21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) (23 page)
Read 21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) Online
Authors: Steve Stack
EXT.DAY
Two animated chaps, both of whom look a bit like that bloke the Pink Panther spent most of his time pissing off, are running down a sketchily drawn high street.
CLOSE UP
CHAP 1: ’Ere Bert, this is the place.
CUT TO
Dodgy still photograph of an Indian restaurant with shaky text proclaiming the name of said establishment.
VOICEOVER: Just a short walk from this theatre.
Ahh, those were the days. No cinema trip was complete without a flurry of shockingly bad adverts for local shops, businesses, and eateries. They were usually slotted in after the big budget ads for Malibu and Cinzano, and before the Crusader was asked if he had any nuts and the Westlers hot dog appeared from the side of the screen like a giant penis. Perhaps the thinking was that we wouldn’t notice how terrible they were if they were sneaked in between proper commercials.
It never worked.
Dodo Rating:
You would turn up at your local Odeon or ABC cinema at 10am on a Saturday morning, load up on penny chews, and sit down with your mates for two to three hours of uninterrupted viewing pleasure.
The Saturday morning cinema screenings were for kids’ films only (with begrudging dads often sitting up the back having a snooze or trying to read the paper from the refracted light of the projector), and were made up of cartoons, adventure serials, public information films, and other odds and sods the projectionist found lying around.
The adventure serials were the best. Flash Gordon would zoom across the screen in pursuit of, or escape from, Ming the Merciless, and every episode would end on a cliffhanger, meaning you had to go back the following week to find out what had happened. These serials kept doing the rounds for decades, with kids of the ’70s and early ’80s watching black and white shows from the ’30s and ’40s. No one seemed to mind, but they didn’t have Nintendos and mobile phones back in those days.
I seem to remember a serial from the ’70s that featured a disembodied head (possibly a shrunken one from a South American tribe?) who hung about with a bunch of kids and got up to all sorts of scrapes. There was a particularly peculiar song at the beginning, with the head singing direct to camera. If anyone else can remember this oddity, then do please drop me an email; the address is at the end of this book.
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A typical projectionist’s job description from 10 or 20 years ago:
Working alone, in a windowless room, you will be operating a number of mechanical projectors and ensuring the smooth running of films in each of the cinema’s screens. Heavy lifting may be required to transport reels from one screen to another. You may also be responsible for the physical environment of the auditorium – air conditioning, lighting, curtains, etc.
Other responsibilities will include:
- checking film reels as they arrive from distributors
- loading reels, in the right order, onto the projectors
- ensuring the smooth running of each film while playing
- checking sound
- maintenance of equipment
- hours will include afternoons and evenings.
A typical projectionist’s job description today:
- Press play
The rise of the multiplex and digital projection means that the art, and it is an art, of film projection is dying out. Splicing lengths of film together, setting a new reel up for showing, the intricacies of the projector itself are all being replaced through the use of hard drives. One ‘projectionist’ can now manage every screen in a multiplex from a computer at a desk. Next time you go to see a film, the chances are there will be no one in the actual projection room at all.
Ah, but this is progress, I hear some of you cry, and perhaps it is. But it is soulless, heartless, humanless progress and I am not sure I like it.
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Or supporting features, to give them their proper name.
These were often, but not always, low-budget films screened before the main attraction or as part of a double-bill. Cinema-goers got more for their money in those days, with several hours of viewing for the price of one ticket. B movies would frequently prove to be the training ground for the stars of tomorrow, with actors such as Robert De Niro, John Wayne, and Jack Nicholson, and also Oscar-winning directors such as Frank Capra, Jonathan Demme, and Francis Ford Coppola, all cutting their millionaire teeth on low-budget supporting features.
Essentially these were films that didn’t cost very much to make, relatively speaking, and didn’t need a ton of marketing money thrown at them for the simple reason that they were being shown before a film that did have a ton of marketing money thrown at it. They gained most of their audience by default.
This is not to say that they didn’t have their fans – far from it. Over the last 60 or 70 years, a massive fanbase for B movies has sprung up, especially the genre films – science fiction, westerns, and particularly horror. Some of the greatest horror films ever made were B movies, or came from B movie beginnings.
B movies started out in the ’20s and ’30s with studios forcing theatres to take the supporting feature if they wanted to show the big blockbuster. The practice continued for many years, and only really died out in the 1980s because of the sheer cost of production; films that had once cost less than $100,000 to make were now closer to millions. Nothing was really ‘low budget’ any more.
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Where we bought our sweets and comics …
In the 1970s, the ten-pence piece was a magical coin. It was, for most kids, the sum total of their pocket money for the week. It was also the shiny silver key that unlocked the wonders of the mix-up bag.
Whatever you called it where you lived – 10p mix, mix bag, ten penny mix-up – it amounted to the same thing: a small paper bag into which you could place an array of sweets until you reached your budget.
And, magically, ten pence worth of sweets was just enough to get the average child through a suburban Saturday.
All newsagents had a selection of penny sweets in front of their counter. They displayed them there so that they could keep their beady eye on schoolchildren who might be, shall we say, a trifle overzealous with their selections, or those for whom the capitalist notion of fair payment for goods was slightly lower down the pecking order than the thrill of hiding a pink shrimp up your sleeve.
There was a variety of selection methods available. These were very much dependent on the layout of the shop, the trusting/gullible nature of the proprietor, and/or the range of sweets available.
Self-service
. A stash of paper bags hung from a string next to the cornucopia of tubs and boxes of sweets. You helped yourself to the sweets you wanted before handing over the bag for payment. This was the most common practice.
Deluxe self-service
. As above, but with a small pair of tongs.
Assisted service
. Where the newsagent himself would handle the bag and selection process, guided by the juvenile customer. ‘I’ll have one of them … and one of them … no, hang on … two of them …
how much have I spent so far?’ This was a less common approach, and was normally restricted to the particularly friendly proprietor – ‘Can I tempt you with some Parma Violets?’ Answer: ‘No you can’t’ – or grumpy ones who didn’t trust kids to do it themselves. It tended to be unpopular with the adult customer queuing behind waiting to buy 20 JPS and a copy of
Razzle
.
But far more important than the selection method was the selection itself. Which combination of sweets would you go for? There was generally a lot to choose from: Black Jacks, Fruit Salad, liquorice pipes, flying saucers, chocolate rainbow drops, cherry lips, pink shrimp, fried eggs, gobstoppers, Hubba Bubba, golf ball chewing gum, Refresher chews, red bootlaces, coconut mushrooms, aniseed balls, fizzy coke bottles, Mojos, milk bottles – I could go on!
