Popcorn

by Ben Elton

  “OK, Bruce,” said Wayne, trying to look calm and collected, “you’re the professional. Why don’t you just explain to people what’s going on?”

  Scarcely able to believe it was real, Bruce addressed Bill’s camera.

  “Um…Hullo, everybody. I’m sorry that your morning’s viewing has been disrupted but I guess you all know what’s going on here. I’m Bruce Delamitri, the film-maker. The two women you see manacled behind me are Farrah, my wife, and our daughter, Velvet. The wounded woman on the floor to my right is Brooke Daniels, the model—”

  Brooke, whose condition had stabilized somewhat with Velvet’s help, croaked in protest.

  “—I’m sorry, Brooke Daniels, the actress. Anyway, we are all prisoners of Wayne Hudson and his partner, Scout, whom you see sitting beside me.”

  “Hey,” said Wayne, with nervous bravado.

  “Hello, America,” Scout mumbled, her head still buried in her hands.

  “So, introductions over. Let’s come to the point.” Incredibly, Bruce was beginning to enjoy himself. Here was his chance, the chance he had dodged the night before, the chance to take on the censors and reactionaries. And oh, such a chance. The Oscars podium paled in comparison to his current platform. What an opportunity! To face down two vicious, heavily armed murderers on live TV and bring them to some understanding of their personal responsibility for their actions. Bruce glowed with excitement. This would be a genuine moment in the social history of the United States, and he was to be the mouthpiece. He must be careful, he must concentrate. There must be no ‘legs of fire’ this time.

  “I make films in which actors and stunt artists pretend to kill people,” he said. “Wayne and Scout actually kill people. Not long ago, they decapitated my security guard, and they shot my agent, Karl Brezner, dead in this very room — his corpse lies in my kitchen. They have also seriously wounded Ms Daniels here. They are, of course, the notorious Mall Murderers and have over the last few weeks slaughtered numerous other innocents. Is that a fair summary, Wayne?”

  Wayne thought for a moment. “Well, Bruce, my sweet momma brought me up a Christian, so I guess I know that none of us is truly innocent, because even tiny babies are born with the original sin upon them, passed down to us all from Adam.”

  “Is that why you shoot people? Because they’re sinners?” Bruce enquired, a sense of huge intellectual superiority welling up inside him.

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know why I shoot people. Partly, I guess, because it’s so easy.”

  “Well, innocent or not, I think we can all at least agree that Wayne and Scout have made something of a habit of shooting people they don’t know.”

  “That is the case,” Wayne admitted. “We sure do that.”

  “So what has all this to do with me?” Bruce continued, sounding more like a schoolmaster every minute. “Well, Wayne and Scout have broken into my house and attacked my friends because they claim that I am in part responsible for their actions. They contend that in some way my work ‘inspired’ them to do what they do. Now, I of course utterly refute this puerile concept—”

  “We never said you’d inspired us, Mr Delamitri.” Scout’s head finally emerged from her hands. “Now don’t you go putting words into our mouths.”

  “Forgive me, I thought that was what this whole debate was about,” Bruce replied.

  “Daddy, don’t be so patronizing,” Velvet cried out from the lampstand.

  Wayne considered Bruce’s answer. “No, Bruce, Scout’s right. ‘Inspired’ is the wrong word altogether. I mean, it ain’t like we saw a guy and a girl shooting people in your movie and said, “Hey, I never thought of that. That’s what we should be doing.” ”

  “So my work does not inspire you? Then I’m confused. I cannot imagine what other point you make when you seek to equate me with your crimes.”

  Wayne knew when he was being talked down to. “It ain’t a direct thing, Bruce,” he answered sharply. “We ain’t morons. We didn’t walk straight out of Ordinary Americans and shoot the popcorn seller—”

  Scout had been brought up to be honest. She couldn’t let this go by. “Actually, Wayne, we did.”

  “Once,” Wayne conceded. “We did that once, that’s all. I must have seen Ordinary Americans fifty times, and only one time did I walk out and shoot the popcorn seller. What is more, that wasn’t because of no movie, it was because the stupid bastard in question was a popcorn seller who would not sell us any popcorn.”

  In the control truck the producer nearly gave birth in horror. “For Christ’s sake!” he screamed into Kirsten’s ear. “Can’t you tell that dumb fucker to watch his dirty fucking mouth? It is ten thirty in the fucking morning!”

  “Excuse me, Mr Hudson,” Kirsten interrupted nervously, “could you possibly moderate your language? We’re picking up a massive audience share but adult dialogue is going to cause problems. The children’s channel has already gone back to Sesame Street.”

  “Yes, Wayne,” Scout scolded, “you watch your mouth, now.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, honey, and I ‘pologize to you good people out there, specially if you’re watching with young people. But you know, what I’m describing here was a very aggravating situation.”

  “Yes, honey, it was.” Scout turned to the camera as if she was speaking to a girl friend. “We’d just come on out of the movie and I said to Wayne to get me some popcorn and Wayne said, “Sure, honey pie. If that’s what you want I’ll get you a big bucket.” But the popcorn seller said he only sold popcorn before the movie, and it was after the movie so I couldn’t have none.”

  “He was there, man.” Wayne appealed to the camera. “With the popcorn and the buckets and a scoop and a hat on and all that stuff, but he would not sell me none.”

  “So you shot him?” Bruce enquired.

  “Yes, sir. Yes I did. I shot that boy, because it ain’t as if the world’s short of assholes, now is it? The world is not going to miss one asshole more or less. Pardon me for my language.” He addressed this last to the camera.

  In the control truck, there was furious debate about whether they could continue to broadcast such an intensely unpredictable situation live. Murder and mayhem were one thing, bad language was quite another.

  Eventually it was decided that they could not censor the news while it was happening, that they had a duty to broadcast. They would, however, try to bleep out the strongest bits of Wayne’s language.

  On the numerous screens in the truck and the many millions around the nation, Bruce was still trying to get to the core of Wayne’s argument. “So you shot the popcorn seller because he was an asshole? Not, and this is an important point, because you’d just seen a movie full of death and destruction?”

  Wayne sounded almost weary. “Bruce, like I say, you are taking all this far too literally. Does anybody shoot a popcorn seller in Ordinary Americans?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “You don’t believe damn right. Fifty-seven people get shot in Ordinary Americans, did you know that?”

  “I knew it was a lot.”

  “Wayne counted them,” Scout said proudly.

  “Well, of course I counted them, honey pie, or how would I know? They don’t put it up on the titles do they? Like, um, that damn film you liked, Marrying and Dying or something — there was some faggot in a kilt who should have died a whole lot earlier as far as I’m concerned, like before the damn film started.”

  “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

  “That’s right. Well, Bruce here did not call his movie Fifty-Seven Murders, Plus People Taking Drugs and Screwing Each Other, did he?”

  “I guess not, honey.”

  “Then don’t talk dumb in front of the American people. I counted who got shot in your movie, Bruce. Cops got shot, drug dealers got shot, pregnant teenage girls got shot, an old lady got one straight through the colostomy bag — man, that was a great scene, Bruce. How do you think up that stuff?” Wayne turned to the camera to explain his ent
husiasm. “There’s a shoot-out, right? And this sweet little old lady takes a stray and guess what, man? It goes through her colostomy bag, and do you know what she says? She says, ‘Shit.’ That’s all, just ‘Shit.’ I mean, man, is that a good line or what? Everyone in the movie house just cracks up. Pardon my language but it was in the movie and Bruce here did get an Oscar for it, so I guess it’s art.”

  “I’m glad you liked it,” Bruce said woodenly.

  “I sure did, but what I’m saying is, no popcorn seller got shot.”

  Bruce was getting irritated. “So what’s your point? I thought you were claiming diminished responsibility on account of my influence over you. Isn’t that what all this is about?”

  “Who was the guy who rang the bell and the dogs dribbled? Pancake or whatever. I saw a thing about him on Timewatch.”

  “I think you mean Pavlov,” said Bruce.

  “That’s right, Pavlov. Well, you ain’t no Pavlov, Bruce, and we ain’t no dribbling dogs. There ain’t nothing specific here. I am talking generally. I’m saying that you make killing cool.”

  Bruce leapt at the point. So far his heroic battle had not been going quite as splendidly as he’d hoped. He had allowed himself to be sidetracked. He had to regain the initiative.

  “No, Wayne. I make going to the movies cool. Let me put it plainly. You are sick,” He addressed the camera directly. “These two people are sick. They have erred from the acceptable norm. They have diseased and unbalanced minds. Did I unbalance them? Certainly not. Did society? I doubt it. No, they are simply sick. There have always been murderers and sadists. Long before there was TV and movies, people got killed and raped. Now—”

  Bruce was on a roll, winding up to utterly discredit these sad nobodies with the massive force of his intellectual power. Unfortunately, Wayne interrupted him.

  “Tell me something, Bruce. I’ve always wanted to know, do you get a hard-on when you make that stuff?” He said this with a wink at the camera. “I’ll bet you do, boy, ‘cos I admit it just thrills me. What’s more, I look round the movie theatre and I can see all the other guys and they’re just loving it too. Every one of them is just itching to haul out a gun and blast away. Of course, they don’t do it, but I can see them licking their lips and wishing, just the same.”

  “That’s the point, Wayne, nobody does anything.” Bruce was slightly shaken. He wanted to keep the debate on what Wayne did, not on what he himself did. “It’s just a story.”

  “It ain’t no story,” Scout protested. “First time I saw Ordinary Americans, I said to Wayne to tell me when the blood and gore happened so I could close my eyes. I guess I had my eyes closed just about the whole picture.”

  “That’s right,” Wayne agreed. “Ain’t no room for a story in your pictures, Bruce. A story is like…um…so the dude kills the dude because of, like, this reason and that reason, and afterwards he goes away and does some other stuff. A story is, well a story — stuff happens. Showing the dude killing the dude, in slow mo’, now, that’s a fantasy.”

  Bruce knew this was madness, nonsense. He made movies. These two killed people. There was no connection, and yet somehow he could not nail the debate down. It was slipping away.

  “To sane people, it’s a diversion,” Bruce said. “It’s an entertainment, perhaps not a very edifying one, but an entertainment none the less. It’s only a fantasy to people who are sick in the head like you and your girlfriend here.”

  “So we’re sick, are we?”

  Wayne shifted his gun on his lap but Bruce was determined to press the point. “You’re sicker than a rabid dog.”

  From behind the couch in the back of Bill’s picture Velvet cried out in anguish. “Daddy, be careful. Don’t make him angry.”

  In the control truck they cheered. They loved it when the cute little girl chipped in. Now that was television.

  “Sneak a close-up on the daughter,” the producer whispered into his microphone, but Bill ignored him. As far as Bill was concerned, Wayne was producing the show by the authority of the gun he had on his lap.

  Bruce attempted to reassure his daughter. “He isn’t going to kill you, honey. We’re on live TV. He’s pleading for his life.”

  “If I’m sick, Bruce, and you said I was,” Wayne said, “what does that make you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Well, don’t your movies exploit my sickness? Don’t you use the terrible, sick, mental condition that afflicts psychopaths like me, just to give people a thrill? You never saw no Aids or cancer movie where the sick people were the bad guys, did you? But that’s the way it is in your movies. You want to know what I am, Bruce? I am the exploitably ill.”

  Things were beginning to go horribly wrong. The question seemed to be getting more complex. Bruce had set out to shoot down gloriously a fatuous contention, but his target was moving, putting up smokescreens.

  “Perhaps you’re suggesting that you committed your crimes as a protest against my treatment of psychotics as a class?”

  It was a weak response. Bruce knew that this was not what Wayne had suggested at all. He was trying to buy time with smart comments, in order to collect his thoughts.

  “I don’t know what I’m suggesting,” Wayne replied, “except I’m suggesting that it ain’t only the criminals who create a culture of violence.”

  “It’s only the criminals who commit the crimes. Violent people create a violent society.” This was the point Bruce wanted to make. He needed to stick with that and not allow himself to be diverted. “It is violent people who create a violent society,” he repeated, firmly and loudly.

  “Are you sure?” Scout suddenly shouted. “Are you absolutely sure about that? Are you one hundred per cent absolutely sure that no matter how many times you show a sexy murder to a rock and roll soundtrack you have no effect on the people who watch? Because if there’s even one shred of doubt in your mind, then what right have you to make your movies?”

  “I am an artist. I can not ask myself that question.” Bruce regretted it the moment he’d said it. It was true, but that wasn’t the point. He knew that claims of intellectual immunity would be unlikely to impress in the heartlands.

  “Why? Why can’t you? If you won’t take responsibility for your actions, why should we take responsibility for ours?”

  Damnation, where did this bitch suddenly learn to talk?

  “Because my actions are peaceable and within the law.”

  It was weak. Bruce knew it, she knew it.

  “A real man answers to his conscience, not to the law.”

  “And I am perfectly happy to do that. Is your conscience clear?”

  Wayne laughed. “Of course, it’s not clear, man. We kill people we’ve never met.”

  “Yes, like every king and president there ever was,” Scout added.

  Bruce felt his bowels almost move with tension. This woman was pulling out red herrings like a demented fishmonger. Christ, if they were going to spread the debate that wide, he was finished. To Bruce’s intense relief, Wayne himself headed this one off. “Now I’ve told you before I don’t want to hear that kind of Communistic bull Scout. I do not respect much in this world but I do respect the American way. And in my opinion things’d be a whole lot better if the president was to shoot a few more people, ‘specially them damn A-rab towel heads who keep burnin’ Ol’ Glory.”

  “Excuse me,” Kirsten said nervously, looking up from her equipment. “Um, this is all very interesting, of course, and the producers are delighted, they’re very happy in control…it’s just that the ratings are beginning to drop — see here, it’s all displayed on my monitor. The chief wants to know if it would be OK to record this and then edit it for the evening news?”

  “No need for that, Kirsten. I have an idea. Hey, America!” Wayne shouted at the camera. “Listen, phone your friends, tell them all to tune in, because in ninety seconds I’m going to shoot Farrah Delamitri. In one minute and one half, the wife of the guy who just got the Oscar gets shot dead liv
e!”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Farrah screamed. Velvet screamed. Even Kirsten thought about protesting, but then she remembered the sacred duty of the news-gatherer: never intervene, not even if the news is being created for your benefit.

  “Please, Wayne, don’t,” Bruce said.

  “She’s my Mom!” Velvet sobbed.

  Outside, in the command truck, Chief Cornell was in agony. Should he send his SWAT teams in now? If he did, there would certainly be bloodshed. If he didn’t, likewise.

  Oh, how he wished that somebody else would take responsibility.

  Inside the mansion, Wayne had got up and was studying the ratings on Kirsten’s computer screen.

  “They’re climbing, aren’t they?”

  “Yes they are,” Kirsten replied, “but none the less my producer is saying please don’t kill the woman.”

  Farrah sobbed, pulling pathetically at her manacled hand.

  In the control truck a lively debate was in progress.

  “We have to terminate the broadcast,” some were saying. “He’s feeding off it. It’s creating his crimes.”

  “He killed plenty of people before there were any cameras to play to,” others contended. “We can’t turn off. We don’t choose the news. We don’t have a right to censor national events just because they’re unattractive.”

  “But if he’s creating the news for us?”

  “We can’t take responsibility for his actions.”

  “Can we take responsibility for our own?”

  The cameras stayed on, as no one had doubted for a moment that they would, and the ratings continued to climb.

  Inside the lounge Wayne showed off his guns to the camera. “Hurry up now, y’all,” he said. “You don’t want to miss it, do ya?”

  When the ninety seconds ran out Wayne shot Farrah dead.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  OK, hit it,” said Chief Cornell, and silently, through the doors, the windows and even the roof, the SWAT teams began to enter Bruce’s house.