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“Local Heroes” is a free-to-read Vague Visages column dedicated to movie theater memories and the theatrical experience.

I have some spectacular cinema memories. Diamantino in Imax at Pathé Rotterdam. Taipei Story in 35mm at Acmi Melbourne. Scanning past the queues for Paranormal Activity<span style=”font-weight: 400;”> at AMC Empire Times Square to see A Serious Man on opening night. And yet, it’s a cinema in the small Essex city of Chelmsford that I can’t shake. Odeon cinemas provide an alternative to the (s)wank experiences of Picturehouse and Everyman that dominate British cinema exhibition. Odeon is cheaper and more casual. In the late 00s, this cinema was — for me — the cultural hub of Essex, a county known for cockney ex-pats, fake tan and actually some quite nice rural landscapes.  

I lived in Brentwood. The next town over from Chelmsford, Brentwood is infamous as the setting of The Only Way Is Essex, a scripted reality show which turned the town into a nightclub destination that transformed the high street into a gallery of crap bars and restaurants. The cinema there closed in 1998 when Titanic stopped running, and they discovered the place was riddled with asbestos. The easiest cinema to get to (15 minutes on a train) was Chelmsford, and so, as a movie obsessed youth, to Chelmsford I would go. The town is a nice but dull commuter haven. I would usually meet some friends, peruse HMV — Britain’s ubiquitous record and DVD store — and the Oxfam bookshop (where I discovered Thomas Pynchon, Raymond Chandler and LL Cool J — a different story). Then we’d hit the Odeon; a shabby, 1990s building built on the site of an original 1930s Odeon concert hall visited by Ozzy Osbourne, XTC and The Cure. Now, it was all grey plastic, sticky floors and slow queues. And yet, Odeon Chelmsford opened the doors of perception.  

I remember seeing Adam McKay’s finest hour, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and feeling elated at how it skewered a Bush-era America that I only knew through television. I was introduced to John Waters, via Hairspray. I realised Bryan Singer was a hack after sitting through Superman Returns. We’d usually see a film just because it was on. I convinced a friend to take a punt on Bridge to Terabithia because we were in town and it was wet outside. We were there. Far from the YA drek we expected, Gábor Csupó’s child’s eye fantasy is a moving, existential children’s film in the vein of The Spirit of the Beehive.  

But the screening that changed my life was There Will Be Blood in screen 2 on February 16, 2008. I’m not sure that oily opus has aged perfectly, but it was a phenomenon at the time, particularly to a young film fan who knew that the adage “they don’t make them like they used to” was patently false. To sit in the same seat that I’d watched Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End on just months earlier and see a stream of images like those summoned by Paul Thomas Anderson was overwhelming. I was kino-pilled that summer. I saw Mamma Mia twice. I saw The Dark Knight six times. I was a child of IMDB. Although my introduction to the world of cinema was largely white, American and male, I’m glad I got it out of the way early. Imagine if The Shawshank Redemption was still a blind spot in 2020! Drag Me to Hell dropped that Halloween, probably the first horror flick I saw in a theatre (unless I count Monster House, a highlight of the 2006 summer). Out of my mind on sugar and Sam Raimi-anticipation, I was blown away by the effect of the craft on a packed audience, particularly one girl at the back who screamed with fear, “Can we go now?”

My mother gave me five pounds each weekday for the train fare to school, and I’m sorry, mum, but I would usually hop the barriers and use that money for cinema tickets. I support the arts, and trains should be nationalised. Soon enough, I’d swapped pick “n” mix for a nearby pub with a real National Front vibe that would happily serve beers to teens. Scornful of the 3D wave that was plaguing cinemas, and adding two pounds onto each ticket for glasses, we would roll into Youth in Revolt or Whip It or Role Models or Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist feeling like we were rebelling. Protest through consumer choice. 

By this time, I was well on my young cinephile bullshit, and was old enough to go to the Wednesday night “art house” screening to get my mind blown by what was, to a foundling such as I, the edgiest in the contemporary moving image from Synecdoche New York, to Let the Right One In.  I went back two weeks in a row for each part of Steven Soderbergh’s Che. I convinced one of the staff to sell me a ticket to the 18-rated Eastern Promises — people left after the naked knife fight. 

I had a group interview for a job at Odeon Chelmsford once. The first question gave me a chance to flex my muscles: “What is your favourite film?” As we went around the group, to answers like Ice Age 2 and Back to the Future, I knew I had the goods with my answer: “There Will Be Blood. It’s this Paul Thomas Anderson film with amazing cinematography and Daniel Day-Lewis gives this oscar winning performance.” But I’d already lost the room. The next guy’s answer, Rise of the Footsoldier, was met with an approving “Yes, quality film,” by the interviewer. Maybe they weren’t kino enough, maybe they’d seen me staggering into Screen 1 to watch The Social Network after a bikeshed blunt. It would have killed the magic to work there, anyway. I recall a screening of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s “blank check” sci-fi film Paul, just after my 18th birthday. My pals arrived at our designated seats to find that they had been utterly torn from their floor fixings. We sat in the next seats along, and it wasn’t until an hour and a half in that people came in claiming the seats had been theirs, and tried to kick us out! Of Paul!

Between this behaviour and the advent of 3D, was there any decorum left in cinema? 

I moved out of Essex in 2011, and my mother soon after, so I had no recourse to return to Odeon Chelmsford. I went one last time in 2014, visiting a friend. We saw Luc Besson’s Lucy. When the literal galaxy-brained title character, portrayed by Scarlett Johansson, raises a champagne flute aboard a Jet and says to no-one but the audience, “to knowledge,” my mate and I rolled around laughing. But it was a perfect Odeon Chelmsford moment. These films are a chronicle of my film education as much as the DVDs of Alfred Hitchcock, Sergio Leone and Billy Wilder that formed my more traditional film education at home. 

The sheer range of what this pretty standard multiplex had on offer, at a reasonable price, is now gone from most towns in Britain. I have so many memories of this one cinema — and there are others (don’t get me started on Romford Vue) — because even as recently as 10 years ago, Hollywood produced films in every genre for general cinema release. Half of the films I have such fondness for would be straight-to-streaming today. The death of Paramount Vantage and other indie arms of the majors, not to mention the sale of Fox to Disney, is driving cinema viewing towards fewer and fewer films. I worked at a London cinema last year that played nothing but Spiderman: Far From Home, The Lion King and Men in Black: International for three weeks in a row. Kids tickets at £16.50. Not to be “Old Man Yells at the Cloud” about it, but that’s no environment for a teen who likes movies to grow up in.  

When theatres return from quarantine slumber in the next few months, in whatever form they take, my one wish is that it drives Disney to release more of their films directly to VOD, as with Artemis Fowl. If they take up less space in our socially distant cinemas, then perhaps there will be a gap for distributors to put lower and mid-budget films in the multiplexes, for a week or two, or at least spread the wealth. I’m not asking for the moon, just a screen for anyone, at any time. South East London gem Peckhamplex still provides it. Cheap, cheerful, accessible. It is just as likely to screen the major international films as Star Wars. It is cinema as it should be: for all. 

Ben Flanagan (@manlikeflan) is a film critic and programmer based in London.