Ben Elton - Popcorn

by Ben Elton

1996

Bruce shoots movies. Wayne and Scout shoot to kill. In a single night they find out the hard way whats real and whats not, whos the hero and the villain. A nation watches in awe as Bruce and Wayne resolve the serious questions. Does art imitate life? And does Bruce use erection cream?

O n the morning after the night it happened, Bruce Delamitri was sitting in a police interview room.

Name? said the interrogating officer.

It wasnt really a question. The officer knew Bruces name, of course, but there was a procedure and he was required to follow it.

On the morning before, Bruce had been sitting in a television studio. Opposite him, across the sweeping curve of the presentation console, were two Ken-and-Barbie-style presenters of indeterminate age.

His name (pause) is Bruce Delamitri, said Ken, employing the sincere, plonking tone he reserved for really big guests.

Occupation? said the policeman on the morning after, as if he didnt know.

He is probably the most celebrated artist working in the motion-picture industry today. A great writer, a great director. Hollywoods golden boy.

I heard he makes a great pasta sauce too, interjected Barbie, by way of adding a little human interest.

It was the morning before, and the last day on which Bruce would hear himself described in such terms.

Marital status? the cop enquired.

But career excellence takes its toll, and Hollywood was recently saddened by the news that Bruces marriage to actress, model and rock singer Farrah Delamitri was in big trouble. Well be talking about that also.

The red light on top of the camera facing Bruce lit up. He adopted a suitably sardonic shit happens expression. The next twenty-four hours would prove him right about that.

Bruce tried to look the policeman in the eye. Marital status? What a question. The whole world knew his marital status.

My wife is dead.

Tell me about last night.

Tonight is Oscars night, Ken beamed. The big one. Numero Uno. Nights dont get any bigger than this. The night of nights. The nightiest night of them all. The night which, according to all the forecasts, promises to be the greatest night of Bruce Delamitris life.

Last night? said Bruce, who had given up trying to make contact with the cop and now spoke almost to himself. Last night was more terrible than I could have imagined possible.

Youre watching Coffee Time USA. Well be back after these messages, said the male presenter, whose name was not Ken but Oliver Martin. The studio lights dimmed and the Coffee Time logo came up while Oliver and his female colleague, Dale, stacked their papers in an important manner. There was of course nothing on their papers, but maintaining the fiction that TV presenters are proper journalists, as opposed to people who read whatever comes up on the autocue, is one of the principal duties of current-affairs broadcasting.

Bruce watched on the monitor in front of him as Oliver and Dale disappeared and were replaced on the screen by four bikini-clad babes clutching soda bottles and tumbling ecstatically out of an old VW Beetle.

A girl, a beach, its happening, its real.

Its a boost, its a buzz, its the way you should feel!

The studio controller killed the volume, and the bikini babes were left sucking on their bottles in muted delight.

One and a half minutes on the break, said the floor manager.

This was the signal for the make-up girls to rush in and pat gently away at all available faces. Oliver turned to Bruce, addressing him through a flurry of powder and pads.

I think what we need to concentrate on here is the fact that our industry is not a dream factory any more. We deal in gritty realism. We show it like it is.

The make-up lady applied another layer of slap to Olivers already heavily caked features. The gritty reality was that anyone who had acquired such a deep and lustrous tan would long since have died of skin cancer. But Oliver was of the old school of TV presenting: he believed that sporting a thermo-nuclear tan was a mark of respect to the viewer, like wearing a nice shirt and tie. You had to show youd made the effort.

One minute to the break, said the floor manager.

Across the vast pastel-coloured desk, Dales voice could be heard from the midst of a cloud of hair-spray. I mean, surely the big issue, Bruce, has got to be this whole copycat killing thing, hasnt it? I mean, thats what America is concerned about. As an American woman, it sure is what Im concerned about. Are you concerned about that, Bruce? As an American man?

Americas population is not as young as it was, and soon the number-one issue concerning the majority of Americans will be adult incontinence.

This was not Bruce. It was the TV. The studio controller had pumped the volume back up preparatory to going back on air. It was after nine, and the network advertisers were beginning to switch their focus from workers and schoolkids to a coffee time audience, which meant young mums and old lonelys. Soda-sucking babes were giving way to nipple pads, denture fixative and nappies both infant and adult.

No, I am not concerned about copy-cat killings, said Bruce, speaking with difficulty because a young woman was painting some kind of menthol-flavoured grease on to his lips. I dont believe that people get up from the movie theatre or the TV and do what they just saw. Otherwise the people who watch this show would all have their hair set in concrete and their brains sucked out along with their cellulite.

It was scarcely a comment calculated to endear him to his media colleagues, but that was Bruce. Tough, sarcastic and a bit of a stirrer. If you wore a leather jacket and shades on TV at nine in the morning, you were almost duty-bound to be abrasive. In fact, Bruce had guessed that Dale would not hear his answer anyway. He could see she was the type of interviewer who used her guests answers as quiet time in which to consider her next question.

Good, good, you should make that point on air, said Dale absently, checking her eye-liner.

Fifteen seconds on the break, said the floor manager. Four, three, two, one

Olivers face lit up. Were talking to Bruce Delamitri, the hot tip for tonights Best Director Oscar. But amidst all the glory and the adulation there lurks very real controversy.

Dale picked up the ball. Bruce Delamitris movies are hard, tough, witty, sassy street-wise thrillers, where the life is low and the body count is high. Remind you of something?

You tell me, Dale, said Ollie, deploying his serious and thoughtful face.

How about Americas streets? said Dale, looking equally portentous. Thats right, the streets of America, hard, tough and dangerous, where the kids grow up fast and dying is a way of life.

Youre saying that the movies of Bruce Delamitri reflect the streets of America?

Some say reflect, some say influence. America, its your call. Well be back after these messages.

The studio lights dimmed again. Oliver and Dale went dark and shuffled their papers.

Do you have sensitive teeth? Does ice-cream make you go ow! when you should be going mmmmm?

O n the morning after it all happened, a young woman, hardly more than a girl, stared across a bare formica-topped table at an interrogating police officer. She was being interviewed in the next-door room to the one in which Bruce was being questioned. Unlike Bruce, however, the young woman was considered highly dangerous and was therefore in chains, her thin wrists manacled to her almost equally thin ankles. In fact, so petite was she that it looked as if she could have slipped off the steel bracelets if she had wished and just floated away on the next breeze. She was indifferent to whether they chained her or not. She had nowhere to go anyway.