You’re sitting there silently mouthing each line of dialogue as the characters speak it. You know every glance, every nuance, every word and every feeling that so encapsulates this perfect movie. Maybe it’s the one you saw that time at the cinema on the first date together. Maybe it’s the one that you watch every Christmas because it brings the happy memories flooding back.
Maybe it’s Casablanca. As you sit there, you’re revelling in every moment, from Humphrey Bogart’s line to Sam the piano player: “You played it for her, you can play it for me.” The end approaches and you’re welling up inside, grabbing the sofa cushion tightly, as the plane takes off carrying Ingrid Bergman into the arms of undeserving Victor Laszlo.
Then it’s time for that line. That line.
As Bogart and Claude Rains walk off into the mist and the music swells, forcing you to bite your lip even harder, Bogie says: “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Only he doesn’t.
He gets as far as saying: “Louis, I think…” and then some fake-tanned tosser holding up a can of oven cleaner, and with a grin so white you just want to smash his face in, blunders on to the screen wanting you to buy his product. The temptation to hurl both your beer bottle and the bowl of peanuts through the TV is overwhelming.
This is Spanish commercial television.
Spanish TV is now digital, which means that although virtually every foreign film is dubbed into Spanish, you can actually press a button and switch it back to English. Which is good.
But for some unfathomable reason, some reason that defies common decency, the people who schedule the advert breaks for Spanish TV don’t wait for the end of a scene, not even the end of a line, they just ram the things in like a policeman bashing in a rioter’s head with his truncheon.
Why??? At what point did they decide this? I mean, they must have decided to do it like that because the adverts don’t happen by themselves. Which pea-brained, backward, pathetic, friendless excuse for a human being sat down and said: “I know, let’s jam these adverts in at the most sensitive, climactic moments, just so we can piss off the viewers. That’ll definitely get them to want to buy the stuff we’re advertising!”
You see, here’s the thing. Spanish adverts are not like British adverts. First off, it’s common knowledge that Spanish TV adverts go on for ages – sometimes 15 minutes at a time! Now, this I’ve got used to. But what makes me foam at the mouth, what makes me want to hunt these advert schedulers down and force feed them their own shit, is the fact that their adverts cut perfect scenes in half, come two minutes after a new programme or film has started – yes, really! – or two minutes before it ends! There’s virtually never an ad break between programmes, like you’d expect in the normal world. You just plough from one programme to the next - even the film credits are cut - without so much as a “Thank you ma’am. That was delightful. We must have dinner soon. I’ll call you.”
Imagine watching that climactic scene in The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader says: “Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father.” Luke: “He told me enough. He told me you killed him.” Darth Vader: “No….I am your father.”
“Fuck that”, think the advert schedulers, “Whack an advert for tampons in the middle of that speech, right at the point where he’s just about to say “…..your father”.”
Maybe it’s Gone With The Wind and Scarlett O’Hara is pleading with Rhett Butler asking him where she should go, what should she do. And he, of course, doesn’t say: “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”, because some moron with bongos crashes on to the screen trying to sell you car insurance.
Don’t the advertisers themselves have something to say about this? I mean, don’t they think people would be more inclined to buy their crap razors and underarm deodorants if the adverts didn’t dump all over their viewing pleasure as much?
As I sit there in front of the TV, seething, imagining what I would say to the advert schedulers if I could confront them, two iconic lines of dialogue come to mind; Firstly, Peter Finch in Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more.”
But what I’d really like to say to them is what axe-wielding Jack Nicholson says in The Shining: “I'm just gonna bash your brains in. I'm gonna bash 'em right the fuck in."
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