Popcorn (22 page)

“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 live!”

THIRTY-SEVEN

F
arrah 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

O
K, 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.

In the siege room the shot still resonated.

“You bastard! When will this end!” Bruce had rushed over and was holding Velvet, who sobbed hysterically, still handcuffed to the lampstand beside her dead mother.

“You saw the ratings, man. They went up. Blame the couch potatoes.”

“You hypocritical swine!” Bruce shouted. “
You
killed her — no one else did! What is it you’re saying? That the media, the public, is responsible for the fact that you’re a murdering lunatic?”

“I’m just saying I wouldn’ta shot her if people hadn’t switched to
The Simpsons
.”

“You are responsible!”

“Yes. I’m responsible for me, but you are responsible for you and they are responsible for them. I don’t see anyone doing much about that. I’ve got an excuse, I’m a psycho. What’s your get-out?”

Kirsten received a message from the producer. She turned to Bill. “Get down! There’s a SWAT team coming in!”

“No!” Wayne shouted into the camera.

Above them they could hear the sound of the roof being breached. Wayne grabbed Scout by the hand, and addressed the camera. “Wait! Hold it. I’ll give myself up, Scout too, I swear. Stop the attack. Keep the cameras rolling. We’ll give up.”

Outside, Chief Cornell signalled that his forces should pause. Was it possible that they could get out of this nightmare without further bloodshed?

Wayne continued to shout at the camera. “But we give ourselves up to the people. The people are responsible. They decide our fate, the fate of everybody in this room.” He had hold of the ratings computer now. “It’s up to you, the people out there…the lives of us all are in your hands. Here’s how it is. When I’ve finished talking, if everybody watching switches off their TV, I swear me and Scout will walk out of here with our hands up…But if you keep on watching, I will kill every last mutha in this room, including myself and Scout. Not a bad show, huh? Exciting, right? And to see it, all you have to do is stay tuned for another few seconds. Well, you’re responsible. Are you gonna turn off your TV?”

THIRTY-NINE

INTERIOR. THE LOUNGE. DAY.

Wide shot. The room eerily still. Wayne stands with Scout before the television camera. In one hand he carries his weapon, in the other the ratings computer.

Close-up on Wayne from the TV camera’s point of view. Grainy, video-style quality to the picture.

WAYNE
: (Snarling into camera)

I said, are you gonna turn off your TVs?

Whip pan down from Wayne’s distorted face to the ratings computer. Picture turns to sudden hard focus. We see what is clearly some kind of graph climbing. Wide shot of room. Wayne hurls the computer to the ground.

WAYNE
: (Shouting)

No you ain’t!

Cut to…

INTERIOR. THE TV CONTROL TRUCK. DAY.

Chief Cornell and the others are watching Wayne on the screens. Fast jagged, staccato zoom on to Wayne’s image on one of the screens. Mid two shot of Cornell and the SWAT commander.

CHIEF CORNELL

Take him.

EXTERIOR. THE ROOF OF THE MANSION. DAY.

SWAT officers blast their way through.

Jump cut to…

EXTERIOR. A WINDOW OF THE MANSION. DAY.

SWAT officers swing through windows on abseiling ropes, smashing glass.

Jump cut to…

INTERIOR. OUTSIDE THE LOUNGE DOOR AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRWAY INSIDE THE MANSION. DAY.

SWAT officers smash door down.

Jump cut to…

INTERIOR. THE LOUNGE. DAY

Extreme wide shot. Wayne and Scout at centre.

Mute sound. Slow motion.

SWAT officers burst through the windows and doors. Wayne and Scout open fire.

A little later the room was filled with strange green figures. Green jump suits, green rubber boots and gloves, green face masks. The green figures were tracing the outlines of the dead. One of them tried to draw a line around Wayne. The chalk made little impression on the sticky swamp of congealing blood in which his body lay. The green man tried using some white tape but nothing much sticks to blood soaked shag pile.

The whole room was alive with flashing light, the effect was almost stroboscopic. Hundreds and hundreds of photographs were being taken for further analysis. The contorted features of the corpses flickered in brief moments of glorious illumination. Their grotesquely twisted limbs seemed almost to twitch in the jaggedly pulsating light.

Hundreds of bullets and cartridge cases were being tweezered from the floor, more prized from the walls. Hairs were plucked from clothing, bloodied thumb prints carefully preserved. The green men and women missed nothing. A pair of pink Doc Martens, freckled with a few spots of blood, were photographed where they lay then placed in a plastic bag marked LAPD. Lab. Likewise a can of hair mousse, a pair of panty hose, a tiny glass, miraculously still upright and containing a splash of
crème de menthe
.

There was little point in this forensic zeal. Everyone knew who’d killed whom, who had died and who had survived. The whole thing had been captured on television and would shortly be available on video in all good stores.

There is however a process and the green figures had a job to do. A full inquiry into the events of that terrible Oscar night had already been promised. The authorities were anxious to show that, despite everything, they remained in control.

Outside Bruce’s house the survivors were carried away in screaming ambulances. Other ambulances waited for the dead.