THE CLIMB
J.J. ABRAMS on SAFETY LAST
When Edgar reached out about my most vivid experiences watching films in the cinema, two things occurred to me. The first is just how many varied and profound memories I have. I can recall the literal crying hysterics of the audience watching Airplane!
(I actually fell out of my chair laughing that day). I remember the auditorium full of crazy shrieks of horror during the original Friday The 13th,
and the roar of applause when Richard Kimble survived the train crash in The Fugitive, and when Doc, Marty and Jennifer flew away in the Delorean at the end of Back To The Future.
I nearly get chills recounting the house full of sobs when I was a kid with my parents watching E.T. or when I was a parent with my kids during Toy Story 3. Or, when, at ten years old at The Spy Who Loved Me at the Avco Theater in Westwood, I was on the edge of my seat as Bond skied off the cliff at the end of the opening sequence. I actually gasped. And the jaded stranger in the row behind me blurted out, “Parachute,” just before 007’s Union Jack chute emerged from his backpack and Carly Simon started singing. The moral there is that some audience viewings can be annoying.
In short, there are just too many of these memories to count. It is said that our most enduring memories are made outdoors, in nature. Maybe. But movies are at least a close second.
There is one experience worth mentioning. It was a 2008 screening of Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last in Royce Hall at UCLA. A live organist played along with the film, which is one of the classic silent comedies. What was stunning — and inspiring and wonderful — was the audience reaction. The crowd — nearly a thousand people were there — was, even 12 years ago, accustomed to all the cutting-edge, anything-is-possible visual effects of the modern age. In short, they’d seen it all. And yet here they were, actually screaming — loudly — as Lloyd climbed the side of the building, fighting off the pigeons and
clinging to the building clock’s hands, even as it broke and lurched forward. If there had been a decibel meter on hand, it would have shown that the only audio louder than the screams were the cheers and applause when Harold finally made it, in glorious fashion, onto the roof and into the arms of the woman he loves.
It was an electric screening, and we all felt it. Whoever was in that audience, wherever we were from, or however old we were, or whatever god we believed in or sports teams we loved or food we ate, we were all Harold that day. We were all the underdog, all of us climbing that building for love. I’ll never forget that communal thrill-ride, or the smiles that strangers exchanged on the way out. We hadn’t just been told a story — we’d been through something, together. And that is the unique alchemy of cinema.
Which leads me to the second thought I had when Edgar called: that there are two things being discussed here. There are the movies themselves, and then there’s the magic of seeing them en masse. The additive reaction that galvanises the memory of the experience. Not that we can’t and shouldn’t enjoy movies at home, but it’s a far different and, arguably, inferior experience to the collective exuberance of hundreds of strangers in the dark together, screaming, crying, laughing, existing.
If 2020 has proven anything it’s that the world is, in large part, a fucking nightmare. If there has ever been a time when people need to be reminded just how much we actually have in common, it is now. And that is something that only movies can provide.
I believe that when we are on the other side of Covid, there will be a powerful need to be together. The cinema will, perhaps more than ever before, be a place to celebrate, to congregate, and to appreciate films and each other.