With the publication of Stealing Stacey's Heart, I was thinking about movies. In the book, Stacey grew up in the theatre her grandfather managed, the St George. It was a theatre with Shakespeare productions, musicals, ballet and movies, so she had very fond memories of theatre and when its demise is imminent, (the plot of the story) it's as if a part of her, a happy childhood, will be going, too.
In real life, however, my experience of the theatre in recent years has been limited pretty much to movies although I used to see productions when I was a kid, from the local operatic society which Mum took us to. She kept all the programmes so there are programmes for shows like Oliver and pantomimes like Aladdin. I loved going along to them all. All that anticipation and excitement. There was one show I was even part of, in the children's choir. It was to celebrate the town's centenary, which was hugely exciting, getting to dress up in early settler clothes and have time off school for rehearsals. I've still got that dress I wore, somewhere.
I'm pretty sure my first movie was the cartoon Winnie The Pooh, and it was held back in the days when, as a commonwealth country, we would stand and sing God Save the Queen. That must have been hard on the anti-monarchists. However, in looking it up it seems there was no feature Winnie the Pooh until the seventies, so it must have been what they called a 'featurette.'
My most gutting movie experience, however, was Ring of Bright Water. I walked out of that theatre sobbing at the death of the otter. It is a 1969 comedy-drama... apparently... and I'm pretty sure the movie was fine up until that shovel landed on the otter, if I remember that right. Maybe that is why I prefer to read and write happy-ever-afters. It would not surprise me after the trauma of that ending. I can still remember leaving the Odeon, tears streaming down my cheeks.
I remember seeing a movie in the 1970s called Sunshine, about a young mother who dies of cancer. I went with my youth group and all around me, other girls were sobbing. John Denver famously song the theme song.
I have been to movies I was very meh about. I went to see The English Patient with a bunch of romance writer pals and wasn't all that fussed.
Ditto, a group of us went to see City of Angels where the heroine dies on her bike at the end. I really liked the story up until that point. What's not to like about angels on earth? Falling in love with a human who dies, apparently.
But I will say, with no hesitation, that my most favourite movie experience-I will be bold enough to say EVER- was last year when I went along to see Top Gun: Maverick. Oh my goodness. I never saw the first one in the theates, only on DVD later, but it doesn't hold a candle to this new one. Everything about Maverick, I thought, was perfect. Everything. I got the DVD and watched it several more times just to make sure and, yep. Bloody great movie.
And of course it had a happy ending.
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