In the Irish language we call the cinema, the physical building, the Pictiurlann, which translates as the picture house. When I was growing up in Dublin in the 1970s and 80s that’s what we called it: the picture house or going to the pictures, I am sure some people, probably not too many, still do.
Hello and welcome to The Picture House Podcast. My name is Jamie Lynch.
Back then, the 70s and 80s I mean, films were very important to me. More important than books, music or TV. More important than friends.
My father and I had, at that time, a difficult relationship. It would be fair to say that we went for years without ever really talking. Nothing beyond the everyday ‘listen to your mother, eat your dinner’ kind of thing. We did, however, go to the pictures. When my Dad was a child he went to the pictures at least once a week. Those were the days of the flea pits, before TV in the home. Those were the days of being sprayed for lice as you ate cheap sweets and watched cowboy movies. My Dad and I went to the films less frequently, maybe once or twice a month but it was a very big deal. Being able to sit together silently, experiencing something powerful without having to communicate in any other way, was very good for us. It was very good for me.
A little later on, when I went to the pictures on my own, I was the kind of kid who brought an mono tape recorder in with him and taped the film so I could listen to the sound, just the sound, on a Maxwell 90 tape, over and over. When I say I was that ‘kind of kid’, I may have been a one of one in that strange practice…
It has been on my mind recently that as I enter the second half century of my life I have encountered lots of films that formed me in one way or another and live with me to this day. Quite a few of them may not be familiar to folks in their 20s say who genuinely love the movies and I would like this podcast to be a way to suggest to those people that they give those particular films a watch.
I would also like to share memories and experiences with fellow oldies who have similar stories to tell, about the same movies or completely different ones. It’s a way to make something positive out of the creeping nostalgia I am increasing falling prey to.
These don’t have to be the greatest or best films, not even the best my a particular director, they will be the films that made us. You see, I have a life shaped by cinema as so many who came up in the 20th century do and did and I have the perhaps overly grand intention to create a picture of what that century, particularly the latter half, was like, through thinking and talking about the films we loved.
I hope to produce two podcasts per month, roughly but do commit to one per month definitely.
I would love if listeners got involved -sharing the stories of the films that helped make you who you are.
If you would like to contact me: picturehousepod@gmail.comand I am on Twitter @picturehousepod
Also, as time goes on please take the time to review the podcast on your preferred podcast platform. My understanding is that that really helps.
Next time, in the first episode, one of the lesser films, in many ways, of one of the Great American directors of the last 50 plus years.
Hope to talk to you then.
Jamie Lynch 