Quiz night in Bermondsey

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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31 October

For some obscure reason, I had known of this part of London for years, but I really did not know where it was.

I was quite surprised that it turned out to be near Tower Bridge, London Bridge, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, and that incomplete pointy building, highly visible from Tate Modern. (I think, perhaps, I had been confusing Bermondsey with Bethnal Green in some corner of my mind, although, rationally, I knew that that was Bethnal Green (and, therefore, not Bermondsey), and so placing it north of central London.)

Near the hospital, and on the way from the Tate to the venue of New Empress Magazine’s first quiz night at – and in association with – Shortwave Cinema, I turned out to pass the pointy building (I wonder if there is there some connection other than its proximity). The hoarding told me that it’s properly called London Bridge Quarter, but what I now know to be The Shard of Glass still looked no nearer completion: maybe the money’s run out, or ‘quarter’ (or 'shard': shards are like that, unlike shreds!) relates to the unfinished pinnacle…

What beckoned all the while was a film quiz, courtesy of Helen Cox, editor in chief of NEM (which I now know to be named after a cinema in Nottingham, which closed in 1927), and compered by comedian (and film buff) Adrian Mackinder (it may not be spelt quite that way...), with the general assistance of film-maker Phil Bowman (sure a Sagittarius, and a devotee of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher). (In one round, various combinations of the three valiantly acted out dialogue from various films for us to identify, if we'd ever seen them.)

On getting there, it was straightaway apparent from the question papers (why are they often called that when they are answer-sheets?), since I know no film with a shark in it (except perhaps a cartoon like Marine Boy, who was always terribly, maybe – except for the title – unnecessarily aquatic in his tastes), that the picture round wasn’t going to be where (if at all) I could shine.

Which was a shame, because, as a free radical, I had accosted and oxidized the team of Betty, Ulli and Stephanie (I never did - try to - discover any connection between them, and maybe they just met when they all got off at the nearby bus-stop), just at that vulnerable moment when they had brought chairs in from outside and hadn’t yet ordered drinks, and Betty had stipulated that I could join them, provided that I was a film geek. (OK, I lied…)

They had agreed to take me in as an orphan, and I accordingly owed them my share of points in the final score (if that’s not soccer, rather than quiz nights). However, little did any of us probably realize that an early inspiration regarding that page of shark-laden images was our best chance of winning anything…

All in all, what I guessed at, rather than knew, was that the film that had been banned and is being remade is Straw Dogs; that the MGM lion had had five incarnations; and that Douglas Fairbanks was one of the four founders of United Artists; but, I think nothing else, and none of these (except that the Dustin Hoffman film had been banned) was any more than luck.

(Oh, and I ought to have said that, in the round with clips from music that had run over unnamed films’ closing credits, I thought that one was from The Matrix, but, as is the way with a quiz, another team member had another answer, and I felt meek. I also recognized the vocalist in the next clip as Freddie Mercury, and, I suppose, although that did not help me to the name of the film, I could have shared that with the team.)

All in all, my participation led to a gain for the Sleeping Beauties (Stephanie had preferred that name to my impulsive first suggestion of The Geeks, and it was adopted by default) of two-and-a-half points, as one of us also named Charlie Chaplin as a UA founder, and so we got credit for two out of four. (No one had seen the film from which I derived the name, but someone had spotted the poster: unfairly, I suggested that, in my opinion, this was the best thing about the film.) Those points – no pun intended – actually counted, as we would otherwise not have been nudged ahead as fifth overall.

During the time allowed for finishing off our second-half answers, no one objected to me doodling, by filling in the blanks of the picture round with unrelated titles such as Citizen Kane, Hannah and Her Sisters, and even, nautically enough, 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea (although I probably wrote 1,000).

Admittedly, I was taking what I had been taught to extremes, but I knew not to leave a blank where a well-educated guess (Hannah and Her Sisters? the scene where Michael Caine first makes a move on his sister-in-law?) might give a chance of a point: of course, this became the norm with the advent of examination papers with multiple-choice answers – why is it even called multiple choice, when you can usually choose only one answer, and, with ordinary questions, there is a infinite choice?

Apart from these meaningless answers, my first reaction to seeing the depiction of a large tooth-filled mouth lunging at a bridge had been to say Sophie’s Choice, so I stuck with that answer, as I still liked it (despite telling poor Stephanie, who did not seem to connect with it). I think that the premise must have been that the water level had risen, amongst other devastating effects, and thus that the bridge – or those on it – were within striking distance…

When I helped with marking tests at GCSE (more multiple choice, but thankfully long ago!), I just memorized the string of intended responses, and did not really register the content of incorrect ones. Fortunately, Helen had not only clearly read the answers minutely, but found the intended humour in my choice for that image, because that was the basis on which we won a prize, a copy of the – now rare – first issue of New Empress Magazine.

So, as my team members ceded it to me, double the reading of NEM for me (I had bought the latest issue on the night), and very good and varied it is, too!

Oh, and a further prize was talking to Rob, who owns Shortwave, and the jewel of seeing the auditorium - as I told him, I was reminded of The Electric Picture Palace in my beloved Southwold.

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