This morning.
To celebrate the re-opening of cinemas across Ireland…
…Mark at Jam Art Factory writes:
We thought Broadsheet readers would be interested in a competition for a set of 2 A4 signed “old Irish cinema prints” by Paddy Duffy. The winner can choose from Paddy’s wide range of cinemas here
To enter, just share with us your most memorable Irish cinema experience…
Lines MUST close at 6pm.
Sponsored Link
In 1979, 8 year old me and the rest of the bash street kids went to see Elvis The Movie starring a young Kurt Russell in the Fairview Cinema.
By the end of the movie everyone was up dancing in the aisles.
(I assumed it was an awful movie but I chanced upon it a couple of years ago and it wasn’t all bad).
When The Commitments came out I was still living in Finglas.
There was a little cinema in the old Janelle where you could sneak in two litres should you so wish.
I always remember the huge cheer that would go up every time local lad Ken appeared on screen :)
Ah the old Fairview Flea Pit… A whole heap of us descended on Fairview to avail of the *ahem* two for one special, aka the big screen bamboozle…, this involved all the tallest members of the group lined up across the kiosk asking as many questions as humanly possible to distract the ticket usher as the younger ones slipped the net.
Ironically our movie choice was Piranha and it is safe to say we that we nibbled away at our hosts profit margin that day, that’s for sure.
In the film True Romance, where Christian Slater’s character talks to his imaginary Elvis, they wanted Kurt Russell to reprises his role from that film, sort of :-)
They got Val Kilmer, who was not bad at all.
my first proper movie was “The Big Bus” in the Strand, Fairview
have a vague recollection of a bottle of fanta with teeny narrow straws + “pub grub” crisps
Back in 1997/1998 I went to see the documentary movie “Sick – the life and death of Bob Flanagan” in the Dublin Film Festival. It is about the eponymous Bob who had cystic fibrosis and was a masochist and a “performance artist”. He lived his life in pain but in an act of defiance against the pain and the cystic fibrosis, he would hurt himself on stage, and inflict further pain on himself. He was also quite a funny guy. An interesting movie but a tough watch though. Anyway, the cinema was packed. In one scene he takes his dick out and places it on a piece of wood. Then he takes out a 6 inch nail and a hammer. The cinema went deathly quiet. He proceeded to drive a nail though his penis AND the piece of wood with the hammer. People looked away in horror. Extreme silence. Except for one sound. Some women giggling away uncontrollably. Bob then took the claw part of the hammer and extracted the nail from his penis and the piece of wood. Blood everywhere. I was horrified. Next there was a loud “thud” sound in the cinema as someone fell out of their seat followed by the now immortal words “Is there a doctor in the house ?”. Truly unforgettable movie experience.
My first experience was The Ormonde in Stillorgan, opposite the shopping centre. a Disney Double Header, together with our cousins from up the hill in Mount Merrion, my mother and aunt treated us all. It was the first time I ever saw a film in colour, home TV was black and white, a Pye that came free with the mobile home Dad had to get for overflow of the horde of kids. It had six channels, tunable by turning the knob. We managed to get HTV, which we lost when we moved here.
First cinema film I saw was Dumbo, followed by The 101 Dalmatians. My aunt bought us all popcorn – again a novel experience. I do not recall right now the first live action film I saw, but I think it might have been Kurt Russell in Now You See Me, Now You Don’t, also in the Ormonde.
But I think the most memorable was the old Stella in Harold’s Cross which, for manys the year, hosted the Rocky Horror Picture Show every Friday. The first time I went was with college friends in first year. Despite having seen the film on TV (this time in colour), we were live Rocky virgins. A friend had brought a pan of bread toasted for the obligatory scene. When it came, he broke off bits and tossed them over his shoulder, only to nearly get concussed by a flying Irish Pride brown bread, every slice toasted, and still in the paper :-)
Sadly, no one felt the need to bare certain portions of their anatomy a young student would find interesting.
The “Classic” Harold’s Cross, “Stella” Rathmines.
D’Oh!
@slightly
Today’s Bread To Daze… :-D
Those prints are desktop dull.
If you have nothing nice to say….
The Classic cinema in Harolds Cross (RIP) used to show the Rocky Horror Picture show every Friday at 11pm up until around 2002.
Owners were brilliant. they let us U18 yr olds bring in beer, only charged about £2 and let us dance/jump around the place. It was like the owners just wanted to see us have fun. I could not imagine these new chains with their shareholders and impersonal touch, with their insurance issues, health and safety letting us get away with murder. we didnt feel too bad, the floor was really sticky and the seats in rag order, but felt very comfortable.
These old school cinema owners treated their cinema like their house and loved inviting people in. Recall an old cinema in Arklow being the same in the 90s. Owner sometimes gave us kids free popcorn.
Dublin cinemas I remember visiting as a kid in the 70s.
Savoy, Ambassador, Carlton, Adelphi, Green, The New Metropole (became the Screen), the Astor, Academy, Stella, Classic, and the Ormonde.
I vaguely remember the (old) Metropole as a building but was closed and demolished well before I was cinema going age. I remember it as being an impressive building. If I remember, a BHS was built in its place and now its Pennys.
My Father would being me to the usual suspects of Herbie Goes Bananas, Jungle Book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or whatever Disney movie was on and handy to get to and kill a few hours from all the women in our house. On top of that. my ‘big’ sisters, who at times were forced to ‘mind’ me would have me tag along to something more grown up and have their boyfriends keep me quiet with sweets and so on. That sweet deal ended, however, when I was brought to JAWS. Jesus, my eldest sister got it in the neck for that one as I was traumatized for months. It even ruined a summer holiday as I went full-on nuts at the sign of the seaside. Took a couple of years to grow out of that piece of terror on my toddler psyche.
Anyways, and while it’s somewhat predictable, my most memorable moment was in 1977, being brought to Star Wars in the Ambassador (I think). I was the perfect age (6) and my mind was utterly blown. Even today it’s hard to replicate the sheer levels of awesomeness that movie had me walk away from.
I was there, man, I was there.
The Ambassador was a class place altogether
which bit in Jaws screwed you up? with me it was the scene where Hooper goes into the water alone to investigate what happened to Ben Gardners boat finds the tooth and yer mans head pops out………….aaarrrrrrggggghhhhh!
nightmares for months
best movie ever imho
The IFI wasn’t really a thing in the mid 70s for a Star Wars mad 6 year old! Been a member for years though.
And yeah, it was a combination of the head and the menace amplified by the soundtrack.
True story – a number of years later the whole family decanted to LA for the ’84 Olympics. We visited Universal Studios and got to go on the studio tour which had Jaws hisself lep out of the water at you along the way. Frightened the shyness out of little 13 year old me – even though I knew well it was animatronic….
Back in the autumn on 1991 I rolled out of some disreputable night club with a pal in the wee small hours of the morning and in a fit of inspiration we decided to go see The Commitments! When the film opened the Savoy on O’Connell St had it exclusively for a week and as a PR stunt they were showing it around the clock in their No 1 cinema.
We got there at 3.00am, give or take, and managed to get to get 2 of the last few tickets. The cinema held almost 800 people and it was packed. I had already seen the film which was handy as it was practically impossible to follow due to the exuberance of the pissed up crowd.
Watching a fun film like that with a crowd that roared at every joke and sang along to every song, whether they knew the words or not, was an amazing experience The sheer joy of those two hours is something I’ve never experienced since in a cinema anywhere in the world. Only in Dublin…