The Christmas Meeting of the Drumfeld Film Club

19/12/07

The Christmas meeting of the Drumfeld Film Club was, unfortunately, beset by exactly the same squabbles and technical problems that have recurred throughout every other meeting this year. Despite the fact that invitations had specified the screening of It's a Wonderful Life, Sharon Patrick arrived clutching a d.v.d. of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. By the time I'd distributed cards and taken orders for refreshments, she had conducted an improptu poll the result of which was seven to four in favour of a change of bill. Naturally, I refused to even consider such an idiotic demand. If cinemas were to run on a similarly haphazard principle they'd be over-run by yahoos. "Democracy has spoken!" insisted Sharon as she tried to remove It's a Wonderful Life from the d.v.d. player. Rather than be drawn into an unseemly tussle with a female, I unplugged the machine prompting catcalls and a fusillade of the home made mince pies I'd distributed earlier. Christine, who tries to accommodate everyone with the invariable consequence that nobody is wholly satisfied with the result, was not helpful. "They watched It's a Wonderful Life last year," she reasoned, her entire body language indicating her willingness to capitulate. "Maybe we should have a modern classic this time." By whose definition, I wondered, was National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, a movie apportioned two stars out of a possible five and dismissed as 'sub-moronic'by the Radio Times Guide to Film, a classic? The entire point of the film club is to expose Drumfeld's depressives to better influences than the ones to which they're naturally attracted. Given a choice, whether it be what movie to watch, whom to marry or what to have for lunch, they'll opt for the wrong option. That's why they're depressives.

On reflection, the parallels between George Bailey's situation and my own in the aftermath of the Rat of the Year mortification, possibly caused me to argue the case of It's a Wonderful Life more zealously than I ought. Christine and I should certainly have discussed the matter privately in the community centre's committee room. By the time my meticulously planned schedule had been, quite literally, torn up in front of me, relations between us were as fraught as at any time since the Niall Quinn incident. I had been accused of 'trying to take over', four of the club members were in tears and the floor was spattered with mince pies. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, meanwhile, was as pointless and mean-spirited as I'd anticipated. By its dispiriting conclusion, only six viewers remained, all of whom had spent at least half the film's duration discussing a the rights and wrongs of Donald Trump's proposed golf course. 

 

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