It’s Thursday morning and I’m driving up Moreland rd singing loudly in an attempt to calm down (or block out?) the baby crying in the back seat. Minutes before parking she abruptly drops into a deep micro-sleep, which lasts precisely long enough for me to get to the Westgarth foyer, purchase ticket, coffee and Toblerone, then settle my self, pram, nappy bag and throw cushion into my now three-weeks-regular spot. I’m halfway through my coffee and the previews when she rouses, blinking at the dim, coloured lights outlining the Art Deco ceiling sconces above.
“You know where we are, don’t you bug?” I coo, hoping this experience will help imprint some film appreciation, or perhaps the lights will aid with the latest wonder week – kidding myself this is in any way an activity that might benefit her “development”. When it is much more like an excuse to eat chocolate bars for lunch.
The credits roll but the room stays twi-lit, just enough illumination to allow a furtive nappy change in the aisle. Women continue to drift in with their prams right up to the film starting – in any other situation the build up of buggies would be a precursor to an outbreak of crowd rage, but here all is mutely tolerated – it’s a “safe space” for those of us traveling heavy. A kind of autonomous anarchy seems to rule: mutual cooperation and trust; we’re all adults here, we’ll figure it out.
Pram-Jam
I look around: I recognise other new mothers getting out of the house for the first or second time in a long while by their tired eyes and careful movements; they look at once apprehensive and gleeful. Then there are the seasoned pro’s whose elder children wear noise cancelling headphones and read books by the light of an aisle sconce. They make a beeline for their favourite spots, catch up with buddies they meet here on the reg. There are a smattering of fathers and grandparents too, and the occasional retiree or reviewer who has stumbled into this scene unwittingly, by turns delighted or appalled by their luck. The cinema manager ducks in just before the movie starts to make sure everything is on track, either that or to perve on the plethora of exposed breasts, who can tell? There’s a warm, low hum of conversation, lots of cute babies. I feel good. I feel like I’m with my people.
The last time I went to the Valhalla, the Westgarth’s former, pre-Palace incarnation, Winona Ryder was still a credible indie headliner. Sitting up in the Gods watching Night On Earth (did I imagine it once had a balcony?), it felt unbelievably cool to be at a cinema as gorgeous and unkempt as the Valhalla for such a long, boring film. I was raised to love going to the movies. To sit outside under the speakers at the Drive-In on a hot night. To relish the front row and its retina excoriating proximity to the screen. To borrow 5 or 6 videos at a time from “Rainbow” in Moonee Ponds, and recreate a movie marathon on our mattresses, dragged out to the lounge room floor. It was our mother, indeed, who taught us how to take advantage of Hoyts’ staffing stinginess, paying for one film, then slipping into whatever nearby session was just starting up as the first ended – cinematic pot luck for cheap skates.
I should say: I used to love it. But as the truly independent cinemas of the 90s have all been absorbed or nudged out by chains, art house programs have been badly watered down, and commensurately, Hollywood output has fallen into a pig’s trough of tasteless, mealy slop. I seem to enjoy going to the movies less and less. To the point that even when the urge strikes strong, I can easily convince myself out of it. To put a blunt face on it – I’d become a snob. Even worse than a movie snob, because even art house fodder felt trite and predictable to me, who has been immersed in experimental video art for the last 10 years. Narrative? How gauche. However, having a baby, and becoming eligible for the $10 Babes in Arms sessions at Westgarth quickly snapped me out of my screen-based superiority complex, and renovated the badly trashed movie house in my heart.
There is something delicious about going to the movies in the daytime, just to begin with. As a new, breastfeeding mother, I consumed plenty of screen culture in the early weeks of my child’s life – inhaling several primo American cable series in early morning feeding sessions from the couch. But actually going to a cinema while everyone else is at work, sealing yourself off for a few hours in the timeless, airless space of the movies feels both privileged and degenerate: nowhere else you need to be, and nothin better to do. Add to this a nerve-soothing cup of hot 90s style lartay, a shame-free environment where boobs are proffered at will and babies are free to gurgle and screech without their primary carer feeling the need to urgently shoosh, pretending “She doesn’t usually do this”? Pure unadulterated fucking bliss.
On top of all the other wonders, the 1988 price of $10 invites a willingness to take aesthetic risks which modern prices inhibit. I LOVE ALL MOVIES NOW. Like, literally, any movie at all. I. Love. It. Of the five films I’ve seen at Westgarth I’ve really liked one. I’ve violently hated another, felt mildly entertained by a third, frustrated with the glossy misogyny of the fourth and bewildered by the complete stupidity of a fifth. A 20% strike rate is nothing to write home about I guess, but I don’t care – it’s my weekly story, and I will literally see any old crap. The Babes in Arms programming philosophy seems to roughly be Heartwarming British Dramedy x Occasional Hollywood Blockbuster x High-Prod Oscar Bait. In fact, this might be the first year in decades that I will be able to follow the Oscars intelligibly.
Of course, I realise that what I’m describing is the average Melbourne cineaste’s idea of the seventh ring of hell. And in a pre-baby life I too would’ve found the idea of a constantly noise-polluted screening in a room not even properly blacked out, distracting from my cinematic meditation, an assault on all that was good and meaningful in life. The OHS nightmare of prams blocking exits would’ve made me twitchy.
What an arsehole.
Hudson Hawk Fans, population: me
As I get older I return to the cinematic tastes of my youth. Not so much in terms of Bruce Willis’ canon, but in the mode of watching: together, in a room with other people who are not trying to disguise or minimise their presence (far from). It’s the total opposite of the on-demand, home-theatre, streaming, torrenting, instant gratification world my generation has created. At crybaby, you get what you’re given each week. There’s no “editing” or “curating” your own program here. It’s form over content, where the “delivery platform” is not a vessel of intricate, anonymous bits waiting to be filled – it’s a beautiful old theatre where I would be happy to watch just about anything.
Ultimately, the most beautiful thing about crybaby movies is what is most beautiful about raising a child: the bittersweet fleetingness of the whole thing. In a few months time my daughter will no longer be happy to feed and sleep, sleep and feed, with the occasional startle at some explosion/gunshot/instance of gratuitous sexual violence, and my daytime movie sessions will be nothing more than a warm fuzzy memory. In that sweet spot before daily outings revolve around occupying the ever expanding attention spans of our offspring, crybaby is a short window to savour, a passing moment of cultural indulgence and solidarity between under-slept mothers and fathers for which I will ever be grateful.
Picture Skew 
Hudson Hawk…… you me, and my youngest