IT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN TO A FILM JOURNALIST
Editor-at-Large JAMIE GRAHAM lifts the lid on film journalism.
Jamie recalls his favourite trips to the cinema.
Little did I know when I attended a screening of The Invisible Man a few days before it opened, that it would be my last trip to the cinema for… well, who knows? I certainly don’t at the time of writing this, two days after Boris Johnson declared lockdown in the UK.
Normally, I go to the cinema three or four times a week, with something like a 50/50 split between attending press screenings and toddling along to my local Cineworld to watch a movie with ‘real people’. Going to the pictures is the thing I miss most, now that the world has shut down. So, it got me thinking – what are my fondest cinema memories? Below is a list of my Top 10…
10 BIRD OF PREY
In 1999, I watched the Kevin Costner baseball movie For Love Of The Game at an open-air cinema on the Greek island of Skiathos. Dusk deepened into night and an owl circled the sky above. It certainly outshone Kev.
9 SELF-ISOLATING
I’ve long gone to the cinema on my own – you have to when you watch as many films as I do – but I got plenty of stares when I rocked up solo to Showgirls in ’95. The various groups in attendance clearly thought I was a right perv.
8 WATCH THE SKIES
My first multimedia screening as a film journo was Independence Day at the gigantic Empire (now Cineworld) in Leicester Square. A thousand frisbees were handed out in the foyer and we all lobbed our ‘spaceships’ at the screen before the film began.
7 SHIVER OF FEAR
I saw Paranormal Activity in LA before it reached UK shores. I was so up for it I had to see it on the night of my arrival, and drank eight mugs of coffee to beat the time difference. Caffeine overdose + expert scares made me literally shake.
6 NO PETTING
On a date to see The Silence Of The Lambs when I was 18, I rebuffed all snogs as I wanted to see the movie. Back in the early ’90s, we all used cinemas as make-out dens, so my snubs got me labelled as a weirdo.
5 FILM ADDICTS
I saw S1m0ne at a small cinema in Rome in 2002, and even though Andrew Niccol’s comedy-drama is under two hours long, there was a 15-minute intermission for espressos and cigarettes. I opted for beer as the film was so bad.
4 LOST IN TRANSLATION
On the island of Kos in 2003, all the bars put up screens and played a pirated movie each night. The Last Samurai had dodgy English subtitles. My favourite? “He is a man of tremendous feats” became “He is a man of tremendous feet”.
3 A QUIET PLACE
Aged 20, my mates and I went to see Schindler’s List. Normally they talked through films (much to my disgust), but now sat in silence for 195 minutes. Not that they all rated Spielberg’s magnum opus. “It would have been better in colour,” said one.
2 MOVING ON UP
My first-ever press screening was Vampire In Brooklyn at the legendary Mr. Young’s (now The Soho Screening Rooms). I got there early and chose a good vantage point, only for Barry Norman to arrive and politely inform me that I was in his seat.
1 DATE NIGHT
I invited a woman I fancied to the Spider-Man premiere in 2002. It was actually the first press screening (not quite the same!), and I left my tickets on the tube and had to blag our way in. Somehow, 18 years later, we’ve been married for 14 years.
‘I GOT THERE EARLY, ONLY FOR BARRY NORMAN TO ARRIVE AND INFORM ME I WAS IN HIS SEAT’