A magical viewing experience
The weird world of the 24-Hour Movie Marathon
It was 2011 and I was a wannabe movie reviewer, watching hours of movies every week, when I heard about this must-see movie event in Auckland. They called it the 24-Hour Movie Marathon, a wild day and night of non-stop movies curated by Incredibly Strange Film Festival mastermind Ant Timpson.
‘‘Twenty-four hours? Too easy,’’ I thought. I once watched all six Star Wars films back-to-back, even Attack of the Clones. This so-called marathon was gonna be a cake walk.
But it was not a cake walk. My legs had started to cramp around the fifth hour, and I was halffrozen because I hadn’t brought a blanket. Nine hours in, I could no longer feel my face and the walls were getting a little bit . . . melty.
Around me were about a hundred cheering and jeering film maniacs. In front of me, some of the weirdest, creepiest, most disorienting and questionable movies I had ever seen played.
That year, the marathon opened with the first New Zealand screening of incendiary sci-fi cult classic Attack The Block, starring John Boyega (Star Wars) in his first feature role, and ended 24 hours later with beloved 1980s classic ReAnimator, starring cult film hero Jeffrey Combs.
What went on in between was complete retro madness (if you haven’t seen 1980s cyborg emodrama Eliminators featuring a mandroid – part man, part car – you absolutely must). I loved it.
Hours later, as I staggered out into the Auckland daylight and a flight back to sanity, I felt fundamentally changed.
According to Timpson, that’s quite normal. It might even be the whole point.
‘‘In these days of the Netflix binge, people are quite used to sitting down and absorbing multiple hours of entertainment, but there’s a big difference between lying in your bed eating biscuits, watching seven hours of Stranger Things and a [vintage Z-grade horror master] Andy Milligan film destroying your brain at 3am in a cinema with strange people surrounding you,’’ Timpson says.
‘‘Also, you know this. Your brain starts doing really strange things after 20 hours in a cinema. You start to have a slightly out-of-body experience. You possibly become part of the narrative. And that’s just on coffee.’’
It’s ‘‘crazy’’ to think of the movie marathon being 20 years old. Timpson has been organising and hosting them, ‘‘literally hiring a giant screen TV and playing VHS tapes’’, since since his university days in the 1980s.
‘‘It’s been funny watching the regulars age along with the films, everyone will be coming in walkers pretty soon,’’ he says.
If marathon regular,Wellingtonian David Brough, has his way, that’ll be true.
When this year’s season kicks off on December 7, it will be his 21st marathon (in the early years, he’d do two – one in Auckland and one in Wellington). And he has an almost uncanny recall of every film and programme he’s experienced.
At his first, as a 16-year-old cinephile in 2001, he used a fake ID to get into the R18 event.
Somehow, I don’t think Timpson would mind the fake ID much. As he wrote in the anniversary marathon’s announcement, attending is ‘‘like drinking absinthe or skinny dipping with strangers . . . something everyone should do once in their life’’.
So what’s it really like at one of these things? You arrive at the Hollywood Avondale, file in and find a seat. Smart film fans buy tickets for the bean bag area up the front. They also bring pillows, blankets, extra cushions, and maybe a onesie.
Kick off is 3pm. You watch films from numerous genres and decades non-stop, until 3pm on Sunday, only coming up for air long enough to wolf down a bacon butty and slurp down a triple-shot, fivesugar cup of coffee.
Brough calls it his Christmas, because he never knows what he’s going to see and every new film is a like a gift he gets to unwrap.
‘‘It’s really a haven for cinephiles to see old films on a big screen with a really fun audience,’’ says Timpson.
‘‘It’s so rare to feel like you’re part of something special, that is a one-off occasion. It’s kind of like what Childish Gambino did with his concert. If you weren’t there you didn’t experience it, and you can’t really see how it was or associate with it, unless you’ve done the hard yards.’’
Brough, who’s done the hard yards and then some, has some advice for first-timers: ‘‘Make friends with the people you’re sitting next to. Tell them your name before it all starts. I did my first three or four without knowing anyone and then plucked up the courage to actually talk to people.
‘‘It’s something amazing, having gone through it with other people. If you do it alone, it is a slog.
‘‘Second tip: Every time there’s a break, get outside the cinema for fresh air and water. Don’t hit the sugar until Sunday.’’
Wise, wise words.
Now, where did I put my onesie?
The 20th Annual 24 Hour Movie Marathon kicks off on Saturday, December 7, at the Hollywood Avondale in Auckland.
Tickets are on sale now from Hollywoodavondale.nz