The Devil's Cinema (15 page)

Early on, he had faltered. His first love, Traci Higgins, had found her way back into his life through Facebook and they had later kissed. Just once. He knew it was a foolish and hurtful thing to do and he regretted it. Twitchell wanted to keep a pledge to never lie to his wife, so he quickly confessed. The couple worked hard to sail through their first rocky patch. The incident had been all the more devastating for Jess, however, because she had been a couple months' pregnant at the time, suffering through morning sickness, the infidelity catching her totally off guard.

Chloe was the grounding Twitchell needed to finally put an end to his impulsive lifestyle and erratic actions. He was supposed to be growing up and becoming a responsible father. But it wasn't working out the way he had hoped.

Twitchell was doing all the things that new fathers do, even expressing the same worries and concerns. But deep inside, his stomach was in knots. He wasn't actually experiencing any of the feelings for his child that he understood other new fathers felt. He was acting. He wrote about his struggle in his personal writings, wondering what to do. But publicly, he remained jovial. He had only offered possible hints through the years that he was different, hiding his emotions through humour or double meanings.

“Sometimes I just don't understand human behaviour,” he once wrote online.

Quoting
Star Wars
, of course.

J
OHNNY HAD BEEN SEARCHING
for meaning. Becoming single again at his age tended to put one's life in perspective. He wanted to meet someone special, but his transition into the dating scene in his late thirties was also providing time to explore within.

He believed there was more to life than the day-to-day grind. He wanted to understand himself and others – not just who they were, but to look beyond and see deep inside, to become self-aware.

For hours each night, he searched online for answers to these big questions of the universe. He read New Age books and watched movies examining philosophy, spiritual enlightenment, and the world's religions.

He found achieving such enlightenment was proving difficult. He was no hippie. He had never listened to psychedelic music or smoked pot. He rarely drank. The extent of his alternative lifestyle included dabbling in herbal teas and spices to assist in meditation.

As his interest grew, he pushed himself a bit farther by importing South American herbs. Some had been used by Aboriginal groups to stimulate hallucinatory experiences. Grinding these herbs into a steeped tea, Johnny sat on his couch, sipping the mixture for a couple of hours. But he became frustrated. “I got a little drowsy, but that's about it,” he wrote online of the experience. “Is there something I did wrong?”

His spiritual quest faltering, Johnny enlisted the help of a hypnotherapist. One day, he relaxed at her home office for a one-hour session, leaning back into her couch. She slowly lulled him into a deep trance. His breathing slowed. His muscles loosened. Shapes formed within the darkness under his eyelids. He saw a blurry image moving toward him. The shape slowly focused at it approached. It was an old man. He appeared serene and wise. Johnny's mind was flooded with peace.

His vision crystallized.

Johnny's eyes fluttered open. He turned to the hypnotherapist and asked her what he had experienced. She gave him a knowing look. He had been visited by his spirit guide, who appeared to be an ancient tribal medicine man. And his soul dated back over twelve thousand years.

He felt like he had just seen something profound and he couldn't wait to share.

T
HE HISTORIC
H
OTEL
M
ACDONALD
stood under Edmonton's downtown office towers like a little French castle, its copper roof rising to peaks out of limestone walls. Walking into one of the hotel's meeting rooms, Twitchell and Joss scanned a gathering of a dozen business executives. The pair of young men weren't used to such an ornate setting, but Twitchell didn't let it bother him. He met each person's gaze with a smile and soon launched into a polished speech that demonstrated both his salesmanship and passion.

In the previous weeks, in late April and early May of 2008, he had worked his way through a screening process for Venture Alberta, an umbrella group of angel investors keen on hearing about new business opportunities. Out of two hundred applications a year, about thirty to fifty were given the chance to pitch to the group. Barely a quarter of all entrepreneurs who entered the room would find someone at the table willing to hand over their money. These were professional investors. Many ran multi-million-dollar companies, had heard hundreds of pitches before, and were a notoriously hard audience to impress.

Twitchell and Joss had come prepared. Their friend Rebecca had tried to help since she was in business school, but Twitchell was convinced he could do it better on his own. Joss had spent a great deal of time designing a comprehensive website for Twitchell's production company and their fan film project. The public face of the business looked slick and professional, like they had been making movies for years.

As he spoke, Twitchell projected enthusiasm. In a way, it was no different than selling electronics or office supplies, as he had done thousands of times before. He flicked on a PowerPoint presentation explaining Xpress Entertainment and his new movie,
Day Players
. He smiled once more.

The proposed comedy followed two movie extras and their often silly and outrageous lives. It was a lot like the British sitcom
Extras
, starring
Ricky Gervais, but in Twitchell's script an undertone of sex and violence filtered through the narrative. There were subtle references to slit throats, duct tape, and being restrained to a chair. In an early scene, a woman complains about a man who had deceived her with a fake online dating profile. But most jokes in the film were corny and clichéd. One scene featured “screaming crazy athletic sex” waking up the neighbours. And a key gag involved an actor who fools someone into thinking he's a criminal by using props from a movie set.

The Hollywood filmmaker portrayed in Twitchell's script was also adept at magic, able to correctly guess a playing card chosen from the deck. The secret to the trick required him to influence people's choices through the art of suggestion. And Twitchell compared this ability to telling a story; both magicians and filmmakers rely on persuasion, slight of hand, and misdirection. “A convincing storyteller takes you on a journey and makes you feel like you're the one willing it along when, in reality, you're not,” he wrote in the script.

Twitchell's investment pitch centred on securing plenty of cameos from Hollywood stars to guarantee a big box office draw. All he needed was some financing, he said, to get the exciting project rolling.

Twitchell paused. A big photograph of actor Alec Baldwin flashed up on the screen.

Investors rubbed their chins. Eyebrows were raised.

Each potential investor had been handed a two-page document:

Twitchell was reassuring, explaining how his company used completion bonds, or an insurance policy, to protect investments if the movie project failed to be signed by a distributor. Getting investors signed, he said, also opened up access to six-figure government grants.

Attached to the fact sheet were revenue forecasts. Based on his research, he envisioned Xpress Entertainment would generate $26 million in revenue within twelve months. The following two years would see the figure balloon to $33.9 million annually.

Joss listened closely as Twitchell weaved his way through the difficult parts of the pitch. He came across like a seasoned performer. Articulate. Engaging. Charismatic. By the end of Twitchell's presentation, Joss saw a few investors pick up their pens and scribble their names down on the “gold sheet” for the company, showing they wanted to know more.

The pair walked out of the investor meeting feeling like they had won an award. Twitchell would repeat his performance two more times as he headed south to the cities of Red Deer and Calgary to make the same sales pitch. The experience invigorated him. He began pushing everyone he knew to invest in his film project. With such a positive response from professional investors, he believed he could get a deal locked up quickly.

And it couldn't have come at a better time.

Twitchell had just been fired from his latest job, where he was supposed to be selling outsourced IT systems to corporate clients. Instead, he spent most of his workday talking about
Dexter
and filmmaking. His work email account showed no messages sent to clients in nearly three months on the job. Twitchell resorted to taking on another sales job, selling home security systems, as he waited for his chance to transform himself from a wannabe big-shot filmmaker to the real deal.

Joss was the first to respond to his urgent financing requests. He saw Twitchell as a “glorious leader” who was guiding him and the rest of the film crew toward dream jobs and untold fortunes. Joss had been designing websites with his own company, Mandroid Inc., but now his friend was promising him a huge slice of the production services pie if the
Day Players
deal went through. Seeing Twitchell work a room simply confirmed what he already knew: his friend could be a star. Joss's parents handed over $30,000 in three installments. The next to fall into line was Twitchell's brother-in-law. He had money saved up from working in the oilfields. On May 23, 2008, he signed over $30,000, but only under the strict condition that his investment “be held in trust” for the film project.

With so much potential brewing, Twitchell began to believe that if he
quit his job to focus on securing funding full-time, he could be producing a major film within weeks. The very thought of it was tantalizing.

Twitchell talked it over with his wife. While Jess was happy his film career appeared to be taking off, she didn't want him leaving his day job just yet. She urged him to keep a steady paycheque coming in until he had all the money for
Day Players
in the bank. They had a daughter to raise, after all.

But her pragmatism made him angry. Twitchell took her concerns as an ultimatum, an attack of his life's work by pitting his passions against their relationship. With more money in the bank than ever before, Twitchell simply couldn't wait any longer after dreaming of this chance for years. Twitchell decided it was finally time to take the plunge, to shed his old life and embrace the new. But he wanted it both ways too, so he found a way around the dilemma: he quit the job and kept it a secret. Having an open schedule would enable him to sign up the remaining investors he needed more quickly. Jess would never know.

The day he quit, his brother-in-law handed over his money and signed a film investment contract. Twitchell sat down in front of his computer and logged into the message boards on
theforce.net
. Under his Achilles of Edmonton account, he began typing a post with the subject line, “How to parlay fan films into a career.” It was a chance to brag – and to say goodbye – to the
Star Wars
community that had embraced him for years. “Sweet zombie Jesus. I did it!” he wrote in elation. “I did my homework, made sure that all my ducks were in a row before hitting up the big boys and now we're there.” He explained how this meant he was likely weeks away from being fully funded. “It's my first multi-million-dollar feature and we're looking very realistically at getting Alec Baldwin and Jeff Goldblum on board.… Without my fan project to prove my crew had what it takes to get the job done and do it right, this would not be happening right now.”

It would be the last words he ever wrote on the
Star Wars
boards. A lifetime of fascination and three years of writing more than sixteen hundred messages on the fan forums came to an abrupt end.

He had a new life, a new career. A new Mark Twitchell had emerged.

“No one's going to stop me but me,” he later mused.

A
FTER WORK AND DURING
his weekends, Johnny was often filled with anticipation. He had been going on dates again, looking for someone to spend his life with. He preferred the convenience of online dating and was relying on several sites. He gave his co-worker Willy, who was also single, updates on his lovelife. While Johnny didn't go on too many dates, the people he did meet were often impressive and lovely girls. Things were looking up.

Johnny had noticed a good-looking brunette on
plentyoffish.com
one day and sent her a message. Debra Teichroeb read his message and replied. The registered nurse found she had a few things in common with Johnny and agreed to meet him for a coffee. He introduced himself as “John,” preferring to shorten his birth name these days, as the two talked in a restaurant. Debra thought they could be friends. Soon they were phoning each other regularly. She would sign into MSN Messenger and type him messages on the chat service as the weeks flew by.

But Johnny found very few women shared his deep interests in New Age philosophy. He believed in reincarnation and had become fascinated with out-of-body experiences. He was practising methods of separating the mind from the body through meditation. He once tried placing a metal pyramid above his bed, a practice meant to focus and heighten his energy. This behaviour appeared bizarre to those not accustomed to discussing such grand theories as the meaning of life and spiritual consciousness. He discovered a group listed on
meetup.com
, however, that understood his interest in the unknown.