Charlie Bucket and Elliott
Other than my parents, step-parents, Pink Cat (not a real cat) and my brother and sister, the two most important people in my life growing up were Charlie Bucket and Elliott from E.T. Both blew me for six, knocked me sideways, wouldn’t quite leave my heart and my head.
At the beginning, I wasn’t into books and this must have alarmed my parents. My dad was a publisher, my mum a journalist, my stepmum a copywriter and my stepdad a journalist too. They lived for words – crosswords, puzzles, chatting, what’s your favourite word this week, do you think marshmallow is a good one or too long? What would be a good word to describe those clouds? Ah. ‘Fluffy’ again? OK. That was the car chat. I liked playing shops (till really, really late. Actually, if you gave me a fake till and some plastic pizza right now I’d be happy all day) and never seemed to lose myself in literature.
They’d tried to encourage me, there were weekly trips to the library and small incentives – ‘if you get through this Enid Blyton we might have a choc ice at the weekend’ – but none of it had made the slightest difference. But then, quite by accident, I came across a Roald Dahl book and, bored, picked it up.
I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from start to finish in two days (this was a miracle, I refused to read the back of a cereal packet). I even pretended I was ill so didn’t have to go to school. I was mesmerised by the factory, by his grandparents, Violet and of course Willy Wonka but it was Charlie who never exited my brain. What would Charlie do? I’d think that when I was in maths, in P.E., at home with my siblings. He was so good, so thoroughly decent. He passed a test that I know I would have failed. I’d never been so mesmerised by one human being – he was so selfless, always hungry and cold but never complaining, the epitome of an unassuming hero. I’d talk about him all the time. ‘But why Mum, why would he give the sweet back?’ and ‘Would you, Dad? Would you have done?’ He was deep-down good but also not wet and this, to a ten-year-old, was almost a miracle. Through Charlie, I wanted to read all of Dahl’s works – I inhaled every single one and read James and the Giant Peach over eighteen times. You can test me when we meet.
The first time I went to the cinema, properly out, was to see E.T. It was 1982 and I was ten. I was allowed to bring a friend (Joanna, same class) and it was a seriously big deal. I had a velvet poncho and patent shoes for the trip. Can I just take a moment here to say thanks to my mum as she’s allergic to velvet. Not as in ‘it’s not her favourite fabric’ but she’ll squeal and jump a mile if she touches it. I’m not sure how you feel about birdeating tarantulas or heights – yes, that. She once yelped in a shop so loudly when she accidently touched some on the rails we were immediately asked to leave. But she still let me wear this poncho, my favourite piece of clothing (a therapist would have a field day – how much did I want to punish her?).
It was a Saturday night and she bought us tiny paper bags of popcorn beforehand (literally six kernels, the world has changed). We went into the inky black. As we watched, we were transported. We got lost in a screen bigger than we’d ever seen, in the swells of music, in the sheer scale and drama of the story. Here was this young boy who was going to save an alien. He didn’t look particularly special, he didn’t have a sword (this was a big deal), he wasn’t a brainbox, he was, like Charlie, outwardly quite ordinary. But of course he was deep-down kind and well, good.
Three-quarters of the way through my eyes were scratchy and hot. I didn’t understand. ‘What’s happening?’ I whispered to my mum. ‘Why does the back of my throat hurt? Why am I sad?’
Mum very carefully leant over and, without touching my poncho, explained that the film was making me cry.
Can you imagine? It had never happened to me before. All I’d seen was Tom and Jerry and Playschool – cartoon animal violence and educational cheer. There hadn’t been any feelings. Here was boy ready to risk it all for someone he’d just met.
It instantly became my favourite film of all time. Of course I hadn’t really seen any other films at this point, but do you know what? It still is. For sentimental reasons, because it was my first film and it affected me so much, because the score alone makes me feel like I’m wrapped in velvet, for E.T. himself and specifically because of Elliott – Elliott was the one.
At university, our Rembrandt tutor (a brilliant man called Jean Michel Massing) let us have a week off Dutch Art and said we could write about anything that moved us. I nervously suggested I could write about the similarities between the two soft yet principled heroes in a kids’ book and a Spielberg film. He tutted and said a break from Amsterdam meant a quick 2,000 words on Chagall or Matisse. So I never got to put both their names down on paper at the same time.
Following poor, kind Charlie into that chocolate factory, or seeing Elliott find a friend in E.T. to the sounds of John Williams, really did move me. They showed me another world. They taught ten-year-old me that you don’t have to be outwardly spectacular to be, well, spectacular.