Nine Till Three and Summers Free

by Mike Kent

  The following morning, Duggan pinned a notice on the board in the main corridor, announcing the birth of a new film society provided there was enough support, and stating that the smaller common room had been booked for a short meeting the following evening. Underneath, he pinned a separate piece of paper for people to write their names on if they were interested. By the next afternoon, Duggan’s piece of paper had been filled with names. William Friese-Greene, Julius Caesar, Florence Nightingale, Burt Lancaster and Attila the Hun had all expressed a strong interest in joining, but there were at least thirty genuine names on the sheet and it was certainly a promising start.

  About fifteen students were already in the common room when we arrived and they watched politely while Duggan and I placed a table and three chairs in one corner of the room, and then re-arranged the remaining easy chairs in front of the table.

  ‘Excuse me,’ asked one of the students, ‘is this the Beethoven appreciation meeting?’

  ‘No mate,’ Duggan replied cheerfully. ‘We’re the film society. Or at least, this is the meeting for it. Fancy joining?’

  ‘What are you showing?’

  ‘Nothing yet. This is the first meeting. We haven’t even got a committee yet.’

  ‘I see.’

  He hesitated for a moment, and then decided he’d prefer to search for the Beethoven appreciation society. As he left the room, more students wandered in, and within half an hour we had a good crowd. Dai Thomas sat in the front row, studying a battered score of Handel’s Messiah. Dudley sat behind him, smiling enthusiastically and poking tobacco into a curved pipe with a massive bowl. Sitting near him, I noticed with interest, was Simon Daines. David Barton had come along, still bald because he’d become used to his appearance and now actually preferred it, and Rashid was there with his girlfriend, a beautiful Indian girl with shining almond eyes. Ben Fellows, a keen photographic student, sat at the back of the group. Together with five other students, also at the meeting, he’d started a photographic society. Surprisingly, this hadn’t maintained enough support, and I assumed he felt that a film society might be the next best thing.

  Three other students wandered in and asked why the television wasn’t on. When they were told a meeting was about to start, two of them decided to stay and be entertained by that instead. Gerry looked at the clock on the wall, opened his notebook, thrust his long legs comfortably under the table, and carefully packed his pipe with tobacco. Alan Dawdle, a student with a hearing problem, moved to a chair immediately in front of Gerry and fiddled with his hearing aid.

  ‘Shall we begin?’ Gerry whispered.

  ‘Pardon?’ called Dawdle.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Gerry replied. ‘I was talking to my friend here. I was just suggesting that we should begin.’

  ‘Oh, right. I thought you were talking to me. Sorry.’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Duggan. ‘There’s a good crowd here. Don’t forget the main intention is to elect ourselves as the committee.’

  ‘That might not be easy,’ I said, looking round at the faces in the audience.

  ‘It’ll be okay,’ said Duggan. ‘Leave that bit to me.’

  ‘You’re going to do the talking then, are you?’

  ‘No, Gerry is. He’s the bloke with the knowledge.’

  Gerry turned to him and choked on a smoke ring. ‘You didn’t tell me I was doing the talking. I’d have prepared a lot more notes than I’ve got here. I’m not sure…’

  ‘Look,’ Duggan urged, ‘I like going to the pictures. Samantha likes going to the pictures. And Mike likes going to the pictures, especially with Samantha. But you’re the one who’s had a crack at making your own home movies and you also know about the arty stuff.’

  ‘Well, maybe a bit, but…’

  ‘Who directed ‘Shane’?’

  ‘George Stevens. What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Name another film he directed.’

  ‘Giant. A Place In The Sun. Swing Time. But I don’t…’

  ‘You see? Chuck a film question at you and you know all about it. We’ll back you up if you get into difficulty, won’t we Mike?’

  I nodded cautiously.

  ‘Now let’s get cracking,’ Duggan urged. ‘Before they all decide to push off down the pub.’

  Gerry hesitated, tapped his pipe out nervously into the huge glass ashtray on the table, and stood up to start the meeting. The audience sensed that something was happening and the murmuring quickly stopped.

  ‘Thank you all for… um… coming tonight,’ Gerry faltered. ‘Now, the idea of this film society is to show…er… films.’

  ‘Bravo!’ shouted a hearty voice from the back. Gerry thanked the student politely and continued.

  ‘That is, films which are either acknowledged classics in their own right, or have… um… exceptional entertainment value.’ Somebody on the third row coughed and looked at his watch. Dudley raised the hand containing his pipe and waved it to attract Gerry’s attention.

  ‘Sorry to stop you so early old boy, but how do you define a classic? I mean, give me an example.’

  ‘Citizen Kane,’ called a voice from the row behind him, before Gerry had a chance to reply. Dudley turned swiftly in his seat. ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘You see. That proves my point. My colleague here obviously thinks Citizen Kane is a masterpiece. Frankly I think it’s an overrated bore. Your view of what constitutes a classic might very well be different from mine.’

  Duggan’s mouth dropped open. ‘God, this could turn out to be livelier than I thought,’ he muttered.

  ‘There’s another point, of course,’ said the student sitting next to Dudley. ‘You said you were intending to show films which were either classics or great entertainment value. Surely a classic should be great entertainment value anyway?’

  Gerry opened his mouth to reply, but Dudley had already started speaking again.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t call ‘Intolerance’ great entertainment value. Or some of Eisenstein’s work. Powerful, emotive images, yes, but not great entertainment value. I think we should…’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ called Barton. ‘The bloke at the table has only said two words so far. Shut up and let him talk. I can’t sit here all night listening to you. I’ve got to go and get my hair cut.’ There was a ripple of laughter, and all eyes turned back to Gerry.

  ‘Thank you,’ Gerry said gratefully. ‘Now, we… er… intend to have the shows in the lecture hall. Once a month if we get enough support. It won’t be possible to please all tastes, of course, but at the moment we’re thinking of making one of the monthly films a popular one… something that will be particularly well attended… and the next month’s a lesser known foreign film. Some of the best foreign pictures are likely to be quite expensive to hire, so we’ll have to rely on making up the charge from our popular night. Unless, of course, the foreign films we show are popular too.’

  Ben Fellows waved his hand in the air, and Gerry stopped for a moment. ‘What film gauge are you thinking of using?’ he asked.

  ‘Surely that’s immaterial?’ Dudley interrupted. ‘This is supposed to be a society concerned with celluloid images, not mechanics.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Fellows argued. ‘I assume that sixteen millimetre is going to be used? I mean, if I’m paying good money out of my grant to support this society, I think it’s important to have crisp images on the screen. I want to see the films as the film makers intended them to be seen. Crisp and sharp and properly projected.’

  ‘I hope you’re selling nuts and ice cream as well?’ said Alan Dawdle, fiddling with his hearing aid. The talking stopped and Gerry stared, nonplussed, at Dawdle.

  ‘As well as what?’ asked Duggan.

  ‘As well as crisps. You were talking about crisps.’

  ‘I don’t think I mentioned selling crisps…’

  ‘Ben m
entioned crisp images,’ I whispered. ‘I think he misheard.’

  ‘Oh, right. Yes, we’ll be selling all those things. Drinks, hot dogs, popcorn. You name it, we’ll be selling it,’ Duggan called reassuringly, like a politician agreeing to everything potential voters were asking for. Dawdle nodded contentedly and thanked him.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ Ben Fellows called.

  ‘There’s a perfectly good reason for that,’ Duggan replied.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We’ve forgotten what it was.’

  ‘I was asking which gauge you’re going to use. I mean, I’m assuming it will be sixteen millimetre?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Gerry, feeling it was his responsibility to answer questions directed at the technical aspects of the society. ‘Eight millimetre would be cheaper, but we’ll have to see what sort of support the society gets when it starts.’

  ‘So what sort of things are you going to show?’ asked Dudley. ‘After all, if we’re supporting you, it’s down to you to take note of the sort of things we want to see. Otherwise we’ll end up with Citizen bloody Kane every other month.’

  ‘We could do far worse,’ called the voice behind Dudley.

  ‘We could do far better, as well,’ Dudley retorted. ‘In my view it was a self indulgent, pretentious piece of tedium.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ replied the student angrily, leaping to his feet and glaring at Dudley. ‘There are camera techniques in that film that had never been used before, and the editing…’

  ‘It’s two hours of unrelieved boredom. And even that’s being polite about it,’ said Dudley mildly.

  ‘We haven’t actually got around to making the programmes up yet,’ Gerry interrupted quickly. ‘We can’t do that until we’ve got some sort of idea of the costs involved.’

  Dudley scratched among the dead matches in his box until he found a live one to light his pipe. Three people immediately moved their chairs sideways to avoid being enveloped by the acrid yellow smoke that seeped from the bowl.

  ‘I appreciate that point,’ he declared at length, ‘but I was just wondering if you could give us an idea what you had in mind, that’s all.’

  A number of people around him nodded. It was obviously a popular point and Gerry considered it for a moment.

  ‘It might be an idea to ask you that,’ he replied brightly. ‘After all, the success of the society will depend on giving people what they want.’

  ‘What about ‘Nudes Around The World’, or ‘Diary of a French Chambermaid?’ a student in the front row suggested. ‘They would be popular. They’d be popular with me, anyway.’

  There was a chorus of amused agreement from the group around him. Daines sighed and picked up a newspaper, and somebody sitting near the door got up and walked out.

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ Duggan interrupted quickly. ‘We tried to book ‘Nudes Around The World’ for our first programme, but we got a letter back saying it had been shown so often in slow motion the print had gone all brown.’

  ‘So what sort of foreign films would you show?’ asked Rashid. ‘What about something like Satajit Ray’s Apu trilogy. People would love that.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, who’s he?’ asked Barton.

  ‘Yes, who’s he?’ whispered Duggan to Gerry.

  ‘A brilliant Indian director.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘Does that mean sub-titles?’ asked Dawdle. ‘I can’t stand films with sub-titles.’

  Duggan looked up at him. ‘I thought it was a hearing problem you had?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I said I thought you had a hearing problem? I didn’t know you had a visual impediment as well.’

  ‘Oh, I can see all right. I just don’t like sub-titles.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Eh?’

  Gerry turned to Rashid and stroked his chin thoughtfully, deciding to return to the original question. ‘We’d probably only get a small audience for the Apu films. And we’d be hard pressed to choose between, say, the Apu trilogy and Andrzej Wadja’s trilogy.’

  ‘Bloody hell, this is getting a bit high-brow,’ said Barton. ‘Look, why don’t you run two shows a month?’

  ‘We can’t,’ I interrupted. ‘We can only have the lecture hall for one Tuesday a month.’

  ‘Alright then, run two shows on the same evening. The early show can be for the nuts who queue up at the National Film Theatre and talk rubbish in loud voices, and the other show can be for normal people like me.’

  ‘I thoroughly object to that,’ said Dudley, disdainfully.

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ Barton replied.

  ‘What about the classic musicals, boyo?’ asked Dai Thomas. ‘You could show somethin’ like ‘Singin’ In The Rain’ or ‘South Pacific’ and have ‘em cryin’ in their seats. Now then, who’d like a renderin’ of ‘There is nothin’ like a dame…?’

  He turned to the meeting and without waiting for an invitation he burst heartily into the song, joined by several others for the final chorus. There was a burst of appreciative applause as he finished and took a bow.

  ‘There you are, boys,’ he said. ‘Bloody magic.’

  ‘I like that one with Julie Andrews singing about the fish,’ called Barton. ‘You know, the eels are alive with the sound of music…’

  ‘Look, if we’re back to talking about classics, we shouldn’t be talking about nuns leaping all over a hillside yodelling about mountain climbing,’ Dudley objected. ‘We should be talking about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers…’

  ‘Or Busby Berkeley’s films,’ added Fellows. ‘They’re full of camera sequences worth studying.’

  ‘Look, we study here all day mate,’ Barton sighed. ‘We want a bit of entertainment in the evening. If you’re going to have a musical, what about Elvis?’

  There was a groan of disapproval. Aware that they were unlikely to get unanimous approval for whatever they discussed, Gerry stood up and waved his pipe in the air.

  ‘We’ve only got this room for another fifteen minutes and we still haven’t got anything sorted out. Why don’t you leave the committee to work out the programmes?’

  ‘Because they won’t choose stuff I like,’ Barton said. ‘I don’t like singing nuns, for a start.’

  ‘Really?’ grinned a student behind him. ‘I thought you liked the kinky stuff?’

  Daines stood up and gestured impatiently to the meeting. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘Why not leave it to the committee to put a list of possible films on the noticeboard? Ones which might appeal to a fairly wide audience. Then we put ticks against the films we want to see. And we add any others to the bottom of the list. The committee hires the films with the most ticks.’

  ‘It wouldn’t work,’ Barton objected. ‘People could add as many ticks as they want. Frankly, it seems…’

  ‘It seems you have a basic mistrust in your fellow students,’ said Dudley. ‘It seems perfectly feasible to me.’

  There was a general murmur of approval and Gerry interrupted swiftly while the going was good.

  ‘I think it’s worth trying. At least to start with. Anyway, we’ll still need to get a good crowd on our first show to recover our outlay.’

  ‘You’ll probably make a vast profit,’ said the student sitting next to Ben Fellows. ‘Can I be on the committee? Or have you already decided who’s going to be on that?’

  ‘We’re going to do the voting in a minute,’ Gerry replied.

  ‘You want to charge a fair bit for the balcony, you know,’ Barton advised. ‘People can sit up there and hold hands. It’ll be just like sitting in the back row of the Regal. I love holding hands in there.’

  ‘I wondered who was holding my hand the other night,’ said the student sitting next to him. ‘It must have been you.’
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  ‘Probably was. I hold hands with absolutely anybody.’

  ‘Is this relevant?’ asked Dudley.

  ‘Of course it is,’ Barton replied. ‘We’re talking money here. If the committee sells the seats in the balcony at vastly inflated prices, they will make a lot of money. This, in turn, will allow them to spend more on films. Or even better, lower the ticket prices. You never know, they might even make enough to hire some of the crap you want to see.’

  ‘We’re not all like you, Dave,’ shouted one of his friends. ‘You never know, the films might be worth watching.’

  ‘What do you mean, you’re not all like me? We never see any women in here apart from Wednesdays and the weekends. If you’re not like me with that sort of handicap there’s something wrong with you, mate.’

  ‘I suggest Mr Barton hires the entire balcony and a harem, and we get back to electing a committee,’ said Dudley. ‘This is getting ridiculous.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I was quite enjoying it,’ Barton objected.

  Dudley turned in his seat and squinted at him. Smoke from his pipe was now enveloping the first two rows and many of the students had given up listening, turning to each other for a chat instead. Dai Thomas had rolled up both trouser legs and was inspecting a cluster of red insect bites that had appeared on his ankles. Rashid had his arm round his girlfriend and was whispering in her ear, and Ben Fellows sat chatting to his friends from the defunct photographic society about the camerawork on early Bergman films. Hearing the conversation, Dudley moved nearer to the group, pushed two chairs together to make a platform for his large feet, and launched into a discussion on the cinematic merits of Resnais and Truffaut.

  Gerry looked around for help, wondering if there was any point in going on. During his first teaching practice in a secondary school, he had peeped through classroom doors and silently sympathised with those teachers who struggled to hold the attention of unruly classes. He suddenly knew how they felt.

  ‘What do I do now?’ he whispered earnestly to Duggan and me.

  ‘Get their attention. Shout at them,’ urged Duggan.

  ‘We’ll… er… put a notice up about the first show, then,’ Gerry said loudly.