Preview: The Loft Movie Theatre's Summer Programme
The Savoy Cinema legends Gavin and Lucy chat to The Notts Review about what's coming up in cult cinema...
Your Jaws screening has come quite far into your time at Savoy - why is now the right time to bring such a classic to the screen?
Jaws is one of those films that gets shown on the big screen fairly regularly - whether it’s outdoor summer screenings, theatre screenings with a live score, anniversary re-releases etc - so we’ve held off screening it ourselves just because we thought some of our audience members might have already seen it on the big screen recently. But it’s a film we both love, and it’s been in our minds to show it at some point, when it felt right. This will actually be the 84th film we’ve shown as The Loft Movie Theatre, and quite honestly, we don’t know why the time feels right now, but it does!
Our first screening of the year was The Crow, which was our most-requested film to date, and clearly there’s a lot of love for the film as the event sold out - and it was great to see so many people dressed up for the occasion
What other films or types of films can people expect as part of your summer programme, and how did you decide on them?
We actually have our films booked in through to August already. After Jaws on 20 May, we have The Running Man on 24 June, Dirty Harry on 22 July and Raiders of the Lost Ark on 26 August. These are all films that we've had on our list for a while, and they're also films which some of our audience have told us they’d like to see on the big screen too. The way we curate our schedule is a bit like DJing – we like to keep things mixed up, trying not show two similar films one after another and offering a range of genres for our audience to enjoy. Sometimes we show titles they’ve almost certainly seen before, and other times something a little different.
You've put on some brilliant films already this year - what's been the highlight of 2024 so far?
It’s hard to choose just one highlight! Our first screening of the year was The Crow, which was our most-requested film to date, and clearly there’s a lot of love for the film as the event sold out - and it was great to see so many people dressed up for the occasion. It was also brilliant to revisit Reservoir Dogs on the big screen in February – a film that still packs a real punch - and we had such fun at our American Psycho screening last month, especially handing out our Patrick Bateman business cards as people came into the auditorium.
How do you go about collecting your infamous goodie bags for these screenings? I imagine it's pretty fun putting them together...
The prize bag – affectionately known as the “brown bag of dreams” – usually contains a mixture of decent things - like the movie soundtrack or a T shirt - along with a bunch of silly things that relate to the film in some way. For Big Trouble in Little China, we had fun choosing a variety of snacks from our local Chinese supermarket, and for the Jaws prize bag, we've managed to score a pair of flippers, a diving mask and a snorkel at a car boot sale for the total of £1! We also always include a VHS of some sort – either a bought copy of the film we’re showing, or if we can’t find one, Gavin will create a bootleg VHS in an old rental box, usually taping the movie over something terrible, and adding the subtitles from a different film for a true bootleg VHS experience!
For the Jaws prize bag, we've managed to score a pair of flippers, a diving mask and a snorkel at a car boot sale for the total of £1!
What are your favourite summer blockbuster picks and why?
Gavin: My favourite summer blockbuster would probably have to be Star Wars. I got to see it the weekend it was released at the Odeon in Nottingham, and it was my first proper cinema experience. We had to queue around the block to get in - right past Beatties model shop on Mount Street - and there was such a sense of anticipation and excitement. It was an amazing experience to see it on the big screen with those dazzling special effects, the rousing John Williams score and everything else. The perfect film for a sci-fi obsessed seven-year-old. Brilliant!
Lucy: My first ever cinema experience was Labyrinth. Coincidentally, I was also seven, and saw it at the Nottingham Odeon! It really captured my imagination, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards. Before the days of the internet, there weren’t many ways to immerse yourself in a film once its theatrical run had ended, but I remember being thrilled when someone bought me the Brian Froud ‘Faeries’ book for Christmas, as I recognised some of the designs from the film - and when I got a VHS copy a few years later, I watched it over and over.
Grab your tickets for The Loft Movie Theatre’s Jaws screening, and drop them a like on Facebook.