Em Bee, 77, doesn’t see many movies any more. “The last movie I saw was Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) because it had some of the old fashion actors and actresses that I knew. I did enjoy that yes, it was good”, she says. “It was recommended too and I thought ‘yes, I would like to see that’. One of my friends that had seen it recommended it to me; they’re the same age as me”.
This hasn’t always been the case though. “[We used to go] at least once a week, sometimes twice. We lived out at Bulli. We went as a bit of a get away from plain ordinary life”, Em says. “You’d get into something, almost like a fantasy I guess you could call it. It was just a get-away from the ordinary hum-drum life.”
The reasons as to why Em doesn’t see many contemporary movies anymore are simple: “I don’t like a lot of violence. Avatar and all that doesn’t appeal to me, it’s just not my age group even though some might say its light.” Surely it is just the quality in the depictions of violence right? “[I do like] A good war movie. A good musical like Rose-Marie, Kiss Me Kate, Showboat, Calamity Jane, those types of things. I never did like boxing movies and I never did like anything to do with jail movies. [And] Some of the rubbish that they show on the TV at the moment I wouldn’t even look at. So I like the old stuff, yes.”
As people, we are all creatures of habit, and Em is no different. “I’ve got to sit down stairs at the back”, she admits. “I don’t do stair very well. Otherwise I might sit upstairs up the front, but preferably downstairs.”
When the movie is over, Em doesn’t hang around. “As soon as it’s over I usually make my way out”, she confesses. “I just get up and go when the movie is over, yes. I wait till the lights come up, but I never hang around”.
If ever you see Em at the theatre though, try not to disturb proceedings too much. “I go to movies to watch a movie, not to hear what they’re talking about. I think it’s very, very rude”, she comments on people who make a little too much noise. “I would probably turn around and give them a stare. I don’t think I would say anything, but I turn around and give them a stare” she says with a decent demonstration of the dirty look one can expect to be thrown.
As the story of Em Bee demonstrates, while it is important to move with the times in some facets of life, not everything has to change.
Hologram of Baal 