’ effect might be because laughter may have been a precursor to language and that our ancestors may have laughed to show they were friendly and meant no harm to others. Consequently we are hard-wired to respond to laughter. (I guess that is also why sitcoms still use the ‘laugh track’. My advice, they should track down that young fellow that was at my cinema—he was a laugh track all on his own.)
And it seems that we humans don’t hold the exclusive rights to laughter either. Experts (I always want to put that word in inverted commas, but I don’t want to offend anyone, so I won’t) believe that other animals laugh too, although, at this stage they seem to believe that apes and rats are the only others to do so. The chimps and gorillas I get—closest living relatives and all that (and we all know someone who actually sounds like a chimp when they are laughing, don’t we?)
The rat thing is just a tad weirder. ‘Tickling‘ experiments done on rats (because why wouldn’t you want to do a tickling experiment on a rat?) discovered that when rats were being tickled, they produced high-pitched, ultrasonic vocalizations (chirps), and these sounds were only made when they were playing. And, what is more, these rats actively went out of their way to get more tickles (as you do), further indicating that they were actually enjoying the process. (These giggly rats also preferred to play with other ‘chirpers’, which stands to reason really—why spend time with the grumpy old codger in the corner when you could be having a chuckle-fest with the fun crowd?)
I was a little surprised though, to see that there appears to be no evidence that cats and dogs laugh. As an owner of three incredibly silly and giggly dogs, I am absolutely convinced my girls spend the majority of their (awake) time laughing. (The same experts who did the rat experiments above would no doubt call this ‘anthropomorphizing‘. I have one thing to say to that—have any of these experts ever owned a dog?)
And—okay, sure—I admit that you don’t often see cats rolling around on their backs, tongues hanging out, eyes rolling madly, while waving their legs in the air with gay abandon when something amuses them (behaviour far too uncouth for most cats)—but you can just tell from their expressions that they are laughing (hard) on the inside . . .
Anyway, I am not quite sure how I managed to get from Deadpool to tickling rats but the long and the short of this story is that I am planning another trip to the movies this weekend and I am kind of hoping that young man is going to be there again.
I am feeling in need of another really good belly-laugh . . .
I went to the movies last weekend—an early Sunday morning showing, my favorite time to go. There’s method in my madness—all the good people are in church and all the teenagers still in bed, so attendance is usually really low. Once or twice I have even been the only person there. The first time that happened it was a bit of a shock. It was a little unnerving to be sitting in the dark, alone, with all those empty seats around me. A bit spooky (everyone knows that the monsters always get you when you’re alone in the dark . . . )
I was also a bit distracted and annoyed, waiting for the latecomers to arrive. I just knew they were all going to rush in, all of a fluster, just as the movie was really getting going, and hover about in front of the screen (not having the courtesy to even pretend to be sorry) where they would (loudly) discuss where they would like to sit. 
But that didn’t happen. Nobody else turned up. Not a single other person. And once I realised that no-one was going to come and tell me that the movie wasn’t actually going to run and it was all a big mixup, I got totally caught up in it. I felt like a celebrity at my own private viewing. There were no distractions—no talking, no coughing, no people getting up and down, nor cellphones beeping. No overpowering popcorny smell (sorry folks, don’t like popcorn). There was just me and the big screen. Oh yes—I could get used to this.
Last Sunday I was not disappointed. There was only one other attendee (I was in a good mood and happy to share). I sat in my favourite seat, high up on the left on the aisle, and she sat in what I presume was her favourite seat, further to the front, down on the right. We didn’t know each other, but waved and smiled anyway (it would have felt a bit weird not to—it really is much easier to ignore a whole crowd than just one other person). While we waited in the hushed quiet and dim light for the movie to begin (me nursing my coffee and trying not to eat at all my Maltesers before the opening credits) I found myself reminiscing about how much the cinema experience has changed for me since I started going some 50 years ago (Yikes . . .50 years . . . if you say it really, really fast it doesn’t sound quite so bad . . .)
Going to the ‘flicks’ has always been one of my most favourite things to do for as far back as I can remember, but my memories now are less about the films I saw then and more about the actual ‘going-to-the-movies’ experience. When I was a kid Saturday was ‘movie day’, not just for me but for most of the kids in the neighbourhood (except those weird kids who were into sports of course). Parents dropped us off in the carpark, handed out money for tickets and lollies and uttered idle ‘Behave yourselves’ incantations before disappearing to do whatever the parents did with those precious child-free hours.
With tickets procured we would rush the Kiosk (lolly counter) to load ourselves up with popcorn (eeerk), jaffas, crisps, chocolate, cokes and fantas, before almost running the usher down in our headlong dash to get ‘the best’ seats. I can’t quite remember now why we were in such a rush to get to our seats because no one actually stayed where they started. We were up and down and moving around to catch up with friends, or swap lollies, or trying to find a seat where you could at least see over the person’s big fat head in front of you (there were a lot of people with big fat heads in those days I remember).
And it was loud. We laughed and shrieked and stamped our feet (no lush carpet in our cinema then—wooden floorboards were the go), and had jaffa-rolling contests down the aisles (another good reason for wooden floors). Young teenagers pashed in the back row (resulting in all kinds of raucous banter), and the adults who were there, though few and far between, chatted amongst themselves (and smoked incessantly—each seat had it’s own built in ashtray) and appeared mostly oblivious to the pandemonium around them.
No-one cared—that’s what movie day was all about. Besides, the movie we had actually come to see didn’t start for ages anyway—there were at least a couple of hours to fill in before that . . .
First there was the National Anthem (‘God Save the Queen’) and although the talking and laughing (and popcorn throwing) didn’t necessarily stop, we would all stand (and sometimes even sing along) while pictures of the Queen (always wearing the same green dress) drifted across the screen. Duty done . . . then came the fun stuff . . .
There was the ‘Coming Soon to a Cinema Near You!’ (a montage of movie trailers to delight and entice), followed by the ‘Looney Toons’ (I still really miss the ‘toons. Wylie Coyote still cracks me up), and then perhaps a newsreel or a travelogue or an episode of a weekly Serial (giving us all plenty of time to change seats again or catch up on a bit more gossip or, more importantly, to go for a pee).
And, as no self-respecting cinema would ever think of offering just one movie, there was the ‘B’ movie—usually a cheesy sci-fi or a western or a gangster movie. Even when you factor in that you could absolutely-and-without-fail count on the film projector stuffing up at least once, more likely twice, during the matinee, you still got a lot more bang for you buck back then.
After the B movie came the INTERMISSION which would immediately instigate another roar of noise and headlong rush down the aisles to restock on goodies (because by this time we were all seriously sugar-deprived having eaten all our lollies, or thrown them at someone, within ten minutes of first entering the building), or to go to the bathroom again (all that coke and fanta), or just to stretch our legs. The ‘fire exit’ door (which had opened and closed with unceasing regularity throughout the entire program) would now stand wide open flooding the cinema with blinding sunshiny light, giving us all a welcome breath of fresh air, while also providing those people who were only interested in seeing the ‘A’ movie every opportunity to wander in off the street and steal someone else’s seat before the lights went down and the doors closed again. Oh, what fun . . .
As I think back now I have almost no memory of the actual films I saw at those long-ago Saturday matinees, and I am not even sure whether all these memories are even of one time or place. Perhaps they are an amalgam of a bunch of different childhood memories and times jumbled up in my mind. It doesn’t really matter—they are my ‘movie’ memories, and fond ones at that. Although some things (even a lot of things) may have changed since those early days, my enthusiasm for the experience remains the same.
I may have a favourite seat I like to seat in now, and prefer to be able to actually see and hear the movie without distraction, but, happily, my taste in movies has changed very little. I still like a good old blockbuster—a sci-fi (even a cheesy one), or a full on thriller, an end-of-the-world, beat ’em up, blow’em up, boys-and-their-toys blockbuster, full of colour and light and noise. I am really not a chick-flick kind of girl, and I make no apologies for that. (Last week’s choice, if you are interested, was Sicario —kept me on the edge of my seat for the whole 121 minutes. It was well worth the look—even if some of it was peeping through my fingers.)
So now the weekend is coming up again and I am planning another sojourn, this time to see Spectre. I am not really a James Bond fan per se (what self-respecting woman is?) but Daniel Craig, on the other hand, can take his shirt off for me anytime. I’m thinking it would be quite nice to spend next Sunday morning alone in the dark with Daniel, but as this is the movie’s first showing here I am not liking my chances. I am preparing myself for the fact that I might have to share again.
Shame really . . .
Sally says . . . eat, sleep, work, read, play, draw, bark . . . 