“You really haven’t seen his movies, huh?”
“Thank you all so much for coming,” Holtz said. “Okay, okay, settle down, thanks, let’s begin—is that all the applause you’ve got? I’m just messing with you. But really, is that it? I guess the rumours were true: UBC are the real clappers in this city.” The man was no amateur. In just a few sentences the crowd had surrendered themselves to his will, cheering themselves into a frenzy. Even some of the lukewarm film students were getting into the act.
Holtz’s manager scurried around in the background, doing last-minute checks on the complicated knot of cables running out of a laptop he’d placed on a table. He tucked a remote control in his client’s shirt pocket.
“It’s so great to be with you today,” Holtz continued. “Now, your lovely prof, she brought me in here to talk about some of the movies I’ve made at SFU. Did you guys know I started out going to school here, way back in, what was it, 2000?” He drummed his fingers on the lectern, squinting at the old memories. “It was great. Really great. But then I got caught up in that big Hollywood machine, and, well, you know how it goes from there. Who has time for midterms when you can hang out with someone as beautiful as Keri Russell all day? This was before she chopped her hair off, mind you. Back when she was still a stone fox. Bookish, like some of the girls here, actually, and with this insane bone structure. Cheekbones are real important down in Hollyweird. Speaking of weird? I actually flew down there for the first time on September 10. Just before the attacks. Now doesn’t that just put it all in perspective …”
Alex glanced at Tyson and Keith, who were both utterly enthralled. Chip kept looking to Keith, a little confused, then back to the podium. Tracy was scribbling furiously in her notebook.
“Don’t tell me you’re using any of this garbage,” Alex hissed.
“Context,” she said.
Holtz was spinning every moment of his time in Los Angeles into the stuff of beer commercials and tabloid escapism: Hollywood as one long, impossibly sunny boulevard, where famous people stood shoulder to shoulder with one another, and where even the guy running the taco truck used to be in the Shins.
Then he sighed wistfully (a little too wistfully, Alex thought—
this whole thing reeked of schtick) and pulled a small deck of flash cards out of his pocket, bound with a rubber band.
“Now, seriously, folks, let’s get down to business.” Holtz slid the band off and kept the cards in his line of sight. “The first time I ever came to SFU was for Fang City, back in the summer of ‘98. I was heading into grade twelve, and I didn’t get to see much of the sights around here, what with being a werewolf and all.” Everyone chuckled obediently. “Night shoots, am I right? I spent five hours in that makeup chair every day. But the funny thing is that even then I could tell this school was something special. It had that pop, you know? It was different. Unique. I remember thinking, ‘How is it that this place isn’t world-famous? It’s got so much character.’ And I still think that. What SFU needs—what it deserves—is a motivated group of people who are willing to make that leap. To bridge that gap. It deserves a government that cares. A government that recognizes and embraces our uniqueness. Right now I simply don’t think we have that.”
Tracy stopped writing notes and looked up. The cluster of people at the back, the people Alex had pegged as other SFSS hopefuls, started muttering amongst themselves and glaring daggers at Holtz. It looked as if they knew this was coming.
“Anyway, 1998, we shoot the pilot for Fang City,” Holtz continued, returning with a wink to the cue cards. “My character, Vince Mountains, was stuck in the evil doctor’s medical lab, along with all the other hybrid prototypes. So I didn’t have much in the way of actual lines. I was hardly onscreen at all, actually, but they still needed me around to do some vocal stuff. Meanwhile I’d fallen in love—or what I thought was love, at the time—with the lady who did my make-up. So let’s just say I was keeping myself busy.”
The class chuckled again, faux-knowingly. But Tyson started looking bored and restless. The politicians at the back kept grumbling. It was a strange moment. Who’d have thought that this was the place where the Venn diagrams of student politics and Tyson overlapped?
Holtz shuffled to the next index card. “Over the next two years we did some more shooting on campus, and every time we did I thought, ‘You know what? I like it here.’ Sounds corny, I know. But it’s true. The air was so clean, and the buildings were so … different, y’know? It felt like I was entering someplace special.
“Then, as you know, we got cancelled” Holtz paused for boos; the crowd was happy to oblige. Keith wound up and, in solidarity, hurled the rest of his Milk Duds toward the podium, where they scattered in a shower at Holtz’s feet. The manager shot him a withering look. “And yeah, it wasn’t fun. It was my first real gig, and I was sorry to see that whole universe get packed away. And the crew, you guys. What great people. Seriously, the little people never get their due.
“But it wasn’t all bad—I mean, we were one of the first shows to get out there on DVD. I think it was Babylon 5, then us. So we were second. Or maybe … X-Files was in there somewhere, too.” He flipped through the cards in search of this phantom piece of data. “And sales were, just, real strong. I got to go to a few conventions and meet a bunch of fans.” Pause. “Just a second. I’m wondering what our exact sales were on that first season. Mitch?” He looked to his manager, who doled out his second severe look in as many minutes. Holtz got the message. “Anyway. It was something just crazy.
“Then I was off in Hollywood for the next couple of years, just trying to make a living, you know what I mean? It’s a real grind out there. I got my first real break with Maximum Death. Yes. Yes. Thank you, sir. You’re too kind. Alright, really. That’s enough. No: please stop.”
Tyson grinned and put the air horn back in his pocket.
“I’m guessing most of you have seen this little flick,” he continued, and the room roared. The cinephiles, meanwhile, visibly cringed at the word flick—and said in the hallowed halls of their film department, no less! Professor Monahan nodded along with Holtz so intently that when she went to rest an elbow on the overhead projector, she missed completely and nearly swatted her head against it.
“Grossed six hundred million dollars worldwide—but who’s counting.” It didn’t come out like a question. Holtz winked again. “For the three of you out there who haven’t seen it yet, I’ll give you a quick recap. I play Blair Williams, badass without a cause.”
“‘Without a cause’?” Alex whispered. “He was a government agent. He had a million causes.”
“Shh,” said Tracy.
“And so I’m up against, just, the most diabolical group of terrorists you’ve ever seen. A nasty syndicate that calls itself the Blue Cutlass. Their headquarters are in this Aztec-y fortress, on top of some remote mountaintop. Those are the parts we shot at SFU. Come to think of it …” He trailed off, apparently lost in thought. “You know, I was just thinking, it’s not unlike the political situation here today. You’ve got a group of fat cats who’ll do anything to hold onto power, and an edgy outsider willing to call it how he sees it.” He nodded to the politicians at the back. “That’s so funny,” he called to them. “I can’t believe I never saw the parallel until now—hey, guys?”
The politicians paced back and forth in a pack, furiously whispering to one another.
Alex felt the nausea of impending conflict. He fumbled with his recorder, double-checking he had enough tape, then looked at Tracy. “Is this—”
“Shh,” she said, pulling the top of her own recorder out of the binder. “Backup,” she added.
One of the politicians, his face brick red, burst from the group and shouted, “You’re going to get run up the flagpole for this, you bastard. Just wait ‘til the IEC gets wind—”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Professor Monahan, her loose, swaying posture now turning rigid. “This is a classroom, young man. I will not to
lerate these kinds of disruptions.”
“Are you kidding me?” he shouted back. “Are you fucking—” A female politician grabbed the guy by the shoulders and yanked him back to the relative anonymity of the alcove.
“That’s Samantha Gilmartin,” Tracy whispered to Alex. “I’m sure of it.”
“I am so sorry about that,” the professor said, re-surrendering the podium to Holtz. “Please. Go ahead.”
If Holtz was thrown, he didn’t show it. “Oh, it’s fine,” he said casually. “This just goes to show the kind of entitlement this administration has. They think the laws don’t apply to them. And yes, I know, I know, they don’t want me talking about that kind of thing here—but then they wouldn’t, would they? They’re the ones who made the rules in the first place. Luckily, a stacked deck doesn’t mean anything to a guy with an ace up his sleeve.”
While Alex groaned at the gridlock of clichés, the rest of the crowd broke out in applause. But could he blame his fellow students for being so easily courted? Odds were they couldn’t pick the current SFSS board out of a lineup, but pop culture had expertly trained them to recognize a few key storylines: (a) The Establishment Is Corrupt; (b) The Hero, Humbled and Returning from Exile, Makes a Comeback; (c) Famous People Know Things the Rest of Us Don’t; (d) Rules Are Dumb, Made to Be Broken. With this speech, Holtz had tapped into all four at once.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this kind of steamrolling charisma was going to be dangerous for campus politics.
But what did it mean for The Peak?
“Listen. You don’t have to just take my word for it,” Holtz continued. “I decided to bring in a friend of mine—a guy I go way back with, all the way to that first day on the Maximum Death set. You’ve probably already seen his wardrobe and make-up people running around campus.” A burst of electricity shot through the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, straight from his lunch break on Y02: The Awakening, your friend and mine—”
The mystery actor poked his head out from behind the side curtain, and if the crowd had been enthusiastic about seeing Holtz in the flesh, this time they acted as if the rapture itself was upon them and they’d all made the shortlist. The raw noise from the yahoos, plus screeches from Tyson’s air horn, drowned out the end of Holtz’s introduction. This was the kind of Hollywood encounter every single person in attendance could go home and tell mom about. The man was a household name, and a committed Method actor, too, though this fact was hotly disputed on his Wikipedia page.
As the mystery actor made his way to the podium, someone yelled, “His outfit!” The crowd gasped: he was wearing a T-shirt that read, across the chest in huge purple block letters, “PRESIDENT HOLTZ.” In one hand, he carried a kind of plastic-tubed cannon, which connected to an oversized backpack. In the other, a mesh bag full of strange little fabric bundles.
They were T-shirts.
He was holding a T-shirt gun.
Alex froze in his seat. He could feel confrontation bearing down on the room. This was no longer potential; it was going to happen. The only thing he couldn’t figure out was whether this, too, was part of Holtz’s plan. A splashy, ethically dubious endorsement was one thing, but a soccer riot in a film class?
Holtz’s friend patted him warmly on the back, gave the manager a quick finger-gun salute, and took his place at the podium—but as he opened his mouth to speak, the politician with the brick-red face sprinted down the auditorium steps, his fists swinging like a third-string gladiator. The rest weren’t far behind, and included in their ranks a positively homicidal-looking Samantha Gilmartin. Stumbling backward, the household name accidentally set off his T-shirt gun. A purple bundle clocked the red-faced politician right in the nose; he lost his footing and tumbled down the stairs. The rest of the politicians threw themselves toward the podium. Holtz’s manager yelped and tried to pull his client out the side door to safety, but when Holtz brushed him off, instead taking cover with his friend behind an overturned table, the manager didn’t hesitate in fleeing the scene on his own. The crowd jumped to its feet. Some looked about ready to enter the fray, but decided to hang back, standing on tiptoe to get the best view of the action. Dozens of camera phones made their little synthetic clicks.
Tracy grabbed Alex by the sleeve and pulled him to the ground, where they both took refuge behind the seats in front of them. He, in turn, reached for Tyson, but too late: the air horn’s honks preceded him in his mad, whooping rush toward the front of the room, pulling some of the crowd along with him. Where were Keith and Chip? Alex couldn’t see them anywhere.
He turned to Tracy, who was peeking between seats and trying to scribble notes as quickly as she could. A wave of adrenaline turned Alex’s limbs loose and warm, bringing an unfamiliar but welcome clarity of mind. “Where’s your cell phone?” he shouted to Tracy. “We need photos.”
“No good,” she yelled back. “It doesn’t have a camera. Where’s yours?”
“At the office.” At the time he’d been afraid it could be traced back to him. How could he have been so stupid? For nearly four years he’d been calling himself a journalist. Where were his instincts?
He’d have to start building them now. “Okay,” he yelled. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Get down there, as close as you can, and record everything.” Two fire extinguishers erupted spontaneously, sending jets of foam spraying across the auditorium in tall, sloppy arcs. Professor Monahan had pulled a whistle from god knew where, and was blowing it as hard as she could.
“What are you going to do?” Tracy said.
Alex held out his hand. “Give me your phone. I’m going to get us some backup.”
She handed it over, then grabbed her recorder. “Damn,” she said, holding it up to her ear and shaking it. “Dead. After all these years. Well, looks like it’s all on you now—let’s just hope your tape doesn’t run out.” She threw the busted recorder over her shoulder, then crept out into the aisle, and was gone.
Holtz and the mystery actor were still hunkered down, near the projector screen. They managed to fend off a few of the more feral attackers with a barrage of chalk brushes and dry-erase markers; Alex noted how easily Holtz slipped back into his Maximum Death persona, delivering his character’s trademark “Believe it!” whenever a missile hit its target. Gilmartin stayed crouched behind the first row of lecture seats, and directed her troops with a flurry of quick nods and arm movements. They charged forward, using discarded film textbooks as shields.
From out of nowhere, Keith and Tyson appeared together in front of Holtz’s overturned table. They tackled two of the closest politicians while Chip yelled out a series of football plays and World War II–era attack codes from a few feet back.
Jostled by the crowd around him, Alex scrolled through Tracy’s phone for any Peak contacts. Steve. Suze. Rick. All either off the payroll or on bed rest. Shit, he thought, reciting another law of the internet. Pics or it didn’t happen.
Chip. Keith. Shit shit shit. Then he spotted it: Claude. Of course. Time to prove yourself, kid. Alex fired off a text, in all caps to prove he meant it, then surveyed the scene to plan his next move.
A second, reorganized group of politicians—combined with a few of the brawnier cinephiles—made a new attack on Holtz’s group on its weak side. Meanwhile, three or four others, each wielding a stray plastic chair, rushed from the opposite flank. A pincer attack.
But just as the two groups converged on the desk, Holtz’s celebrity friend burst out from behind the table, channeling his inner dystopian soldier, desperate and bug-eyed. Holding the T-shirt gun straight out in front of him, he took aim and pumped a dozen rounds of hot, purple cotton-polyester blend into the faces, chests, and kneecaps of his attackers. Alex was impressed. “Looks like he’s Method after all,” he said into the recorder.
Somewhere in the fracas Holtz’s laptop was hit by a stray arm or marker, and a PowerPoint presentation sparked to life on the lecture hall’s theatre-sized screen. It started with a clip from the climactic
scene of Maximum Death 2, a kinetic shoot-out that obliterated a pristine snowy mountainside in slow motion. The flashing, ultra-realistic digital images bathed the real-life combatants, at times making the real Holtz look like no more than a pixie-sized sidekick to his gigantic, begoggled counterpart. Just off-screen, Tracy was tucked away behind the auditorium curtain, taking rapid-fire notes from the best seat in the house.
Alex looked back just in time to see the first wave of campus security pour into the room. Waving their batons around, they looked confused and shell-shocked. Behind them—Alex punched the air and actually whooped—burst a triumphant Claude, holding a high-end DSLR above his head and snapping away at anything he could get a shot of. And behind him, trying to shove his way through, was the Metro’s own Mack Holloway. He didn’t even have a notebook with him. Another fire extinguisher went off in the background. The air bristled with thunks from the T-shirt cannon, wails from Tyson’s air horn, and panicked blasts from Professor Monahan’s emergency whistle. From the dozen or so speakers circling the classroom, in state-of-the-art Dolby surround sound, Special Agent Blair Williams yelled, “Believe it!”
Alex grinned up at Mack and wiggled his tape recorder, which now shuddered to a halt as the tape side finally ran out.
17
ONE HUNDRED BEERS
Outside the lecture hall, Alex was jittery with adrenaline. “I can’t believe what just happened,” he said. “Will we have to give a police statement? I’ve never given a police statement before.” He turned to Tracy, who was still writing notes as fast as she could. “How’d we do? Is there enough for a story?”
“Oh yeah,” she said, shaking her hand to fend off the cramping. “All I need is to get one of those SFSS guys on the record while he’s still nice and pissed off. They’re probably back at the office by now.”
He tossed her his recorder. “I think it’s safe to say Rachel will make this a priority.”
“She better,” Tracy said, shoving it and the notebook into her dummy backpack. “Okay. I’ve gotta get to work on this. I’ll probably have a draft ready by the time you get in tomorrow.”
The Dilettantes Page 18