“Something big is gonna happen!”

I love cinema.

I love the way it takes me to places I didn’t expect to go, to feel things about the familiar in ways I did not imagine were possible. I’m fascinated by the way the lens can telescope and pull details right up into my face and say “…see this, this is important”. And how it can also pull back, offer a wider angle of view, make me consider things at the periphery of my vision that otherwise may have sneaked by me. In cinema’s stream of wonder lies story, emotion, connection. Lots of things that should not ‘work’ sometimes do, others that seem ‘easy’ as a narrative, fail. It’s unpredictable. And in that unpredictability lies its magic.

Audience © John MacPherson

As a teenager I stood for an hour in the small highland town of my birth, in a unprecedentedly long cinema queue in the torrential rain, waiting to see ‘The Exorcist’. All of the prospective audience had to run the gauntlet of the Free Church zealots who had picketed the screening and were exhorting us to save our souls lest the demon unleashed by the power of celluloid invaded us and took us to hell.The queue was long, and not moving. Those haranguing us were mightily enthusiastic and utterly certain of the worth of their mission of salvation. It was a relief to get inside the cinema and simply be terrified.

On another occasion in rural Ireland I bought a ticket for ‘Scent of a Woman’ in a double-screen cinema which it turned out was actually an old cinema with a new hardboard partition right down the middle. No soundproofing, no fancy decor, just cinema. And the ticket-seller’s comment “…..sure it’s a 7pm start, but we can start whenever you like sir, you’re the only one in for Pacino tonight. Have you eaten? No…….well go and get yourself something to bring in and eat, I can recommend that shop down there they do good takeaways. I’ll wait for you, we’ll not start until you come back.” The ticket vendor joined me for the screening, the two of us losing ourselves in the story.

With my pal Kenny, we ran the local Film Club after our town cinema went up in flames. I was projectionist, an onerous task. One night I could not get the film to sit properly in the path, it kept leaping out of focus. So for three reels I stood with my fingers in the gate holding the celluloid against the metal, until my fingertips were numb, my fingerprints gone, wiped clean and smooth. My fingertips were hypersensitive for days. One night I got the 400 minute, multi-reel ‘Strauss Family’ epic showing in the wrong order, reel 1 first as you’d expect, then reel 2, but by some mental lapse (boredom we later decided) then reel 5, but by the time I’d swapped it for reel 3 the audience were also so mind-numbingly bored that most of them had resorted to drink in the nearby bar (our screenings were in a local hotel) and could not be enticed back in.

But ‘Gandhi’ ruined us. It cost us so much to hire the film that we had to fill ALL the seats that night. We failed. We knew as we started the projector that we were doomed. Still, our swansong was a memorable one.

There’s something about sitting in a dark place with other people that defies description – you’re accompanied, but alone in your own little world of wonder. Autism is a bit like that too. I’ve worked professionally with several people with autism over the years, and despite how much I try to do things ‘together’ with them, I’m quite often conscious of being ‘separate’, unable to join them in whatever space they are. There’s two of us present, but there is no ‘we’.

I came across this blog recently. It’s a small piece. A simple story that hints at the complex power of cinema. The magic that can happen in that space between the viewer and the screen. The way it can enable us to be alone yet share wonder, happiness, sadness, joy, and so much more. It is beautifully written, insightful and moving. It’s about ‘we’ .

You may not know much about autism, but if you like cinema, you’ll understand……..

“That one trailer was to seize Gabriel’s imagination like no other. How did we discover that ‘Sparky’ was indeed the endearing dog of Burton’s creation? Gabriel showed us. We went to the cinema and Gabriel ran to a cardboard FRANKENWEENIE placard and spent 45 minutes dancing, babbling, singsonging and beaming in front of it. Over several months we hotly anticipated the release of the film. With every poster, every Disney Store window display, Gabriel turned to us with animation and joy. He began to request ‘Sparky?’ for the trailer and, always, he’d turn to us and exclaim and dance and beam.”