The Scottish Exodus

Saturday Night at the Movies

25 November 2000
Merchant City, Glasgow

Today was Movie Day. After two weeks of frantic hell and hurried pace and way too much energy spent on conquering the world, Andrea and I decided to take in a movie, or, more rather, I decided, as a date, to take Andrea to a movie she wanted to see. Simple enough prospect you’d think, but this is Glasgow, City of the Damned according to the Daily Mail, and nothing is ever easy here.

We’d tried to see a movie three weeks ago, a Saturday much like today, a decision much like today, but that was an abject failure. The only movie theatre within the City Centre that shows main feature releases is on Renfield Street, called the Odeon (which is, as always, a chain). There are other places, but this theatre is within five to seven minutes walk. Who wants to ride the bus to the Forge Shopping Centre in the eastern suburbs when you can walk to the Odeon on Renfield?

The show we wanted to see was at 8:00 pm, so we figured, like in America, you need to show up about thirty minutes beforehand to navigate the rush. The problem with that strategy was that a rush in Glasgow at 7:30 on a Saturday night is considerably different from a rush in the States, namely regarding use of space issues. Europe in general is small, but only in the sense that they have to cram more people into less area. For those mathematically inclined, it has to do with amount of population per square mile. Unlike the States, there isn’t more farmland on the other side of the city to sprawl onto and infect. They have what they have, and like Tokyo, they have to build up and down instead of out. That leaves little space sometimes for population flow, hence the crushing madness that is Glasgow on Saturday afternoons.

The line for tickets that Saturday night was out the door and halfway around the block, this with twenty minutes to show time. Neither Andrea nor I wanted to wait. I generally will not go to a movie if I’m going to walk in late, in much the same way that I will not go to a class late. We skipped the movie that night (Road Trip if you’re wondering, which had just came out here to raving reviews, proof positive that the British public has no taste when it comes to American culture). Instead we wandered around the City Centre, finding a throng of casinos and arcades and girls with skirts slit up to their crotch.

Today was to be a different day. Andrea, in all her kitschy glory, had spent the last week raving about Charlie’s Angels. We saw a shirt in a shop in Edinburgh yesterday that had the Angels silhouetted that she had to have, had to have, had to have (she did not get it). She desperately wanted to see the film. She loves Drew Barrymore, and anything that has chicks in skin-tight leather kicking ass must electrify some prehistoric nodule in female brains to make them want to be those chicks. Andrea certainly exhibits the warning signs.

We had a better strategy today: go in the afternoon to a matinee, thereby, in theory, avoiding the crowds. It was a good strategy, honest.

The Odeon is like any other movie chain (Star Theaters, AMC, etc) in that it tries to duplicate some strange Metropolis-esque decorative motif. Blue walls, multi-coloured strobe lighting, and futuristic goodies counters clutter the lobby, as well as tons of damn people. As per European space issues, the lobby is the size of my mother’s apartment, ideally suited for moving through the entire population of the Glasgow at one moment. That is saying a little and a lot. The goodies counters are self-serve, with candy on racks and pop dispensers freestanding in the middle like some central hive unit from The Matrix. We purchased our student tickets (at least there was no line around the block) with Andrea’s expired CMU id card and bought some Tango Orange soda before heading upstairs.

Yes, you read right. We had to go upstairs. Theatres five through eight are on the main level, but one through four are upstairs, a nice curvy set framed with the ever-present fire doors. The upstairs lobby was even more blue than downstairs, if that’s possible, and teeming with snotty kids. We were forced to congregate in the roped off section of the blue lagoon while we waited for the theatre to open. Jim Carrey as the Grinch stared back at us while a four year old tried to play the electronic slot machine (she might have won, I think). Finally, Igor, button-down shirt untucked to create the illusion of no protruding gut (he failed), signaled for the mad cow stampede in to see Cameron Diaz’s ass.

Oh, but did I mention that we had to climb even more stairs? Seems the theatres are all staggered throughout the building like some strange architectural nightmare. This one, theatre one by the way, I like to think of as The Birthing Chamber.

A huge oval shaped room, with a gray, blue, and purple colour scheme awaited us at the top. Even the floor seemed to curve down and around, rising back up to meet the screen. Three sections of seating, all the same size (same number of seats), followed the curve down and back up towards the screen. The very top back row of seats seemed to be up a foot or two higher than the rest, sitting on the lip of the volcano. Andrea and I made a beeline for the middle section of the top back row. Not a single head blocked our view of the screen. It was like being at home, except of course our home doesn’t have revolving lights projecting the word "ODEON" all over the ceiling. Bad rock music soothed the crowd from behind the curtains.

The movie start time was listed as 4:30, but this is where the unreality began to settle in. At 4:20, the theatre lights lowered and the curtain opened. In the States, this would be where the previews began. In Glasgow, well, there were some previews, I’ll grant them that.

We were literally bombarded with advertisements, public service announcements, and probably subliminal messages for the next HALF HOUR! HALF HOUR! What is wrong with these people? The first clips were commercials, not special movie advertisements, but television commercials. Most dealt with sex or used sex in suggestive ways to sell diamonds, Internet banking, Tomb Raider video games, or whatever you can imagine. There was a public service announcement about driving safe that used sexual imagery and kinetic jump cuts timed to techno music.

Odeon had its own version of self-promotion, much like AMC splashing its name all over before a film or Jack Loeks having you zoom around a meteorite/mountain to read "Thou shalt not talk during the film" etched in rock by lighting from, presumably, God. However, their promotion looks like the opening to Seven, technocratic nightmares, blurry images, and all. I thought I was in Blade Runner when the Buddhist monk appeared and tried to sell me Tchae tea. There was even a music video by Destiny’s Child. The whole bloody thing!

Out of the whole half hour, there were only four movie previews. Mel Gibson looking old in some movie about hearing what women can think, Nicholas Cage in some sappy City of Angels type movie that Andrea cooed over, Val Kilmer in a spacesuit on Mars making my mom giggle like a school girl, and another mountain rescue film. I was already curious about Red Planet, but I was just in shock about what I was seeing even to process the other previews. Too many damn Kodak commercials!

The movie itself was amusing, if nothing else. Andrea loved it and came out of the film wanting to kick ass and take names. Sigh.

---drew, Madison Avenue is coming for you, and they want your movie theatres…

Copyright ©Andrew D. Devenney, 2009, all rights reserved.