WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM | JULY 2 - 8, 2021 | 23
SCREEN TIME
After 35 years, Worcester fi lm columnist lets fi nal reel roll Jim Keogh Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
On July 1, 1986, my fi rst movie review appeared in The Evening Gazette. I’d been assigned “American Anthem,” which was meant to be the launch of Olympic gymnast Mitch Gaylord’s acting career. I don’t recall my exact words, but I believe I suggested that Mitch moves like a jungle cat and acts like a pommel horse, or something to that effect. His time on this particular stage was brief, then he was gone. And so am I. For 35 years I’ve been writing about movies for the Worcester County audience — fi rst at The Evening Gazette, then The Telegram & Gazette, and fi nally, for more than a decade, at Worcester Magazine. Now I’ve decided it’s time to step away from this wonderful gig to direct my time and capacity toward other pursuits, and to deal with a personal challenge that requires my focus. Besides, three-plus decades at anything is a good run, amiright? I’ve enjoyed fi lling this space with observations, criticisms, and silliness, week after week, year after year. The late, great Gerry Goggins hired me in 1986 to write freelance reviews and produce the Film Clips column in the Gazette’s Time Out section after I’d abandoned my short-lived career as a high school English teacher (and lost my reserved place in heaven). I’m not sure I knew what I was doing in those early days — no, on second thought, I am sure I didn’t know what I was doing — so when Gerry, a taciturn guy, would say, “Good column,” I took it as a sign my stuff was passable enough to keep printing for at least another week. When I started as a critic, Worcester had four theaters within the city limits — National Amusements’ theaters downtown and in Lincoln Plaza and Webster Square, and a General Cinema on the basement level of the Galleria, later to morph into the Bijou. White City Cinemas was just across the bridge in Shrewsbury, and the independent Cine-
For 35 years Jim Keogh has been writing about movies for the Worcester County audience — fi rst at The Evening Gazette, then The Telegram & Gazette, and fi nally, for more than a decade, at Worcester Magazine. GETTY IMAGES
ma 320 screened art house and international fi lms at Clark University. All are gone. Showcase Cinema North debuted in 1995, and it’s shuttered, too. I loved these places. As I write this, the memories are racing through me: If you attended a movie at the downtown Showcase in the ’80s, you likely encountered Selma, an elderly Worcester character known for her heavily powdered skin and penchant for cackling loudly from the front row, even during slasher movies. I once gave Selma a ride home after the Mikhail Baryshnikov movie “Dancers,” and she regaled me with stories about her own former dancing career. Was any of it true? I hope so, because I bought every detail.
(The late Doug Ingalls, then the Showcase manager, always waved Selma through for free, and hosted a Thanksgiving party at the theater for the band of regulars who had no other dinner options.) When my wife and I were newly married, we trudged through a snowstorm from our apartment off Mill Street to catch a double feature of “Moonstruck” and “Overboard” at Webster Square. The audience was so tiny that the manager came around and chatted us up individually between shows. Cozy doesn’t begin to describe the experience. On the Bijou’s last night, I drifted away from the party in the lobby and made my way upstairs to chat with the
projectionist who spilled his stories about old-time Worcester cinema (including porn). I felt like Jimmy Breslin interviewing the guy who dug JFK’s grave. My favorite of all was Showcase North, that boxy, beautiful behemoth on Brooks Street where I introduced our two children to the miracle of big-screen movies. I brought them to fi lms that were perfectly matched to their ages and maturity levels, and exposed them to others that proved to be wholly inappropriate. (I regret nothing. Well, maybe “Jackass Number Two.”) A few days after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, during a packed screening of “Monsters, Inc.” at Showcase North, the lights came up and we were instructed to immediately evacuate the theater. At the time, everyone was on high alert for the next terrorist strike, and the unsettling sight of fi retrucks and police cruisers gathered at the entrance only added to the discomfort of the parents clutching their children’s hands. Finally, we were allowed back in, and as I passed by Deb, the manager, she whispered to me, “Burnt popcorn.” I’d considered for this fi nal column getting into technology’s infl uence on the production and delivery of these columns and reviews (yes, I wrote my early reviews on a typewriter) or doing a deep dive into the evolving ways we engage the tsunami of content available to us. But I and many others have already addressed all of it. What’s left to say? Just tell me a story that moves me — to tears, to laughter, to wonder — and I don’t care if it plays on an IMAX screen or a smart phone or is projected on a yellowed sheet in an alley. I will certainly have more to say after today, and my editors have graciously invited me to contribute to these pages when I’m inspired to do so. For now, this break from the weekly duty is good and necessary. It was an honor to share my thoughts, opinions and whimsies with you across the years, and thank you for reading.
