I first discovered the Scala cinema in August 1981. I’d just turned 17 and had spent the summer holidays working night shifts cleaning planes at Gatwick Airport. It was dirty and hard but magical to stay up all night and see the lights, and also to be part of a crew of oddballs who were knowledgeable about movies. My school mates were a bunch of punks who regularly escaped the constraints of our conservative town by getting the train up to London to explore the clothes shops on the King’s Road and in Kensington Market, go to gigs and to the Scala, a vibrant repertory cinema just off the Tottenham Court Road. Alongside daily changing double-bills of arthouse independents and cool Hollywood classics, the Scala put on all-nighters of bands with movies showing between the likes of Throbbing Gristle, 23 Skidoo and others whose names are now lost in the mists of music history.
The Tottenham Street Scala came to an abrupt end in April 1981 when the building was redeveloped as the offices of Channel 4. But within three months its programmer Stephen Woolley had managed to move the whole operation up to an abandoned ‘Primatarium’ above a snooker club in a majestic 1920s electric picture palace near King’s Cross station. My friends grumbled that the ‘new’ Scala wasn’t as good as the old one, but we had a bank holiday weekend to kill and decided to go to an all-night show. For me, it felt like entering a fairytale castle with endless marble mosaic staircases and a jungle mural that eventually led to a deep, dark auditorium where my mind was blown by the extraordinary images endlessly appearing on the silver screen. It was glorious and wild, particularly for a kid ravenous for more films than their local cinema could provide. And they played Joy Division on the PA between the films. At 7am the next morning I staggered out of there freezing and physically exhausted, but a different person. Enlightened and with a sense of purpose.
