When we went to see UP the other day, it was refreshingly different to sit in a cinema which wasn’t empty.  This isn’t an idle remark.  Not long ago Ivy dragged me out to Ayr Odeon to watch (500) Days of Summer (typical light romantic comedy – not great – not awful – probably not worth going unless you are really hard up for something to do, but might be worth renting the dvd in due course if that’s your kind of film) – anyway, the point of this story is that Ivy and I were the only members of the audience.  Literally.  We were the only two viewers in the entire auditorium.  Somehow small audiences detract from the pleasure of watching a film – and you can’t get much smaller than two.  I remember watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest years ago in a fleapit cinema in Cardiff – and the place was absolutely packed.  Even the steps had people sitting on them.  I remember our collective amazement and shock when the giant negro in the film suddenly says something, when up until then everyone had assumed he was mute.  I remember going to early showings of Star Wars films, when you either had to book early or queue round the block to get a ticket (hence “blockbuster” by the way).  More recently, I remember all three Lord of the Rings films being total sell-outs.  Watching those films along with so many others added enormously to the experience.  Another time I watched Carrie – the entire audience on the edge of its collective seat – Carrie makes one knife fly up to stick in her mother’s hand, then another, then another – and some wag in the packed audience called “one hundred and eighty!”, and the tension lessened as the whole place erupted in laughter, but not so much that we failed to leap into the air with shock at the final closing, classic seconds of the movie. Would it have been the same with only a handful of people watching?  Or only two?  I doubt it.  Somehow a cinema audience feeds off itself, and that aspect of the “cinematic experience” is conspicuously lacking when hardly anyone turns up to watch a film.