I remember it well. I walked in from school one day and Ma said she had a surprise for me. "Your Da is going to bring you and the lads over to Tullamore to see that film you were reading about the other day." I was lost, not a clue what she was on about. "Take a look at the open page on the Midland Tribune there" she said. I walked over to the table for a look and there it was, a half page ad for a showing of Reservoir Dogs in the Market Square cinema in Tullamore. I was over the moon.
This was 1995 and Reservoir Dogs was still unavailable on video in Ireland because of concerns over its violence. It was only available legally in the cinema and now it was being re-released to cash in on its infamy and the recent release of Pulp Fiction. I'd been reading about it for years in Premiere magazine (remember that one, i still miss it) and it sounded right up my street. I was 16 and mad for movie blood and guts. This one was supposed to be gruelling, vicious stuff. The kind of film that if you made it through you could wear it like a badge of honour. And my parents were going to let me see it. They were cool about stuff like that though, I was generally let watch whatever I wanted, as long as there was minimal ridin' in it of course.
We set off for the 40 mile drive to Tullamore. Me, Da, Michael & William Shanahan and David Fletcher. 4 giddy fools and my Da already rolling his eyes. These were the lads I'd started my movie education with. We'd scour the shelves of the local video shops for the nastiest horrors and the most violent action films we could find and watch them together. We'd all heard of Quentin Tarantino but none of us had seen one of his films yet. We were buzzing. The only issue was we were all 16 and the film was an 18 cert. Would we even get past the counter?
Thankfully whoever sold my Da the tickets didn't give a flying feck about the legalities of underage film viewing and we were in. The old cinema in Tullamore was an odd place. Like a converted barn. The floor was level and you had to look up at the screen. And I vividly remember a steamy poster for a long forgotten film called Disclosure being on the wall in the theatre too. The film started with moans over a black screen. Oh Jesus, don't let it be a sex scene. I got an elbow in the arm from one of the lads who thought the same as me. Then we were greeted with the almost relieving sight of poor Mr Orange writhing around in his own blood in the back seat of a car. It made me squirm immediately. Straight away I knew I was in for a new experience. We were glued.
Then just like that it was over. I was speechless. I'd just seen an amazing film. One that played with words in a way my favourite films hadn't before. One that played with time in a manner to which we weren't accustomed. One that shunned the traditional good guy/bad guy narrative of the movies I knew. Bad guy's weren't supposed to be likeable and funny. They were supposed to be bastards you wanted to see die. Later on we realised that these film making methods were far from new but this was our first real exposure to them. I'd never seen anything as cyncial or pessimistic before either. We all expected Mr Orange to live. We expected some of the colour coded gang to make it out. The mainstream films we grew up on just didn't end that way. I recognised Chris Penn from the Best Of The Best films and fully expected him to make it out. Nope. This was new territory.
In pre-internet 90's it was hard to read about films that weren't new but I devoured anything about this film that I could. Magazines, books, newspaper articles. Reading about the movies and shows that influenced the movie and Tarantino himself. I found out about French new wave film, Hong Kong action cinema, 40s and 50's film noir. It took a long while before I got to see these films but voracious reading gave me an appetite to broaden my viewing beyond Under Siege 2 and Maximum Risk (don't get me wrong, i still love these films too). There was a whole world of film out there past Hollywood but I had no idea about it. I know Quentin Tarantino is a knob and statements of late from him would leave a bad taste in your mouth but I will always credit that first viewing of Reservoir Dogs as the moment I turned from someone who liked watching films into someone who was obsessed with them.
Time to get out the blu-ray for a rewatch I suppose.
Any similar experiences out there?
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