Location, location

I used to say that one of my favourite places on earth was the Alice Springs Drive-In, c.1981. It's derelict now and has recently been slated for subdivision as a new suburb, Kilgariff.

 http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2010/05/13/2898433.htm

But it was a fantastic place to watch movies back then. Six kilometres from town, you'd sit outside in the desert night. If you were waiting for the movie to start you'd look at the brilliant starry night or the dinosaur shapes of the MacDonnell Ranges glowing in the dark (they do glow), pick up the odd whiff of eucalyptus smoke or snatch of Pitjantjatjara or Arrernte spoken around the campfires of the fringe camps around the perimeter, and then watch Hollywood movies while surrounded by Americans from Virginia or Maryland who worked at Pine Gap Defence base.

I remember seeing The Elephant Man there in 1981. The Victorian-era story of the dreadfully deformed Joseph Merrick, forced to work as a carnival attraction until rescued by the surgeon Frederick Treves and allowed to live at London Hospital for the remainder of his days, is heart-rending enough. But in the past few days I've watched again some of the scenes where Antony Hopkins perhaps first became recognised universally as a great actor. There's the scene where Treves sees Merrick for the first time. Treves, played by Hopkins, steps out of the shadows where he's been cowering and in the light a solitary tear runs down his face. How did Hopkins do that?

There is also that great scene where Treves is trying to convince Mr Carr-Gom, the administrator of the hospital, that Merrick is not an imbecile and that his needs are best-served at their establishment. He has coached Merrick in The Lord is my Shepherd, but Merrick is struck dumb when Carr-Gom visits. I'm sorry, says Carr-Gom, but he will have to go elsewhere. Outside Merrick's room, on the landing, Treves is disappointed and pensive. But he hears Merrick go on. 'Mr Carr-Gom,' he says, 'I didn't teach him this bit'. What bit is it? The bit that always gets me: 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me'.

But to get back to the Alice Springs Drive In. Here was the other great thing about seeing this movie there. The Elephant Man was in black and white. In the desert night, there was no way of telling exactly where the screen ended and the desert backdrop started. And at the very end of the film, as the sounds of Barber's Adagio stir and Merrick decides to try sleeping lying down 'like ordinary people', though it will asphyxiate him, a huge falling star fell behind the screen and sputtered spectacularly. Everybody, even those out on the perimeter, gasped at that long-ago event timed beautifully for the end of our movie.