The Fabulous Forum Theatre

I'm conscious of the danger of making every post into a crazy rant from the cranky old man. So for a change, here's something I love.
When I was a kid the family used to come down to Melbourne for holidays & catch up with rellies & friends. As a result I always had an affection for the place - the smell of the air (which I later realized was a combination of gas leaks & leaded-petrol fumes, but what can ya do?), the diffuse light that was so unlike the blazing nuclear-war intensity of north Queensland, the cool weather... and the amazing old buildings. Given the relatively recent arrival in Australia of europeans, I guess most places in the world wouldn't consider any construction here to be truly old. But having grown up in a state where heritage always came off second best to "development" and historically significant buildings could literally vanish under wrecking ball & dozer in the middle of the night (when the right mates slipped ministers the appropriately stuffed paper bag - or backed up the right size dump truck, if you count the more ambitious under-the-table investment relationship between notoriously corrupt then-Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen & industrialist Leslie Theiss, among many others), Melbourne looked positively like The Grand Tour.
And so, large chunks of Melbourne are close to my heart. Some of them I can't even be objective about. The Forum Theatre is a good example. We visited it when I was so young I still wasn't totally sure if it was open air - so convincing to a 6 year old was the carefully painted & lit high ceiling, made to look like the night sky twinkling with stars. It also has a weird Mysterious Orient flavour to the exterior, which I'm told is part of the Moorish Revival movement popular in the mid-nineteenth century. . It was designed by American architect John Eberson & opened in 1929, seating over 3000 people & accommoding a Wurlitzer organ with 21 rows of pipes. Sadly the organ is no more. But it still houses all kinds of oddities - little alcoves with fake Greek statues in the lobby, balcony areas either side of the stage populated with more statues & fake pine trees with a stuffed bird suspended above them (!), as well as a beautiful proscenium arch & lots of sculpted floral & seashell decoration. It might well tip over into kitsch. If it does I just don't care. Can't be objective. Love it.
It's possible we saw Back to the Future there. Memory's a little hazy, but that rings a bell. If we did, it must have been one of the last films they showed back then, because the same year that Doc Brown & Marty McFly dodged the Libyans & took a plutonium powered DeLorean plus a walkman full of Van Halen to the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance - 1985 -  Greater Union sold the Forum to an oddball evangelical group called Revival Centres International. In the next ten years, while they spoke in tongues to each other (not kidding), the place was allowed to run down. The worship stopped when the church was split over the vexed issue of there being nothing but eternal fiery damnation for those who chose to have sex before marriage. I'm not making this up. More than half of their flock left the herd because of objections over this one. Hopefully they found someplace new & sensible, where they could speak in tongues and get jiggy wit it.

Anyway, these days its a brilliant live music & events venue. Last week the Melbourne International Film Festival wound up, with the Forum once again making a terrific Festival Club. My friend & fellow illustrator Pam & I stopped in to hear American director Joe Dante talk movies with Paul Harris from RRR's Film Buffs Forecast. Good company, great coffee & free Brunetti's cake - all under the faux night sky of one of my favourite places in Melbourne. Sometimes life is sweet.

The Forum. A big fave.

The greatness of the decorative Griffin.

Wonder how the revivalists felt about this guy?

The deluxe, slightly bizarre antechamber to the toilets..

Forum as MIFF Club, Joe Dante on stage.

Archway lion, just off the foyer.

Gargoylish lobby observation.

The Romans and their stuffed bird, above stage left.

Decorative flourish on descent to the gents.

One of the many wall alcoves.

Proscenium & coffee. All good.