The Creators Project

"Interactive Cinema" Turns London Into California

Maverick, Iceman, Viper, Goose… Familiar with any of those names? Don’t be ashamed to admit that you are, but for those in the minority who aren’t—and there must only be about four of you on earth—they’re a reference to Tony Scott’s OTT 1980s film about a macho, elite US Flying school, Top Gun. A film with one of the greatest scripts in the history of Hollywood, according to Quentin Tarantino. But whatever you think of it, cheesefest or bromance classic, you could boil the entire film down to two simple elements: a pair of aviators and a flight jacket. And there were plenty of those on show at Future Cinema’s California Classics event this past weekend, which sought to do the impossible: bring sunshine—in the form of the California coast—to a rain-drizzled London, transforming the docklands area into an immersive celebration of the US West Coast state as seen in two 80s classics: Lost Boys and Top Gun.

The Saturday saw lost boys and girls soak up Santa Cruz, and on Sunday it was time for the top guns to show up. And show up they did, dressed in bomber jackets, aviators, pencil skirts, flight suits, Full Dress Whites and a whole bunch of other Top Gun related sartorial gear. Despite the presence of rain early in the day the sun did finally make an appearance to provide one of the elements for this mock-California, complete with boardwalk, beach, and an amusement park to recreate San Diego in the midst of London’s Canary Wharf, where the mirrored mass of sunglasses met their equal in the mirrored high-rise office buildings that surrounded the event.

Billed as a kind of live cinema, sets from the film were dotted about the place, letting people sit in a flight training class room or reinact homoerotic locker room scenes. Guilty listening classics came blaring out of speakers and on the palm-tree laden beach there was volleyball, table-tennis and even water sports for the brave.

The experience, from a company who “specialise in creating living, breathing experiences of the cinema”, was all about turning cinema into a fully immersive spectacle, where cult films become a multimedia theme park to be enjoyed by an enthusiastic crowd. And, as the sun went down, that enthusiasm was channelled towards the main event as everyone sat back to enjoy a guilty pleasure.