Eight Great Anecdotes from Scala!!! (dir. Jane Giles and Ali Catterall)
Movies like Scala!!! don't always suit themselves to traditional reviews. This is a documentary about the famed Scala theatre and cinema in England, which has existed in some form since 1905. A Hard Day's Night was shot there! It's played over 4000 films and is the sort of scene that just could never exist today (for reasons too numerous and depressing to count). You watch something like this for the stories and the stories here are generally very entertaining. John Waters! Mary Harron! Isaac Julien! A bunch of queer weirdos talking about movies and drugs and sex and punk music! It's got clips and talking heads and archive video and photos and I've grumbled about such films in the past, but here's the rub: I don't have to be consistent about this sort of thing! Viva la Scala!!!
But because I wanted to write something, here are my ten favourite anecdotes.
John Waters: “It’s like they were a country club for criminals and lunatics and people that were high, which is a good way to see movies. I did take Divine to see a Bergman movie on acid and when she ripped her face off in Hour of the Wolf he said I am never ever doing this again. I’m only seeing Elizabeth Taylor movies.”
Mike Moore: “We’d pick nights to go. Like, we’d go en masse maybe 30 or 40 of us to see Jubilee by Derek Jarman, the punk film. You know, and we’d be quite rowdy. People got really impatient during the Elizabethan scenes, which they thought was really boring and too Shakespearean. And now we watch it and we love those scenes. But I think at the time all the punks hated those bits. Yeah, I got into Derek Jarman because of that film. And, of course, I went back to the Scala to see Sebastiane, which– I’d never seen such a homoerotic film, and that was a great thing to see at that age, you know, when you’re discovering your way and just about to start going to gay clubs and things like that. So, that was fantastic, and Derek Jarman soon, quite rightly, became a hero.”
Mike Moore (again; he's great value!): “I remember going to see the Mysterons with 23 Skidoo playing. I think it was the lead singer of the Mysterons, he grabbed hold of the mic stand and he just froze and no one knew what was going on. He was actually being electrocuted live on stage. The drummer got up, kicked the mic stand away, and then he went to another mic and said, ‘That was a shocking experience’, and then collapsed on the floor. And everyone was just like, open-mouthed, like, ‘Yup, we’re at the Scala. That’s the sort of thing that happens.’”
Jim Macsweeney: “The Scala programme was very diverse, and I loved all the different images of it. Obviously there were loads of horror, but there were lots of images of sexy men. The first time I saw Montgomery Clift on a large screen, you know. It was just breathtaking to see him in Red River and then A Place in the Sun and From Here to Eternity. Just that face. And the quality of his acting. But also to know that he was one of us.
Stewart Lee: “I remember being in the screening of the Kuchar brothers’ Thundercrack!, which is a very extreme film. I don’t even know if I would watch it now, to be honest. But there was an old man there sitting near the balcony who as it became more and more obscene kept standing up, turning around and addressing the rest of the room, sort of asking us why were there and what was wrong with us. And yet he would then sit down and continue watching it. You don’t get that at the multiplex.”
Vic Roberts: “I was trying to learn German at university, so I’d sit and watch Taxi Zum Klo endlessly. I picked up some choice phrases which apparently weren’t very decent.”
David McGillivray: “All kinds of things happened in the cinema throughout the showings, especially during the all-night screenings, in the auditorium, in the back row, of course. But mostly in the toilets, which is where we are now. I don’t remember these toilets looking like this at all. They’re far too smart."
Ali Kaylie: “I remember one of my most embarrassing moments here, and I think I nearly lost my job over it. I was supposed to be in the ticket office selling tickets. One of the ushers, he was smoking mushrooms, and he handed me this thing with mushrooms in it. The next thing I knew, the doors opened and these monsters walked in. And Louis and I hid underneath the desk and both of us were like, ‘Fuck!’ The tentacles were banging on the glass, wanting to buy tickets. And then I think we just basically gave away a whole pile of tickets to just get them away from us.”
There are plenty more, but you have to watch the movie, too.
