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Topic: Passenger sets fire to paper on plane.

Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 09-25-2004 07:34 AM

Many thanks for this Stephen and Paul.

I hadn't heard the NFT nitrate kaboom anecdote from quite that angle, though I was told a similar one by Stephen Herbert (my boss at the NFT - Charles Beddow retired a couple of months after I arrived). It, too, was about a film which arrived at the last minute and personally delivered, a reel of which ignited in projection. Stephen didn't mention that it had been transported as hand baggage, but he did say that - irony of ironies - the film in question was The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse! He did say that this was the one and only nitrate fire ever to have happened at the NFT, so I guess we're both talking about the same incident.

I've got John Huntley's British Film Music book, and always wondered why he appeared to worship Muir Mathieson, almost as some sort of god (contemporary accounts in the British trade papers portray him as an average to good musician but an excellent self-publicist). Thanks for the info. In Robert Harris' restoration of Vertigo, which Muir Mathieson conducted in London because of a musicians' strike in Los Angeles at the time, there are some performance errors (mainly fluffed bowing on loud violin notes) which were allowed to let go at the time. This was because it was thought that they would never be audible on an optical mono print. With the original magnetic elements rerecorded in DTS, however, they're laid bare for all to hear!

I'm afraid to say that my favourite anecdote about John Huntley isn't a very complimentary one. I was interviewing a film-maker live on stage at an arts centre in Durham about a documentary he'd made in the 1960s. Huntley, then at the BFI, had championed the project and helped him with fundraising. 'But', recalled my interviewee, in front of an audience of 200 or so, '...the other people at the BFI didn't seem to like him very much. One of them even called him Cuntley, you know!'

quote: Paul Mayer
Leo, I wish I still had my airline IDs. That distillery does look warm and inviting, the perfect destination for a jumpseat (i.e. free) trip. Anyone for a Film-Tech UK Drink?

We have one practically every weekend here in York! The gin distillery is certainly the must-see place in Plymouth - always assuming that you'll be leaving town as a passenger, not the pilot. You can also buy the 'naval strength' version there (57% ABV), which cannot be got anywhere else other than on board Royal Navy warships.

I'm actually a bit surprised that Plymouth Airport and/or Air Southwest hasn't invested in the 'zero visibility' hardware. Low cloud and heavy rain is certainly a regluar fixture there, plus the runway is short and the airport is situated in the foothills of what is effectively a mountain range (Dartmoor), significantly above sea level. I suppose that, as they only have 4-5 passenger planes coming and going each day, they've done the sums and decided that it isn't worth it. The day I arrived to live there it was pouring with rain, and on the day I left three years later the weather hadn't changed very much!

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