BARRY GORDON catches up with Darren Manson to look at the chequered history and present prospects for cinema in Thurso.

Darren Manson (photo - Cinema For Thurso Group)

A RICH, elegant art-deco building that takes pride of place in Thurso’s town centre, Thurso Picture House was an integral part of local entertainment from the time it was built in 1922 until Saturday 24 September 1983, when it closed its doors for the last time.

An empty void was left, and those who wished to see the latest blockbuster on the big silver screen would have to wait until 1987 when mobile highland cinema group, The Moving Picture Show, brought cinema back to Thurso’s Town Hall on a fortnightly basis. That, too, came to an abrupt end in 1990, before a two-screen cinema, the All Star Factory, opened to the public in October 2000.

Ten years on, Thurso is again without a cinema. Dwindling attendances and poor management saw the former glove factory put up for sale at the tail end of last year; however, local film-maker Darren Manson – who has spearheaded the Cinema For Thurso campaign group since 1984, and who also worked with The Moving Picture Show – is determined to ensure Thurso has a permanent cinema. As he says, not only should Thurso have a purpose-built cinema, the original Thurso Picture House should never have closed in the first place. How so?

DARREN MANSON: When Thurso Picture House closed I had been a regular for three-and-a-half years. There were 465 seats and you were lucky if five or six of them were filled, but in the year leading up to its closure, an average of 40 people were attending every show. That’s still not a lot of seats, but numbers were on the increase and in 1982 the cinema made a profit: three weeks of full houses; 21 screenings where the cinema was sold out.

There was no doubt the cinema was in recovery despite the video boom – this was identified by the industry at the time, and Thurso Picture House was one of a few cinemas in Britain turning things around before it hit rock bottom in 1984. It was a drastic blow, especially when you consider Wick’s Pavilion cinema was shut down at the same time.

Suddenly, Inverness, which is 110 miles away from Thurso, was now considered to be our ‘local’ cinema. People who still wanted to see films in the cinema were stuck at home, and there were plenty of those who were prpeared to journey south, indicating demand; so I decided to start a campaign to ensure cinema came back to Thurso.

BARRY GORDON: Your Cinema For Thurso group finally succeeded in 1987, when Ian Rattray’s Moving Picture Show was bringing cinema to various towns in and around the highlands. How did it all come about?

DARREN MANSON: When I started campaigning for cinema in Thurso, I got speaking to Caledonian Associated Cinema (who took over Thurso Picture House in 1947) in Inverness. They put me onto The Moving Picture Show, a mobile cinema with 35mm projection equipment, and I got talking to Ian Rattray about viability figures and the possibility of getting The Moving Picture Show up to Thurso. Fortunately it worked, and we put on the first cinema film since 1983 to a packed house on 17 February 1987. The film? A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 2.

BARRY GORDON: Was The Moving Picture Show a success in Thurso?

DARREN MANSON: It was quite successful within the first few months, but we knew we needed a little more effort. Numbers were dropping away simply because the group were just opening doors, showing films and not much else. It required more attention to make it work, so I took over the advertising and that got the audience numbers back up.

The Town Hall could take 240 people and we regularly had attendances of 160, so it was going well. In the end, it turned out Thurso was The Moving Picture Show’s only profitable venue. As time went on, the cinema became very popular, though there were often complaints about the seating, which, I must say, was council seating and nothing we could directly do anything about.

Ian eventually sold the business and the new owner wasn’t as up on running a cinema as she thought she might be. I was let go, but they failed to realise I owned the advertising material and it soon plummeted into the abyss quite quickly, stopping in 1990. It was sad, though, because the locals definitely felt they had lost something. There had been a big hole left from Thurso Picture House’s closure anyway, and had it not closed we’d be sitting in a multiplex in Thurso right now. That said, when I speak to those who were youngsters and teenagers in the late 80s they have very fond memories of The Moving Picture Show.

BARRY GORDON: You continued campaigning for a permanent cinema in Thurso, and raised a petition of 2200 signatures to approach Manson a local company with viability figures for a two-screen complex. It took eight years in the making, but The All Star Factory finally opened for business in 2000. Was it worth the wait?

DARREN MANSON: Well, when I was working for The Moving Picture Show, Ian always knew that it was my interest to have a permanent cinema. And the campaigning never stopped, even when I was involved with his business. In 1992, I pushed cinema companies to come up and look around, and THOR leisure, a new company set up to run the Viking Bowl bowling alley (sadly closed now, as well), were approached by legal advisers with a proposal for a two-screen, 250 and 100-seater cinema.

Latterly, it ended up a little bit smaller than that, but the general reaction was that it was good to have a permanent cinema back. People were delighted, it made them feel like they were connected to the rest of the world again; a good night out, a social event.

BARRY GORDON: In 2009, and with failing attendances, complaints about prices, and the questioning of the management contributing to its demise, Thurso’s second permanent cinema was put up for sale in September. Where did it all go wrong?

DARREN MANSON: To put it in a polite sense, they lost their direction – if they even had one. They were not connected to their audience, weren’t aware of demand, and I got the feeling they weren’t even aware of what the cinema industry was doing. The last owners just opened the doors and thought that was enough. Why people stopped going, though, I can’t be entirely certain. I think the loss of direction deterred people from going, and the loss of the cinema has again reminded people just how much they need one.

For instance, when you go to Wick, you get the feeling there really isn’t much to do. In Thurso, you had the cinema and the bowling alley – now we have neither. Both might have been a little pricey, but it was there. I also suppose it’s a question of whether people want to participate; in modern society a lot of us want to be spectators, and cinema is where you can be a spectator. Now, there’s nothing for under-18s, and it’s a big blow to kids not to be able to grow up with the cinema. With films like Clash Of The Titans and Alice In Wonderland coming up, we’re all going to miss them.

BARRY GORDON: What next, then, for cinema in Thurso? Do people want to see cinema return to the town? And if so, is it possible a cinema will be coming to town in the near or distant future?

DARREN MANSON: The deadline for bids on the business has closed, so right now we’re in a fingers crossed period. We’re hanging on, hoping that whomever takes it over will have the vision to bring the cinema into the 21st century. Once a decision has been made we can take steps to see how we can progress.

Because I’ve been involved, though, I can’t say too much, but certainly I want to see any new cinema much more connected to the public and the industry. It needs to be modernised to go forward. So long as whomever has it has the mind to run it and run it well, that’s the crucial thing. What we do need, as well, is support. When you’re campaigning for something as big as this, you often get a mixed bag when it comes to feedback. You know, ‘it’ll never work’, ‘why bother?’, etc.

Even now there’s negativity surrounding the cinema issue. That’s because people don’t always rightly know what’s going on behind the scenes. Sometimes you can’t say too much because you’re doing things in confidence. I mean, there’s things that’s been going on with the campaign over the last four years that has nothing to do with the present owners and operators of the current cinema that closed.

Trying to find a solution to keep a cinema going – that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time. There’s no use blaming the recession, either – cinema has always done well during a recession, but I do have to think negatively, too. They way things have gone, business-wise, in the past, it doesn’t bode well for the next potential buyer. I have to accept the fact it might never happen again. If we lose this cinema, it might be impossible to get another one back again.

To buyers, it might look like cinema has constantly failed in Thurso, that it can’t work. But if you have people who understand it, it can make a profit. I’ve seen enough figures to know it’s a viable business. In the right pair of hands, it’s a goer.

© Barry Gordon, 2010

Links

• Darren Manson