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News feature
Jonny Greatrex Mercury 3 Jan 10
A Walsall artist has played a part in making one of the most successful movies of all time. Avatar has already made nearly half a billion pounds for 20th Century Fox since its release on December 18. Little-known graphic artist Andrew Whittock, 38, was a key part of the team who created the amazing computer-generated (CG) graphics for the sci-fi epic, including the blue alien race called the Na’vi…
Feature
George Makin 15 Dec 09
Birmingham’s Electric Cinema is Britain’s oldest working cinema and it is about to celebrate it’s centenary. Walsall journalist George Makin recalls a job there in the mid-1970s when the celebrated cinema in Station Street was known by the racier name, the Jacey.
Back in 1976 I was 17, unemployed and desperate for a job; not unusual at the time as the recession had begun and as today, young people were told ‘Sorry we don’t have any vacancies.’
But luck came my way. I saw an advert for a trainee projectionist at the Jacey Cinema in Station Street.
Fortunately, a friend did the same job in the Futurist Cinema and he offered me tips for any job interview and more, his dad had worked at the Jacey as a projectionist and agreed to be a reference.
So I rang up and was offered an interview.
This is when the trouble started.
Opening in 1909, the cinema had gone through several changes as it slowly declined and by the time I arrived, things had pretty much hit rock bottom.
The first thing to strike me was the hoarding outside the entrance announcing the double bill as…..well all I can remember is the lurid, orange typeface declaring ‘Part Time Swedish Virgins.’
Now although I had grown up during the ‘swinging sixties’ the permissive society had completely bypassed the young George Makin, leaving me with a knowledge of sex that, if I had admitted it, I could easily write on the back of a packet of fags.
But even I knew part-time virgins, Swedish or not, were an unnatural occurrence. I was so embarrassed.
It was heightened by the fact that directly across the road was a string of bus stops where dozens of little old ladies were now staring at the pimply and increasingly, red faced teenager, shiftily hanging around the entrance of a soft porn cinema.
I wasn’t going to walk in while they were there! One of them might know my Mum!
So I walked down the street and waited until the bus turned up and carted the little old ladies away. Unfortunately each bus seemed to deposit more than it picked up, and with the time of the interview looming ever closer, there were now scores of them … maybe hundreds.
But I needed a job!
When you’re a young child you believe little old ladies have telepathic powers. Grannies fix you with a stare which says, ‘I know what you are thinking.’ Worse, they can communicate your thoughts to other women.
This feeling returned as swallowing my embarrassment and averting my eyes, I walked past the horde of female OAPs who had deliberately congregated to witness my humiliation, and I climbed the steps to the cinema entrance.
I wanted to shout back at them: ‘It’s not what it looks like! I work here… or at least, I hope too.’ but I thought better of it.
Once inside, it went swimmingly. I was offered the job and left an employed man.
Even the little old ladies had disappeared.
My first weeks taught me two things.
First, although I couldn’t pay to see the films I was showing because I was underage for X-rated films I could, for some reason, be paid to watch them.
Second, pornography and sex have little in common and the films were boring, boring and well, boring.
So I got on with preparing and repairing film prints and cueing up the records for the music between shows and changing an awful lot of light bulbs.
Our audience was almost entirely drab men but one customer, dressed in smart, beige slacks which had a razor sharp crease, polished shoes, dark blazer with a regimental crest on the breast pocket, stood out from the rest.
He always sat in the front row of the circle by the balcony
At the time it was a legal requirement for cinemas to play the national anthem at the end of the day’s performances.
So, after showing porn films, we had to salute the Queen.
My last task of the day was to cue up the National Anthem on the record player and then ‘splice’ a roll of film onto the last reel.
This showed the Queen in full regimental uniform, sitting on a horse, taking the salute at the Trooping of the Colour. I had to make sure the film and the anthem ended in sync while staring out of one of the projection box’s portholes as I operated the volume and projector controls.
Unlike the rest of the customers who scurried to the exits, the spruce gent always stood for the anthem, not moving an inch.
That was till the night the print ‘jammed’ in the projector gate.
The enormous heat from the projector first produced a growing brown spot as the thin film emulsion started to melt.
It only took seconds, but in what seemed slow motion, and as the words ‘God Save our Gracious Queen’ rang out, her Majesty began to topple off her horse and hit the parade ground floor…. still saluting.
But it was the reaction of our spruce gent that grabbed my attention.
As if urged on by the lyrics, for a moment he broke his ramrod stance as he moved as to leap to her rescue, only to realise he was thirty yards away and at least 15 feet up in the air.
Faced with an impossible task, his resolve faulted, he hesitated and finally he did the only thing he could do and snapped back to attention.
In the projection box the chief projectionist ran in, alerted by the anthem that had turned into a loud series of clicks and the white light blazing across the screen.
He found me on the floor howling with laughter.
I continued laughing through a full blown dressing down but I did kept my job.
I and the Jacey soon parted even though one of the perks of the job was free entrance into other cinemas. The first time I took this up, I saw the ‘Sound of Music’ at the Gaurmont on Coldmore Row.
It might not be fashionable to admit it now but it is a superbly made film and after all the rubbish I had to sit through…I loved it.
Business
Express & Star 26 Nov 09
The boss of Cannock’s new cinema has hailed the venture a success after 3,000 people visited the venue in just over a week of its opening…