BEN FREEDMAN
OWNER OF THE PRINCE CHARLES CINEMA
“THE PRINCE CHARLES is everything an independent movie theatre should be,” Quentin Tarantino once said. And since 1991 the cinema, sitting on a side street just off London’s Leicester Square, has operated on its own terms. Ben Freedman has run and owned it since then, when his father bought it after hearing about the building during a poker game, and from the start it’s been a snobbery-free cinematic church where pretty much anything goes, from astonishing movie marathons to gloriously messy audienceparticipation events. Here, Freedman tells us how he’s forged a unique community.
There’s a spirit that underlines how the Prince Charles communicates with the customers. Did you set out to foster that? It was the original spirit of what we did. It’s a professional informality. We want to make everybody feel at home, feel welcome. We have to try harder than anyone else, because we survive on our wits. We were very aware of that from the very beginning.
You’re famous for your insane movie marathons. When did that start?
We’ve always done different things. One night early on we showed a 16mm horror film about a goat. And I stood in the auditorium going, “I can’t believe that we’re showing this, and that it’s full.” We sold out, so I didn’t care. We once showed the entire series of Twin Peaks over three days. We spent money on lots of fancy cherry pies that nobody ate because everybody turned up with Tupperware, which is very Prince Charles.
You’ve always put on crazy audienceparticipation events. How did that come about?
We began showing The Rocky Horror Picture Show when we opened in ’91, on Friday nights, with the troupe on stage acting it out. And then later Sing-a-long-a Sound Of Music. The whole
concept of saying to people, “This is something that you love, you can sing, get up and dance, shout stuff out” — we passed over control of the performance to the audience, and trusted them.
For a few years now you’ve been doing it with Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. How did that happen?
Somebody heard about it in America, and we tried it, because we try almost anything. I have a place I lean against on the right side of the auditorium, and I remember watching The Room, saying, “Shit. How could anyone watch this?” I was just astounded. But you go with it. I’ve given up trying to rationalise it. It just works. We collect garbage bags full of plastic spoons after the shows. That’s not something that most cinemas can handle. But it’s worth it.
Your signage above the front doors — the readergraph — has also become famous, saying things like, “Every Time You Torrent, God Kills A Cinema”, or “Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Animals”.
They’re tongue-in-cheek but serious. We had “We’ll Be Back” when we had to shut down this year — yes, it’s a quote, but it showed we were determined that we weren’t going to go anywhere. It’s quite retro compared to the Odeon and the Vue’s amazing electronic signage in Leicester Square. We have our very oldfashioned readergraph with a limited number of letters. [Laughs] But that’s who we are.
What’s it like to have been at the helm of such a creative cinema for three decades? It’s been joyous. I love it. I go to the movies 40 or 50 times a year. Nothing is better than sitting down and watching a film in the cinema. I consider it a privilege to be able to offer it to the general public. During the lockdown we’ve had such a level of support from everybody. It’s a big responsibility to live up to it. And we’ll come out of this. As long as there is cinema, we will be there.