IT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN TO A FILM JOURNALIST
Editor-at-Large JAMIE GRAHAM lifts the lid on film journalism.
Our Jamie takes his VHS collection to the dump.
When I was 15 years old, I bought my first video: Stand By Me. I’d been taping movies off TV for years, forever schlepping to Woolworths to stock up on Scotch cassettes (“Re-record, not fade away… re-re-rerecord, not fade away”), but being afforded the opportunity to own a finished film was a new thing. Thirty pounds was a lot of money to a teen in the late ’80s (hell, it’s a lot of money to a humble film journalist in 2021), but it seemed like a snip to own my favourite film.
I was bitten by the bug. Suddenly, owning my fave film wasn’t enough. I needed to own my Top 10. So I landed a Saturday job in the Fresh n Fruity section of my local Spar. I had, and still have, a phobia of apples (long story), but happily I traumatised myself stocking the shelves with Granny Smiths so I might purchase Rocky IV. In the Christmas hols, I worked nights in a cheese factory, placing circles of roule in the top right-hand corner of selection trays as they trundled past on a conveyor belt. It bought me Carrie, Dawn Of The Dead, First Blood, The Terminator, Christine, Hellraiser, The Lost Boys and, er, Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Café. My Top 10, on a bedroom shelf.
BAD TIP
Why bring this up now? Because l’ve just taken my entire video collection down to the local dump and poured it into a skip. There must have been close to 300 videos – it turned out that owning my Top 10 didn’t quite quench the thirst – and it broke my heart to see them lying there in the trash.
These films had gone to university with me. They’d survived six different moves when I rented pokey rooms in London during the first 10 years of my career. They’d made it to the house I bought with my wife when we got married, albeit sitting in the loft, replaced on shelves downstairs by DVD and Blu-ray copies. From time to time, when I needed to go up into the loft to fetch down the Christmas decorations, perhaps, or to store an item of furniture, I’d sift through my collection. It would immediately take me back to my teens and my twenties, conjuring precious memories.
But now I’m moving again and just don’t have room. No charity shop would take them. My offers on Facebook and Twitter met with resounding silence. So I poured them into the skip, and my guts with them.
BE KIND, REWIND
I thought the pain would pass. It hasn’t, and not just because I tweeted a picture and someone responded that my copy of RoboCop would’ve fetched good money on eBay. I honestly feel like I’ve committed a crime – to cinema, to my younger self – and at the risk of sounding melodramatic and/or tasteless, I can’t stop thinking about the burning of books in Nazi Germany.
If I could rewind time by a couple of weeks, I wouldn’t take them to the dump. I’d take them to the new house and bury them in a waterproofed hole in the garden, if need be – anything to keep that piece of me. The trip to the skip has scarred me, though it was kind of lovely when three or four people stopped tossing their own stuff and stared at the cascading videos in horror and mournful respect. They then shuffled closer, offering consolatory words and talking fondly about certain titles they could see. Ah, the unifying power of cinema!
And I did keep back my copy of Stand By Me. I own it several times over on DVD and Blu, in various international editions, but that VHS is going nowhere. Until, that is – and I say this in all seriousness – it’s tucked beside me in my coffin and lowered into my grave.
‘PEOPLE STOPPED TOSSING STUFF AND STARED AT THE CASCADING VIDEOS IN HORROR’