Are you talking to me?: A Life Through the Movies

Are you talking to me?: A Life Through the Movies
John Walsh

A combination of wit and heartbreak in a memoir of a life intertwined with an obsession with film. A Fever Pitch for cinema lovers.‘This book will consider the influence of movies on one life, the interaction of celluloid fantasy and the growth of a personality. It’s not just a film buff’s record of his enthusiasm’s. It’s about how some films do, weirdly, change your life.’Beginning with his first cinema outing, The Mutiny on the Bounty, and tracing his passion through his growing up years to adulthood, Walsh will weave together his own life experiences with his rapturous dependence on key moments in film. He will write a funny, personal, loving account of the magic and drama of the silver screen and its ultimate, all-encompassing power to become larger than (real) life.

ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?

A Life Through the Movies

JOHN WALSH

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_2a775fbb-be9a-5b8c-980f-5e0ab4823c91)

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2003

Copyright © John Walsh 2003

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780007139309

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN 9780007441198

Version: 2016-03-23

Little Boxes Words and music by Malvina Reynolds © 1962 Schroder Music Co., (ASCAP) Renewed 1990 Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Jean Genie Words and music by David Bowie © 1973. Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd/Moth Music; Chrysalis Music Ltd; and Tintorreto Music administered by RZO Music Inc for the USA and Canada and by RZO Music Ltd for the World excluding the USA and Canada.

There is Nothin’ Like a Dame Words Oscar Hammerstein II/music Richard Rodgers. © 1949 Williamson Music International. Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London WC2H 0QY

Although we have tried to contact all copyright holders before publication, this has not been possible in every case. If notified, the publisher will be pleased to make any necessary arrangements to rectify errors and omissions at the earliest opportunity.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

DEDICATION (#ulink_428cc1a2-e9c5-5c64-868f-cd4532b5c9f6)

This book is dedicated, with fond affection,

to Giles Brody – nephew, godson, film buff,

crazed Tarantino fan, precociously talented script-writer

and future movie director – hoping it will demonstrate that

you don’t have to be Samuel L. Jackson all the time …

CONTENTS

Cover (#ub36af5d7-9ee4-54d8-8e71-67a58a8c3e10)

Title Page (#uaebf57c6-41d8-56ec-9e5a-9510936203fe)

Copyright (#u84025e64-5a4a-5a24-b9e5-e2aed710749a)

Dedication (#uf4d365c7-5e7e-59ff-af6b-b670c57222c3)

Introduction: Straining Your Eyes to See (#u384da683-9e96-5179-ab59-75b2a1d5ebc3)

1 The Cat in the Crimson Sock Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) (#u3bb167fd-947d-5b19-a1fd-d8bfe93e5865)

2 Faces at the Window The Innocents (1961) (#ud374c7c3-ed1d-5bbd-8662-3c46c8e65f80)

3 John Wayne’s Filthy Temper Red River (1947) (#ue5c23d98-ccdc-5ee2-ac9e-65d50a08b397)

4 Girl in the Gazebo The Sound of Music (1965) (#litres_trial_promo)

5 White Hat and Golden Shirt Bonnie and Clyde (1967) (#litres_trial_promo)

6 Dancing with Decadence Cabaret (1972) (#litres_trial_promo)

7 Far Away from Everything The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) (#litres_trial_promo)

8 After the Red Raincoat ‘Don’t Look Now’ (1973) (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Further Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

INTRODUCTION STRAINING YOUR EYES TO SEE (#ulink_489c6f22-4c21-5e77-a548-8788f3ab2e9c)

‘From the movies we learn precisely how to hold a champagne flute, kiss a mistress, pull a trigger, turn a phrase … but the movies spoil us for life: nothing ever lives up to them’

– Edmund White

You are sitting in the three-and-nine seats at the Granada cinema, Clapham Junction in 1962, with an empty carton of Kia-Ora crushed in your hand, and you are gazing into the horizon of a hazy, golden desert. Your eyes are straining to see what you think you see – what you might be able to see if you craned forward just a bit.

You are oblivious to the other people around you in this cut-price Alhambra Palace in south London. But even if you could register that 300 other people are sitting beside you, staring at the screen, you couldn’t believe they can see what you’re seeing. The experience you’re going through is wholly individual. Your eyes are – surely? – the only eyes capable of picking out the tiny dot on the horizon.