VARIOUS MOMENTS

JOE CORNISH on TOO MANY FILMS TO NAME

How long have you got? Spinal Tap at the ABC Fulham Road in 1984, the first time I stood up and walked over to someone else in a cinema and told them to stop talking because they were spoiling the film. I was 15, they were about 12 and I felt like a badass. The Color Purple in a multiplex in Los Angeles in 1986. When Shug kisses Celie, a guy in the audience shouted out, “Awwww, come on, that ain’t Hollywood!” Then when the projectionist forgot to change reels and the picture sputtered out, the same guy shouted, “Hey, put out that joint and get the movie back!” We were 17 and thought that was hilarious and exotic. Die Hard in Brooklyn in 1988, a packed house went crazy all the way through, shouting out to the characters and leaping to their feet when Alan Rickman plunged to his death. Kids in New York in 1995, a late-night screening alone with just me and a bunch of young skaters a few rows in front who kept pointing and shouting when they saw their friends on screen. The 11.15pm late show of Total Recall on a Friday night in the Odeon Marble Arch in 1990, a sold-out crowd of over 1,000 people going crazy when Arnie shoots Sharon Stone and says, “Consider that a divorce.” The press preview of Independence Day at the Odeon Leicester Square in 1996, the whole theatre exploding in cheers after the White House blew up. Flash Gordon in the courtyard at Somerset House in 2005, sitting behind Brian Blessed while he spoke along to his own lines in his booming baritone. I could go on but... oh God, please don’t let cinemas die, it can’t happen, it mustn’t happen, we can’t let it happen!