"I went by to see Daniel this morning," I said, pausing to gauge her reaction, half-expecting her to say So I heard, and if you don't leave right now, I'm calling the police. She retained her usual wide-eyed crazy-lady stare, so I pressed on. "He told me I could come by and pick up his digital video camera. He's letting me borrow it."
I heard myself suck down a deep, nervous breath. The next few seconds were crucial.
April's stunned disbelief hung in the air like a swarm of gnats. Daniel would do that?
I opened my mouth to embellish my audacious claim, then realized that another word might be all it took to tear the whole ruse apart. The Chihuahua's tinny bark grew to thunderous volume in my head as the moments passed.
"Okay," April said, pushing the screen door open. "Um, come on in. Shut up, Choo-Choo." The little dog ran a few feet away as I stepped inside, then spun and began barking at me again.
The atrocities committed upon the inside of the house were even more heinous than Daniel's rape of the front yard. He had completely gutted the place, replacing its funky 50s-era charm with the pre-fab plastic-wood splendor usually reserved for doublewide mobile homes. April's decorating sense was the Tex Watson to Daniel's Charlie Manson, fulfilling the evil potential of the stricken house. I vowed to move no further into the place, and April seemed happy with my silent decision.
"I'll have to dig it out – we haven't used it in months," she said, starting off down the hall.
She shot a nervous look back over her shoulder at me just before disappearing from view, but Choo-Choo remained vigilant, barking and shivering a safe distance from where I stood.
"Make sure you get the digital camera," I said. At the sound of my voice, Choo-Choo shut up, did a little pirouette, then resumed his yapping.
"I'm not sure which one that is," April said from the direction of the bedroom. "Maybe I should call Daniel –"
"Just bring 'em both, I'll pick it out," I interrupted. Christ, what if she was already on the phone with him back there? I should've gone with her.
"Well," she said, unsure.
A few seconds passed. I crouched, sending Choo-Choo into a tizzy, then extended my hand and waggled a finger at the diminutive beast. He instantly shut his yap and scampered over to me, licked my finger once, then ran back to his post and fired up the bark again.
I stood, accompanied by a rush of exhilaration, as April returned from the back of the house, a camera bag in each hand. She set them down on the couch and opened the bags, peering in with a look of confusion.
"This one says 'digital' on it –"
"That would be the one," I quickly said. "Thanks." I seized the bag containing my prize and started for the door. As soon as my back was turned, Choo-Choo took the opportunity to bite my ankle.
"Choo-Choo!" April cheerfully squealed, pleased by her dog's good sense.
"See you later," I said, the screen door banging shut behind me.
April watched me trot to the car as Choo-Choo voiced his distaste. I knew the minute the door was shut, she'd be on the phone to my brother, questioning his sanity.
I never would've believed you could lay rubber in a Grand Marquis before.
35
"Mom, he stole my damn video camera!" Daniel wailed.
He had showed up on Mom's doorstep only moments after I made it home myself, so I was right about April making that phone call. Now my long-suffering mother found herself in the middle of the whole freakish scenario.
"I didn't steal your camera, I kidnapped it," I said. For the first time, I felt as if I held the position of power in an argument with Daniel. "And if you don't meet my demands, you'll get the thing back a piece at a time."
"Demands?" Daniel's voice had gone all high-pitched and frantic, making him sound like Daffy Duck. "I'll call the cops, you little asshole!"
Mom took a drag on her cigarette, letting the smoke drift out as she spoke. "You're not going to call the cops on your brother, Daniel."
Mom always remained cool in harrowing situations – once, when I was little, the vacuum cleaner she was using burst into flames. While I screamed and ran around in circles, she casually walked to the wall socket and unplugged the melting Hoover, then put the fire out with a box of baking soda.
"Goddammit, Mom – you always let him get away with everything because he's the baby," Daniel whined, pacing.
Mom just cocked an eyebrow at him; from my vantage point, the message was clear.
"He's trying to get something done before he goes back to LA," Mom said. "I don't understand why it would put you out so much to help him a little."
"I'd be happy to help him out if it was something real," Daniel argued, finishing another lap of the living room. "I'd give him a job if I thought he'd show up for work. It's this stupid bullshit he constantly wastes his time on that I won't have any part of."
"Who the hell do you think makes movies?" I asked. "Where do you think those people come from?"
Daniel's pacing came to a halt, signaling choice words to follow. "Those are people with talent, not thirty-four-year-old losers living off their mothers."
Never in my entire life have I seen a look of rage like the one that twisted my mom's face at that instant. For a frightening moment, I thought she was going to fling herself from her chair and attack Daniel, perhaps scorch one of his eyeballs out with the smoldering tip of her cigarette.
"Ooo – I've about had it with you," she barked, legs bobbing up and down with barely-contained anger.
Daniel actually took a step back, his eyes widening. I was immobile, stunned. So much for remaining cool.
"First of all, Alvin does not 'live off' of me," Mom continued. "He pays most of his bills himself. I help him out when he needs it – and if you'll pull your head out of your ass, you might remember that there were many times I did the same for you."
"I didn't say –" Daniel began.
"I'm not through yet," Mom said, cutting him off. "Secondly, don't you dare imply that he's untalented. Have you ever bothered to read anything he's written or watched the movie he wrote?"
"Uh, let's not get carried away," I said, fearing the possibility of having to sit through Terror Town with Daniel at my side.
"Shut up," Mom snapped at me. Thankfully, she returned her attention to Daniel, bringing a waggling finger to bear. "He's spent his whole damn life on this movie business, and he's actually made good on that. How many people do you know who've stuck to something from the time they were little kids?"
"I started my own business," Daniel meekly pointed out.
"With money I loaned you," Mom said.
"Well, I'm paying you back."
"And when Alvin is successful, he'll pay me back, too," Mom said. Noticing the wavering two-inch long ash on her cigarette, she flicked it into the ashtray and settled back in her chair, her fury spent. "Besides, how do you know that what he's doing with your video camera isn't the first step in that?"
Daniel allowed himself the beginnings of a sneer before thinking better of it. To be honest, I thought the sneer was kind of appropriate, but I wasn't going to let on.
"Now I don't want to hear any more of this shit," Mom concluded. "Go back to work and leave your brother alone. Both of you."
Daniel forced air from his nostrils, an angry horse. "How long are you gonna have the camera?" he asked me.
"Daniel," Mom warned.
He threw his arms up in surrender. "I just want to know when I can expect it back, is all."
"A few days, maybe a week," I said. "I've used these things a lot. I'll be careful with it."
"Damn right, you will."
"I could make you give me that camera as part of the money you owe me," Mom said, not taking her eyes off the TV.
"Jesus, Mom!" Daniel griped. He left the house empty-handed.
I started making phone calls.
36
I didn't have to suffer through it with Daniel, but I wound up watching Terror Town that night regardless. It was Butters's idea;
he thought everybody needed to see my previous work before we started on The Blue Man. Subjecting them to a reeking shitfest was probably not the best way to inspire confidence in my abilities, but I could always blame Terror Town's shortcomings on the director.
The ill-fated movie reared its ugly head immediately after I was hired at Big Planet Entertainment. Mort Berg, the man behind Big Planet, was a notorious check-bouncer who somehow managed to remain one step ahead of his creditors – and the law; at one point the sheriff showed up looking for him, but nobody could specifically recall his whereabouts (I hid in the restroom, knowing I'd break down the minute the cop's withering gaze fell upon me).
In his ruthless effort to never give the human race a break from the cinematic sewage his company puked out, Berg had taken to shooting most of his movies in Romania. If life itself weren't cheap there, the locations and crew certainly were, and it was a regular occurrence for some of the more lonely American crewmembers to gleefully return home with sloe-eyed Romanian wives on their arms; sadly, these tended to run off after getting their first taste of LA nightlife (and, one presumes, the LA stud-pool).
Fellow Big Planet employee Walt Patrick had been pestering Berg to let him direct a feature, and apparently seeing an opportunity for a sizeable tax write-off, Berg agreed. Always a touchstone of creativity, the bossman told Walt that his movie would be called Terror Town – as there had already been a poster made for a feature by that name – and he'd be shooting on digital video in Romania.
At first, I refused to write the thing, despite Walt's pleas. Then I started thinking about that two grand and all the potatoes I'd be able to buy. Walt and I took a meeting – as they say – with Berg and pitched our take on Terror Town (keeping in mind the Romanian locations): Our hero would be a sullen vampire who wanders into the little town of Halliday in New England, certain that he can feast on the hamlet's unsuspecting citizens with impunity. Then – and Walt and I really put on our Hollywood Pitch Guy act for Berg at this point – the vampire discovers the town is inhabited by something far worse than himself. What that might be, we had no idea; Berg fell for it, however, and within an hour, I was signing the contract to write the picture.
I hadn't figured on the angst-fueled case of writer's block that losing Alison had left in my path, however. Every time I'd sit down at my laptop and stare at that blank screen, I was overwhelmed with torturous thoughts of Alison locked in a musky, grease-slathered embrace with her new fella. The first four days passed, and I had only a title page and an establishing shot to show for it – and to make matters worse, Berg had yet to fork over my thousand-dollar advance, and the bills were piling up.
Figuring money in hand might put words on paper, I called Susan Davis, the head of development at Big Planet, and complained about not getting paid. She told me the check was "being processed," but I'd seen enough in my short time at Big Planet to know that her words actually meant "What are you going to do about it, little man?"
I told her I wasn't writing another damn word until that advance check was in my bank account. I watched TV the rest of the evening. The next morning when I arrived at Big Planet for my usual gofer duties, Susan called me into her office. The check was on her desk.
"I want you to know this isn't a result of your blackmail," she said.
"Do you consider it blackmail to expect your paycheck on time?" I asked.
"This is different," she said.
Yeah. Screenwriters should be grateful to take a large, knobby tree branch up their asses.
While it didn't entirely prevent me from agonizing over the degree to which Alison's new boyfriend was surely more sexually adept than I, that thousand bucks helped – and knowing that wangling the follow-up check out of Big Planet would be about as easy as skateboarding to the moon with a wildebeest on my back, I sure as hell didn't want to spend too much time on the thing, so I bore down on it as best I could under the circumstances and managed to crank out a first draft in less than two weeks.
It could've been much worse, I suppose. Especially taking into account that, even after finishing the damn thing, I still wasn't sure what the horror our vampire hero discovers really amounted to. I copped out by trying to be "Lovecraftian," which basically meant I avoided describing the things in too much detail other than to say they lurked in the shadows and were misshapen.
Walt – God bless him – loved it. He and I handed the script over to Berg the next afternoon.
"This is the greatest," Berg pronounced, turning pages like he was flipping through a girlie magazine. Apparently, the physical act of holding a script was enough to assure him of its quality. He only paused on the last page, looking at the upper right-hand corner. "Eighty-eight pages," he noted. "Perfect."
Then he dropped the bombshell: Romania was out. Big Planet was strapped for cash; the entire budget of Terror Town would be $22,000 – and what did we think of shooting at Berg's own house in Hollywood? (Meaning, of course, that Berg could charge the company a location fee for the use of his home. No slouch, this one!). You could almost smell the shit in Walt's pants.
After some hasty re-writing, Walt shot the movie in nine days. I wasn't even able to hang out on the set, thanks to my post as head cheeseburger-fetcher around the Big Planet offices. Since I sat on my ass for most of those nine days, I suspected I was being punished for insisting on being paid (and while we're on the subject, my second check was only three weeks late; a speed unheard of, in light of Big Planet's history).
So when Butters suggested we all convene at his house to watch the flick, you can imagine the horror I was faced with: first, obviously, the embarrassment of unspooling Terror Town in the presence of others; second: Butters's house? Jesus Christ.
Overcome with images of the cannibal family's dwelling in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I tried to beg off by telling Butters we might not be able to find my little movie on the local video shelves.
"Already got it, my friend," the big man boomed. "It was right there under the Ts."
I was forced to submit.
At seven o'clock, Taylor, Mia and I were to meet at Butters's house. He lived on the south side of town, on the outskirts of an area referred to by locals as "the war zone." It was a part of Albuquerque where one could literally cross the street from a decent neighborhood and find themselves in a gang-ridden, desolate near-ghetto. Terror Town, indeed.
I took Daniel's video camera with me, in case he attempted a rescue strike while I was out. To my surprise, Mia showed up on time, pulling up as I was getting out of Mom's car. She gave me another warm, yielding hug, which I was forced to break by pretending I was about to drop the camera – couldn't have her accosted by the expanding protuberance in my trousers, after all. We walked to the door together. I don't think she noticed that I held the camera in front of my crotch the whole time.
Taylor was already there; Butters had picked him up earlier and they had eaten dinner together. Once the shock from that had passed, I began to take in my surroundings.
The little two-bedroom house bore a startling resemblance to Butters's office, right down to the Bruce Lee posters and photos on the walls. The funk, of course, was all-pervasive, but oddly enough, I seemed to be getting used to it. Every flat surface was occupied by some sort of project Boone was working on. When I saw the dorm refrigerator and microwave, I realized the house was his office.
"I had to shut the storefront down," Butters said. "Emptied it out today. I'm still in business, though."
It occurred to me that automatic doors and an array of cute register-girls were often wasted on the wrong people.
Taylor, sprawled on the incredibly long sofa – the thing could've accommodated Andre the Giant and then some – spoke around the straw in his Lotaburger cup. "I told Boone we'd help him out with a job tomorrow night after we finish shooting."
"Tomorrow night?" I asked, more surprised by Taylor's willingness to work with Butters than concerned about what sort of "Improvements" the big man might be making after dar
k.
"I've gotta help some people move," Butters explained, tossing a bag of popcorn into the microwave. "It's not a big job – they're just moving from one apartment to another in the same building, but it works out great for us, because they both work all day."
"All right, then," I said. I nudged Mia, smiling. "You don't have to help."
She squeezed my arm.
As the popcorn began to do its thing, the smell blended with Butters's own to create an almost circus-like atmosphere of animals and food. The big man urged us to take a seat, and we moved to the ample couch. Settling in, I found myself nearly swallowed up by a massive indentation in the cushions.
"Oof," I said, sinking from sight.
"That's my spot," Butters chuckled. "My big ass kind of made its own nest."
I tried to leave the nest, but couldn't get enough leverage. Finally, Taylor had to get up and yank me from the cavernous trough, and I moved to a less-personalized part of the couch – next to Mia, of course.
"Hey, you took my place," Taylor griped.
I shot a sidewise glance at Mia. Catching on, Taylor plopped down at the far end of the sofa.
Butters dumped the bag of popcorn into a bowl, handed out sodas, and fired up the TV. I swear to God, the whole scene went into slow motion as he inserted Terror Town into the VCR.
"This is so cool," Mia enthused, actually wriggling alongside me.
I swallowed hard, torn between unease and arousal.
The Big Planet Entertainment logo welled up, faded away. In an establishing shot lifted from another movie, a pair of shadows stole into a Romanian castle. There – or more accurately, on our cheap set built on Big Planet's tiny insert stage – our vampire hero lay in his coffin, waiting for the last rays of the sun to fade so that he might stalk his prey. The two shadowy figures – vampire killers – approached the coffin, carefully sliding back the lid, only to have the vampire spring from his unholy slumber and rip the nearest man's throat out in a fountain of gore.
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