This Film's Crap, Let's Slash The Seats, Pt.1
For some a trip to the cinema is all about overpriced ice cream, sitting in seat 2K, and a spot of escapism. For others, it's all about fire, fistfights and nude satanic rituals.
Pulp Fiction
Place: Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York
Time: September 23rd 1994
After Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction attracted claps and catcalls upon winning the 1994 Palme d’Or, it was no surprise that the boy wonder’s second movie was selected to open the 32nd New York Film Festival later the same year. Screened at the prestigious Lincoln Center, QT’s homage to trash noir would probably have kicked up a fuss even without any undue incident.
As it was, no sooner had John Travolta plunged that syringe into the overdosing Uma Thurman’s chest than a shrill scream went up in the stalls. Fearing a gun-related incident, the management immediately lit up the auditorium to reveal a man collapsed on the carpet.
The unfortunate gentleman turned out to be a diabetic who’d gone into shock after seeing Travolta’s decidedly dodgy syringe technique. He was revived and taken to the foyer to recover.
”I was quite anxious,” remember Eric Stoltz who plays personable drug deal Lance in the offending scene. “I was sitting next to Quentin and he said, ‘When they screen Jaws, a man had a heart attack and died. When they told Spielberg, he jumped up and down shouting, ‘Great, that means the movies works!’’”
Manhattan Melodrama
Place: The Biograph Theater, Chicago
When: July 22nd 1934
There aren’t too many reasons to get excited about WS Van Dyke’s crime comedy, Manhattan Melodrama. Granted, it features half-decent performances from Myrna Loy, Clark Gable and the pre-teen Mickey Rooney, but it’s hardly one of the great pictures of Hollywood’s ‘Golden Era’.
Indeed, the movie might have been forgotten altogether had it not been for the events of July 22nd 1934. That evening, as the audience exited a screening of Manhattan Melodrama at Chicago’s Biograph Theater, respected G-Man Melvin Purvis and assorted officers of the law swooped on a man accompanied by a woman wearing a scarlet dress. Before the suspect - crime legend John Dillinger - could reach for his revolver, he was gunned down. The man J Edgar Hoover had dubbed ‘Public Enemy Number One’ was dead.
His date came off somewhat better. Not only did moll Anna Sage collect $5,000 for her part in the operation, she also went down in the footnotes of gangster history as the enigmatic ‘Lady In Red’.
Cry Of Battle/War Is Hell
Place: The Texas Theater, Dallas
Date: November 22nd, 1963
It’s a sweltering Texan afternoon and, anxious to avoid the hottest part of the day, you decide to enjoy a couple of hours of air conditioning courtesy of the local movie house. The Texas Theater is screening Van Heflin vehicle Cry Of Battle and Burt Topper’s gung-ho Korean actioner War Is Hell. Not a double-bill to di fore but, hey, you live in Texas so anything with guns has something going for it.
Imagine your surprise then when, midway though the first picture, the cinema manager marches up on stage accompanied by a uniformed police office and points to a man towards the back of the cinema. The lights flash up, then 30 officers bundle in and surround the small, balding chap who’s been identified.
”This is it!” shouts the suspect, one Lee Harvey Oswald, before slamming a fist into the nearest copper’s face. “Kill the president will you?!” replies one of the policeman as Oswald is subdued and frog-marched from the auditorium.
Understandably shaken, you take a minute to regain your composure then ask the manager for a full refund and a complimentary packet of Opal Fruits.
Schindler’s List
Place: The Grossmont Center, San Diego, California
Time: February 1994
It’s hard to imagine anything too shocking happening during a screening of Steven Spielberg’s critically-lauded Oscar-winning adaptation of Thomas Keneally’s Booker prize winner. Indeed, despite the great gag from comedian Rita Rudner about right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh starting a Mexican wave midway through the ghetto liquidation sequence, you’re a whole let more likely to see audiences leaving the cinema with severe depression than anything else.
Sadly, it only takes one moron to shit in the soup, so be upstanding and welcome Mr Robert Parry. Acting every bit the archetypal redneck, Parry single-handedly scared the bejesus out of the entire audience when, halfway through the film, the gun he was carrying in his boot (!) accidentally went off.
This was especially bad news for Mrs Rita Montierrez who was unfortunate enough to be the person sitting in the seat right in from of Parry and so received a complementary bullet along with her popcorn.
Mrs Moniterrez recovered in hospital, Mr Parry was released without charge and your writer was left feeling royally pissed off as he’d been sat in that very cinema just a day earlier watching Backbeat, during which he’d have been happy for someone - anyone - to shoot him.