‘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 filmmaker. 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. Fiftyseven 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 FiftySeven 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 enthusiasm. ‘There’s a shootout, 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.’