Page 7 - CinemaRecord #21R.pdf

Outgoing Editors Note by Peter O'Reilly

As the outgoing editor of Cinema Record I hereby take this last opportunity to do a little bit of unedited writing.
When creating a monster you tend to do so for various reasons, not all of them the right ones. My main reason
was that we did not already have one, and what is an historical society without something to record history in.

The first issue appeared on the streets in January 1994. We were off to a flying start. The members of CATHS
had previously been approached, and thankfully they came up with some very good articles. And so away we
went- 20 pages- and we had this new rag that had the strange name of "CinemaRecord".

The name evolved from my very early preference of movies over football. Back in the boarding school days
when footy, sometimes strangely pronounced "foopball", was only played on Saturdays (and no Picture Thea-
tres were open on Sundays) the inmates were allowed out after lunch to visit their preferred holy ground. You
had to be back at the school in time for the Saturday night dinner, probably one of Mrs Couch's culinary delights
such as "Mystery Pie", Meatloaf" (who needed Laxettes after that), or maybe even "Baked Beans-On-Toast".
Those of us with a bit of class (usually only Kennedy and O'Reilly) used to ride the Red Rattler from Mentone to
Flinders Street with the one-eyed crowd, and then slip off to a different type of holy ground, either the State,
Majestic, Regent, Plaza, Metro, Esquire, Odeon, Lyceum, Capitol, Grosvenor or Athenaeum, for an afternoon
of culture at the 2 o'clock session.

After the movie we would usually arrive back at Flinders Street station and meet up with the highly excited one-
eyed crowd and travel back to school with them. They all seemed to have a copy of this little publication called
the Footy Record. Why not have a Cinema Record, I thought. Why not spell it as one word like CinemaScope,
I thought. After all those years I finally got my wish.

The first few editions were done by moonlighting at various business locations around Melbourne, thanks to
friends who probably risked their jobs to let me use the company photocopier after hours. Then we purchased
our own copier to produce our various mailings. Things went along fairly well for a while, but long print runs tend
to turn copiers into different beasts, and they start to jam and threaten to catch on fire after you get half way
through a long production. Also suddenly we realised that we were not printing 50 copies any more, but were up
near the 120 mark, so it was time to get the thing properly printed. The job just got too big for a few people.

I take this opportunity to welcome Stan Gunn as the new editor of Cinema Record and assure him that if at any
stage I can be of any help in producing CinemaRecord, and am able to, I will be very happy to do so.
As I have said many times before, this is your magazine, your chance to record your thoughts and experiences
as a part of the history of local cinema. Please do so. We all have something to contribute in some way. If you
can type, type it. If you can't type, write it. If you want to record it on cassette, do so. Perhaps you have a friend
who can do it for you. If not, ask your committee to help. It does not matter how you do it, please just do it.

Many, many, many, thanks to the following CATHS members who have made it possible to bring out these
twenty-one issues of CinemaRecord. Without them we would not have had a magazine.

Rod Cook Geoff Edwards Ramon Estrada
Peter Fogarty Stan Gunn John Holloway
Rod How Denzil Howson Brian Hunt
Gerry Kennedy Noel Kerr David Kilderry
Ron Lambert Brian Miller Fred Page
John Polianakis Michael Purden Garry Saunders
Roger Seccomb Graham Smythe Ken Tulloch
Trevor Walters Ann Westmore Alan Windley

This list is fairly accurate. I hope I have not left out anyone. The current membership is about 160 and the list
of authors above is 24. We need more.

First prize must go to Gerry Kennedy (a free return train trip from Traralgon to Morwell, not transferrable,
valid until 31/10/98, conditions apply* must be accompanied by both paternal great-grandparents) for
publishing 16 articles on cinema history in 21 issues. A great effort for someone to try to beat.

- '