Seeing a movie on the big screen, beautifully projected and with booming sound, is an incredible feeling – but it’s only half of the cinema experience. The other half is the audience itself – the crowd all gathered to get sucked into someone else’s story, ready to burst into raucous laughter, jump out of their seats, or have the rug pulled out from under them in a glorious shared moment. Ask anyone what their greatest ever cinema moment is, and the movie itself always has a part to play – but it’s the feeling of the crowd that inevitably tips it over into something truly special.
Filmmaker Edgar Wright – the man behind The Cornetto Trilogy, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Baby Driver, and this year’s upcoming Last Night In Soho – is a firm believer in the power of the cinema experience. And in the new issue of Empire, on sale now and available to order online here, he’s pulled together an epic celebration of the Greatest Cinema Moments Ever, compiling specific moviegoing memories from 40 of Hollywood’s biggest names, and you, the readers too.
Now, you can read all about Edgar’s own favourite cinematic memories – the director spoke to Empire from the plush velvet seats of the Regent Street Cinema to recall the moments that really made the movies come to life, with epic thrills, major chills, and laughter that left his stomach aching. Take a read.
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Gravity
"I was a bit spoiled by the first movies I ever saw at the cinema – Star Wars, and then later Raiders, and then E.T. and Superman. At that age you start to think that all films are that good, or all experiences are that good. More recently, I can think of movies that I’ve seen at a private screening, and then went back to see it with an audience because I was like, ‘I now want to experience how I felt, with a crowd’. Gravity was one I saw at a private screening, and I was so bowled over by it that I had to go and pay money almost to experience the audience reaction as much as watch the movie again. I feel like there’s a lot of people in this industry who don’t actually go and see films with a paying crowd – festivals don’t count because that’s a slightly different thing, and premieres don’t count. It’s a very different thing with an opening weekend crowd."
Mad Max: Fury Road
"The next time that happened was with Mad Max: Fury Road. I ended up watching it four times in five days. I was going to do a Q&A with George Miller, so I watched it privately at Warner Bros, and I was so dumbfounded by it that the next day, when I was doing the Q&A, I was saying, ‘I wanna watch it again!’ Then I went to the premiere, and then when it came out at the cinema, I saw it another three times with audiences. It’s usually all to savour the same moment in the movie. There’s lots of amazing moments in Fury Road, just, gasps from the audience. At the end of the sandstorm sequence, when that amazing set piece finally ends and you see the little fuse of the dynamite going down, and then it wipes out and goes to black, everybody breathes out, and then everybody claps. It’s such an amazing feeling. I can enjoy that film at home, but whenever I do I’ll think about what that sound was like when I saw it – that gasp of astonishment, and then the applause. Once you’ve seen a film like that with a crowd response, it’s almost like that is part of the audio track in your head."
Fatal Attraction
"Literally, the reason that I wanted to do this article was I was watching Fatal Attraction with my girlfriend. She had never seen it before and had little idea what she was in for either, which was perfect. We were watching it on a big projector screen in my living room, and she was reacting in the way an audience would. There’s a scene where Anne Archer has a phone call with Glenn Close’s character Alex Forrest, and it’s shot in a mid-shot, and she says, ‘This is Beth Gallagher. If you ever come near my family again, I’ll kill you, you understand?’ And as I was watching it, I remembered that the audience I saw it with in Los Angeles once erupted into applause – it was this weird cathartic roar from the audience. And so I had to say to my girlfriend, ‘When I saw that at the cinema, that line got a big round of applause!’ I had to break out of the movie and give this running commentary of, ‘You should see that with a crowd!’"
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
"The other time recently that I wanted to see the reaction was Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. I had seen it privately, and I took some of the crew from Last Night in Soho. A couple of times recently I’ve been fortunate enough to read Tarantino’s scripts beforehand, but I hadn’t read the script for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, and I’d stayed away from all the reviews, because I knew there was something about it and I didn’t want it spoilt for me. So, I watched that pretty cold and that final fifteen minutes just bowled me over. As soon as it was coming out, I said to my girlfriend, ‘We’ve gotta go and see that again on opening night! I just want to experience it with the audience.’ I’m paying money just to feel the vibe in the room. That’s a great feeling, where you’re getting a secondary hit from the movie. That’s a wild film to see with a packed house who don’t really know how exactly it’s going to pan out. "
The Silence Of The Lambs
"I remember seeing The Silence Of The Lambs in the first weekend. I was at the Westway in Frome, and there’d been a lot of hype about that movie, but the precise details of what happened were not necessarily out there. This pre-internet age, unless you’d read the book, it wasn’t easily spoilt. There was almost the opposite of a loud audience reaction – everybody was cowering in their seats. You could feel this wave of goosebumps in the audience, particularly the scene where Lecter has escaped. That moment when he rises up from the gurney in the back of the ambulance and pulls the skin off, I just remember the audience… I’m not even sure whether it was a vocal reaction, it’s just you could feel the electricity in the room of everybody dumbfounded by this twist and sinking in their seats and cowering back. I can only describe it as like sort of an electric feeling. I remember that vividly.
"Another great bit in Silence Of The Lambs, a little bit that doesn’t get mentioned as much, is when Clarice is at Buffalo Bill’s house at the end, and people are already freaking out cause she’s at the other location where the rest of the FBI are not. And it has that shot where she notices the moth landing on the spindles of thread. I just remember people freaking out before it even gets to the next bit because they’re like, ‘Oh my God! She knows!’ What’s so amazing is that the audience is so in step with the movie, that a cutaway to a moth and some thread is the thing that makes people go insane. That’s stuff you just can’t bottle, and it’s so interesting when the shot that you remember is not a big dramatic one. It’s the close up, just an insert."
Seven
"I maybe unwisely went on a first date to see Seven – a first and last date. Seven is maybe not a great idea for a date movie. People mention the Sloth moment, which is an expertly engineered shock – and the ending. With twist endings, you always get this little wave of anticipation of what’s coming. And Seven is an interesting one, because when you watch that with a crowd and people don’t know where it’s going, you can feel people getting what’s going to happen at different times – it’s catching in the audience. People are starting to realise, it’s dawning on them with horror, ‘What’s happening? What’s going to happen?’ That’s an exciting thing, the penny dropping for some of the audience about the contexts of a box before everybody gets it."
A Fish Called Wanda
"When I was a teenager, I remember going to the cinema to see A Fish Called Wanda, and maybe it’s because it was a British film and there’s always that kind of national pride in a British hit, it was so packed. People were laughing so hard you could only hear two-thirds of the film. I think I went back to see it again. But that’s a great feeling – A Fish Called Wanda being so riotous to see with an audience, and all of the most outrageous bits haven’t been spoilt by trailers at that point."
There’s Something About Mary, South Park, and Team America: World Police
"I vividly remember seeing There’s Something About Mary at the cinema. I think I saw it at the premiere or something, at the Odeon Leicester Square, and within five minutes people were laughing so hard you could barely hear it. It’s just an amazing ripple effect, where it just feels like the whole audience is as one. More recently both South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut and Team America: World Police are ones where I’m laughing so hard it was hurting. The opening of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut at the cinema was just a riot. And so was Team America in a different way, just so outrageous, so designed to shock and appal. It’s an amazing thing to be witnessing that with other people."
Empire’s Greatest Cinema Moments Ever issue – curated by Edgar Wright – is on sale now at all good newsagents, and available to order online here. The digital edition is available to purchase worldwide via the Empire Magazine app on iOS and Android. Contributors include Steven Spielberg, Tessa Thompson, Patty Jenkins, Jordan Peele, Taika Waititi, Paul Rudd, Guillermo del Toro, Chris Evans, Simon Pegg, Daniel Kaluuya, M. Night Shyamalan, Matt Stone, Kumail Nanjiani & Emily V. Gordon, George Miller, Greta Gerwig, Kevin Feige, Christopher McQuarrie, Joe Russo, J.J. Abrams, Bong Joon-ho, David Yates, Daisy Ridley, Joe Cornish, Anya Taylor-Joy, James Gunn, Bill Hader, Alfonso Cuarón, Walter Hill, Rian Johnson, Spike Lee, James Cameron, Lily James, Robert Zemeckis, Ang Lee, Jon Hamm, Daniel Craig, Jon Favreau, Sam Mendes, and Mark Hamill.