Woodcuts, rubber and lightsabres
Posted 30 May 09 by Scott AndrewsI’m on the front page of Rotten Tomatoes today, with an article tracing the build up of hype surrounding Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which came out ten years ago. It went live yesterday and it’s been getting a lot of attention on the site, I’m happy to say.
10 Years of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
Kind of as a companion piece, I’ve dug out a journal entry from the time, describing the very odd evening I first saw the film. I’ve not edited it at all, it’s as I wrote it back then:
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My friend B decided, in his wisdom, that Star Wars – The Phantom Menace, was a film best viewed with a group of like-minded souls who could provide a shared sense of occasion. Scouring the listings for suitable showings he hit upon a plan…
“No, it’ll be great really,” he said to me down the phone. “I mean, at that time of the morning, when you’ve been up for, like, twenty four hours, your senses are honed, your perceptions are altered, you enter a higher state of sleep-deprived awareness. Plus it’s, like, really amazing if you drop acid – your trip is so much more weird.”
“Hmm-mm.” I was not convinced.
“There’ll be about eight of us, and you can crash at our place afterwards.”
I pondered. My life in Ipswich had so far been pretty much devoid of excitement, adventure and really wild things, and a three a.m. showing of Star Wars with a group of sleep-deprived, acid-tripping, net-head sci-fi fans, whilst offering perhaps a tad too high a concentration of geekiness in one place, did at least offer novelty.
“Go on then, count me in, I’ll be at your doorstep by about 8pm.”
I was greeted at the door by B who was waving a large, green, glowing lightsabre toy that made the appropriate buzzing sounds and, when he whacked me – hard – on the arm it sounded JUST like the movie one. He was also wearing a floor-length, hooded, black woollen cloak. He told me that he was intending to go to the film like this and we would leave at about eleven. Oh great – walking through London at closing time on a Friday night with a guy dressed in a cloak waving a glowing green noise making machine. I began to suspect that we could be in for an interesting night.
When S entered, encased from head to toe in black rubber which B then proceeded to spray and buff, my suspicion resolved into certainty.
We left the house at about eleven ‘o’ clock and made it to the bus stop just in time for me to knock on the door of a bus and see the gleeful sneer of the driver as he slammed her into gear and pulled away rather than let me board. Maybe he’d seen B’s lightsabre and was just scared.
I was in a state of high-self consciousness, waiting for the drunken louts who’d spot B’s get-up and, lagered-up and ready to rumble, would stroll on over and gleefully kick the shit out of us. Luckily no-one seemed to notice us, although the glare of reflected street-light from S’s black, shiny, freshly-buffed bodice must have blinded a few pub leavers.
The bus arrived, we got a seat and headed off. We got off the bus, I know not where, across the road from a heaving theme pub which had clearly been granted a late license and become the mecca for all those sad souls, lately ejected from their locals, looking for somewhere to find that fat, ugly chick or smelly, boorish, vomit-stained guy drunk enough to wake up beside next morning. As we crossed towards the huge crowd waiting to enter someone, finally, noticed S.
”’Ere… Oi… Darlin’… Eh!”
S strolled blithely on, her clothing emitting the occasional squeek.
“Eh, oi, oi, you…” he meant me. “I mean, bloody ‘ell, will ya just look… I mean, well, you’re gonna give ‘er…you’re really gonna give… I mean Jesus, you are REALLY gonna give ‘er such… YOU, my son, YOU are gonna give ‘ER such a… such a…bloody ‘ell. Guys, come and look at this…”
S continued to stroll away, no doubt grinning fit to burst, but showing only her back and keeping her counsel; B was lagging far behind so I kept pace with S on her right and they assumed S and I were a couple.
A couple of the guy’s mates joined him, and, presumably to emphasise his point to them, he started smacking the back of his right hand into the palm of his left, hard.
“He is gonna GIVE (SMACK) ‘ER (SMACK) such a bloody (pause for emphasis…SMACK)… such a (SMACK) SUCH a… (SMACK) good (SMACK).”
He sidled up to me, friends in tow and I could see he was black, about my age, reasonably pissed but not even vaguely looking for a fight – he was simply gobsmacked by S.
“Are you ‘er bloke? Eh? Are you? Are you ‘er bloke? You, my son, you (SMACK) are gonna give ‘er such a good fucking (this was an imprecation, not a verb, by the way), such a fucking… You are ‘er man aren’t you, I mean, bloody ‘ell…”At this point B, cloak, lightsabre and incipient acid trip sauntered alongside S on her left.
“Well, actually…” I said, but smacking bloke had seen B.
“You are, I mean, ‘er man, I mean…oh…oh…oh…fuck…you’re BOTH ‘er men!!! FUCK, I mean, FUCK. You guys… you guys are gonna give ‘er SUCH a (SMACK).. I mean Jesus.”
He paused here, his vocabulary clearly exhausted. He turned to his friends, agape, who obviously egged him on. His struggled to come up with some sophisticated rejoinder, some witty final remark, a little bon mot to win the heart of this tall, blonde, rubber-clad vision.
He turned and bellowed: “You wanna bit of black in ya?”
And then: “YOU DANISH?”
We rounded a corner and disappeared.
When we reached the house where we were supposed to be meeting B and S’s friends we tried the doorbell to no avail. Looking up to their first floor flat we saw the window was open and started yelling as quietly as possible, since it was nearly midnight by this time. But no-one heard us. The yelling got progressively louder and I got more and more nervous about irate neighbours. In the end, after we had dissuaded B from heaving rocks he hit upon the idea of making loud lightsabre noises – surely bound to rouse the deaf Star Wars fans. And so, at midnight we stood in a suburban front garden whilst a cloaked man waved a glowing green toy sword and occasionally belted me with it on the arm to make that noise, you know THAT noise.
Worked like a charm.
The assorted friends were an amiable bunch of internet gurus, techies and sci-fi fans, so naturally I felt right at home and as the wine flowed much daft banter ensued. I mentioned Ipswich in passing at one point and en masse the whole room turned, pointed and exclaimed ‘Oh, you’re THAT Scott!’ much to my delight. B, it transpired had been sending my letters to a mailing list the entirety of which was currently in the room. Oh, the dizzy heights of celebrity.
The cinema was phoned to ensure that the three am showing was still on and having had it confirmed for us we booked two taxis for two am. That done, one of B’s friends – A – produced the acid and he and B dropped cheerfully.
“Should take about two hours to kick in, so should begin about the same time as the film,” said A, offering me a tab which I politely declined – the evening was surreal enough already. The conversation naturally veered onto drugs, and bad-trip tales were exchanged.
“I’ve never had a bad trip, actually,” said B. ”’Cause all my trips are exactly the same, so I know exactly what to expect and that’s kind of cool, really.”
I had to ask what his regulation trip consists of.
“Well, and don’t think me weird,” he said, as if I, based on the night so far, could have reached that conclusion, “but every time I drop acid I see Sixteenth Century woodcuts in the carpet.”
“Woodcuts? What of?”
“Well, just, sort of, rural village life, y’know, wooden chocolate box stuff – farming scenes, markets, horses, more farming scenes.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I know, weird. I mean there’s the occasional witch-burning, which can be a bit freaky, but that’s about as bad a trip as I ever have, really. But in that case I just don’t look at the carpet. They never leave the carpet.”
“Uh huh.”
“Yeah, anyway… woodcuts. There you are, go figure.”
“Right. Oh, here’s the taxi…”
The driver of our taxi was bouncing for joy outside his cab, grinning like a loon and eager to please. We piled in, with B in the front seat, S, A and I in the back, and with a squeal of tires and a lurch to the left that hardly inspired confidence in the suspension, we were off.
The first inkling we had that we were in the hands of a madman was when he wound down the window and stuck his head out, seemingly for no other reason than that he liked the feel of wind in his hair, much like a dog. The fact that our speed never ceased to increase, even when we rounded a blind corner without indicating, was also a bit of a giveaway. He leaned back into the car and turned to grin broadly at us, one hand on the wheel, foot plunged down hard on the accelerator, other hand gesticulating wildly, to confirm our destination. We told him where we wanted to go.
“And we’re really, erm… hah, in no hurry, honestly,” I added.
He turned on the radio, loud, with the hand he had been using to steer and for a timeless five seconds we were careening down the wrong side of the road at seventy miles an hour whilst the seatbeltless driver had both hands off the wheel and was facing the back seat, grinning all the while.
A loud horn drew his attention back to the matter in hand, or not, as the case was. He spun fast and flung his head out of the window, thrust an arm after it and let fly with a string of obscenities that was almost poetic. His other hand, waving for emphasis inside the car, chanced upon the wheel, and, for want of something better to do, resumed steering our course.
And so we progressed. Blind corners, one way streets, slow cars ahead, steering wheels, indicators, speed limits – all were casually brushed aside as obstacles only for the craven and weak of heart. Our speed never dropped below sixty and probably averaged about seventy five as we sped through the city centre leaving a stream of abuse, wild gesticulations, tire burns and traumatised drivers in our wake.
B, slowly falling under the influence of LSD, stared fixedly at the carpet, a rictus grin of utter terror fixed to his face, trying to soothe himself with shire horses and smocks.
Still shaking and wide eyed, butterflies dancing drunkenly in our bellies, we entered the cinema to the fading sound of squealing tires only to find the ticket office unmanned, the foyer all but deserted and the ice cream booth closing up for the night.
At the food counter were a group of maybe seven folk filling their faces with popcorn and pepsi. S went over to talk to them and returned with the news that the two am showing had been cancelled and those seven, being the only people sad enough to turn up for it, were being bought off with free nosh and an apology. Our showing was also, presumably, cancelled.
B looked up from the carpet, threw back the hood on his cloak, grinned maniacally, extracted and extended his lightsabre until it buzzed and glowed. He began to scan the room for victims and lo, here came the manageress, a petite Irish lass who looked as if she had been thinking her bad day had been about to end and had just realised, to her dismay, that the best was yet to come.
“You see,” she said “the neighbours complained to the council and our license for late showing was revoked due to noise”.
B waved his buzzing sword as if he could not possibly imagine what the neighbours could have meant. “But we phoned two hours ago to check and were told that the showing was definitely going ahead,” he said.
“Ah, well we knew this morning, it was actually the first thing I was told when I got to work. You phoned our enquiries line, which is based in Manchester, somebody must have neglected to tell them. Sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.” She then launched into a long rambling tale of woe about late licensing laws, local protests and council officialdom, during which B turned to S and stage-whispered “S, you’ll have to handle this, I’m straight now but I won’t be in about a minute.”
S, who famously once harangued a train driver into going back a station, stepped into the fray and in the pause following the lengthy saga simply said “and what has any of that got to do with us?”
The seven free-food gorgers, realising that something was up, drifted across the foyer, ranged themselves around us and joined our argument.
S strode into battle, a PVC clad valkyrie, and all fell before her in mute terror and supplication.
Free tickets for any film except Austin Powers were offered.
“Why the hell would we want to come back here again?” railed S. “We travelled an hour to get here. I want our taxi fares refunded, that’s fourteen pounds here and fourteen pounds back, right? I mean, we NEVER come here, this is the middle of nowhere, we had to make an effort to get here and it’s not an effort we’re inclined to repeat, frankly.”
Silence. The manageress wavered.
I leaned forward and raised a tentative finger. “I came from Ipswich.”
The manageress turned and wobbled uncertainly away to the back office and a moment’s respite. We stood and seethed. B stared at the carpet. S blew steam from her nostrils while the seven strangers munched on their popcorn and stared at her in unblinking wonder.
The manageress came out, steeled herself and waved us all over to a corner of the foyer.
“Okay,” she whispered conspiratorially, leaning forward and scanning the horizon for eavesdroppers, “I’ve spoken to the projectionist, and he’s willing to do a showing, so we’ll close the doors, turn off the lights, waive the ticket price, give you free ice cream, drinks and food and show you the film on our biggest screen. Fair?”
From that moment on it was plain sailing until fucking Jar Jar fucking Binks hit the screen, delivered his first line of dialogue, and provoked a stunned chorus of “Oh my God, NOOOOOOOO!”
Comment
- Here from the SFX site, where you were kind enough to comment on my somewhat similar blog. All I can say about your night a decade ago is: WOW.
Just…wow.
I would’ve loved to have been there. But then again, that would’ve meant not battling it out with this fellow, and we couldn’t have that now, could we?
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn219/jedivet/PM2.jpg
Ah, the memories…sigh…
— Laura Jun 3, 3:55am #
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