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So, it's Friday 14th February, you live in Sheffield (Britain's seventh largest city) and you fancy seeing Kenneth Brannagh's critically acclaimed four-hour version of Hamlet, a film hyped to death over the past few weeks (with reviews or interviews on programs like: Film 97, Moviewatch, Steve Wright & Michael Parkinson's Radio Two shows, even a special half-hour program on BBC2 entitled, "The Filming Of Hamlet").
No trouble then, should be the "big film" everywhere. Your favourite cinema is the 7-screen Odeon, because it's easiest to get to, and has good, large screens. So you ring up the information line.
"Hello sir, how can I help you." "Hello, yes, could you tell me the times for Hamlet, this evening please?" "I'm sorry sir, we aren't showing that film." "Aren't you? Oh, er, okay then, thanks." Hmmm. Undeterred, you try the eleven screen Warner cinema in Meadowhall (the nation's second busiest cinema, and the busiest outside London). "Hello. Warner Cinemas Meadowhall Information line, how can I help you?" "Ah, hello. Could you please give me the times for Hamlet today please?" "Hamlet?...No we're not showing that today sir." "Not you as well. Are you ever going to show it?" "Well, apparently there are only 10 prints of the film in this country, and we could only put in for it for one day in April." "Oh. Thanks." 10 prints? In a country with far in excess of 200 cinemas? The biggest British film for donkeys years and there are only ten prints in Britain? Admittedly it is a four-hour movie filmed on 70mm, so it's not like you can just stick it in the VCR and run off another copy, but ten prints? So a cinema which serves a catchment area of over a million people, Britain's second busiest to be precise, is only going to show February's most eagerly awaited movie for one day? In April? It makes you wonder what's happening in the rest of the country. So let's check Teletext on Channel 4 for the north's cinema listings. Page after page roles by, Leeds, Barnsley, Rotherham, Huddersfield, Wakefield, York, Sheffield, Chesterfield, and not a sign of Hamlet anywhere. Okay then, maybe it opens next week. Let's consult Empire. Contents...News...Previews...Reviews...Mars Attacks...The Crucible...Ah! Hamlet. Hamlet...Kenneth Brannagh, Derek Jacobi, blah blah blah...five out of five...aha, here we go...opens 14th February, selected cinemas. Selected cinemas. So? Not the, selected cinemas as in Trainspotting, Michael Collins, Surviving Picasso, Shallow Grave, I Shot Andy Warhol and Looking For Richard, all of which screened in Sheffield. No, obviously this means selected as in ten bloody prints for a country with a population of over 55 million, the country that spawned the bloody movie, the director and star's home country, the only bloody country on Earth that'll understand the thing anyway, and we get ten prints? Now, as you may have guessed, this sort of thing gets me really angry, and there's not a bloody thing we can do about it! There are indeed, only ten prints of Brannagh's masterpiece which are touring the country over the next few months, but surely it would have simpler, and more practical to run more prints of the movie and distribute them on the 14th, before the media frenzy generated by the film dies down. Under normal circumstances, Hamlet would have rocketed to the top of the UK top ten, as it is it'll be lucky if it even makes number twenty, and it's a crying shame too.
Spleen vented by: Tom Green
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