Midnight Movie: A Novel (34 page)

Claire then cooled her jets—which, frankly, needed cooling—while I turned young Theo into a zombie. That was … interesting.

So after Billy put on my ratty-ass zombie clothes and my nasty-ass zombie scars, he tells me to close my eyes and hold my nose, then he dumps a bucket of I-don’t-know-what over my head, and that shit stank to high heaven.

I was like, “Yo, what’s in this? I’m going to hurl, here. Seriously.”

He said, “Theo, you don’t want to know.”

Now, Billy was a nice dude, so I didn’t want to go off on him, but if I was going to have to be covered in this slop for the next week, I had to be aware. So I was like, “Yeah, dude, I
totally
want to know.”

He was quiet for a sec, then he was like, “Okay, fine. But trust me, you won’t get sick.”

I was like, “I don’t know, dude. This stuff smells like crotch, and I seriously feel like I’m going to blorch.”

He was all like, “Yeah, but blorching from crotch smell doesn’t mean you’re sick.”

I was like, “I see your point. So what in holy hell am I wearing?”

Billy gave me a big sigh, then was like, “Grape jelly, petroleum jelly, pickle juice, tomato juice, mashed-up bananas, and …”

He didn’t say anything, and I was like, “And what?”

He was like, “And a bit of animal excrement.”

I was like, “What the fuck, dude?! You covered me with shit?!”

He was like, “Yes. But it’s safe shit.”

I was like, “How the hell do you make shit safe?”

He was like, “You, um, you boil it.”

I was like, “So you’re telling me that I’m wearing hot diarrhea.”

Billy was like, “Well, not exactly. After all, it’s not hot.”

I was like, “But it
was
hot at one time in the not-too-distant past.”

He goes, “Yeah. But it’s cold now.”

I was like, “But it’s still diarrhea.”

He was like, “But it’s
safe
diarrhea.”

I go, “I don’t know if I necessarily believe that, Bill. Do you have any scientific data to back that shit up?”

He goes, “No. But Gary Church wore it during the original, and he lived.”

I was like, “Yeah. But he also died.”

Then Tobe and Erick came over, and Tobe was like, “Theo, my brother, you smell like ass. Perfect. Let’s shoot this fucker.”

We banged out the first part of Claire’s section in seven takes. If I were
trying
to make it look good, I would’ve nailed it the first time through—I mean, how hard is it to shoot somebody flipping cue cards, right? But I’d done so many films that shooting a quality shot was
ingrained
in me. It took all that extra time to make it feel amateurish.

It would’ve been even more difficult if I’d had a professional, experienced cameraman. Fortunately, Darren was a rank amateur.

I shot it. And I shot it perfectly. I
always
shoot perfectly.

Then Erick’s boy Theo slimed his way onto the set, so he could kill Claire for the closing scene. To be honest, if I had the opportunity, I would’ve killed her myself. My Lord, what a pain in the backside she was.

I’m sorry if Tobe felt I was a distraction, but this wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. First, they put me in these ridiculous-looking slut clothes, then they had me attacked by a kid who was dressed in a ridiculous-looking zombie costume and was stinking like a sewer. It was hideous. While the kid was attacking me, he
accidentally scratched my arm, and I think some of that crap he was covered with oozed into my bloodstream. Billy assured me that I shouldn’t worry, but the second I was done for the day, I called my doctor in New York and told him to have a tetanus shot ready to go.

I didn’t
attack
her, for fuck’s sake. I did exactly what Tobe told me to do, which was circle around her, pretend to hit her, and moan. He said he’d edit it so it’d look badass. I believed him.

The fake arm, the spurting blood, making Claire’s death look convincing: It was all easy. It was like riding a bike. It was a blast, and for a brief moment, I thought about taking a leave of absence and trying to get some work in Hollywood. But then I remembered what Tobe had told me—that Hollywood was a ghost town—so forget that.

And then it was my turn. And I was not psyched. Not one bit.

Some directors like to see themselves on the screen—Woody Allen and Alfred Hitchcock come to mind—but not me. Me, I like to be safe and sound in my cocoon behind the camera.

The dialogue was inane: “Good afternoon, dear viewers. My name is Tobe Hooper. You don’t know me. I could be a nice guy. I could be a liar and a thief. I could even be a killer. You can believe everything I tell you. Or you can ignore every word that I say. Or you can burn this film into a pile of ashes. But if I were you, I’d listen carefully. Because I have the camera. And I know the truth.” Come
on
, man.

After I wrapped up all that gobbledygook, Theo went after me. I guess I could see why Claire was so bitchy when she said good-bye.

Tobe was bitchier about the whole thing than Claire was. It was all, “Marron, you’d best de-stink this motherfucker
now
,” and “Who’s the idjit that wrote this shit … oh, wait, it was me,” and “Erick, be my body double.” It’s amazing we finally got it in the can and finished the day without anybody killing anybody else.

I wish I could describe to you exactly what happened, but it was a blur. I remember getting off the airplane, I remember getting to the hotel, then I remember getting back onto the plane. The four days I was in Austin are a blank.

The day after I got home, I started seeing a shrink. She believes that I blocked out the whole thing. She said—and these are her exact words—“It was a traumatic experience that recalled another traumatic experience. There’s no reason for you to recall any of it, because you’ll learn nothing about yourself. Put it away inside a safe, lock it up, throw away the key, and move on with your life.”

So that’s what I did. I never saw the finished product—I had no desire to—and I never spoke to Tobe Hooper again.

Honestly, I didn’t believe it.

I didn’t believe that Tobe’s childhood movie caused any kind of virus, and I didn’t believe that Tobe’s adult movie would cure
anything
.

At least at first.

When I got back to New York and I couldn’t remember a damn thing about the shoot after I put together that stinking alligator, I believed.

A little.

I came. I went. I saw. I conquered.

At least I thought I did.

I made it home. My camera and the screenplay didn’t. I was mad. And sad.

Yeah, I don’t remember a damn thing after day two, but I credit that to the fact that I smoked a shit-ton of pot that week.

It was weird, man. One second, I’ve got Theo making out with Helen, and the next, I’m in my hotel, futzing with the footage on the makeshift editing bay that Dick Gregson so graciously paid for.

And that footage was putrid, somehow worse than the original. Watching it actually sickened me. That’s probably why I don’t remember the specifics about cutting that fucker together. But that was okay, actually. If my brain decided to kick into denial mode, what better time than that?

I was so wrapped up with the movie that I didn’t notice until August 31—the night before the international debut of
Destiny
Express
—that the streets of Austin were empty. Actually, they weren’t totally empty: There were a bunch of guys in hazmat suits wandering around with these scary-ass guns.

I wondered,
When the hell did this happen? And how the hell did I miss it
?

It happened quickly, so Erick can’t be blamed for not catching it right away. One day, it’s business as usual, and the next, everybody’s hiding in their house, and all these military guys are patrolling the streets. There weren’t a lot of them—maybe one or two teams of two positioned every few blocks—but they were
there
. We called it the Great Austin Takeover. On the plus side, the fires stopped. It was a trade-off, I guess.

Austin wasn’t the only city that was on its deathbed. We weren’t completely alone. Erick told me that Tobe told him that Los Angeles was unbelievably quiet. But there was nothing about it online or on television, absolutely nothing, so I didn’t know for sure.

There was some info out there. Based on a
very
detailed blog by somebody in Albuquerque that somehow hadn’t been shut down by whatever entity was shutting down huge chunks of the web, they were dealing with the fires, and explosions, and sex crimes, and apparent zombie attacks—and I say “apparent” because I wasn’t totally convinced about the zombie thing at that point—and a heck of a lot of violence. There were hazmat guys on the street, but it sounded like the military presence hadn’t quite reached the level that we were at. But it was getting close.

I sent an e-mail to the contact address at the bottom of the Albuquerque blog, but it bounced. That didn’t make me feel so hot.

It was more than a little bit disconcerting that the government, or some powers that be, had the ability to completely shut off a
story, and it made me wonder what the hell we were missing … but I didn’t wonder that hard. The fact of the matter was, I was scared, and my body was still hurting, and my heart was broken—you can’t imagine how much I missed my little sister—and I wasn’t in the mood to play investigative journalist. All I wanted to do was cuddle in the sack with Erick and hide under the covers until this all went away.

And if it didn’t go away, what better place was there to be than in bed? If we were going to die, at least we’d die comfortably … which is more than I can say for my sister.

From the outside, the Regal Arbor Cinema looked like any other multiplex: a ticket taker, a marquee, and a couple of posters on the wall. Nothing special. The inside wasn’t much to write home about, either: It was slightly dilapidated, the floors were sticky with months-old soda spills, the bathrooms were in need of some serious updating, and most of the seats creaked when you sat down. Probably the ideal place to show our little flick.

We didn’t advertise it or anything. We frankly didn’t want anybody to see it. We didn’t want to see it ourselves.

Oh. Right. I suppose I should mention that we hadn’t seen it yet.

Let’s do a checklist here: We’ve got the goddamn zombies, and we’ve got the goddamn Blue Spew, and we’ve got goddamn cities burning, and we’ve got goddamn psychotics beating the crap out of whoever they want to beat the crap out of, and we’ve got hundreds of people killing themselves in some pretty goddamn imaginative ways. Pretty goddamn weird, right? Right.

But believe it or not, for me, for yours truly, for Tobe Hooper, for the dude who might’ve started this mess, that wasn’t the weirdest.

No, the weirdest was waking up on the morning of August 31 with a film sitting on my nightstand. Right there on the canister, in my own handwriting:
Destiny Express Redux
.

See, I didn’t remember finishing it.

Naturally we’d planned to show the flick at midnight. We had to.

At noon, my cell phone rang. Unknown number. I screened it. Whoever it was didn’t leave a message, so I figured it was a wrong number. Then they called again two minutes later, and the same deal. Then, two minutes later, again. I couldn’t turn my phone off, because I needed to be accessible to Janine, so finally, after the sixth call, I picked it up and yelled, “
What?!
”

It was a guy. He said, “Is this Erick?”

I said, “Yeah. Who’s this?”

The guy said, “Erick Laughlin? Erick Laughing Boy? Erick the Half a Bee? Erick the Earache?”

Fuck. Dude McGee. I said, “How did you get my number, McGee?”

He said, “You’re not hard to find, Laughing Boy. You’re not that important. It’s not like anybody’s protecting your whereabouts.”

I said, “So somebody at the newspaper gave it to you.”

Dude said, “Oh. No. They wouldn’t. Bastards. I have other means. Don’t worry about it. So how’d the movie turn out? Better than the first one, I’d hope.”

I said, “I’m in a bit of a rush. What do you want?”

He said, “I’d like to see To-beeeeee Hoopster.”

I said, “Hooper.”

He said, “Right. Hoopster.”

What a dick. I said, “He’s incommunicado. Can I help you with something?”

He said, “I’d like to come to the screening.”

I thought,
What the fuck
? We hadn’t told a single person about it. Our plan was to show it to the empty theater and hope for the best. I said, “How did you find out about it?”

Dude said, “A mutual friend told me. Darren. Darren Allen. Darren Baron Allen. Darren Gallon Allen. Baron Gallon.”

I desperately wanted to get off the phone, but I had to ask: “How do you know Darren Allen?”

Dude said, “Oh, I’ve known about Darren Allen Baron Gallon for a while. He’s huge in Houston. Do you want to hear something funny about Darren Allen Baron Gallon? Do you want to know why Darren Allen Baron Gallon is kind of … off?”

Tobe had insisted that back in the day, Darren was considerably less weird than he was when he was shuffling around our sets, seemingly barely able to hold the camera, so I actually was a little bit curious. I said, “Sure, Dude. Tell me why Darren is kind of off.”

He said, “The poor man was in a terrible car accident a few years back. It almost crushed his head. He doesn’t like to discuss it.”

I said, “I can imagine.”