Picture Palace

SET MY HEART TO FIVE Guest contributor Simon Stephenson on his love for cinemas…

MIy novel, Set My Heart To Five, tells the story of Jared, an android who teaches himself to feel by watching old movies. The book is set in 2054, when only a handful of old cinemas remain, lovingly showing the movies that survived the Great Crash because they were stored on film. Thus, the future cineaste’s canon is almost entirely composed of big-hearted hits like Forrest Gump, Thelma & Louise, and Sleepless In Seattle.

As now, the unsung heroes of the piece are the cinemas themselves. Many of the cinemas Jared frequents are real places that I conceived as little changed from today, albeit with their neon marquees a little more burned out, their red velvet seats a little more threadbare, their alabaster statues a little more headless. At the time of writing, it seemed a safe bet these cinemas would still be around in another few decades. After all, many of them had survived two world wars. Some of them had even survived Gigli.

But I wrote my book before many of us had even heard the word ‘coronavirus’ or had opinions on the merits of N95 versus FFP3 masks. I

wrote it before any of us knew how good we had always had it.

At this moment in history, our future feels uncertain in a way it never has before. So where do us cinephiles go to find our solace? For many of us, going to the movies has always been what we do when things get tough. Cinemas have carried me through break-ups, sicknesses, and even bereavements. I know I have not been alone in spending my pandemic evenings wishing I could simply go and watch a movie in the dark amongst my fellow humans.

I have even found myself fantasising about revisiting beloved cinemas I have known: the Dominion, the Cameo, the Grosvenor, the Coronet, the Rio, the