Songfacts®:

• The lyrics, written by Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, refer to Romeo and Juliet (named after the famous Shakespearian characters), who are separately readying themselves for their date at a cinema show with Romeo hoping for a sexual conquest that night. Banks recalled: "The idea of using two words, 'Romeo' and 'Juliet' actually was Peter (Gabriel)'s. I thought it should be more impersonal just using 'young clerk' or something, and I wasn't too sure about it to begin with."
• Tony Banks: "'Cinema Show' was an example of extended playing. Mike, Phil and I were in a room together and Mike came out with a riff in 7/8, which had a great feel, and by restricting his playing a little he allowed me to make the chord changes... so with Mike just hitting the bottom three or four strings of the guitar I managed to write endless bits on the rhythm. Just before we came to do the album, we put them in order and the final section of Cinema Show developed."
• The lyrics make a number of oblique references to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Eliot's modernist poem has been an influence on a variety of musicians. The British pop duo The Pet Shop Boys, Oregon alternative singer-songwriter M. Ward and Massachusetts metal band Shadows Fall have all drawn on this work.
• A performance from a show in Paris on June 23, 1976 was used on the band's 1977 live album, Seconds Out. That show was part of Genesis' Trick of the Tail tour, which featured Bill Bruford on drums; Bruford's distinctive style and sound is clearly recognizable at the start of the track.
  
  Bruford also appeared on the live medley "It"/"Watchers of the Sky" released on the fourth side of the 1982 live album Three Sides Live, which was recorded in Scotland, also in 1976.