With Spielberg’s most personal film chronicling his journey to becoming a filmmaker, we look at an undersung ’90’s classic that lovingly celebrated the humble art of movie appreciation…
There’s a bit in Matinee, Joe Dante’s love letter to cinema, where John Goodman’s suspenders-wearing, cigar-chomping filmmaker Lawrence Woolsey explains why the cinema experience is so special. Likening it to the cave painting that marked man’s first foray into storytelling, he starts: “People come into your cave with the 200-year-old carpet. The guy tears your ticket in half. Too late to turn back now!” Meanwhile, Dante lovingly sweeps up through the halls of an old-school picture house in its prime, illustrating Woolsey’s speech. You can almost smell the hot popcorn. “The stuff’s laid out on the candy counter. Then you come over here to where it’s dark. Could be anything in there…” Woodsley sweeps open auditorium doors. “And you say… ‘Here I am!’ What have you got for me!’”
It’s an evocative moment in a movie that’s full of scenes reminding us of the unparalleled and transformative power of going to the cinema. Celebrating its 30th birthday this week, Matinee is far from Dante’s most well-known movie thanks to previous hits like The Howling and Gremlins. However, it’s definitely his most personal -- and as our own relationship with going to the movies has changed over the years in the wake of sofa streaming, it’s emerged as a celebration of not only filmmaking itself but the very act of going to the movies and the people who still show up to fill the seats for a big-screen experience.
The story of a monster movie-loving kid who meets a big-time movie director, at the heart of Matinee is a deep love of movie-going. Much like its young hero Simon (Gene Fenton) and his military man father, Dante’s professional golfer dad had a job that led to lots of moving around, with cinema becoming one of the only consistencies in his life. As such, movies devoured his attention; much of the film posters and magazines glimpsed in Simon’s teenage bedroom all came from Dante’s own personal collection, with monsters quickly emerging as a stand-out favourite. When a new feature came to town, it was an event -- and in a pre-streaming age, something to be savoured whilst still available. This romanticism bleeds its way into Matinee’s nostalgic frames, with cinematographer John Hora frequently providing a golden hue to the film’s scenes, matching Dante’s clear love of that time period.
It’s an evocative moment in a movie that’s full of scenes reminding us of the unparalleled and transformative power of going to the cinema. Celebrating its 30th birthday this week, Matinee is far from Dante’s most well-known movie thanks to previous hits like The Howling and Gremlins. However, it’s definitely his most personal -- and as our own relationship with going to the movies has changed over the years in the wake of sofa streaming, it’s emerged as a celebration of not only filmmaking itself but the very act of going to the movies and the people who still show up to fill the seats for a big-screen experience.
The story of a monster movie-loving kid who meets a big-time movie director, at the heart of Matinee is a deep love of movie-going. Much like its young hero Simon (Gene Fenton) and his military man father, Dante’s professional golfer dad had a job that led to lots of moving around, with cinema becoming one of the only consistencies in his life. As such, movies devoured his attention; much of the film posters and magazines glimpsed in Simon’s teenage bedroom all came from Dante’s own personal collection, with monsters quickly emerging as a stand-out favourite. When a new feature came to town, it was an event -- and in a pre-streaming age, something to be savoured whilst still available. This romanticism bleeds its way into Matinee’s nostalgic frames, with cinematographer John Hora frequently providing a golden hue to the film’s scenes, matching Dante’s clear love of that time period.
It’s also a movie that frames cinema as a necessary form of escape. Dante’s movie plays out in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and an impending nuclear war that could start at any given minute. Despite thirty years passing since Matinee’s release — and even more since America’s close call with apocalypse in 1962 — this theme still feels eerily prescient. After all, it was only recently that we learned that the Doomsday clock had ticked even closer to midnight, placing us just 90 seconds from fiery catastrophe. With the ongoing war in Ukraine and Russian aggression, continual gun issues in America and a growing distrust of authority here in the UK, there truly couldn’t be a better time to elope into a dark, quiet room and escape into fiction.
Like a flipped take on Spielberg’s semi-autobiographic new one The Fabelmans, Matinee doesn’t so much chronicle the events that lead someone to become a visionary filmmaker but instead tackles the key coming-of-age moments that create a die-hard movie fan. It’s a film pairing that’s unlikely yet weirdly apt. After all, it was Spielberg who gave Dante his big break, selecting him to helm Gremlins, the first movie released under his Amblin production banner. Three decades later and while Spielberg’s still doing what he does best, Dante’s love for the world of movie making is stronger than ever, both in the films he creates and his extracurricular activities like his cinema celebrating Trailers From Hell podcast. Both individuals continue to showcase the romanticism and importance of the big screen experience — something that couldn’t be more important for the times we currently find ourselves in.
Matinee is currently available to buy on Amazon. Read more of my work by visiting my TikTok or following me on Medium and Twitter.
Like a flipped take on Spielberg’s semi-autobiographic new one The Fabelmans, Matinee doesn’t so much chronicle the events that lead someone to become a visionary filmmaker but instead tackles the key coming-of-age moments that create a die-hard movie fan. It’s a film pairing that’s unlikely yet weirdly apt. After all, it was Spielberg who gave Dante his big break, selecting him to helm Gremlins, the first movie released under his Amblin production banner. Three decades later and while Spielberg’s still doing what he does best, Dante’s love for the world of movie making is stronger than ever, both in the films he creates and his extracurricular activities like his cinema celebrating Trailers From Hell podcast. Both individuals continue to showcase the romanticism and importance of the big screen experience — something that couldn’t be more important for the times we currently find ourselves in.
Matinee is currently available to buy on Amazon. Read more of my work by visiting my TikTok or following me on Medium and Twitter.
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