I’ve started going to see films again at the cinema. Tonight I went to see my third film in three consecutive weeks. It was called “Home” and was about a family living next to an abandoned highway, which gets re-opened, resulting in disintegration as their deepening isolation slowly leads to madness. Last week’s film was “Moon”, in which about a man who works all alone on the moon and starts thinking he’s going mental. The week before that we watched the psychological horror “Antichrist”, about a man and woman ravaged by grief, who head to a cabin in a forest alone together in an attempt to come to terms with the loss of their child, and eventually end up going insane and debauched. In case you haven’t noticed, I only like films which feature single-word titles, bitter isolation and slow, tortured mental decline. They are my favourite type. In fact I will only watch films which feature all these three elements.
Antichrist has been the subject of some particular controversy and on the way in, the cinema’s steward warned each if us about its explicitly offensive content, despite the fact that there were already numerous warning signs around the box office. This actually unnerved me a little, because I have never seen such diligence of caution. And sure enough, as soon as the lights went down, we were subjected to an onslaught of cruelty as the screen lit up with imagery that can only be described as gratuitously offensive. Apparently U2 are advertising Blackberry phones now and we had to sit through at least 30 seconds of yet another of their songs which was the Rock equivalent of aural fresh air. It was little more than obscene. Haven’t those fuckers got enough money? Why use U2 to ruin our cinematic experiences? What do they have which qualifies them to ruin cinematic experiences nationwide anyway? Why not use, say, long-lived African-American doo wop vocal group, The Drifters? They’ve been banging on about Saturday Night at The Movies for fifty years now. I’ve never seen such a loyal allegiance to the movie industry. In fact they must really love films, because they also wrote, “Kissing in the Back Row of the Movies” which I’d argue could be seen as a kind of homage to the concept of a sequel. Ok so lyrically it was pretty much the same concept as “Saturday Night At The Movies” which made it a bit rubbish. There’s only so many times you can listen to songs about taking a girl out to the movies and giving her a kiss and a cuddle on the back row. Sure it would have been nice to hear a little a progression. But in their defence, it was different time and their conclusion to the trilogy, “Fingering through the Trailers” probably wouldn’t have gone down very well in the 50’s. For this reason it’s probably for the best the demo remained unreleased.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that The Drifters would be perfect for cinema advertising. It’s just that they’ve already been frequenting the movies for 50 years, so surely they seem more deserving to have such long-standing custom rewarded in some way. But if they have been cruelly overlooked, I suppose they have no-one to blame but themselves. Given a closer inspection of their lyrics, they freely admit, “Who cares what picture we see?” And whilst they are clearly helping keep the fledging cinema industry alive they obviously have no respect for the film as an art-form. In any case, to me it seems a bit reckless to have no regard for “what picture we see”. It would, for example, be very unwise to take their “baby” to go and see Antichrist. I couldn’t imagine scenes of explicit sexual imagery and harrowing sadistic genital mutilation being a particularly comfortable or appropriate context for “hugging with your baby on the last row of the balcony.” Even assuming this "baby" is of the required age of 18, surely the bit involving a clitoris and a rusty pair of scissors would kill the mood stone dead on any first date. It’s little wonder they never get further than a kiss and a cuddle.
That’s the problem with them Drifters. No forward planning.
