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American Cinematheque
Posted on July 28, 2023
I’m in bed today with man flu. Thanks Tommy. At this moment I should be having a swim with Tommy in the pool now but instead I’m laying about feeling a bit sorry for myself. Daiana is out picking up authentic Argentine empanadas from Platja d’Ar0 to cheer me up. I have good news though. I’ve finally seen the completion of our cinema. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start again…
…I once loved visiting the cinema. Bucket of buttered popcorn, Milk Duds and a giant Coca Cola. My first cinema film was the Bond film Thunderball. And although my mum wouldn’t let me sit in the balcony, I was hooked. During my L.A. years an author friend of mine and I went to the films all the time. He was in the WGA and voted in the Academy so nearly once a week we’d head down to Westwood or the Galleria in Sherman Oaks. We both began to notice the older we got the less we liked battling hours long traffic to sit in a cinema where somebody inevitably was talking on their mobile phone and when you asked them to shush they told you to f-off.
So the both of us built home cinemas. His atop one hillside in Sherman Oaks. Mine atop another. I did dearly love mine. Refuge from the madness of the 405 and 101 Freeways and those sweltering hot valley afternoons when the sun shown powerfully on the west facing side of my home. Wrought iron 
railings leading up to a leopard carpeted cinema hidden
from the outside world by thick red velvet curtains. A big flat screen plasma — a new invention in 2005 — hung above a natural stone fireplace. Four enormous sofas on descending risers offered perfect viewing of the big screen. At the back of the cinema was a custom English pub for making cocktails. Just as I was getting settled into it my soon to be ex-wife decided we must to move from Sherman Oaks to the beach. A decision I regretted.
It was goodbye to my home cinema.
Eighteen years got behind me. 2023. The Costa Brava. Spain. My wife Daiana and I found our perfect home on a mountain overlooking our 
village and the Mediterranean. The house’s O-Level was waist high in earthen detritus. With spade and pneumatic hammer we cleared i
t out. A subterranean space revealed itself. Over five years we smartened up the brick walls to give the space a New York Brownstone vibe, covered other walls with red velvet panels trimmed with gold studs. Somehow we managed to squeeze through a hole we cut to the outside garden a British styled pub made in Singapore and shipped in pieces to Spain during the pandemic. An enormous bespoke sofa made in Holland was similarly passed through. A 100” flat screen tv that weighs as much as a 35” weigh 15 years ago was hung on the exposed brick wall. Finishing touches included a fully restored 1952 Coca Cola machine bought from a restorer in Ohio, USA. Just now we finished the installation of Victorian Era styled ceiling tiles sourced from England.
Our movie nights are once again an event. Lights dimmed. The smell of freshly popped popcorn, ice-cold Coca Cola in glass bottles. Wife beside me with our feet up on our red crushed velvet sofa, Sopranos on the big screen. Ah, what can be better than the feeling of settling in your personal movie house reminiscent of the cinemas I visited as a child in Brighton, England and as a teenager in Birmingham, Michigan. Great Gilded Age palaces, refuge from the daily grind. In miniature, we recreated this for those evenings when we wish to be carried away to another time and another place.
As always, the journey is everything.