The movies lived on the inside back page

It was always my favourite part of the newspaper, and it was always in the same place, every single edition. It drives me crazy now when modern newspapers move their sections all over the place when I just want to find the fucking puzzles. And I long for the days when the world news was always on page five, and the sports was on the back and the movie listings were always, always on the inside back page. 

There were two cinemas in my town growing up and literally the only way you could find out what was playing every week was by reading the newspaper and seeing the movie listings in their little portrait-formatted ads.

I would stare at those ads and beg to be taken to the 2pm screening of Spies Like Us, or the holiday showing of a 20-year-old Herbie film. I was always a little freaked out by ads for the Sunday night double features, when the grown up movies always played, and I would always keep an eye on those age restrictions, because there was nothing more unjust than a great-looking film that you just weren't allowed to see. 

(I carry a simmering anger over not being allowed to see Blade Runner when I was seven that still lingers, even if I'm not sure how 7-year-old me would actually handle it.)

Sometimes we'd visit the big cities like Christchurch or Dunedin, and they had the movie listings in the same place, but they spread right across the page and were a gateway to dreamworlds. Both towns had multiple picture houses, and so many more options. The first place I ever see anything about Rocky Horror is on the pages. I still remember seeing the advertisement for Dragonslayer in the Christchurch Press, and how exciting that was.

There were phone lines and the most burgeoning of internet presences when I really started to get into movie when I was 19, but I was still relying on those inside-back pages. I was a student at polytech a the time, doing some computer bullshit but working in factories on the side, so I could go to the big cities again and drain the bank account buying John Byrne comics.

For some sweet months, it became a ritual of going to the polytech library, and seeing what was playing out there. Me and my mates would drive for hours, hit up Comics Compulsion on Manchester Street, or visit our uni pals down south, and then get in as much cinema as humanly possible. All planned out hours in advance, in that polytech library, where the thrill was as strong as it ever was.

Like everybody else, I'm lazy now, and rely on outsourcing basic brain functions like the retention of data. (This means I'm constantly running late to films because I get the times wrong and haven't imprinted the fixed information in my head.)

But now I can literally find out the start times for any cinema in the world on my phone, and it's just not the same. It's just never as exciting as turning over that back page.