After spending months circulating the literary underground as a beat-up manuscript, Matt Burns has decided to electronically publish his entire first novel JOHNNY CRUISE as an 'ebook' for anybody who wants to read it. This was the only way to meet the high demand for this incendiary piece of literature that is already creating a buzz in literary circles across the nation.
JOHNNY CRUISE is a Jekyll-and-Hyde-type-story about a big movie star who is at war with his media persona, which has literally taken on a life of its own. John (the person) stays secluded inside a mansion high up in the Hollywood Hills while Johnny (the persona) leaves the mansion and does all the movies, premieres, press events, charity events, interviews, talk show appearances etc. John desperately wants to leave the house and show the public the REAL him, but Johnny abusively makes him stay inside, warning him that the public won't like what it sees and his career will be ruined.
Overall, JC is an American Tragedy that is also at times very funny. It's a story about a man who will do anything to look good - or at least stay - in the public eye, even if it means completely killing off his real self in the process.
Overall, JC is an American Tragedy that is also at times very funny. It's a story about a man who will do anything to look good - or at least stay - in the public eye, even if it means completely killing off his real self in the process.
...
JOHNNY CRUISE: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY
© 2010
Author's Note:
Reduced to its externals, the tragedy of JOHNNY CRUISE may initially appear to readers as being negative and hopeless. I, however, would strongly disagree with this assessment.
Perhaps one of the largest problems plaguing today's American culture is that people have somehow come to mislabel 'truth' in art as being 'negativity'. Maybe it's because we have been so conditioned by Hollywood movies, where endings are always happy and life - in the long run - is always fair and swell. Or maybe it's because of books like The Secret that try to condition people with a "positive psychology", one that inadvertently makes us turn a blind eye from problems in our lives, which only allows the problems to worsen in the long run.
I certainly won't deny that I am, at times, brutally honest in my depiction of Hollywood (and America) in my novel, but I am confident that the tragedy of JOHNNY CRUISE offers great hope to those who read it. After all, the purpose of writing tragedy has always been to pinpoint certain human errors, so as to learn from these errors and avoid making them in our own lives. Hamlet, as we remember, didn't offer a happy ending, but we learned from it. Dr. Faustus didn't offer a happy ending either, but we learned from it. Oedipus Rex, Medea, Antigone...these Greek Classics didn't offer happy endings either, but we learned from them.
JOHNNY CRUISE is no different. In my tragedy, the character of John (aka 'Johnny') Cruise functions as a sort of sacrificial victim, a fictional character whom we learn from so we can avoid meeting a similar fate as his own. And it's in this learning process that we find true hope and positivity.
At the risk of being redundant here, I will leave you with some advice my mentor (and friend) offered me not too long ago:
"There is a lot of sadness in life, a lot of tragedy, a lot of pain. Don't try to make your endings happy. The desire to escape or deny pain is an American sickness. Cherish the pain. Give thanks for it. Plumb its depths and grow from it."
-- Professor Ray Carney (cassavetes.com)
“Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.”
-- Cary Grant
“That’s the trouble with the world. We all despise ourselves.”
-- Charlie Chaplin
“And when you’re high you never, ever want to come down.”
-- Axl Rose
SCENE ONE
“Johnny, all I gotta say is SPEED meets LETHAL WEAPON! Hit me back, brutha!”
John rips a hit of weed from his bowl and melts into a pair of pale-gray couch cushions. The couch as a whole exudes an unsettling energy, as though it’s possessed by some sort of negative entity from the past. This is likely to happen in a town like Hollywood where most people rarely die in peace. After they overdose or blow their heads off with a shotgun or die in a disturbing car accident or get murdered by a member of the Manson family, fragments of their soul become lost and attach themselves to objects that they liked or used a lot or don’t want to let go of or (of course) died on...this is what the metaphysical-types claim, anyway.
By the antiqued looks of John’s couch, it was probably passed around from one Hollywood Hill mansion to the next, so it wouldn’t really come as a surprise if the thing did, indeed, embody some form of negative energy. Over the past century, so many ‘negative’ incidents have occurred in the Hills - murders, suicides, murder-suicides, rapes, robberies, black-mails, fuck-overs, schemes, tricks, back-stabbings, orgies, pornos...you name it. Who knows what kind of doomed spirit could have attached itself to the couch throughout its lifespan?
The haunted couch (as it shall henceforth be referred to as) is surrounded by other potentially “possessed” pieces of furniture that look like they were purchased at a movie studio’s prop warehouse auction. The coffee table looks like it could have been in Casablanca. The lamp-stand was probably in The Maltese Falcon. The lamp on the lamp-stand looks like the sexy leg-lamp used in that movie A Christmas Story. On one of the room’s walls, there is an old-fashioned bicycle that looks like it could have been ridden by the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz. This bike is adjacent to Pee-Wee-Herman’s red bike from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.
On another wall, there is a pair of scissor-hands from the movie Edward Scissorhands and the red ‘Rosebud’ sled from Citizen Kane. There is also a half-smoked cigar mounted in a glass frame. Supposedly, it’s the cigar Groucho Marx was smoking the night he immortalized himself in the cement of the Grauman’s Chinese Theater forecourt. The cigar even has saliva stains at its butt end from where Groucho would have chewed on the thing.
“I got you booked on Leno for the thirteenth, Oprah for the fourteenth, Conan for the fifteenth, Dr. Phil for the sixteenth, Howard Stern for the seventeenth, Larry King for the eighteenth, ‘The Today Show’ for the nineteenth, ‘60 Minutes’ for the twentieth, ‘Meet the Press’ for the twenty-first. All right, brutha.”
John sits amidst - what he refers to as - his ‘Movieland’ and packs another nugget of weed into his bowl. He brings the bowl up to his lips and cooks the nug with a lighter that looks like something Humphrey Bogart would have used back in the 40s.
The flick of the lighter is about three times louder than it should be due to the vacuity of John’s ridiculously enormous living room, not to mention the vacuity of his mansion in general. No amount of movie memorabilia could ever fill the space to this unnecessarily gargantuan home. The house is so damn big that even the sound of silence creates its own eerie echo.
But John didn’t buy the mansion for its size. He bought the place because it was once owned by his favorite movie director of all time: Stanley Hitchcock. Not only did Stanley and his family live in the place for about thirty years, but the ten-time Oscar-winning director also used the home as a setting for a number of his films. In fact, the first time John stepped foot in the place, he felt as though he were stepping foot inside one of Stanley’s movies. This gave him a high better than any nugget of marijuana could ever provide.
Stanley, however, wasn’t the only previous owner of the home. The house was actually built in the 1930s for a young child actress by the name of Shirley Garland. Garland was under contract to MGM for a number of years, mostly starring in musicals, but also in an occasional screwball comedy or two. Louis B. Mayer (head of MGM) wanted his precious little star to live like a princess - not necessarily as a reward for making his studio shit-loads of money - but mainly to give the general movie-going audience the perception that his stars lived like gods. See, Mayer wanted to create the illusion that his studio had “more stars than the heavens”, implying that his studio was the REAL heaven, further implying that - as studio head - Mayer was God Himself.
So the house was built in plush Spanish-Colonial-style high up on the tallest hill of Laurel Canyon’s Mt. Olympus Drive (the street name, of course, possessing god-like connotations). And each room had an exotic theme to it, like the kitchen had an Ancient Rome theme where the walls were made to look like the Roman Colosseum; and the garden had a Japanese theme where the non-Bonzai trees were groomed into a shape that resembled Bonzai trees; and the foyer had a Transylvanian castle-like theme, complete with candelabras and fake cobwebs and also organ music playing over a hidden phonograph. In fact, the rooms looked more like movie sets on a sound stage than rooms in a house. The interior designers thought this would be fun for a little girl like Shirley Garland.
But they were wrong. The diverse themes ultimately created an uncomfortable clashing of energy inside the house, totally antithetical to any kind of contemporary “Feng Shui” philosophy. Psychologists would later speculate that the poor Feng Shui more than likely contributed to Garland’s mental breakdown that came a few years later.
Yes, the “breakdown” (to use the most euphemistic term) was the usual, clichéd story: Child actor hits puberty and doesn’t look cute anymore; general audience grows tired of her; studio terminates her contract; child-actor realizes she’s peaked and has nothing more to look forward to in life; child-actor then resorts to an unprecedented amount of drugs (cocaine and morphine) to help her deal with the pain of such a realization; child-actor gets so messed up on drugs that she feels it’s a perfectly reasonable idea to take an axe and hack her parents to death, for it was those damn sons of bitches who turned her into a commodity they could profit off of and live vicariously through; and then, of course, the child-actor subsequently overdoses on morphine while standing knee-deep in her parents’ blood.
That’s right: all this happened in the very house John now sits and smokes his weed in; but John doesn’t really care too much about this morbid history. All that matters to him is that he’s sitting in the very house Stanley mother-friggin’ Hitchcock shot some of his greatest movies in. Being in this house is like being in a Stanley Hitchcock movie...ALL THE TIME. It’s the closest John could ever get to making the REAL world a REEL world, which has been a goal of his ever since he was a child.
“Johnny, this is gonna be the next NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET! Think BLAIR WITCH PROJECT meets THE RING!”
John blows out a really good hit of weed and brings the steaming bowl away from his dried, flaky lips. For a man living in an enormous palace formerly owned by Stanley Hitchcock, John looks like complete...well, SHIT. If a zombie from a George Romero movie and a wino on Hollywood Boulevard ever coupled and had a son, John would probably look something like that son.
He wears a mustard-stained Super Bowl XXX shirt and a holy pair of frosted jeans that look like they were either stolen from a Salvation Army thrift store or from an unattended drier at a Laundromat. His oversized tennis sneakers are of a brand that nobody ever heard of, except for the poor bastard in the China factory who was paid three cents an hour to manufacture them.
As for John’s hair, it’s long, snarly, oozing with grease, crusted with dandruff and contaminated with lice. His teeth are a lemon-yellow: that is, what’s left of his teeth, as the two front incisors are missing due to chronic gum recession. His skin is the color of a brown baked potato due to the unprecedented amounts of marijuana smoke that he clouds his aura with all day. In short, John looks like he belongs on Skid Row, not in one of the nicest mansions ever constructed in the Hollywood Hills.
He nurses his bowl in his lap and zones out for several minutes on end, staring at a "Kit Cat" wall-clock that – in his mind – always has the little hand pointing at four and the big hand pointing at twenty. (Incidentally, the wall-clock was in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids). And, then, after maybe five or six minutes, a minor jolt of energy will trigger motor activity – just enough for John to bring his bowl back up to his lips and spark up another delicious toke.
“Golf benefit on the twenty-second. Children’s Hospital on the twenty-third. Police Ball on the twenty-fourth. Special Olympics on the twenty-fifth. Help an old lady cross the street on the twenty-sixth. Be seen with a black person on the twenty-seventh. Peace, brutha.”
John holds the hit of weed in his lungs for as long as he can hold his breath, which is getting shorter and shorter every day that goes by. After all, he’s been smoking marijuana just about all day, every day, for about the past ten years now - ever since he came to Hollywood, in fact. Well, of course he had smoked on occasion with his friends back home in the East, but it wasn’t until he came out to Hollywood that he found it absolutely essential to smoke on a daily basis. This was basically because everybody and his brother was smoking the shit and the only way NOT to feel alienated was to join the ranks.
But to say it was “peer pressure” that made John get into the weed would be a little bit off the mark. It wasn’t to be “cool” or to “fit in” or some baloney of that nature. It was more because everybody who smoked weed seemed to be functioning on a slightly different plane of reality than he was. They were tuned into a slightly different frequency. And John realized pretty early on that he couldn’t participate within the Hollywood environment in any functional way unless he, too, tuned into this frequency. And smoking large amounts of weed was the only way to do this. So he smoked weed. And tuned in.
“WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S meets DRIVING MISS DAISY!”
Click. John cuts the power to his Blackberry, which has been spewing voice mail out of its monaural speaker for what-seems-like hours now. The messages have been one big blur to John. His agent, his manager, his lawyer, his publicist, his agent’s lawyer, his manager’s manager, his agent's manager's assistant, his manager's agent's assistant...they all talk like the bald guy with the mustache who used to do those Micro-machine commercials. In fact, everybody in the “industry” talks this way: fast enough so that the people listening don’t have time to detect the bullshit.
For all John knows, he’s listened to a couple hundred of messages while he’s been sitting there on the haunted couch, blazing like a fiend. But if he’s heard one message, he’s heard them all. Hundreds of messages on his voice mail a day, and they’re all just saying the same thing. Different, but same. Wait a minute...Mr. Miyagi said that about Daniel and the Elisabeth Shue character in Karate Kid. The two were different but same, so they made a good couple. But that really has nothing to do with anything right now. Perhaps John is just baked out of his gourd. Or maybe he’s seen so many movies that everything he thinks of reminds him of something he saw in a movie. Probably a combination of the two.
Anyway, now that the messages have stopped, there is finally silence in the house. Nothing but the drone from the air conditioning and the sporadic moans and groans from the house’s inner bodily functions. Some of the moans are probably from the ghosts, too. Although the horrible Hollywood massacre occurred several years ago, the intense energy of the “Shirley Garland murders” undoubtedly still lingers inside the mansion. Experts of the paranormal would attribute this to a phenomenon called a “residual haunting”, where a tragic event plays itself over and over again in the same space that it occurred - kind of like a skipping record. In other words, the moans John hears may be Garland’s parents dying over and over again...or Garland herself dying over and over again. This isn’t the most uplifting thought in the world, but whenever John feels depressed about it, he takes a hit of weed and everything feels better. In fact, now might be a good time to do just that. Or maybe he’s just looking for an excuse to smoke some more weed....
He brings his bowl back up to his lips, but - shit! - he’s smoking soot. The bowl is cashed. Got to pack a new nug in that fucker.
SCENE TWO
The small hand is still on the four. The big hand is still on the twenty. John is still on the couch.
He lights up a fresh bowl of weed and feels the THC run through his bloodstream. For a moment, he has a brief OBE (i.e. outer-body experience), so he feels very fortunate. He used to have a lot of these when he first started the weed, but his body has grown more desensitized to the drug, and, thus, its effects. In layman’s terms, an OBE is basically the sensation that you’re floating out of your body. Your spirit or soul or consciousness - whatever you want to call it - is detaching itself from the flesh.
John loves a good OBE every now and again. The further he gets away from his body, the further he gets away from the pain.
“RRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEoooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeee!”
There is a long groan in the far distance of the house - almost a growl. Maybe it was in the parlor. Maybe in the kitchen. Maybe it wasn’t even on the ground floor. It could have been on the second or third. Maybe even the fourth. Everything echoes so much in the damn house that you can virtually hear everything in every room.
The groan startles John for a split moment, but he still hardly moves from his place on the couch. He does, however, wrap his lips around his bowl and cook up another hit for himself.
‘Damn restless souls’, he says to himself as he sucks in a semi-decent toke. John’s lucky if all he hears is an occasional “reeeeeeeeeeeooooowwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeee” from those doomed spirits. Some days they’re so loud that they sound like Axl Rose at the beginning of that song “Welcome to the Jungle”.
“Whoooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaoooooohhhhhhhhhhhh...ooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooo....oooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
It’s probably no coincidence that Axl wrote “Welcome to the Jungle” in reaction to how he felt when he first moved to Hollywood from Indiana. Maybe Axl heard the moans of restless spirits as well. They’re everywhere in the town if you listen carefully enough.
SCENE THREE
By now, at least some time has passed. Instead of being 4:20, it’s now...oh, wait: it’s still 4:20. A pile of marijuana soot has grown to about the size of an anthill on the Casablanca coffee table.
John allows one last hit of weed to seep through the gaps in his rotting teeth and then he shows the first significant signs of life. He lays his bowl to rest on the coffee table and slowly rises from the couch, like the dead becoming the living dead in some zombie movie. He pivots, moves away from the couch and walks past the amplifier Marty McFly explodes at the beginning of Back to the Future.
He leaves Movieland and enters the foyer to the house, which still has the Transylvanian theme from the Shirley Garland days. The wax candles are lit and the cobwebs are still fake and there’s also an L-shaped staircase running up to the second floor, looking almost like an exact replica of the one Bela Lugosi descends in the original Dracula. The room even has a thin layer of dust on the floor that looks suspiciously placed, like a set-designer comes through every hour or so and sprinkles some flour around to help maintain the castle ‘feel’.
He leaves Transylvania and enters a room with a very New-Englandy feel: the parlor. The chairs and couches are made out of oak and there’s some ships in a bottle, lobster-trap-type coffee tables, a (whale) oil-lamp or two, as well as buoys and fish-netting decorating the walls. The interior designer said the inspiration behind this room was Cape Cod; she wanted to create the illusion that one was sitting in a cottage during a summer vacation in Hyannis or maybe Chatham. John thought this was a good idea, seeing that some of his fondest childhood memories were of his vacations spent on the Cape. But the energy didn’t turn out to be the same. Even if one of the mansion’s rooms were designed to look like heaven – whatever heaven looks like – there would still be a feeling of imminent doom, as though somebody was about to come around a corner and chop off your head with an axe.
He leaves Cape Cod and enters Ancient Rome (i.e. the kitchen). This is another room preserved from the Shirley Garland days, looking exactly the same as it did when the psycho child actress went Jack Nicholson (circa Shining) on her parents. The entranceway to this room is comprised of two white, ridged columns - in the vein of the Parthenon - and the room’s walls were built with stone that was supposedly dug up by some archeologists at some Ancient Roman ruins site that John never really gave a shit about.
In terms of its functionality as a place to prepare food, the kitchen is Julia Child’s wet dream realized. In fact, it looks like it could probably be used as a set for the Julia Child show, and this is maybe what stands out the most about it: that is, it doesn’t quite look like a real kitchen. It looks like a kitchen SET. Even the view in the rear window of the room is a little too pretty. It’s like the fake green trees and blue skies you would see outside Child’s window as she was doing her show.
Hanging from the kitchen ceiling are the best pots, pans and colanders a chef could get his hands on. The brick oven is big enough to feed the whole Brady Bunch. The state-of-the-art “touch-screen” range is something out of that sci-fi movie Blade Runner. And the stainless steel refrigerator is large enough to stock a whole nursing-home’s-worth of food...but instead of having Tapioca pudding and Breakfast shakes, there are sodas, water bottles, Vitamin Waters and enough Red Bulls to give a person a heart attack.
John opens this amazing fridge, grabs one of the Red Bulls, cracks it open and guzzles enough of the drink to substitute for a decent line of cocaine.
“Oh, that actually DOES go pretty good with the weed,” he can’t help but comment aloud. The Red Bull’s sugar takes him to an even higher place than he was before.
He sips the remainder of the delicious beverage as he makes his way out of Ancient Rome and finally arrives at his destination: the “library” or “study” - whatever you want to call it.
This room screams worldliness in a much more literal way than the other rooms. There are various world maps on the walls, as well as Globes atop wooden bookshelves, and also wooden podiums with open atlases collecting layer upon layer of dust. More noticeably, the room is filled with rows of bookcases full of leather-bound books - everything from WAR AND PEACE to TALE OF TWO CITIES to LOLITA to HUCKLBERRY FINN to PARADISE LOST to WORDSWORTH to POPE to STUART MILL to SHAKESPEARE. John always liked the vintage-looking leather binding these books more than the books themselves. In fact, he’s never read one page of them (and realizes he probably never will, no matter how much he tries to convince himself otherwise).
But John isn’t in the library for the books...or the atlases or the maps or any of that stuff. He’s in here for the super-duperly-large personal computer that’s nestled in the far corner of the room - one of the most high-tech, state-of-the-art computers in existence. Enormous twenty-four-inch flat-screen monitor. State-of-the-art Bose speakers with insane subwoofer. Wireless mouse. Thinner keyboard than a Matzo wafer. Blue-tooth wireless Internet. DVD-R drive with DVD-R burner. Firewire 800 port. USB ports up the wazoo.
The computer’s hard-drive itself is one Terabyte in size. In simple terms, this means the hard drive has 1,024 Giga-bytes of memory. In even simpler terms, this means the hard drive is so big that John will never possibly come anywhere close to filling even one-eighth of it. But this is Hollywood; and in Hollywood, bigger is always better.
John nestles his bony bum into a swiveled leather office chair that has the ability to massage your back while you sit (a feature John rarely utilizes, mainly because his back has developed scoliosis and has become very frail from slouching on the couch too much). He awakens the computer from its sleeping state. He clasps the wireless mouse and drags the mouse arrow up to the Firefox web browser. He double-clicks. The web browser opens...
John immediately goes to his bookmarks...or maybe it’s more accurate to say ‘bookmark’, as he only has one of them entitled “Heather”. He clicks on “Heather” and a Facebook profile opens up onto the page. In the top left corner of the profile, there is a wonderful photo of a beautiful girl named Heather Huckle. John stares at the photo for a good twenty or thirty seconds. A tear of love materializes in his eyes, momentarily burning away the marijuana fog like a drop of Visine.
Heather Huckle has long, chestnut hair running down to her shoulders and green eyes that have ‘Libra’ written all over them (or so John would say). Her pink lips surround a set of perfect, white teeth with just the perfect teeth-to-mouth ratio (meaning she doesn’t smile like a horse). Her skin is pale, but not in a pasty kind of way, which would be a bad thing. It is more like milk. Sweet-tasting skim milk. Warm skim milk...no, let’s say two-percent milk. The kind of milk your mother made you drink to settle your stomach before you went to bed. And maybe there’s some honey mixed in there as well.
In short, Heather is an angel sent from heaven-above and John can’t take his eyes away from her godsend of a Facebook pic. He knows it sounds cheesy, but every time he looks at her photograph, something inside of him vibrates that no woman has ever made vibrate before. He’s come to believe that this is his soul and that it vibrates at the sight of Heather because she is his soul mate. There is a theory that when a child is born, he or she exits the womb as a half-spirit: that is, not as a complete being. And the point of life is to find the ‘other half’ of his or her spirit so as to exist in a state of completeness. This, of course, is where that cliché “she makes me feel complete” comes from.
John is convinced that this is the case with him and Heather: that is, he exists right now as half-a-spirit and he needs to be with Heather in order to be complete. Of course, there’s one little problem...
He clicks on the 'info' tab, scrolls down the page and comes to the “About me” section:
“Hi, I’m Heather. I love my friends. I love my cat. And, most importantly, I love my husband!”
Husband!
Husband!!
Husband!!!
O Horrible! The word “Husband” is a hand with sharp fingernails that pierces through John’s chest, rips out his heart and chucks it onto the floor where it lies for days and rots and is eventually consumed by maggots.
Husband.
Husband!
Husband!!!
The love drains out of John’s eyes. Sheer rage replaces it. The rage builds and builds and builds like the finale to an orchestral overture. It crescendos. It peaks. O Horrible! O Terrible! O Misery! John can’t take it anymore! He explodes out of his chair like a cannonball and runs the hell out of the library.
SCENE FOUR
The home movie theater deep in the bowels of the mansion has an old-cinema-theme going on, like something seen in Cinema Paradiso or The Last Picture Show. Old-fashioned 16mm film reels are mounted on the walls, as well as original movie posters for films like Gone with the Wind, Giant, Citizen Kane, Chinatown, It Happened One Night, Clockwork Orange, Rocky, Schindler’s List and other Best-Picture winners from the past 100 years. More notably, there is a one-of-a-kind, six-sheet Frankenstein poster that is estimated to be worth about three-million dollars. It is known amongst Hollywood memorabilia people to be THE most valuable movie poster in the entire world.
In the back of the theater, there is a mini-refreshment stand, complete with popcorn-maker and soda fountain. There is also a glass display case filled with Goobers, Milk Duds, Good N’ plenty and Ju Ju Bees. (The latter candy is John’s favorite because it brings back pleasant childhood memories of seeing Follow that Bird with his mother at the local multiplex.)
John kneels beside the theater’s 75-foot, hi-definition, plasma, back-projected movie screen and places a DVD into the tray of a five-disc DVD player that also possesses the ability to play Blu-rays. He allows the movie a few seconds to gear up and goes to sit down in one of the theater’s blood-red recliners. The seats were supposedly used in 2001: A Space Odyssey during the International Space Station scenes, but John has always been skeptical as to whether that was actually true.
A DVD menu pops onto the movie screen. It’s for a movie called E.T. meets EDWARD SCISSORHANDS - John’s breakout film, the one that made him a star. John grabs a box of Ju Ju Bees from his chair’s cup-holder, pops a few into his mouth and presses ‘play’ on the DVD remote.
The epic Universal Studios logo is the first thing to come onto the screen; now, this is the early 1990s version - the one with the earth spinning and the yellow ‘Universal’ logo orbiting around it. Underscoring the logo, of course, is that epic music:
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
The music successfully creates a feeling of significance and importance. It’s almost as if it says, ‘The following movie is God’s gift to the world. It is the most important thing ever created. It will change your life. You’ve seen a lot of movies, but THIS is the one. This is THE movie. The movie of all movies. This thing is going to alter the Universe FOREVER.’
After the logo fades, a person’s face appears on the screen. The face looks a little familiar. VERY familiar. It’s John...well, not quite.
“Johnny Cruise...in....” reads a title card.
Where John Cruise looks like complete shit, Johnny Cruise looks like he got shat out of Dr. 90210. John is scrawny and Johnny is ripped. John’s teeth are yellow and Johnny’s teeth are bleach-white. John’s skin is discolored and Johnny is nicely tanned. John’s nose has a slight hook to it (the only indication of his Jewish background) and Johnny’s nose is Gentile-perfect. John’s chest is flat and Johnny has rather nice pectorals. John’s hair is long and un-groomed while Johnny’s is short and has a Julius Caesar, George Clooney-esque style going on. In simple terms, Johnny is better-looking than John. MUCH better-looking.
John chomps on a few Ju Ju Bees and gazes at his near-perfect-looking movie persona. Even though he’s seen it a million times, he tries to tattoo the image onto his mind, like a person would do when watching a beautiful - but ephemeral - sunset. He grabs his bowl of weed from his cup-holder and lights up a quick toke to assist in savoring the moment.
But the movie inevitably cuts away from the image of Johnny and goes into a long opening title sequence that John isn’t as interested in. He stops the DVD, rewinds, and plays the movie from the very beginning:
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum....”
John closes his eyes and listens to the Universal theme roar out of the theater’s 7.1 Digital Surround Sound speakers. The music, combined with the weed, takes him onto one of the highest clouds he’s ever been on. He imagines the earth being exactly what the Universal logo portrays it to be: that is, a place where such magical music is playing all the time and all is fine and all is swell. Oh, what a wonderful reality that would be. If only his reality could always be that reality.
Again, the logo fades from the screen and Johnny’s face appears like before. John rips a decent hit from his bowl, stops and rewinds the DVD again. The Universal logo replays.
He stops and rewinds and the logo plays.
He stops and rewinds and the logo plays.
He rips a really good hit of weed.
The logo plays.
He stops and rewinds and the logo plays.
John repeats this process more times than he can count. The feeling he gets when he sees his face appear on the screen after the Universal logo is indescribable. He, John Cruise (aka Johnny Cruise), is in a friggin’ Universal Picture! It makes him feel like he is the ruler of the universe, and that Heather - ‘the cunt’ - dropped the ball with the ruler of the universe. ‘Fuck that girl.’ He’s so much better than that. He’s on top of the world, for Christ sakes. He’s Mr. Universe. Definitely.
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
SCENE FIVE
Having gotten a sufficient ego-boost from the Universal logo, John returns to the haunted couch in Movieland, lights up a fresh bowl and grabs a remote control from off the Casablanca coffee table. The remote itself has about a hundred buttons on it and accesses more than a thousand digital-cable channels, a quarter of which are sports channels. John always wondered what the point was to having about a hundred “classic” sports channels to choose from. Are there really people out there who are idle enough to sit down and watch a bunch of juiced-up “athletes” play baseball games from ten years ago? Doesn’t the excitement involved in watching sports rely on NOT knowing the outcome of the game?
Maybe these channels are for the disabled and unemployed. Maybe they’re for the retired. Or maybe they’re for the retarded. It’s more likely, however, that they’re for the lazy “Joe Six-Packs” of American society, a segment of the population that seems to be growing larger and larger every day that goes by. But John shouldn’t talk: all he does is sit on a couch and smoke weed all day. Besides, it’s these same Joe Six-packs that watch his movies and make him tens of millions a picture. So who is he to complain?
John presses ‘power’ on the remote and a ginormous, wall-mounted widescreen TV fires up on the other side of the room. The TV is so damn large that it's actually comprised of nine separate widescreen televisions. In fact, it was once a JumboTron at the Staples Center. John had heard they were auctioning it off and he felt it was completely necessary to have a television of this size mounted on the wall of his living room. He wanted to create the feeling of being inside the television whenever he was watching it - another semi-successful attempt to make his REAL world a REEL world.
The JumboTron takes a few seconds to warm up and an image of Johnny Cruise gradually materializes from the zillions of pixels. Johnny sits on the set of late-afternoon talk show host Dr. Winfrey, looking completely perfect, but not even in an annoying way. Johnny has somehow perfected the art of how to be perfect in an imperfect way. That is, his demeanor exudes a genuineness and down-to-earth-ness that no member of the Good Housekeeping demographic could ever resist. Every successful celebrity knows that, in order to be liked, one must give off the impression that ‘I’m just like you’.
“How did it feel when you got your first big break?” asks Dr. Winfrey with a look of reverence that would make one think she was interviewing Jesus Christ.
“It was pretty surreal, actually,” says Johnny, being sure his responses contain the perfect balance of wit, charm and sincerity. “My mom raised five children on her own while my dad worked fifteen-hour days at the factory. So it was pretty amazing when I could pay them back for all the love and support.”
The studio audience gives Johnny an enormous round of applause. They clearly love him more than they love their own mothers.
Meanwhile, John heats up another nugget of weed and hits his bowl as hard as he can. ‘Oh, God, this is actually a really good hit,’ he thinks to himself as he zaps the TV with the remote and changes the channel.
Another image of Johnny immediately pops onto the JumboTron. This time, Johnny sits at a desk positioned in a window overlooking Rockefeller Center in New York City. He sits with two news anchors, one of whom is a middle-aged man with a spray-on tan and a five-year-old’s face (Botox). The other anchor is a woman who used to be gorgeous in the 80s, but now is mostly nothing but lip implants, pasty-white skin and glassy eyes (Xanax).
“What’s the secret to your success?” asks the anchor with the Botox face.
“My dad’s last words before he died of cancer when I was eight were ‘Always tell the truth. Always.’ And that’s my secret. That’s what I do.”
“Any advice for those trying to make it?”
“Yeah. Just...be true to yourself.”
Click! John changes the channel and hits the bowl pretty good this time.
Yet another image of Johnny appears on the JumboTron. This time, he is on the “red carpet” for the Golden Globes, strategically positioned in front of a white wall covered with Playstation logos. He is being escorted by three very attractive women: one is White, one is Black and the other is Asian. They hover around Johnny and collectively create a tableaux of political-correctness.
“Who did you want to win tonight?” asks a disturbingly thin reporter from “Inside Entertainment” television. Somewhere down the line, this poor woman got it in her head that starving herself to the point of looking like a Holocaust survivor was a turn-on.
“Everyone who won I wanted to win. I’m really glad Matt Affleck got Best Actor, though. He came from a broken home and was repeatedly abused by his stepfather. Plus, I thought it was pretty amazing to see him dedicate the award to his sister who was killed by a drunk driver when she was eighteen.”
“How do you think Billy Martin did as host?”
“I thought Billy was amazing, actually. Yeah, Billy’s just a real amazing guy with great comedic timing. He donates about a fourth of what he makes on his TV show to the Special Olympics.”
The channel changes and another image of Johnny appears on the JumboTron. This time, he’s standing in front of his private jet, dressed in a robe with a Taqiyah (Muslim cap). A bouquet of local news microphones is positioned on a podium in front of him, each displaying their respective station numbers.
“You go to a country like Somalia,” says Johnny, “and it really makes you thankful for everything you have. These people are lucky if they get one solid meal a week. I mean, I thought I had it bad when I grew up in a trailer home and had to wait in line every time I went to the bathroom.”
The channel changes again - this time, to a local news report.
“Among the celebrities at the charity run were Johnny Cruise.”
The channel changes to another news report.
“The animal shelter was funded in large part by Johnny Cruise.”
The channel changes again. This time, it’s Gene Ebert and Roger Siskel talking movies:
“WEDDING CRASHERS meets FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL starring Johnny Cruise is one of the most original comedies to come around in a long time.”
The channel changes again. This time, it’s a trailer for a movie.
“Critics are calling SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION meets DANCES WITH WOLVES one of the best films of the year. ’Johnny Cruise does it again,’ says Wesley Mitchell of the New York Times. ‘This is Johnny Cruise at his best’ says Amy Kael of the Washington Post.”
The channel changes again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“Johnny Cruise!’
One more time.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again. This time, it’s ZMT: the tabloid news show.
“Yeah, so I got Johnny Cruise outside The Grill,” says a surfer-looking dude with long, blonde hair and a backwards baseball cap.
The show cuts to some amateur mini-DV footage of Johnny exiting The Grill and speed-walking to his custom-made Ferrari parked out front.
“Notice the pick of the nose as he drives off,” the surfer-dude says with a facetious scoff.
Everybody in the ZMT studio lets out a collective “Eeeeeeeeeew.”
“I don’t care what y‘all have to say,” says a porky Black paparazzo sitting in a cubicle. “Johnny so sexy he make pickin’ his nose a turn-on. Aha-yah!”
Everybody in the ZMT office laughs at the banal comment, especially the editor of ZMT (Marv Levin), who is so amused he has to take a break from writing “Johnny Cruise at Grill” onto his see-through grease-board.
John changes the channel.
“Johnny Cruise!” screams the television.
He changes the channel again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
He scans the digital cable box from channel 70 to channel 120.
“Johnny Cruise!”
He scans it again, from channel 120 to channel 215.
“Johnny Cruise!”
Then, from channel 215 to 300.
“Johnny Cruise!”
He surfs from 300 to 350.
“Britney Lohan!”
Wait...Britney Lohan? He must have heard incorrectly. Yes, that’s got to be it. Perhaps if he scans from channel 350 to channel 405...
“Angelina Witherspoon!”
Huh? No, his ears must be deceiving him. Certainly if he scans from channel 405 to 470...
“Tom Pitt!”
Or from 470 to 471...
“Paris Spears!”
Maybe on channel 472...
“Michael Clooney!”
John finally comes to realize that his ears aren’t deceiving him, no matter how stoned he is. Sheer panic sets in. This is no laughing matter! His remote control skills become frantic.
“Jessica Duff! Julia Swank! Richard Hanks! Tom Gere!”
John surfs his way well past channel 1,000 on the digital cable box and not once does he hear the name ‘Johnny Cruise’ anywhere. This is not good. This is not good at all. This is so bad. This is so damn bad.
John tosses his steaming bowl of weed onto the Casablanca coffee table and makes a sprint for the library.
SCENE SIX
John jumps his buttocks into the leather, massage-capable office chair and does a three-sixty-degree swivel into the computer desk. He grabs the wireless mouse and immediately opens up the Firefox web browser. Then he types “Google.com” on the wafer-thin keyboard and - within a millisecond - he gets the search engine. On a normal day, John will pretend that he has other computer business to tend to before he starts doing something like this, but this time there is no beating around the bush. He shamelessly types two words into Google: ‘Johnny’ and ‘Cruise’.
Immediately, a bunch of hits pop up on the computer screen, but not nearly enough as far as John is concerned. According to the numbers at the bottom of the screen, Google is “displaying 10 hits of approximately 16,300,000.” Sixteen-million Google hits may be good for a D-lister, but John is A-list, and for an A-lister, sixteen-million Google Hits sounds like shit.
He pulls a spiral notebook out of a nearby file cabinet and flips open to a page rather deep into the middle. On one of the wide-ruled pages there is a hand-drawn graph reporting the number of Google Hits ‘Johnny Cruise’ received on a given date. According to the report, Johnny received a whopping 48,000,000 only a week ago. This means that - in just one week - he’s had a twenty-four-million drop in Google Hits. How could this have happened?! This is crazy. It’s an all-time low.
“O fuck me.”
There must be something wrong here, though. This couldn’t be accurate. Perhaps there’s a bug in the Google server. Maybe if he just refreshes the web browser the numbers will be better. He gives this a try, but no! Not only are they still low, but they are even lower - now down to about 14,000,000 hits. This couldn’t be! Google’s server must have been hacked and contaminated with a worm by some Dorito-eating computer nerd. Yes, there’s got to be viruses and/or spy-ware and/or Trojan thingys to blame for all this. There’s only one way to find out.
SCENE SEVEN
John darts into Transylvania (i.e. the front foyer to the mansion). The room is dark and musty like a castle would be. The only light comes from the Gothic wax candles and some daylight seeping through the room’s wrought-iron-barred windows.
John starts pacing in front of a dungeon-like double-door with brass rings for handles. He is dressed in camouflage pants, a black-hooded sweatshirt, steel-toe combat boots and dark sunglasses. He looks like a Navy SEAL about to execute some sort of covert operation.
He rips one last toke from his bowl and stuffs it into his side pocket for safekeeping. ‘Oh, that’s one of the better hits I’ve had today,’ he remarks to himself. Then, he grabs one of the brass rings and opens the massive door wide enough to slip his scrawny body through. For the first time in months, John has officially stepped foot outside the house.
SCENE EIGHT
Like much of the home’s interior, the mansion’s outer facade hasn’t changed much since the Shirley Garland days either. The creamy stucco walls, clay roof tiles and wrought-iron windows are part of a “Spanish-styled” architecture that, for some reason, was all the rage in Hollywood back in the early part of the century. Maybe this was because of the area’s Spanish roots. Or maybe it was because the architecture appeared to be exotic and thus made anybody who lived in the home appear exotic as well. Hollywood, after all, has always been about appearances.
The Spanish influence extends to the mansion's driveway, which is composed of faux cobblestones that look like somebody should be riding a horse-and-buggy over. The cobblestones form a perfect circle around an amazing Valencia fountain filled with pennies, goldfish and blue food-dye. A grounds-keeper stocks the fountain with new fish about once a week because none of them live very long. Apparently goldfish don’t thrive well in a fountain-full of blue-number-one. Who knew?
But back to John.
The camouflaged recluse bursts out the front door to his mansion, hops down to the driveway, dives behind the goldfish fountain and takes cover here for a moment. Despite the fact that he is wearing sunglasses, the intense Southern California sunlight makes his eyes squint into slits. He feels like he’s just stepped out of a Matinee and into the harsh daylight of the outside world.
He sits with his back flush against the base of the fountain, trying to conceal as much of himself as he can from all possible vantage points. It’s always a possibility that some bold paparazzo snuck onto the property and John needs to be extremely careful of this. One single photograph of him looking like he does could damage the Johnny Cruise image forever, even with all the camouflage shit.
John takes a peek around both corners of the fountain to be sure nobody’s watching him, but the coast appears to be clear - no signs of a stalker as far as he can see. He’s about to make his next move when he hears a helicopter hovering in the not-too-far distance. He decides he better wait a bit longer, just to be sure it isn’t coming close to his area. Sometimes the paparazzi will rent a chopper to get some aerial shots of his compound; but it’s more likely that the helicopter is the LAPD searching for a gang-banger or car thief or drug dealer or sex-offender or bank-robber or serial killer or child-molester or kidnapper or O.J. Simpson. ‘Christ, how can anyone be a cop in LA?’ John wonders as he ducks his head lower to the ground. Because a criminal is never just your average criminal. And a crime is never just an average crime.
Take the case of the 1981 Wonderland murders: the four people in that apartment weren’t just murdered. They were BRUTALLY bludgeoned over and over again with lead pipes, their guts and brains splattering all over the carpets and walls. What drives a person to the point where they’re capable of doing such a thing? John Holmes - the porn star notorious for having the biggest unit in the business - was said to be somehow involved with the murders, though he was ultimately exonerated from the crime.
And then there’s the 1947 Black Dahlia murder, where some wack-job sawed Elizabeth Short’s body in half, severed all parts of her flesh with near-artistic precision, drained her blood in a bath tub and left her body parts in a vacant lot to be found by some poor unfortunate soul. Like with Wonderland, they never found the wacko who did it. Who the hell on earth could have gotten away with these murders? Heck, maybe it wasn’t anybody on earth. Maybe it was the devil himself.
And then, of course, there’s the 1969 Manson murders, which weren’t exactly typical crimes either. The Manson family repeatedly stabbed a pregnant Sharon Tate in her Hollywood Hills home, tying a rope around her neck for no logical reason, writing “Pig” on a door with Tate’s blood. Why did they do it? Manson claimed the Beatles White album was filled with hidden messages that told him to murder (or at least order the murders). It was all to trigger a race war that would create a new world order and so on and so forth.
Of course, a lot of fucked-up murders happen in other cities, but LA undeniably has the strangest ones. Perhaps the place really is a latter-day Babylon, as it has been nicknamed ever since Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle was accused of killing starlet Virginia Rappe by stuffing a champagne bottle up her crotch. Maybe it’s because everybody in Hollywood is desperate for two things: popularity and profit (Manson, after all, wanted to be a big rock star and was bitter about his failure). And when you’re on a pathway towards popularity and profit, you’re on a path away from God. And when you’re away from God, you’re closer to the devil. And when you’re close to the devil, you’re capable of doing some really fucked-up things.
But maybe it’s not because of the money or even the fame. Perhaps it just makes sense that in a place that is home to the most creative people in the world, the amazing amounts of constructive energy can sometimes go the other way and become the most amazingly destructive.
Whatever it is, one would think a police officer would get depressed in a place where humanity always seems to be operating at its worst level. What is even the point of their job? They stop one bad guy and three more are born right after him. There’s basically no hope of ever fully restoring order. It’s like putting a Band-Aid over an infected wound…
But, alas, such thoughts are depressing to John and must be ignored at once. It’s not the proper time for him to ponder all these issues, anyway. He’s a man on a mission and now that the helicopter has clearly faded into the distance, it’s time to make his move.
He hops out from behind the fountain and makes a run down the long, serpentine driveway. The driveway snakes through a plush, green lawn fertile with exotic-looking plant-life, creating an Amazon jungle-like feel. Many of the palm trees were imported from some exotic island in the Caribbean John never made an effort to remember the name of.
Beneath one of the palms, there is a rectangular steel cage housing a rare, white African tiger worth thousands. John bought the beast a few years back to help scare off stalkers and other unwanted trespassers of his property. Of course, he has to keep the tiger caged (and heavily sedated with tranquilizers), so it wouldn’t be able to do anything should it come face-to-face with a stalker. But John thought the presence of the tiger was a good deterrent, nevertheless - a “turn-the-fuck-around” kind of warning. “You are not welcome!”
John runs past the tiger cage, cuts through the rest of the lawn and the driveway soon becomes one, long downward spiral lined with cypress, eucalyptus, sycamore, olive, lemon, orange and more palm trees. By the looks of all the plant-life, one would think John were running through the Garden of Eden. Of course, the smog in the sky kind of shatters the illusion. Take the plants away and he might as well be running through Moscow.
The driveway spirals downward for two or three minutes and eventually brings John to a golden gate that looks like the entrance to a giant canary cage. The thick, golden bars reach high into the sky and get lost in the dense smog. Jewel-encrusted ‘J’ and ‘C’ initials are mounted in the center of it, interwoven with each other like Tony Montana's. Altogether, it’s like the gate of heaven...only with about a dozen security cameras positioned on each spike along the top (pointing in every which direction).
John dives to the side of the amazing golden gate and takes a moment to collect himself before he makes his next move. For once in his life, he feels that - perhaps - it MAY be a good idea to cut down on the weed, as he is extremely out-of-breath from the run. His chest also hurts him like hell and his throat burns. The good news, however, is that he’s pretty sure he made it down the driveway unseen. He purposely had his gardeners plant the tallest junipers they could get their hands on so as to shield every inch of his estate from the public view. Total privacy...except from the helicopters. No way to conceal himself from those.
After a little breather, John whips a handy set of Sharper Image binoculars out of his pocket and scopes out the scene on the other side of Mt. Olympus Drive. He pans from the left to the right, checking a long line of Italian cypress trees for anything suspicious. He sees one tree that looks pretty normal, and then another tree that also looks pretty normal, and then a tree with a weird-looking branch, and then a...WAIT! He pans back left - to the tree with the weird-looking branch. He realizes that what he’s seeing isn’t a branch at all. He’s pretty sure this mysterious anomaly...is a telephoto lens!
John peels the binoculars away from his eyes and takes a quick peek down both ends of Mt. Olympus Drive. If his inkling is correct, there’s bound to be a random, out-of-place-looking vehicle parked somewhere to the side of the road. Maybe a Chevy Suburban SUV. Or a GMC Yukon.
He peers down the northbound side of Mt. Olympus Drive and all looks clear down there, but when he looks southbound, he notices a black, SUV-like vehicle about 100 or 200 yards down. He blinks a few times to refocus his eyes and ultimately determines that, yes, it’s definitely an SUV. A very familiar-looking SUV! A Yukon! Shit!
John knew this little mission of his wasn’t going to be easy. On one hand, he was hoping there would be no paparazzi so he could easily open the gate and accomplish what he set out to do. But on the other hand, he’s glad there’s at least SOME paparazzi on the scene. This means his popularity hasn’t waned as much as he thought it might have. He’s still hot enough to be a paparazzi target, which is a really good sign. Then again, ever since ‘ZMT’ came about, anybody with the least bit of fame in his blood is a paparazzi target. All you have to be is a contestant on American Idol or the star of a popular YouTube video or the mistress of an adulterous sports figure to be considered prime paparazzi meat.
John remembers the days - not too long ago - when only the most A-list of A-list celebrities were stalked by the paparazzi. At that time, there were literally only a handful of photographers providing content to only a handful of tabloid magazines that were in circulation. But, today, there are virtually thousands of media outlets thirsty for anything and everything celebrity. And there are literally thousands of photographers roaming the streets of Hollywood trying to meet the market’s demand...
Like the one hiding behind the cypress tree right now.
John nestles his eyes back into the suctions of his binoculars, adjusts focus a bit and sees that the telephoto lens is throbbing for some action. John reckons the lens must be about as long as John Holme’s unit - maybe even longer. 500 millimeters, maybe? Possibly 600? Whatever it is, it’s definitely one of the longest lenses he’s seen. And he knows it belongs to one of the best paparazzos in the business: a man named Tex.
Tex is a potbellied feller with a frosty goatee and a Texan accent (hence the name Tex). But Tex, of course, isn’t his real name. All the photographers in LA go by pseudonyms, partly because it’s fun and makes them feel like spies or something, but also because - deep down - they don’t want their photo-subjects to know their real identities (lest a disgruntled celebrity send a hit-man out to murder their family, friends or other loved ones). Besides, nobody goes by their birth-name in a town where people go to reinvent themselves. Or lose themselves.
As far as the paparazzi go, Tex is actually on the older side of the median, as is indicated by his unstylish Wrangler shorts, shin-high tube socks and Velcro sneakers. He’s considered a veteran photographer, actually, and is somewhat well-respected within the paparazzi circle. He constantly tells Rookie photographers about the “good old days” when he didn’t have to engage in fast, Princess Diana-esque car chases or stalk out celebrity homes for hours on end. His line of work used to mainly consist of hanging out at a popular restaurant or club, blending into the scenery and unobtrusively snapping a shot or two as a celebrity goes to their car. A wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of a deal.
But now he finds himself stalking out celebrity homes on a regular basis. He is well-aware of how absurd it all is, but he also knows that, if he doesn’t do it, somebody else will. Somebody else will get that first photograph of Celebrity X taking out the garbage without any make-up on. Or someone else will get the first shot of the paramedics arriving when Celebrity Y overdoses on painkillers. Or someone else will get a shot of Celebrity Z’s wife skidding out of the driveway when she discovers she’s being cheated on. The “first shots” of whatever are always the ones that make him the most money - sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. Christ, he knows one guy who got 1.5 Mill for a first photo of Angelina Witherspoon’s newborn baby. Not too shabby.
People constantly ask Tex how it is he can stoop down to such a low level - hanging out at celebrity homes all day - just to get a stupid photo. And he always tells them that this is how he pays his bills. It’s his job! And most people accept this as a reasonable response, what with the struggling economy and financial crisis and all that shit. These days, every “working man” in America is to be left alone, no matter what that man does for “work”. Besides, Tex has a mother in a nursing home to support, and the doctor’s got her on all sorts of meds, and he’ll be damned if the insurance company is paying for even a quarter of all that shit.
One day, however, somebody had a response to Tex’s “It’s my job” response that bothered him on a certain level:
“Hey, Tex, how is it that you can hang out at celebrity homes all day, just to get a stupid photo?”
“It’s my job. It’s how I make my money.”
“Yeah, that’s what the Nazis said.”
‘That’s what the Nazis said’? Tex didn’t quite understand what this person meant, but it still bothered him on a subconscious level. ‘That’s what the Nazis said’. The remark’s been eating at him for quite some time now. He’s tried to smoke a bowl or two to forget about it, but that only helps in the short term. ‘That’s what the Nazi’s said’. ‘That’s what the Nazi’s said’. Eh, fuck it. ‘How dare that motherfucker compare me to a Nazi. I’ve got a sick mother in the nursing home, goddammit. Don’t fuckin’ judge me.’
“Bee-a-leep! Tommy Timberlake’s at Guitar Center! Bee-a-leep!”
Tex’s Nextel Bee-a-leeps with possible leads as he hides behind the cypress tree, surveying the Johnny Cruise estate like Richard Dreyfuss in that movie Stakeout. Over the years, Tex has accumulated a vast network of “informants” sprinkled throughout the greater Los Angeles area. They are people who work at hot clubs or bars or restaurants or stores where celebrities are likely to hang out. Whenever the informant sees a celebrity, they give Tex an alert on his Nextel. In return, he gives them a little something-something - usually just a few twenty-dollar bills...sometimes more. In many cases, the informant may be a disgruntled cousin or father or ex-wife or desperate manager looking to make a little extra money. Sometimes it’s even the celebrity’s best friend.
“Bee-a-leep! Jeremy Knoxville at In and Out Burger! Bee-a-leep!”
The leads coming in today, however, don’t sound very appealing. Besides, Tex woke up this morning with his sights set on one - and only one - celebrity: Johnny Cruise. Speaking of which, he decides it’s probably a good time to poke his head out from behind the cypress and make sure nothing’s going on at the ‘JC’ gate:
Alas, all is quiet on the Johnny Cruise front - nothing going on as far as he can see. He must resume his waiting. Patience is key. ‘Hang in there. You’ll get your shot,’ he tells himself. He’s ready to wait hours longer if he has to.
By this time, John has concealed himself well from the sneaky paparazzo’s view, crouching behind a lemon tree planted to the side of the golden gate. He realizes he’ll have to resort to “Plan B” in order to accomplish the mission he set out to do. “Plan B” involves him accessing a secret underground bunker that turns into a secret underground tunnel that turns into another secret bunker that leads up to a secret manhole right behind his mailbox on Mt. Olympus Drive.
John had this bunker system installed a number of years ago by a specialized engineering company so as to have an alternative entrance/exit to his estate. The company had designed a similar system at Camp David, the Vice President’s Naval Observatory, the Greenbriar Hotel in West Virginia and also the Walton family compound (i.e. founders of Walmart), as well as at the homes of several other major Hollywood celebrities.
In fact, the company found itself particularly busy in Hollywood after 9/11 when everybody was freaking out about weapons of mass destruction and biological warfare. The Hollywood elite wanted to ensure their survival of a nuclear attack and having an underground bunker was one way in order to do this. They justified the multi-million dollar investment with a Darwinian philosophy: as long as they had enough money to build the bunkers, they must be the “fittest” to survive mass destruction.
As for John, he was more concerned about having a place where he could be safe from stalkers than a place he could be safe from nuclear apocalypse. He wanted to have peace-of-mind in knowing there was somewhere he could go if the obsessed fans ever decided to unite and blitzkrieg his estate, the ramifications of which would be so disastrous he’d much rather not think about it.
The entrance to John’s bunker is concealed by a grove of gardenia bushes not far from the golden gate and disguised in the form of a small boulder (like you would see in any yard or garden). John tiptoes his way into the gardenias, kneels beside the boulder and inserts his fingers into a crevice that functions as a kind of door handle. He lifts the rock up from the ground - just like a door on a hinge - and a manhole-sized pit appears beneath it.
John gives the sky one last check for helicopters and descends his way into the underground via a series of metal rungs functioning as a ladder. He goes down and down and down and down and down until he hits a dusty, concrete floor. His surroundings are nothing but a dark, echoey abyss of seemingly endless space.
Although he is now protected from the threats of the world above, John proceeds through the pitch-black bunker with extreme caution, as rattlesnakes have been known to find their way into the tunnels. One bite from those bastards and John would’ve been better off going through his gate, even if it meant being photographed by the pesky paparazzo.
John blindly feels his way through the bunker and then meanders through a dusty tunnel or two. Aside from the rattlesnake worries, he finds himself blessed with a feeling of complete peace. It is a feeling of total security that he so rarely feels anymore. The only other place he’s felt this secure was when he used to lock himself into a windowless bathroom, like in a New York hotel room nobody knew he was staying at. Everywhere else he goes, there’s always the chance of a paparazzo or a stalker or a fan or a telescope or a pair of binoculars or a web cam or a camera phone or an Ipod watching his every move. Even in his own home he always has the feeling that a creep may be camping out in one of the guest rooms and peeping at him all day.
Unfortunately, the feeling of security John experiences in the bunker is short-lived, for it dissipates when he comes to a dusty ray of light at the end of a tunnel. This light comes from another manhole leading back up to the outside world. “So long, security,” he mumbles to himself as he clasps a metal rung and heads back up to the uncomfortable world above.
Meanwhile - above ground - Tex is still under the impression that all is quiet on the Johnny Cruise front. He takes a soft-pack of Camel Lights out of his pocket and boldly lights one up, even though there are countless ‘no smoking’ signs lining the street. Due to the dryness in the Hills and the gusty Santa Ana winds, cigarette-smoking is strictly prohibited, especially during the summer/early-fall dry season. One piece of cigarette ash literally has the power to ignite all of Laurel Canyon into a conflagration within minutes.
In fact, it’s almost a miracle that Los Angeles hasn’t been destroyed by fire yet - or by an earthquake, for that matter. Scientists predict that “The Big One” (i.e. a really big fucking earthquake) will more than likely strike the Los Angeles area within the next twenty years. It will reach a magnitude of eight-plus on the Richter scale and most of Los Angeles is predicted to suffer a catastrophic amount of damage. As a scientist once commented: “LA was made to be destroyed.”
Perhaps this feeling of imminent destruction explains why there’s no overwhelming appreciation of history in LA. Maybe this is why people didn’t think twice before tearing down the Garden of Allah (where the Marx Brothers and Humphrey Bogart once resided) to make room for a parking lot. And why they demolished a place like Schwab’s drugstore (the place Lana Turner was supposedly discovered) to make room for a mini-mall. What’s the point of preserving history if an earthquake could come tomorrow and destroy everything anyway? Might as well capitalize on the property while you can.
And maybe this also explains why it’s so important that a Hollywood movie grosses well during its opening weekend (much more important than how it grosses throughout its overall shelf-life). In a place where everything could be gone tomorrow, studios need a melodramatic movie like Titanic that razzles and dazzles an audience immediately, as opposed to a more sophisticated film that slowly pulls an audience in over a longer amount of time. In Hollywood’s eyes, the hare always wins the race…mainly because the tortoise isn’t even given a number to compete. There is no patience for a slowpoke movie when everything could be taken away in a heartbeat. Immediacy is key. Instant gratification is essential. Anybody who thinks otherwise is a sucker.
But, again, back to John.
On the other side of the Cruise estate, the lid to another manhole (also disguised as a rock) jiggles and slowly opens. John’s head rises from the hole like that gopher in Caddyshack and he already has his binoculars glued to his face. Fortunately, Tex is still behind the cypress and still focused on the gate (not the mailbox). The coast is clear to execute his final move.
He jumps out of the manhole and makes a run for his gigantic mailbox, which is about fifty yards away from the gate. The mailbox is massive and - like the gate - also sports interwoven ‘J’ and ‘C’ initials on the side of it. Of course, this particular receptacle is for fan mail only. All of John’s important mail (like bills and checks) are delivered straight to his accountant, lest they be stolen by an obsessed fan or idiot or asshole or general menace to society. John hasn’t paid a bill himself in years. His accountant takes care of all his financial affairs.
In fact, John doesn’t really have any need for a mailbox outside his house, as he could easily have all his fan mail delivered to his agent’s office. He wanted it, however, for an occasional ego-boost. Even though he’s been an A-list celebrity for about ten years and has probably received nearly a billion fan letters, the feeling of worthiness a single letter gives him never gets old. Not only do the kind words justify his existence on the earth, but they also provide tangible evidence that proves Heather made an enormous mistake in NOT marrying him, that bitch.
“Yeah, that bitch,” John repeats to himself as he stands in front of the mailbox, taking one more quick peek over his shoulder to be sure Tex’s 600mm telephoto lens isn’t focused on his ass. It’s not - thankfully. So it’s time to make the last move.
He grips the handle to the mailbox with his clammy hand. He opens it up. He takes a look inside...
O horrible! O terrible! O shit!!!
His suspicions have been confirmed: there is the most puniest of all piles of mail in the box. Ten or twelve envelopes at the very most. Some of it is possibly junk. Useless coupons. And bogus credit card offers. Maybe even a Publisher’s Clearing House package. This is not good. This is not good at all. This is so damn bad.
John has to remove his sunglasses so he can see the mail with his own naked eyes, but, god-damn, there’s no doubt about it: the volume of mail is the smallest it’s ever been. This is NOT the mail of an A-list celebrity. This is not even the mail of a D-list celebrity. Hell, John got more mail than this when he was a ‘nobody’ living in a one-bedroom apartment off Hollywood Boulevard. What the hell is going on?!
Sheer panic turns into paralysis and it runs through John’s veins like a hit of weed laced with something rotten. He loses grip of his sunglasses and they fall to the pale-gray concrete below. The lenses pop out of their frames. They make a noise. The noise is somewhat loud...well, at least loud enough to get Tex’s attention.
The scheming paparazzo negligently stomps his cigarette into some dry chaparral and instinctively fires up the power to his camera. He hops out from behind the cypress, turns in the direction of the noise and gets ready to photograph anything that fucking moves.
But the only thing that moves...is another Italian cypress tree to his right...and another one to his left...and another one...and another one. The trees are moving because Tex isn’t friggin’ alone! Ten or twelve or twenty other paparazzos jump out from behind the trunks of the cypresses, brandishing their 600mm telephoto lenses like a platoon of Vietnam soldiers.
They spot the mysterious man standing by the mailbox and immediately start charging at him - locking and loading their cameras - ready to rape the movie star’s soul of everything it has to offer.
“Hey, Johnny! That you?!” shouts Tex as he tries to keep up with the others.
John hears the galloping behind him and knows he’s a sitting duck right now. But he’s still too paralyzed to get the hell out of there.
“Hey, Johnny, what’s up!” shouts another one of the photographers.
“Hey, Lightning Man!” shouts a paparazzo with a miniDV video camera, alluding to a superhero movie John did a few years back entitled SUPERMAN meets SPIDERMAN.
John’s motor skills refuse to return to him, but fortunately - for now - his back is towards the photographers, denying them a good shot.
“Johnny! Hey, Johnny! Johnny!!!” The photographers surround John on all sides. He has nowhere to run now. He’s definitely fucked.
But, suddenly, there’s a sound in the distance. An “eeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrccccccccccccchhhhhhhhhh” sound. It’s the sound of rubber tires peeling the shit out of hot concrete. A red, custom-made Ferrari F430 Spider appears about a hundred yards down Mt. Olympus Drive. It burns and fishtails and peels its way down the street.
Tex knows this car from anywhere. “It’s Johnny!” he yells.
The Ferrari does about seventy miles-per-hour down the road, bombs past John, scorches into a U-turn, peels back in front of the mailbox and skids to a stop - blocking the paparazzi from a clear shot of John.
“Get in!” Johnny yells to John, kicking the passenger door open and pulling the seat forward.
John turns his head halfway towards Johnny, but the rest of his body is still in a state of shock. It doesn’t budge.
Tex and the other photographers form a suffocating half-circle around the car.
“Hey, Johnny. How are ya?” asks Tex, firing off about three shots a second.
“Johnny, what’s up bro?” asks another photographer.
“It’s Lightning Man. Hey, Lightning Man,” says the one with the video camera.
Johnny turns towards the cameras and gives them a milky-white smile, like the one you would see on the wall of a dentist office.
“Hey, what’s goin’ on, guys?”
FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! The camera-shudders sound like an endless deck of cards being shuffled.
Johnny gives them a few good shots and then turns back to John, who still hasn’t budged from the mailbox. Johnny’s camera-friendly smile fades and a demonic look surges into his face, one that would make the devil shiver.
“Get into the fucking car!” he spits at John.
The demonic outburst snaps John out of his paralytic shock. He swipes the pile of mail from the mailbox and dives into the backseat of the Ferrari.
Johnny slams the car door shut and power-locks the doors.
“Keep your head down,” he says to John.
He revs the Ferrari’s engine. The wheels scorch the pavement, making it squeal in pain. Then he peels it into drive, burns into a U-turn and guns it for the golden-gate.
Tex and the other photographers chase after the car, constantly snapping one shot after another shot, after another shot.
“Johnny! Who’s your friend?! Over here, Johnny! One smile!!!”
Johnny’s Ferrari screeches up to the golden gates and fishtails to a halt. The gate begins to open, but it’s so damn big that it takes a full thirty seconds to actually open wide enough for a car to go through. In other words, there’s plenty of time for the photographers to immediately swarm the car like flies on you-know-what.
Johnny rolls down his window and is - once again - all smiles for the camera:
“Hey guys, how are ya?”
The videographer shoves his camera into Johnny’s face.
“Lightning Man, where’s your costume?!”
“Ha ha ha. It’s at the cleaners. Ha ha.”
The other photographers swarm the windshield to the Ferrari, snapping off one photo after another photo. There is not much effort put into style, composition or exposure - as long as Johnny turns up in the shot, they know the photo is good enough to make them several hundreds of dollars.
“Johnny, who’s your friend?” asks Tex.
“Huh?” Johnny pretends to play dumb.
“Who’s your friend in the car?!”
Fortunately, the golden gates are wide enough now for Johnny to get the Ferrari through and ignore Tex’s question.
“All right, guys, I gotta go.”
He revs the engine hard, slamming down on the brake so his tires can start skidding and put the road in a terrible state of misery. EEEeeeeeeeeeerch!
But the photographers don’t get the hint.
“Johnny, one more! Who you dating these days?!”
“All right, guys,” repeats Johnny.
“Wait, Johnny! Come on, bro! One more!!!”
Snap! Click! Snap! Click! Snap! Click! Snap! Click! Snap! Click!
“All right, guys. You gotta get outta the way. I gotta go.”
He revs the engine even harder, but the crazy paparazzi bastards still don’t move. They jump on top of each other like a bunch of hyenas fighting over a carcass. Their jumping soon turns into pushing. Their pushing becomes shoving. And then their shoving becomes actual fighting...as is the case with two paparazzos named Ron and Corey.
“Get off me, bro! Don’t fuckin’ touch me, bro!”
“Go fuck yourself, you faggot!”
Insulted by the ‘faggot’ remark, Corey whacks Ron’s camera out of his hands and the $3,000 machine shatters to pieces on the pavement. Ron doesn’t think twice before he lunges at Corey and starts beating the shit out of him.
“Get off me, bro! What the fuck, bro!”
Johnny realizes things are beginning to go sideways and that it’s a good time to make a final exit. He eases off the brake and starts fishtailing the car away from the paparazzi.
“Wait! One more, Johnny!” they yell.
But Johnny doesn’t wait. He buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurns the Ferrari through the golden gates, goes about ninety up the driveway and disappears around a corner within seconds. The photographers are left to cough and gag and curse from all the dust and exhaust.
Tex, in particular, is pissed off because he didn’t get all the shots he wanted. He has the tempting urge to chase after the Ferrari, but knows it’s not worth the potential legal repercussions he will face for trespassing onto the Johnny Cruise property.
Instead, he decides he better break up the fight between Ron and Corey, which is getting uglier and uglier by the second. He figures it’s probably in his best interest to do this, lest somebody get killed and make the paparazzo profession appear even more pathetic to the public than it already is. Tex is sick of the public hating his guts. He must maintain a certain level of honor, for his ill mother’s sake.
SCENE NINE
Johnny’s Ferrari burns its way up the tortuous driveway, peels the shit out of the cobblestones and rips its way around the goldfish fountain. He skids the car to a complete stop in an open space amidst a black Maserati (orange interior), silver Rolls Royce (black interior), and a Harley Davidson motorcycle (no interior).
The driver’s-side door bursts open and Johnny jumps out onto the driveway. He’s wearing a vintage-looking ‘Pepsi-Cola’ T-shirt and a pair of boot-cut Abercrombie & Fitch jeans with intentional man-made holes in the knees. For footwear, he sports a pair of early-1980s, Jeff-Spicoli-style low-top Vans with no laces. Overall, the look gives off the impression of being ‘old-school’ when, in fact, much of the clothing was manufactured only weeks earlier in some sweaty, third-world factory. Johnny chose this particular outfit - not because he likes the clothing, necessarily - but because he has multi-million deals with Abercrombie, Vans and Pepsi-Co. He must wear one article of each brand’s clothing in public “no less than three times a week” (as the contracts stipulate).
Johnny pulls the driver seat forward in the Ferrari and yanks John out of the car by his long, greasy hair.
“Owe! Stop it!” John yells.
“Shut up!” barks Johnny.
He drags John over the cobblestones, past the goldfish fountain and up the front steps to the mansion.
“Johnny, you’re hurting me!”
Johnny says nothing in response. He drops John on the landing of the Mexican-styled front steps and takes a quick peek over his shoulder...just to be sure no photographers followed him up to the house. He knows that he could sue any paparazzo who trespasses his property, but he also knows that if he pisses any photographer off with a lawsuit it could mean stigmatization (in the form of less attention from the paparazzi). This means less publicity, which ultimately means less popularity.
Johnny and the other major celebrities would never admit it, but the paparazzi basically control Hollywood...or, if they don’t already, they will soon. Back in the golden age, it used to be the five major studio heads who had all the power - Mayer at MGM, Laemmle at Universal, Zukor at Paramount, Cohn at Columbia and Harry Warner at Warner Bros. And then for a certain period of time it was the agents or publicists or whoever. But now it’s the paparazzi. How else did a person like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan or Anna Nicole Smith or Britney Spears become such international sensations? It wasn’t a studio-head that did it. It wasn’t an agent or manager or publicist, either. It was a paparazzo. A paparazzo MADE those people.
Fortunately, Johnny doesn’t see that any photographers have decided to come onto his property, but he’s sure that the day one does, he and all the other celebrities out there will be completely fucked. The paparazzi clearly don’t realize the power they possess. They can do whatever the hell they damn want. Nobody can touch them, so long as that ‘nobody’ wants to remain a ‘somebody’ in Hollywood. The only thing holding the paparazzi back is the scant amount of morality that has yet to leave their souls, though this will more than likely wither completely away in due time.
Johnny kicks open the door to the mansion and tosses John onto the hard stone of the Transylvanian foyer.
“Ouch!” yells John as his skull slams into the floor.
Johnny hurries into the mansion and shuts the door tightly behind him, locking it inescapable with a metal latch.
John squirms on the dusty floor like an injured worm. His skull bleeds and swells. He starts to whimper like a toddler would do before warming themselves up for a good cry.
“Don’t even think about it!” yells Johnny, circling around him like a hawk. “If I see one tear roll down your cheek, I’m gonna rip your fuckin’ eyeballs out!”
“Ok, Johnny. Ok. It’s cool.”
But he still can’t stop the whimpers from coming. Sure enough, a tear materializes in the pit of his eye socket and rolls down his cheek.
“Johnny...please. I can’t help it. Oh, God!”
For a brief moment, Johnny almost seems to look compassionate, but this look is immediately oppressed by boiling-hot rage. He leaps over to John, winds up his leg and boots him in the face with his Vans.
“Aaaaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhhh!!!” John howls in pain. The scream echoes throughout the entire mansion like a police siren in the middle of Manhattan. Blood spurts all over the place. It sprays onto the floor. And splatters on the walls.
Johnny picks John up by his hair and whips him at one of the stone, Transylvanian walls.
“Umph.”
John’s back snaps against the wall like a twig and he buckles over to the ground. Then Johnny swaggers over to him and proceeds to absolutely kick his ass in, ramming his fists into John’s head like he’s hammering a stake into the ground.
“Ouch, Johnny! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze!!!”
The whole scene gives off a disturbing vibration similar to a late-night fight on the Sunset Strip. Johnny is like a doped-up club-rat pounding his knuckles into a dude who bumped into his beer or looked at his girlfriend the wrong way. All sense of love and compassion for his fellow man entirely suppressed by the evil energies of club-drugs.
“Johnny! Pleeeeeeze!!!”
John could easily get up and run away, but he takes every blow that comes to him, almost as though he thinks he deserves it. Or maybe it’s because - deep down - he WANTS it. Or maybe he even LIKES it.
Umph! Umph! Umph! Johnny gives John one last boot to the ribs and lays off the poor bastard for a bit.
“If I see you outside this house again, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you. Hear me?!”
John can do nothing but moan and wail and maybe burp out a little scream.
“Owe. Ouch. Pleeze.”
“I said, ‘DO YOU HEAR ME?!’”
“Yes. Yes, I hear you, Johnny.”
Johnny lets out a deep sigh and shakes his head with a look of disgust that hurts John more than any violent kick to the ribs or vicious punch to the jaw. It reminds him of the look his mother would give him when he was back East, like when he didn’t get the right grade on an exam or when he got stood up for Prom or when he didn’t make the team or get a good job. The look made him feel like his entire existence was a complete disappointment to his mother. And to his society. And to the world. And to the Universe. And to God.
“Johnny, just listen to me for a second...” John pleads between his moans and groans.
He slides the pile of fan mail out of his sweatshirt’s front pouch and tosses it on the floor in front of him.
“What’s that?” asks Johnny.
“Fan mail.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is today’s fan mail.”
“What do you mean it’s today’s fan mail?”
“That’s all there is. This is all that was in the mailbox.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“No, Johnny. There’s less mail. There’s less phone calls. There’s less Google hits...there’s....”
Before John can even get another word out, Johnny darts out of Transylvania like one of those characters in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. He sprints through Cape Cod, past Movieland, through Ancient Rome and hops his ass into the computer chair of the library.
He immediately fires up Google, types in the magic words (‘Johnny’ and ‘Cruise’) and realizes that John isn’t full of shit after all. In fact, now there are only about 12 million Johnny Cruise Google hits. Yes, 12 million Google Hits! The Johnny Cruise brand is officially in the middle of a serious crisis!
“Holy shit.”
Johnny books it out of the library, bolts through Ancient Rome and bursts into Movieland where he sees John’s silhouette already standing in front of the enormous JumboTron, flipping through hundreds of channels.
“Seth Smith!”
“Will Rogen!”
“Jude Dicaprio!”
“Leonardo Law!”
Johnny’s face turns as white as paste while he listens to the giant television shout out the names.
“Angelina Witherspoon!”
“Reece Jolie!”
“Mary Kate Cyrus!”
“Miley Olson!”
The high-profile names go on and on and on and on and on, but there isn’t one ‘Johnny Cruise’ to be heard.
“See...there’s no Johnny Cruise!” John shouts over the loud TV, nursing his fractured rib cage with his bruised hand. “You’re practically obsolete!”
“Barbara Midler!”
“Whoopi Williams!”
“Robin Golberg!”
“Mark Piven!”
“Jeremy Whalberg!”
Johnny can’t bear to hear any more of the names.
“Turn it off!” he yells.
“Ashton Efron!”
“Zac Kutcher!”
“Turn it off!!!”
John nervously fumbles with the remote control and does what he’s told. The screen goes blank, crackles with static, and is then silent.
“Fuck,” mutters Johnny under his breath. He turns away from the television and starts pacing the floor.
John limps closer to Johnny, but also tries to maintain a good distance from him (lest he get another royal ass-beating).
“Johnny, if you just let me leave the house...I can take care of this, Johnny.”
“Shut up!!!”
John flinches from the outburst and even burps out a girlish wail.
“Just shut up for a minute,” repeats Johnny in a calmer tone of voice. “Let me think.”
“But Johnny...”
“You’re NOT leaving the house!”
Johnny grabs the gray cushions from off the haunted couch and starts chucking them at John with unprecedented force. The energy behind these throws is so maliciously negative. The abuse looks even worse than it did when he was kicking John in the face.
“Ouch. Owe. Stop! Please, stop, Johnny!”
John cowers to his knees and shields his face with his hands. The zippers to the cushions stab John in the head as they whip into him. Fortunately, there are only a few cushions to be thrown. And Johnny’s just thrown the last of them.
“This calls for something really big,” says Johnny when he finishes. “I mean...HUGE.”
He paces and paces and paces and paces some more, and - suddenly - an idea pops into his head.
“Sex scandal.”
Still on his knees, John pokes his face out from his hands.
“Sex scandal? What are you talking about?”
“This calls for a sex scandal.”
“Oh, no, Johnny. No, Johnny. No sex scandal. No-no Johnny.”
“Shut the fuck up, John.”
John flinches a bit, but tries to stay strong.
“They’re gonna think you’re a scumbag if you do that.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“What about your image as a golden-boy?”
“I’ll just market the bad-boy image for a while. And if people don’t end up liking it, I’ll go back to Africa. Do another telethon. Cancer-walk. Some shit like that. It won’t be anything I can’t recover from.”
“But, Johnny...”
“Shut up! I’m in control here!”
John sucks in a deep breath of confidence and shakily erects himself from the floor.
“No, Johnny. I’m in control here. This is MY career. I control YOU.”
“Oh yeah? Then control me.”
Johnny swaggers over to John and gets within inches of his face.
“C’mon. Here I am, John. Control me. Go on. Control me.”
John tries ever-so-hard to mask his face with a look of confidence (when, of course, what he really wants to do is piss his pants). He stands straight and tall, staring deep into Johnny’s eyes like a UFC fighter would do to his opponent. After staring for a while, he begins to notice something that seems completely inhuman. It is like a demon getting ready to burst out of Johnny’s skin and bite John’s fucking head off. But John knows this dark entity won’t strike unless he allows it to. He knows that he has the power to control this horrible thing. Yes, it feeds off of his fear.
“Let’s go, pussy. Control me, pussy,” Johnny keeps repeating.
John tries and tries and tries and tries to stand his ground. But he just can’t do it. His fear overpowers him and he allows the demon to be unleashed.
“CONTROL ME!!!” Johnny growls with the voice of a death-metal singer.
“Agh!” John is so scared he stops, drops and rolls away from Johnny like a youngster doing a fire drill.
“That’s what I thought,” says Johnny as he turns to leave the room. “That’s what I thought.”
“What about Heather?!” shouts John from the floor.
The word ‘Heather’ stops Johnny in his tracks.
“What about Heather?”
“How’s Heather gonna react to a sex scandal?”
“It doesn’t matter how she reacts to a sex scandal. She rejected you, John. You will NEVER have her. NEVER. She’s out of the picture.”
“But...but...”
Johnny marches back towards John.
“No, Johnny. Please don’t touch me.”
“I’m not gonna hurt you. Come on.”
He tries to grab him by the arm, but John resists.
“Where we goin’?”
“I just wanna show you something.”
“No, I don’t wanna go.”
“Come here!”
Johnny grabs a handful of John’s greasy hair.
“Agh! Johnny! Let go! Let go of me!”
He drags John out of Movieland, through Cape Cod, through Ancient Rome and into the library, dropping him onto the floor in front of the computer with a tremendous...
“Umph!”
“Get up.”
John does as he’s told.
“Still got her under your favorites?” Johnny asks in a condescending tone.
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“Ye-yes. What of it?”
Johnny takes a seat in the computer chair, opens up Heather’s Facebook page and finds her “About me”.
“’Hi, my name’s Heather,’” says Johnny, reading off the screen in a fake female voice that he purposely makes sound ditsy as hell. “‘Hee hee hee. Well, I love my friends, my cat...and - most importantly - my HUSBAND. Eee-hee-hee.’”
John can’t bear to hear that last word: ‘HUSBAND’. A tear squirts out the corner of his eye and slides down his cheek.
“Hey, John, do you know what a ‘husband’ is?”
“Please, Johnny. Don’t do this.”
“DO YOU? Do you know what a ‘husband’ is?”
The word ‘Husband’ eats at John like a parasitic tapeworm. He tries sniffing the pain into his nostrils, but his efforts are done to no avail. He drops to his knees and starts balling his eyes out.
“Oh God! Oh-ho!”
Johnny shakes his head in pity.
“Ya see this, John? She’s making a mockery out of you. While Heather’s living in some nice, middle-class, picket-fenced house where she fucks Alex every night...here you are crying like a big baby. A great big baby.”
John tries to compose himself, but the tears just keep coming in tides.
“’Oh, goodness, look at how pathetic John turned out to be after I rejected him,’” says Johnny in his Heather voice. “’Look at that big baby crying on the floor while I’m more than likely screwing Alex. A-hee a-hee hee hee. I’m really glad I stayed with Alex because his chest is much more broader than John’s. Plus, it doesn’t have acne all over it. Or is it eczema? Whatever it is, it’s gross and I’m glad I don’t have to rub my hand up and down it like I do with Alex when I ride his cock. Speaking of cocks, Alex’s is much bigger than John’s.’”
“Oh, Johnny! Please! I can’t take it!” John pleads from the floor.
“You gonna let her say that about you, John? You gonna let her get away with that shit?”
“Oh, God. Oh, God. I don’t know.”
“Or ya gonna let me have a little sex scandal? Ya know...give Heather a big FUCK YOU. ‘Yah, Hi, Heather, look at how much sex I’m having without you! Look at all the great times I’m having without you in my life! What’s that? You want me back? Oh, OK...OK, hun. All right, dearie. Come here. Let me hold you. Yeah, let me hold you, sweetie. No, get away from me! Don’t fuckin’ touch me! It’s too late for you, Heather. Ya hear me??? It’s too late, you fucking BITCH!!!”
John rolls around on the ground, nearly drowning himself with his tears.
“Oh-ho! God! No!!!”
But he suddenly realizes he is alone. Johnny has vanished, though the echoes of his demonic screams reverberate in the room like a ghost’s moan.
SCENE TEN
John sits on the edge of the haunted couch, preparing a line of uncut coke for himself on the Casablanca coffee table. Well, at least it’s supposed to be uncut. There’s always the chance the fucking dealer could have mixed it with baby powder or baking soda or some other rubbish. It’s happened before, and it could definitely happen again. Maybe he ought to have a little taste, just to be sure.
He licks his index finger, dabs it in the coke, wipes a little powder along his upper gum and processes the effects. ‘Oh it’s really fucking pure,’ he concludes after experiencing a brief wave of artificial happiness - just a taste of what’s to come.
He resumes chopping the pile of cocaine with a razorblade, knowing that the thinner he gets the line, the less it will burn his (already rotted) septum.
After a moment or two, he finishes preparing the line and immediately snorts it up his nostril with the help of a twenty-dollar bill.
“Oh...God...”
He freezes a moment as he feels the chemical enter the bloodstream and flow through his veins. ‘Oh, yeah, this is gonna be a good one’ he can’t help but remark to himself. He snatches the remote control from off the coffee table and fires up the JumboTron.
A montage of early, “before-he-was-famous” Johnny Cruise photos assault various parts of the enormous television screen. They zoom in and zoom out. They zoom fast and zoom slow. They flip and twirl and spin and push and grow large and grow small. “The Good Life” by Kanye West underscores the whizzing images.
“Welcome to the good life...yeah, it’s the good life...I’m gonna get on the TV, mama...it’s the good life...yeah, the good life.”
The music gradually fades to a lower volume and a gravely voice-over starts narrating:
“All alone in Hollywood, sleeping on a sheet-less mattress and living off Big Macs, Johnny had to work five jobs in order to support himself.”
Johnny’s “childhood friend” (as the subtitle at the bottom of the screen indicates) sits in a smoky, dimly-lit pool hall, wearing a leather jacket and smoking a non-filtered cigarette:
“Oh, man, Johnny was just nuts. He took this one job where he had to dress up as a lobster at some seafood place and - you know - he’d stand on the sidewalk and hand out coupons to everyone who walked by....”
More “before-he-was-famous” images of Johnny zoom and whizz and spin their way on and off the screen. The camera moves in Matrix-esque fast-motion to slow motion. Fast zoom-outs and slow pans to the right.
“Exhausted from working long hours and discouraged from all his rejections, Johnny started to show signs of depression.”
The camera pans along an extreme close-up of Johnny’s old, coffee-stained journal. In an overly melodramatic voice, a bad actor reads one of the entries:
“I am the most miserable man on the face of this earth.”
The close-up of the journal then cuts to an old E! NEWS interview with Johnny from a few years back.
“Yeah, I mean, I never had the gun to my head,” says Johnny. “But I definitely thought about doing myself in at one point. Yeah. Definitely.”
The audio to the interview fades to silence and the image of Johnny melts into a dramatic, slow-motion blur.
“But little did Johnny know that everything was about to change for him...literally overnight.”
The “E! True Hollywood Story” stops and a digital cable menu pops onto the JumboTron screen. The “Hollywood Story” was actually something John found under the cable’s “On Demand” service, which offers a thousand or so more hours of additional television programming.
John tosses the remote control onto the Casablanca coffee table and tries to process the various emotions running through his head at warp-speed. The coke, combined with the “True Hollywood Story”, has successfully convinced him that his life is much more wonderful than he thought. Like the story said, “Everything changed for him overnight.” He’s living proof of the American Dream, for cry eye. He should be happy with his accomplishments. Yeah, Heather made a huge fucking mistake marrying Alex and not him. BIG MISTAKE. BITCH.
John holds this thought in the foreground of his mind while he sits on the couch feeling the coke run through his veins like small metal bee bees traveling at a speed of three-hundred miles per hour. Sometimes it feels like marbles. Yes, it’s like that old Nintendo video game “Marble Madness” in his bloodstream right now. Definitely.
But, suddenly, he hears moaning sounds in the distance. And some distant groaning sounds. ‘Probably just the ghosts in the house,’ he figures. But then they grow louder. And louder. And, then, even louder. They’re different from the usual Axl-Rose-like howls that he usually hears.
He figures it’s probably in his highest and best interest to go and check the situation out. But, then again, what if it’s a stalker? Or burglar? A homeless man? A creep? Pervert?! Schizo?!
Better make a trip to the weapons room...just to be on the safe side.
SCENE ELEVEN
The “weapons room” in the East wing of the mansion has an old-world, Japanese, Samurai-esque theme to it and is located not too far from Transylvania. Mounted on the walls of the room are antique Samurai swords, old Japanese figurines, ceramic dragons and a hand-drawn caricature of Johnny dressed in a kimono. Along the room’s back wall is a massive bullet-proof-glass cabinet with enough artillery to arm a Swat Team. John has a vast collection of Glocks, Berettas, Magnums, Uzis, shotguns, Ak47s, throwing-knives, machetes and even a Sniper Rifle - the last of which will never serve any practical purpose to John, other than to look threatening and add to his overall feeling of security.
To the right of the weapon’s case, there is a glass, soundproof door that opens into John’s own personal firing range. Every now and then, he’ll come in here and try out a weapon he feels he needs more experience with. He figures he ought to be an expert at operating every weapon he owns, just in case the shit REALLY goes down one day. Then he’ll be ready.
John comes stumbling into the weapons room - his heart still rapping against his chest from the coke - and unlocks the weapons cabinet with a key he keeps hidden inside the neck of an antique Japanese doll. He’s not quite sure which weapon he should choose, as there are so many excellent choices. So he does a brief eni-meeni-mini-mo session and ultimately goes with a black, sawed-off shotgun that he’s pretty sure will NOT leave anybody standing.
As he gives the gun a good pump, he hears more moans and groans in the far distance of the house. It occurs to him that he might simply be imagining these sounds. Cocaine, after all, has undoubtedly made him hallucinate in the past...although not usually when he's just snorting it. Either way, it’s better to be safe than sorry. He must investigate. He must!
He leaves Japan and makes his way back into Transylvania, hugging the butt of the shotgun tight into his inner arm. From in here, the moans are a bit louder and sound like they’re more than likely coming from upstairs. He fingers the trigger to the shotgun and cautiously ascends the L-shaped Bela-Lugosi staircase. If he sees anything move, he’s gonna blow it’s fucking face off. He’s not even kidding right now. This is his property. Nobody should be here!
He scales the stairs one step at a time and reaches the first landing without having to use his weapon. From here, the moans start to sound a little different. He identifies them as being sexual in nature. In layman’s terms, they sound like humping - lots and lots of humping.
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
He continues up the stairway - step by step...by step by step...and, Jesus Christ, those moans definitely sound like humping now.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!”
He reaches the upstairs and turns into a long, dusty hallway with no definite end in sight - only an abyss of darkness in the far distance. In terms of its interior design, this area of the house more or less sticks to the Transylvanian theme, meaning there are more candles and cobwebs...but also portraits of creepy-looking people who seem to follow you with their eyes. The hall is dim from the candlelight, but there are illuminated glass display cases lining both walls. The cases hold a plethora of Oscars, Screen Actor’s Guild Awards, Golden Globes and People’s Choice Awards. There are also dozens of framed photographs - Johnny posing with other A-list celebrities, politicians, athletes, American troops, royalty figures and socialites. There is even a photograph of Johnny with the President...right next to a photograph of Johnny with the Pope.
John eyeballs the awards as he tiptoes his way down the hallway. These emblems of his success again assure him that Heather made a terrible mistake in not marrying him. She probably thought that John wasn’t going to amount to much, but these awards prove something different. These awards prove she was fucking wrong.
Heather, however, is not the issue right now. The issue at hand is the origin of these mysterious sounds that grow louder and louder as John moves further down the hall (of fame). They are undoubtedly sexual in nature. Somebody is definitely humping in his house...and not just in his house, but in his very bedroom!
Yes, John surmises the sounds are definitely coming from the master bedroom, the door to which is open a crack, spilling warm, orangey light into the hallway. John gives his shotgun a kiss, pushes his back up to the hallway wall and sidesteps his way towards the bedroom door. He stops at the edge of the doorway. He leans his head into the crack. He takes a peek inside...
The master bedroom is like a New Hampshire hunting lodge, complete with bear-skin-rug, wall-mounted deer head, and a roaring fireplace. In the middle of the room, there is a wooden-framed, king-sized bed with a fifty-inch-widescreen TV that can rise at the foot of the bed with the push of a button. The bed’s champagne-colored sheets are in disarray and there is movement beneath them. The movement comes from two distinct human figures that (given their placement beneath the sheets) look like ghosts in some old Walt Disney cartoon.
“Oh yeah! Yes! Yes!!! Yes!!!” yells a high-pitched female voice that sounds like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Betty Boop.
John stands in the crack of the door, breathing somewhat heavily while he watches the whole scene like a creepy Peeping Tom. It takes him a moment to recognize the other voice beneath the sheet:
“Oh, yeah. C’mon. Give it to me. Yeah.”
It’s Johnny.
John can’t help but be a little turned on by what he’s witnessing right now. His heart starts beating faster. His mouth salivates. His scrotum starts to shift positions involuntarily. Blood rushes into the appropriate places.
He gives the door a light tap with his bony knuckles. But Johnny doesn’t hear him.
“Yes, give it to me. Yeah.”
He gives it a louder knock. But Johnny still doesn’t hear him.
“Yes. C’mon.”
BANG! BANG! BANG! John gives the door some goddamn BANGS.
Needless to say, Johnny hears him this time. He pops his winded head up from under the sheets and sees John standing in the doorway.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters under his breath.
“Who is that?” asks the girl beneath the covers.
“It’s nobody. Stay under there. I’ll be back in just a second.”
Johnny rolls out from under the covers and heads out to the hallway. He is buck naked with a body as perfect as a porn-star - no speck of body hair or unappealing tan-line or freckled blemish to be seen. He temporarily presses ‘pause’ on a small, mini-DV camcorder that is nestled into his right palm. It’s not quite clear what the camera is for, but John certainly smells something rotten in Denmark.
“What the fuck are you doing?” asks Johnny as he scoots into the hallway and shuts the bedroom door tightly behind him. “What’s with the gun?”
“I heard moans. I didn’t know what was going on.”
“Haha...yeah, she’s a noisy one. All I gotta do is make out with her and she moans like a donkey.”
“Who is that in there?”
“Pamela Lopez.”
“Pamela Lopez is under there?”
“Yeah, she’s fucking hot.”
“So that’s your sex scandal?”
“Yep, gettin’ the whole thing on tape. Once this thing gets leaked, EVERYBODY’S gonna be talkin’ about it.”
“Oh...I don’t know about this, Johnny. I don’t have a good feeling.”
“Look, John...I’m sorry I got so rough with you earlier. But this is what we need to do. This is what’s gonna save Johnny Cruise.”
John sighs and looks down to the floor.
“All right...but let me get a piece of the action. I need to get laid.”
“Huh?”
“C’mon, Johnny. I wanna have some sex.”
“No. I’m takin’ care of this. Go back downstairs and do more coke.”
He turns to go back in the room, but John gives his shotgun a cock...and aims the barrel right at Johnny’s head.
Johnny freezes in place. And he slowly turns around.
“John, what the fuck are you doing?”
“I order you to let me have sex with that girl! I’ll kill you right here, right now! Johnny Cruise will die, you hear me? I don’t give a shit.”
Johnny stares John straight in the eye for a few seconds, saying or doing nothing. But, then, he snatches the gun right out of John’s hands - fast as lighting - and shoves the barrel between John’s eyes.
“How about I kill you?! There won’t be any more John Cruise! Just Johnny! What do ya think of that shit?!”
John shivers in his pants.
“I’m...I’m sorry, Johnny. I just wanna have some sex - that’s all. I need to get laid.”
“You don’t even know how to have sex.”
“Wha-what are you talking about?”
“Come on, John. Don’t make me use the word. You’re a virgin. You’ve never had sex with a girl.”
BOOM! The word ‘virgin’ sends a shocking jolt of electricity through John’s body. It’s so intense that it makes his body hair stand on end.
“You got a dick the size of a baby carrot. And your ass is hairier than a barber’s chair at the end of a long day.”
John‘s back slams into the wall behind him and he slowly slides to the floor, tears surging into his eyes.
“Pamela Lopez is Grade-A pussy. She wants somebody who knows how to press her buttons. Not some inexperienced virgin who doesn’t know one hole from the other. Jesus, you’re thirty-three and you’ve never had sex. That’s absolutely pathetic! You’d go in there and start fucking her in the ass and she’d be, like, what the hell does this motherfucker think he’s doing? Obviously this guy’s a virgin. I wasn’t born yesterday!!!”
“No, Johnny. I’m not listening to you! I’m not gonna listen to you!!!”
John tries to stop the tears from streaming down his cheeks, but he fails miserably.
“Jesus, John, you don’t even know how to kiss a girl the right way. Remember that time you had seven minutes in heaven with Heather and you went to go kiss her and didn’t know what the fuck you were doing, so you just kinda moved your tongue around in circles, hoping you were doing the right thing? Well, you know what, John? You WEREN’T doing the right thing. You were doing the WRONG thing. Heather HATED the way you kissed her. That’s probably what made her not like you anymore.”
“No, Johnny! These are lies! I’m not listening to you!”
“Pamela Lopez needs a real man. Somebody who’s humped something other than a pillow cushion! Somebody who doesn’t get a major wet-on as soon as a girl holds his hand!”
“Oh-ho! No!!!”
“Yes, John. A REAL man. Not somebody who cries over every little thing. Christ, you have everything in the world a man could want! And what do you do? You sit on the floor crying and crying and crying and crying...and crying!”
“Johnny, please stop. I feel so awful. I need a hug.”
“Go back downstairs and do more coke! My God, I can’t believe you fill yourself with all that poison. There’s little children with leukemia who would kill to have a healthy body like yours. And what do you do? You sit on your ass and fill your body with toxins all day. You might as well be giving them a big slap in the face! See you in hell, John. I’ll definitely see you in hell!”
“Ah-ho! Please, Johnny! Please stop! I need a hug, Johnny! Please, just give me a hug!”
Johnny releases a great, big sigh of disgust...just like John’s mother used to do. O Horrible! That sigh! John can’t bear to hear that sigh!
“No, Johnny! Don’t do that! Please don’t do that!”
Johnny empties the chamber to the shotgun and chucks the bullets down the dark hallway with the speed of a juiced-up Roger Clemens. Then he drops the gun onto John’s foot and leaves the poor bastard to wallow in his puddle of tears.
“Sorry ‘bout that, Pamela,” says Johnny as he steps back into the bedroom, shutting the door tightly behind him.
John huddles himself into the fetal position and burps out piercing wails.
“Oh-ho. No. Oh no. God. I need a hug. Somebody. Give me a hug. Please.”
SCENE TWELVE
John snorts a nice thin, long line of coke from off the Casablanca coffee table. The line reminds him of a miniature ski slope, which further reminds him of a fun ski trip he took to Waterville Valley one time with his Junior High classmates. ‘Oh, God, this is actually taking me higher than I expected,’ he can’t help but note to himself. He snatches a DVD remote from off the couch and presses ‘play’.
An old movie starts playing on the JumboTron. It’s a scene taking place in a room that looks familiar. Extremely familiar.
John stumbles his stoned ass off the couch, trips over the coffee table and crawls within inches of the giant JumboTron, practically stuffing his face as close to the TV as he can possibly get it. The scene from the movie consists of two, middle-aged women talking to a younger man in a living room, but this isn’t what’s important to John. What IS important is that the room the scene takes place in is the same room John is in RIGHT NOW. At this very moment!
John pulls his eyes wide open with his thumbs and index fingers, basically trying to suck the image of the REEL living room into his head. Then he shuts his eyes tight to hold the image in...whips himself away from the television screen...opens his eyes...and looks at the REAL living room.
“Oh, God, yes,” he says with near-orgasmic delight.
With the help of the coke in his veins, the thought of standing in the very room that is inside that goddamn TV gives John the best fucking rush in the world. It’s like he is standing in the movie right fucking now!
‘Maybe a hit of weed will make this high even higher,’ he hopes. So he quickly crawls over to the coffee table, grabs his bowl and rips a really good hit. ‘Oh, it’s true. I feel really good right now. I feel really fucking good.’
SCENE THIRTEEN
The bar in the west wing of John’s mansion is a small, self-sufficient salon with a black-and-white checkered floor and walls covered in abstract, Jackson-Pollock-esque paintings that are possibly worth millions. John never understood the meanings of the paintings and, for all he knows, some scheming bastard could have taken a brush, slapped some paint on a canvas and convinced an art-dealer it was a masterpiece. Nevertheless, the presence of the works in the house functions as a means of assuring John that he is, indeed, ‘high-cultured’, despite the fact that he spends the majority of his life making banal ‘popcorn movies’ for a mainstream audience.
Running along the far wall of the room is a fully-functional bar that has a lavish display of every hard liquor a man could ever want. There are also several different beers on Tap, including Guinness, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Stella Artois, Budweiser and John’s favorite: Miller High Life. The High Life flows out the tit of a ceramic woman sculpture, which was a prop used in the Moloko Milk Bar scenes of A Clockwork Orange.
John kneels atop the bar’s pine counter, sucking down guzzles of High Life and staring into a widescreen TV mounted on the wall across from him. The television is obviously smaller than the JumboTron, but still has a screen that stabs your eyes with the sharpest images technology has the ability to produce.
John rips a hit from his bowl, chases it with a guzzle of High-Life and watches the same movie he was just watching on the JumboTron...only - this time - the scene takes place in a different setting: a bar...the very bar John is in right now!
He widens his eyes and soaks the image of the REEL bar into his head. He shuts his eyes tight. He rips a really good toke. He turns away from the TV. He looks at the REAL bar...
And, yes, it’s like he’s in the movie. It really is. It’s like he’s in it right now. It feels so damn good.
SCENE FOURTEEN
John now finds himself standing on his outdoor patio that surrounds an in-ground, kidney-shaped pool. The perimeter of the pool is lined with small, stone frogs that spit fountains of water. The frogs - combined with a greenish light at the base of the pool - create a ‘pond theme’, which gives John pleasant memories of childhood fishing-trips in New Hampshire.
Directly across from the pool is another small, Hawaiian-resort-themed bar covered by a grass hut and decked out with Tiki-torches, grass umbrellas and glass pineapple straw-holders. There is a flickery image of a movie projected on a giant wall behind the bar and, yes, the same movie John was watching on the JumboTron and in the mansion’s main bar is currently playing. This time, however, it is a scene taking place on a patio...surrounding a pool...with frog fountains...and greenish water...that looks like a pond.
John imprints the image of the REEL pool into his mind. He closes his eyes. He turns away from the TV. He opens his eyes. He looks at the REAL pool...
But - SHIT! - it didn’t work this time. He didn’t get the high he was looking for.
He starts all over again: looks at the REEL pool, then at the REAL pool. He takes a hit of weed. He allows the hit a few seconds to soak in. But, fuck, he doesn’t get high!
He starts from scratch: REEL pool...REAL pool...REEL pool...REAL pool...hit of weed...REEL pool...REAL pool...REEL pool...REAL pool...maybe some more weed will do it.
But his efforts are done to no avail! By now, the coke has stopped pumping fake euphoria into John’s brain and it suddenly hits him how pathetic he would look if anybody ever saw him doing this.
“This is stupid,” he mumbles to himself. “I’m leaving this house. This is ridiculous! Yes, I’m leaving this house. I really am.”
But, deep down, he knows he’s full of shit.
SCENE FIFTEEN
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
John has returned to his home movie theater, sitting in one of the blood-red 2001: A Space Odyssey recliners and smoking a fresh bowl. He watches the Universal logo play over and over and over and over and over again. And over and over and over again. And over and over and over again.
As he listens to the epic music at maximum volume - nearly blowing his eardrums out - John wonders how it’s possible that he’s been feeling so goddamn insecure about himself. He’s on top of the universe, goddammit! Heather thought she was doing a smart thing marrying somebody like Alex; maybe she thought Alex would give her a better life or had a better gene pool or something. But, man, she was wrong. She was so very wrong.
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
‘Yes, I’m the master of the universe,’ John reiterates in his mind. ‘I’m the master of the universe. Alex has nothing on me. I’m the master of the fucking universe. I’m the master of the universe.’
Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosh!
John chucks the fucking-mother-fucking DVD remote at the movie screen so hard that it shatters into five easy pieces, and ‘fuck, that’s a movie with Jack Nicholson, but that’s not important right now’.
“This is pathetic,” he concludes. “I’m leaving this house.”
And, this time, John isn’t bluffing.
SCENE SIXTEEN
John paces the floor to Transylvania, toking small hits of weed out of his bowl like a baby sucking on a pacifier.
“I’m in control here,” he mutters to himself. “I control YOU, Johnny. I control YOU.”
He reaches for the brass ring hanging from the enormous dungeon door, but stops himself in the process. No, he’s not quite ready to go through with all this. He’s just not high enough. Perhaps another small toke will get rid of his remaining fears.
He wraps his lips around the bowl, re-heats the weed with his Humphrey Bogart lighter and takes the biggest hit of weed that he has probably EVER taken. He inhales the shit for literally ten seconds, filling up his chest until it's about to explode like an overinflated tire.
He plucks the bowl out of his lips, holds the hit in his lungs for as long as he possibly can and then slowly lets the smoke seep out of his chest. It seeps and seeps. And seeps. And it seeps. And seeps. Seeps. A cloud of smoke forms around him and refuses to dissipate. Christ, John looks like Pig-Pen in that Charlie Brown comic strip.
He tosses the bowl over his shoulder and it clinks against the stone of the floor.
Now he’s ready to go.
SCENE SEVENTEEN
The golden ‘JC’ gate glimmers from a full California harvest moon, which is a warm-orange and almost the size of the one Eliot rides his bicycle by in E.T. The moon illuminates the dark smog, which (combined with the urban light pollution), gives the sky an orangey, purplish tint. In fact, the Hills are actually pretty at night, what with the colorful sky and twinkling lights from the valley below. But all the coyotes howling in the far distance still give it an unsettling feel. Christ, their howls sound like police sirens. And they never stop. What is it they are even howling at? Are they angry? Sad? It’s been about a hundred years since the Angelenos started colonizing the Hills with their eccentric lifestyles. Did the coyotes never get over this? Do they want their Hills back??? Or maybe the howls are emanating from the spirits that reside in the long-forgotten Indian burial grounds. Maybe the Indians are sick of being trodden on, trampled over and built on. Maybe they want their hills back...
Across the street from the Johnny Cruise estate are five or six black Suburban/Yukon SUVs, all belonging to the paparazzi. They shamelessly park outside Johnny’s house all night, just to make sure they don’t miss anything juicy. Each of the vehicles has tinted windows and several of the rear windows have black curtains covering them. The curtains allow the photographers to poke their 600mm telephoto lenses out the windows, snap off a few shots of a celebrity, and remain unseen. This method is preferable when they want the celebrity to act natural and not be aware that somebody is watching them. Several good shots - like a pick of the nose or scratch of the butt - can come out of this unobtrusive approach. However, it is more often a good idea for the paparazzo to make his presence known in order to provoke the targeted celebrity, which may result in a middle finger being drawn, which then results in an extremely lucrative photo-op. There’s nothing more shocking to the public than seeing some Disney-Channel, Mickey-Mouse-Club, golden-girl goody-two-shoes giving a photographer the bird. The magazines pay very good money for something like that. Everybody loves to see the first indications of a good girl going bad. That’s the type of shit people love masturbating to.
“Bee-a-leep! Brad Clooney at the Viper Room! Bee-a-leep!”
Tex sits alone in the driver seat of his Yukon, paging through the day’s tabloid magazines like any serious professional would look through the trades. After all, he needs to keep on top of who’s getting shots of what. It’s his job. This is what he does. It’s how he supports his mother, so ‘don’t even think about judging me’.
He is particularly displeased to see that somebody managed to get a shot of Jerry Richards (the washed-up sitcom star) picking through a garbage barrel at The Farmer’s Market - well, so it appears. Even if Richards was really just looking for his wedding ring or car keys or something, Tex knows a shot like that probably made the photographer at least $30,000 on the spot, but probably more.
“Bee-a-leep! George Pitt at Spago! Bee-a-leep!”
The leads coming through the Nextel tonight don’t sound very appealing, but, still, he’s not getting shit outside the Johnny Cruise estate. Besides, Johnny’s become so damn cold lately that his photos aren’t really worth enough to justify Tex parking outside his house all night. Maybe he’ll eat a taco and if nothing’s brewing after that he’ll pack up shop. Yes, that sounds like the best plan.
He unwraps a soft-shelled taco from Chipotle - complete with rice, chicken, black beans, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and sour cream - and he takes a big bite. But before he can even swallow the damn thing, all is suddenly NOT quiet on the Johnny Cruise front. There’s action at the golden gate. It’s starting to open!
“Jesus,” Tex exclaims as he nearly chokes on the Chipotle. “We’ve got action.”
He chucks the taco onto the passenger seat, grabs his camera. Locks. And loads.
“Showtime!” he shouts in a manner reminiscent of Roy Scheider in All That Jazz.
On the other side of the golden gate, John hides in the shadows of a gardenia bush, intending not to reveal himself until the ‘J’ and ‘C’ fully separate from each other. As he watches the gates open, he comes to the full realization that his soul is about to do the same thing. That is, the “real” Johnny Cruise is about to reveal himself to the paparazzi and, in turn, the world. ‘Am I ready for that?’ Certainly he is. Or is he???
His mind suddenly starts racing with the ramifications of what he’s about to do. Once they see him, then that’s it. The Johnny Cruise image will be forever altered, if not completely killed. The public will see the real pathetic, ugly loser he really is. He’ll no longer be loved by the people. He probably won’t be able to get a job. He’ll have to leave Hollywood and return to the East. Everything he built here would be destroyed.
Then again, maybe the public will LIKE the real him better. Maybe he can convince them that he’s better than Johnny. Maybe they’ll see Johnny for what he really is: that is, a giant heap of bullshit and lies, that phony! Yes, he’s the real star and that’s who they should love!
‘No, that’s never going to happen’, he concludes. Not within the current reality that is this early twenty-first century. The public simply won’t like what it sees. They want perfection. They won’t accept his flaws.
But, fuck, who cares what the public thinks, anyway? What does John have to look forward to by staying inside the mansion but more boredom? More drugs. More loneliness. More ghostly moans and groans driving him insane. More relentless abuse from Johnny. Yes, he just wants to get as far away from that fucking house as possible. And if that means revealing his true self and leaving Hollywood and going back East, then so be it. Maybe things will work out for him back home. Maybe Heather will get divorced. Maybe they’ll get together and maybe they’ll have a family and maybe they’ll find true happiness and they’ll be truly at peace. Yes, it’s time to leave the house! Definitely.
By now, the gate is just about fully open. John pokes his head out of the shadows and peeks out to Mt. Olympus Drive. Sure enough, Tex and the other photographers are outside their SUVs - cameras to their eyes - waiting for something - anything - to happen.
“One...
John shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath.
“Two...”
He steps out of the gardenia bush, but is still too much of a shadow to be seen.
“Three...”
He freezes in place and doesn’t move an inch further.
“Three...”
He still doesn’t move.
“Three...”
He doesn’t budge.
Meanwhile, Tex and the other paparazzi feel like complete schmucks, hovering at the edge of the driveway, not knowing what the hell is going on.
“Where the fuck is he?”
“Maybe the gate just malfunctioned.”
“Maybe it opened for the pizza man.”
“Or the Chinese Man.”
“Maybe he’s just fucking with us.”
Tex looks every which way for a person, a shadow...anything. But nothing’s going on. He feels like a total ass.
“Bee-a-leep!” yells his Nextel from inside the SUV. “Paris Simpson’s at the Spider Club! Bee-a-leep!”
Tex’s ears perk like a dog who’s just heard the word “walk”. He runs over to his Yukon, reaches through the passenger window and grabs the Nextel from off the seat.
“Bee-a-leep! I need confirmation on Paris being at Spider Club! Bee-a-leep!”
“Bee-a-leep! I’m looking at her right fucking now, Tex! Get over here! Before somebody else does! Bee-a-leep!”
Suddenly, Tex hears a whole shit-load of other bee-a-leeps coming from every which direction.
“Bee-a-leep! Paris Simpson at the Spider Club! Repeat...Paris Simpson at Spider Club!”
After all, Tex isn’t the only paparazzo who has informants at Hollywood hot-spots.
“Bee-a-leep! Paris at the Spider Club! Bee-a-leep! Holy shit! Bee-a-leep!”
Tex clips his Nextel onto his belt and takes another quick look around the perimeter of the Johnny Cruise estate: nothing is going on as far as he can see. The only action on Mount Olympus Drive is the occasional shadow from a rabid coyote bolting its way across the road.
“Fuck Johnny Cruise. I’m gettin’ Paris.”
He jumps into his SUV, twists the key into his ignition and peels it the hell out of there. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerch!
The other paparazzi see Tex taking off and figure they ought to follow his lead, lest they miss out on a shot that’s going to make them some serious moolah. They all jump in their Suburbans and eeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrcccccccchhhhhhh the fuck out of there.
The SUVS burn and churn and fishtail and peel all over the place, stirring up a cloud of Mojave desert dust that grows to be about fifty feet in height. Then they burn their way down Mt. Olympus Drive, rip around a corner and - within seconds - they are all gone. Only the dust remains.
Over by the wide-open ‘JC’ gate there is the shadow of a person. The shadow says...
“Three.”
It’s John, looking puzzled and confused. He has, indeed, decided to reveal himself to the outside world...but he’s just a few moments too late. The paparazzi have forsaken his estate.
“Wha...where’d they go?” he wonders.
And he can’t help but feel insulted.
SCENE EIGHTEEN
Mulholland Drive is one of the most famous roads in all of Hollywood, and probably THE most famous road in the Hollywood Hills. It also happens to be the most dangerous road.
John thoroughly disliked driving on Mulholland when he first came to town. The road is so curvy that he felt the need to go about twenty-miles-per-hour so he wouldn’t lose control at one of the road’s many "dead-man's curves". Of course, this would have been fine and swell if it wasn’t for the asshole driving the Mercedes 6.3 AMG in back of him wanting to go about eighty. Insane wack-job idiots. It’s almost as though they WANT you to die...but maybe that shouldn’t be such a shocking concept.
And what’s so strange about the road is that there’s only about a foot-high guardrail protecting you and your car from going off its cliffs. It’s like the Hollywood Department of Public Works also WANTS you to die, or they at least get their jollies in making the drive a challenge. Hell, maybe the DPW workers are failed actors who are bitter towards the celebrities in the Hills. Maybe it’s their way of getting revenge.
Whatever it is, John is just glad he isn’t driving on the road right now. Instead, he’s walking it...which, of course, isn’t too much safer. Some lunatic blazing on a medicine-cabinet-worth of drugs could easily come around a sharp curve, smash into John, drag his body fifty yards, and not even think twice about the light thud he thought he heard but it’s probably just the Ambien making him hallucinate.
And if it’s not a drug-fiend that kills John, it could easily be one of the massive houses that are built into the cliffs above. These things look like they are about one tremor away from toppling down the hill and crushing him to the bones. John never understood why anybody would want to live in a place like that. Personally, it would give him a constant feeling of uneasiness - like he was literally living too close to the edge. But maybe that’s the thrill of it for the residents. Maybe they get off on the fact that a simple mudslide could come around and send them over the edge.
Speaking of mudslides, John suddenly feels a light mist falling from the sky. Damn his luck! The one day he decides to leave the house is the day it decides to rain (after all, it rains about once a century in LA)! And of course he has to be on Mulholland Drive, walking under a bunch of heavy houses, dangling from the cliffs, just dying to slide atop the head of a person like John. Better get off the road. Better get off it fast.
He bangs a quick left and descends a hill sprinkled with beautiful jasmine, crimson and gardenia bushes. The hill gradually changes into a more level, wooded area where - every 100 feet or so - John passes a circle of stones and maybe a mattress or shopping cart or smashed TV or tarp or used condom. These are remnants of old, inactive homeless camps...or maybe, in some cases, still-quite-active homeless camps. The strange thing about the Hollywood Hills is that you are in the country, but also in the city. That is, you are surrounded by the landscape of the country, but you feel the same intense energy you would feel if you were to walk through the city. This means that - even though you are weaving your way through luscious, sweet-smelling gardenia bushes and sweet-tasting lemon trees - you still have the feeling in the back of your mind that some bum could come up on your back and mug the shit out of you, just as if you were in a grimy urban alleyway.
In fact, John has this feeling right now (i.e. that he’s about to get jumped) and he comes to the realization that there is no escaping feelings of uneasiness in Hollywood. He would never admit it to anyone, because nobody in this town likes a “Debbie-Downer”, but everywhere he goes he feels uncomfortable. Is there actually a safe-haven somewhere? A place to feel secure? And safe? Maybe in his bunker...or maybe in the locked hotel bathroom of the Roosevelt Hotel (wait, no, that place is rumored to be haunted by Montgomery Clift)...but that’s about it. Everywhere else he feels uneasy.
John is somewhat relieved, however, when a clump of eucalyptus trees spit him out onto a clearing in the wood located atop a high hill; at least here there is no place for a bum to hide and jump out to jack his ass. On the far side of the clearing and at the edge of the hill stands an enormous, billboard-type sign with massive metallic letters. At first, John doesn’t know what he’s looking at...but then it hits him: it’s the Hollywood sign! Of course! He didn’t realize it at first because he’s so used to seeing it from the front, and from a distance. He’s never been so close to it! This is amazing.
He moves closer to the towering sign and immediately notices how weathered the thing looks from the rear. The letters are dirty and grimy and covered with graffiti, none of which looks very appealing to the eye. Most of the graffiti consists of ‘tags’, autographs of people desperate to leave their marks somewhere in Hollywood. For some reason, these people get off on immortalizing themselves like this, even if it’s on the back of the sign and basically invisible to anybody looking at it from the valley. As long as it’s somewhere on there, though, then that’s good enough for these hopeless hopefuls; their name is - at least in some way - written into Hollywood history.
John moves even closer to the Hollywood sign and is shocked by how tall the damn letters are, probably about fifty feet in height, much taller than what he would have expected. He notices the rungs of a ladder built into the side of the letter ‘H’ and it reminds him of a story he once heard about some 1930s starlet named Peg Entwistle who took her own life by jumping off the sign. Entwistle suffered one too many rejections from the studios, so she got drunk one night in 1932, clawed her way up to the Hollywood sign and jumped off the letter ‘H’. Ironically, two days after she jumped, a letter came to her house offering her a lead role in a Beverly Hills Playhouse production (which was quite an honor in those days). But it came too late. Entwistle was already dead.
The coroner surmised that the official cause of Entwistle’s death was internal bleeding due to severe pelvic fractures. He also surmised that it’s likely she didn’t die on impact, which meant she experienced a slow death, most likely with a sufficient amount of suffering. Her body wasn’t found until two days later by a passing hiker. For some reason, the hiker remained anonymous when telling the police about their discovery, but apparently there was no foul play involved. According to the coroner, Entwistle had clearly taken her own life.
As one might expect from such a tragic death, there is a rumor that the ghost of Entwistle haunts the area of the Hollywood sign to this day; several hikers and rangers claimed to have seen the starlet’s apparition on countless occasions. They all say she wears 1930s clothing and appears to be very sad. They also say her ghost emits a gardenia-like scent, which is supposedly her perfume.
It’s with this in mind that John takes a whiff of the air and, yes, there is a gardenia-like scent, but there are so many exotic flowers in the Hills that he’s skeptical of whether it’s actually Entwistle’s perfume. The Santa Ana breezes could easily bring all sorts of aromas into the area and fool some gullible bastard into thinking it was paranormal.
Nevertheless, the thought of (potentially) having an encounter with Entwistle’s ghost kind of freaks John out...but also fills him with an overwhelming feeling of sorrow. If only he could have been there on that fateful night in 1932. He could have helped her, maybe. He could have convinced her that it’s not as bad as it seems - that there’s more to life than what Hollywood makes you think. Just because you’re a failure in this town, doesn’t mean you’re a failure in life. There’s something else out there. Really, there is. Well, maybe there is.
‘Regards, Peg,’ John wants to say. ‘I’m so sorry you were sad here.’ But perhaps it’s best that he keep his mouth shut. If it is Peg’s ghost, she’s probably not a happy ghost and shouldn’t be provoked in any way. Yes, leave her alone. Let her be. Someday she’ll find the light and leave this place. If there’s any just God in this world, He’ll eventually show the poor woman some mercy.
As a show of respect to the fallen starlet, John takes a few steps backwards - away from the ‘H’ - and heads over to the letter adjacent to it: the ‘O’.
Like the ‘H’, the ‘O’ has another metal-runged ladder running up its edge. John mounts the ladder, climbs a few rungs and takes a seat inside the ‘O’, his feet dangling down to the bright-lighted valley below.
Christ, Hollywood looks a lot better from up here than it does from down there - so beautiful and peaceful. There’s the Capitol Records building. And the red, neon Roosevelt Hotel sign. That’s probably the Scientology building right over there. And, look, the few skyscrapers of downtown LA in the far distance.
But even though the view is pretty, John finds himself feeling differently than he would have thought. He remembers being a child, watching movies and looking at photos and seeing TV shows and they would all show the Hollywood sign and it would look so damn awesome. He would look at it and say, “Man, THAT is THE place to be. I gotta get out of the East and go West. To California: the land of milk and honey. And to Hollywood: the place where dreams are made.”
Flash forward twenty-five years or so and John’s there! He’s literally AT “the place to be”. But it doesn’t feel like he thought it would. In fact, he feels no different from how he felt back East. There’s still the feeling of raw reality that - as stupid as it sounds - he thought he could shake once he went to Hollywood. And what’s worse is that - even though he’s at “the place to be” - there’s still a voice in his mind telling him that he’s NOT there, that “the place to be” is still somewhere else. But, no, it’s bullshit! He’s sitting right within the “O” to the Hollywood sign! This is THE PLACE! THIS IS THE PLACE!
So what happens now? Where is the grass greener? Nowhere. You can’t go any further, really, before hitting the East again and finding yourself right back where you started. This is the end of the line - the last stop of the human family’s manifest destiny. So if things aren’t going to work out here, then they’re not going to work out at all.
Perhaps this explains why Los Angeles is so full of depression and despair and people are killing each other and getting fucked up on drugs and doing all sorts of other weird shit. Maybe everybody escapes to this place - the “land of milk and honey” - and realizes that, fuck, this is it. This? Is it??? Well, yeah, there’s nowhere else to go. So if you can’t find happiness here, then you will never be happy. And this is a realization that fills people with despair. And they eventually go a little screwy. And some of them do bad things...to both themselves and to others.
It’s on this depressing note that John decides it’s probably a good idea to hop down from the ‘O’ and leave the Hollywood sign completely. As long as he stays away from the sign - the literal “place to be” - his mind will remain filled with a false hope that there is, indeed, a better place out there for him...somewhere, over the rainbow, or whatever the song says. And he won’t despair.
John discovers a narrow hiking trail that snakes its way down Mount Lee (the technical name for the hill the Hollywood Sign lies atop of), through Beachwood Canyon and past a random cattle ranch that looks like something out of High Noon. Apparently somebody’s dream when they came out to the ‘dreamland’ that is Hollywood was to live in the Wild West...and, hell, that’s fine. At least their dream wasn’t to start a race-war, as described in code within the lyrics of the Beatles’ White album.
The hiking trail leads John around the perimeter of the “Sunset Ranch” (as it is named) and he nearly gets bitten by a scheming rattlesnake lying in the center of the pathway.
“Sneaky bastard,” John says to the serpent.
The snake rattles. And rattles. And rattles its tail. And rattles. And rattles. And rattles...
Could this snake be construed as an omen? John can’t help but wonder. Was it a bad idea for him to leave his house tonight? Who knows what other bad things are waiting for him outside in this frightening world? Maybe he should turn back. Maybe he’s better off being a recluse in his gigantic mansion.
No, nonsense. That is not an option. He must stick to this trail...wherever it may take him.
As it turns out, the trail eventually leads John all the way down to the bottom of the Hills and he’s ultimately spat out onto the pale-gray concrete of Franklin Avenue. ‘Phew!’ John feels somewhat proud of himself as he takes his first step onto the road. He has significantly distanced himself from the monster that is Johnny - that damned persona and all the bullshit that is attached to it. Yes, it’s time to shake the dust of that image off his person and move forward with his life. If this were a movie, now would be the time to have a long fade-out as John walks into the sunset as a new man who has just experienced “self-discovery” or has just “come of age” or something along those lines. But, alas, this is not a movie. There is no fade-out. Time marches on. Reality continues.
John tries to remain optimistic as he makes his way down Franklin, but his optimism turns back into depression when he finds himself surrounded on both sides by several low-rent apartments, the outer facades of which are a far cry from the architectural masterpieces in the Hills above. The buildings are comprised of a pale-yellow stucco reminiscent of watery mustard squirted out of a bottle that wasn’t shaken well. Palm trees and other exotic plant-life grow in the apartment forecourts, but much of their limbs are brown and saggy and sickly - an unsuccessful attempt to disguise the fact that the building is a complete shit-hole.
But what stands out the most about these apartments is that - on each windowsill - there is a small cable satellite dish, pointing way up into space and sucking endless hours of entertainment into each of the units. The crack-heads and sex offenders and Internet porn directors and other residents can hardly come up with the eight-hundred dollars needed to make rent every month, but they still - somehow - find a way to afford the best cable package America has to offer. Amazing.
John moves beneath the rectangular balconies to the apartments above. His nose gets tickled by wafts of second-hand marijuana smoke and his ears are assaulted by the hottest shows on prime-time television: American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and CSI: WHEREVER. Maybe it’s been a while since he’s left his house, but John is surprised to find that he's the only person on the street, which may be normal for a quiet suburban neighborhood, but - fuck - he’s in a city right now. He feels a tad alienated being there on the streets, maybe even a little creepy - like in a sex-offender kind of way.
Wasn’t it Ray Bradbury who once got arrested for taking a walk at night in Los Angeles? Maybe that’s just an Old Wive’s Tale, but it wouldn’t surprise John if something like that were actually true. The LAPD is probably just so used to everyone staying inside and entertaining themselves to death that a man who enjoys a little exercise and some time to think (without a TV blasting in front of his face) is considered abnormal and more than likely up-to-no-good. Or maybe it’s part of a broader conspiracy to keep people in their homes, in front of their TVs and passively complacent. People who are distracted and don’t think make it easier for the world’s “elite” to do what they want, like start needless wars in oil-rich countries, or pass “Homeland Security” bills that take away the very freedoms Americans are supposed to be bringing to the countries they’re “liberating”. Yes, keep the people passive in front of their television sets while the powers-that-be pave the way for a “new world order”, one filled with liberalism and democratism and, of course, lots and lots of corporationalism, not to mention any names Halliburton, Lockheed Martin and Blackwater. Pay no attention to the torture that takes place at Guantanamo or the Wall Street Ponzi schemes or the fact that nobody saw an actual plane fly into the Pentagon. After all, if you unglue yourself from the television, the terrorists might get you, especially that boogeyman Osama Bin Laden who may or may not already be dead but let's pretend that he's alive because we need to justify our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and basically any other country who doesn't see eye to eye with us. We also need to justify the fact that - little by little - our country is becoming one, giant police state that shoves its hands down five-year-olds' crotches at airports, creates "no-fly lists" for anti-war protesters and places security cameras on pretty much every corner of every street. Go tune into the latest Kardashian reality show and ignore the fact that 9/11 may have been an inside job or that corporations are buying up water rights or that Global Warming is a myth created by greedy men interested in making billions off of carbon credits, taxes and new "green" technology both in America and in third-world countries that don't have the money for such technology so let's help those poor countries out because we're nice guys not that this is a disguised form of imperialism or anything.
Ugggh. Good grief. This is too much thinking for John to handle, especially when he doesn’t have a good bowl of weed to fog up his thoughts as soon as they get too troubling. In fact, this is the longest he’s been away from his bowl for probably years now, or at least months. It’s no wonder why his mind has started to clear. Of course, he’d much rather be smoking the weed. He’d choose a foggy head over a clear head any day. The clearer his mind is, the more he is faced with the horrifying truth around him.
After walking down Franklin for a mile or so, John comes to Highland Avenue, which eventually brings him to the corner of Hollywood and Highland. There is a large commercial mall here with your Abercrombie ‘N Fitches, American Eagles, California Pizza Kitchens and what-have-you, but back in the day this was the location of a place called the “Hollywood Hotel". This was actually the birthplace of the “Hollywood Star” tradition, which eventually gave birth to the Hollywood walk-of-fame on Hollywood Boulevard.
As the story goes, there was a trendy restaurant at the Hollywood Hotel that was considered “the place to be seen” - anybody from Cecil B. DeMille to Greta Garbo to Gloria Swanson to Louis B. Mayer could be found there on any given night. In fact, so many celebrity “regulars” went there that the management used to place stars above certain seats where the celebrities liked to sit. The stars would have the celebrities’ names on them and would essentially function as a means of reserving the given seat at all times. By the time the hotel closed in the 50s, there were so many of these stars on the ceiling that they decided to transfer them to the sidewalk outside and, thus, the famous Hollywood walk-of-fame was born!
Of course - back then - only the really special celebrities would get Hollywood stars. The cream of the crop. The most A-list of the A-list. But, today, anybody who’s famous for fifteen minutes can get one as long as they have the $25,000 required to get one...well, so it seems, anyway. As for John...he’s never even seen his star before. Johnny wouldn’t let him attend the ceremony. He doesn’t even know where the damn thing is, exactly.
‘Yeah, where is that damn thing?’ John wonders as he turns onto Hollywood Boulevard and begins his journey down the charcoal-marbled walk-of-fame. He peers far down the boulevard and can’t help but have his line of vision assaulted by endless amounts of billboards, sprouting out of the sidewalks like mushrooms in a fungus-filled lawn. They all have familiar faces plastered on them, like Britney Lohan, George Pitt and late-night show host Dave Leno. Christ, they look so awesome and powerful and important up there - bigger than life. It occurs to John that you could probably take any face, slap it on a billboard and instantly deify that person. He remembers the first time he ever saw his own face on a billboard...or Johnny’s face, if you want to be technical. It made him feel like God.
Speaking of which, one billboard amongst the several hundreds has a face that looks very familiar. Indeed, it’s Johnny’s face...well, it’s some of Johnny’s face. A laborer is actually in the process of painting over the face and pasting up another George Pitt to replace it. Though he doesn’t want to admit it, John can’t help but feel extremely offended by this. It’s like a big slap in the face, seeing his persona be obliterated like that. He LIKES being on billboards. He LIKES being bigger than life. He LIKES feeling like God.
In fact, now that he mulls it over in his mind a little more...this may not be something he’s ready to let go. Is he really ready for this whole Hollywood thing to end? And what does he have waiting for him back East? His parents’ basement and a shit-job at the local supermarket. Heather’s never gonna go for that shit. O Terrible! What has he done?!
He darts across the street to a 24-hour newsstand to check and see if the situation is as dire as he fears. If his career still has a pulse, the tabloids should have at least two or three stories about Johnny Cruise. Sure, the stories will be complete fabrications and overall horse shit, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that there’s SOMETHING about Johnny Cruise, which means the public is still interested, which means his career is not yet over...or Johnny’s career. No, his career. Whatever. It’s all the same.
The newsstand is nestled between two different souvenir shops selling plastic Oscar trophies and two-for-five-dollar Hollywood shirts. Like most places in this town, the walls are covered with autographed photos of stars, most of which are dead, which kind of gives the place a strange, haunted feel. In fact, Hollywood is probably the most haunted place in the world - not necessarily because there are actual ghosts running around (though there certainly are) - but because there are so many photographs of dead stars all over the place, not to mention handprints and footprints and statues and murals and waxed mannequins. In Hollywood, nobody ever completely leaves the earth when they die. They stick around.
Woooooooosh! John bolts through the entrance to the newsstand and immediately claws through the wide selection of tabloids lining the shelves. He pages through them and pages, and pages and, wow, Britney Lohan wasn’t wearing panties under her miniskirt again, and pages and pages, and pages, and...O horrible! His suspicions have been confirmed: there is absolutely nothing about Johnny Cruise in any one of them!
“Help you with something?” asks the store clerk, who seems to have appeared out of nowhere. He has long, white, Gandalf-like hair and - by the look of his gray eyes and skin - John suspects he’s been basking in the smog of Hollywood since around the Manson Family days. Maybe longer.
The clerk’s question gives John a good startle. After all, he hasn’t talked to a person from the outside world in quite some time. But he gives the clerk the best (toothless) smile he can possibly conjure, assuming he will be recognized as a major celebrity.
“Hey, how ya doing?”
The clerk, however, does not recognize him. In the clerk’s eyes, John is just another Hollywood crack-head from off the boulevard.
“Help you with something?” he asks again.
John’s gap-toothed smile fades.
“Um...yeah...got anything on Johnny Cruise?”
“Johnny who???”
Huh? Did he hear right? Did this fucking clerk just say, ‘Johnny who???’
John’s face turns a ghostly white. His heart starts to race at near horror-movie speed. Either this clerk is part-retarded or...well, the Johnny Cruise brand is in worse a state than he could ever imagine.
“Did you hear what I said? Johnny Cruise. The movie star.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Johnny Cruise. The movie star,” John repeats.
“I said I’ve never heard of him.”
O HORRIBLE! John can’t believe what he’s hearing. It’s like he stepped into an episode of the Twilight Zone.
“You never heard of him?”
“That’s what I said. You gonna buy something???”
What a nightmare! John knew a star could rise and fall overnight in this town, but this is, like, way too literal. It’s as though Johnny Cruise never even existed.
“Um...no. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to bother you.”
He turns to leave the store and can hear the clerk mutter “get a job” under his breath. O Misery! The remark is just the icing on John’s cake of despair. ‘Get a job’...ah, the ultimate insult in a country where financial independence is what makes the man. Does he really look like a bum? Has he really let himself go to such an extent? Apparently this is the truth.
He sulks out of the newsstand and resumes his journey down the sidewalk of bronzed stars, his head hanging down to the marble in a walk of shame. A random bum or two brushes past his shoulders, muttering twisted obscenities to themselves. They are strange phrases like “the dog fucked my wife, I’m gonna get that sunavabitch” and “you think you know me, but you’re the one wearing the dress”. No coherence to anything these lost souls say. At least the bums back East made sense. Maybe because Meth wasn’t as prevalent out there as it is in LA. Wait, Meth?
Yes, Meth. Or crystal...crank...bitch...Tina...whatever you want to call the shit; it’s the most dehumanizing drug ever concocted. Meth makes you feel like Jesus Christ, but it also fries away all sense of logic, rationale and civility. Everything a man says or does while on this shit makes perfect sense to him (hell, it’s fuckin’ gospel to him), but makes absolutely no sense to anybody who’s tuned into a normal (i.e. sober, or at least somewhat-more-sober) frequency. There’s probably no other drug out there that allows you to lose yourself in such a greater depth of unreality...and this is perhaps what’s so frightening about it. Because when a man is so out-of-touch like this, there’s no predicting what he is capable of doing.
Case in point: just a few yards down the walk-of-fame there is a young, twenty-something bum who looks like a cross between Harry Potter and Skippy from Family Ties. Judging by his appearance, John would probably consider this quasi-nerdy-looking dude to be somewhat normal; that is, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s jacking off on the friggin’ sidewalk right now! That’s right: his pants are dropped to his ankles like a toddler who’s being potty-trained. And his abnormally large penis is as hard as the Washington monument. But giving the disturbing scene an almost humorous twist is the fact that the bum is wearing a maroon Harvard University sweatshirt. John feels that there is some sort of metaphor or symbolism or irony at play here: the bum is jerking his dreams away, or something like that. No, maybe it’s a comment on the state of Harvard graduates these days, or the state of young intellectuals in general. Yes, it’s the state of an intellectual in a non-intellectual society…in a society that rejects the ‘thinker’. Something like this.
At any rate, John wishes he had a camera so he could photograph the junky jerking and what-not. The photo would definitely be considered ‘deep’. Win some awards. Maybe even get in a museum.
Instead, John walks a wide circle around the disturbed intellectual, being sure to keep a wary distance from this man who is more than likely raving on a lab’s-worth of Meth (if his pimply ‘meth-sores’ and rotting ‘meth-mouth’ are any indication). But as he circles around him, John’s eyes catch sight of the bronze movie camera the bum is currently jizzing on. It’s one of the Hollywood stars! But not just any star. It’s the Johnny Cruise star!!!
John’s first reaction, of course, is “Wow...so that’s where it is!” But then his mind registers what’s being done to it and he gets feckin’ fumed! What disrespect! How dare this bum masturbate atop his star! He oughta tackle this motherfucker!!! But he resists the urge, partly out of fear, and partly out of an unbreakable habit to never upset anybody lest it potentially hurt his career. His publicist taught him early in the game to always play the PC-card and not ruffle anybody’s feathers...even if they’re jizzing on your star. ‘Hi, Sir, I see you’re jizzing on my star. Very, good, Sir. Thanks very much, Sir. Peace and love and God bless.’ Yes, John decides it’s best to leave this Harry Potter look-alike alone and continue down the boulevard.
After a block or two, he notices the Grauman’s Chinese Theater across the street and figures it would probably be a good idea to check on his footprints there, just to be sure nobody’s jizzing on those things. Plus, it would be nice to actually SEE the footprints for once, since Johnny didn’t let him attend that particular ceremony either. Yes, it was at the premier of his film BASIC INSTINCT meets FATAL ATTRACTION where the “honorary mayor” of Hollywood (Johnny Grant) bestowed the honor upon Johnny Cruise. Every member of his family was in attendance: his mom, his dad, his brothers and sisters...even his grandmother. They were all so proud of him - Johnny, that is. Not John. If they saw John, they probably wouldn’t have been so proud.
MEEP! BEEP!
A Jaguar and BMW or two honk at John as he jaywalks across Hollywood Boulevard, hops over a red curb and enters the cement forecourt of the Chinese Theater. The place is dark and deserted at this hour, with the exception of one creepy character sitting on one of the cement squares and smoking a cigarette. ‘Maybe it’s the ghost of Victor Kilian,’ John wonders, remembering how the former character actor was rumored to be haunting the forecourt. Or maybe it’s another movie star like him who’s never personally seen his footprints. Whoever it is, John lets this shady spirit be, just in case he, too, is a Tweaker preparing to do something godless like the others.
John frolics his way deeper into the forecourt and can’t help but allow a big smile to curl up his face. His eyes twinkle as he gawks at all the autographed squares of cement, just like they did when he first came to Hollywood. He skips his way from Marilyn Monroe’s footprints to Shirley Temple’s footprints to Clark Gable’s footprints, kind of like a schoolboy playing hopscotch. And from Clark Gable’s footprints into Fred Astaire’s footprints, and into Rock Hudson’s footprints, and into Humphrey Bogart’s footprints, and into Groucho Marx’s footprints. He eventually comes to a newer square of cement with a greenish hue to it and - huzah! - there they are: the Johnny Cruise footprints.
He stands at the edge of the green cement, looking down to the prints in complete awe. He can’t help but get off on the fact that - right there in that spot - HIS footprints are nestled among Marilyn Monroe’s, Humphrey Bogart’s, Shirley Temple’s, Clark Gable’s, Jimmy Stewart’s, Groucho Marx’s...the list goes on and on.
He closes his eyes and takes a step into the footprints. Then he lifts his head high into the air and gets so damn giddy from the feeling of having made his mark in Hollywood...just like Gable and Bogart and Astaire and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and Roy Rogers and Gloria Swanson and all the other greats. A light Santa Ana breeze whistles through his ears and it’s just the perfect touch to the greatest high he’s ever had while NOT smoking weed.
He leaps into Clark Gable’s footprints.
He leaps into Marilyn Monroe’s footprints.
And then into Tom Hanks’ footprints.
And then Darth Vader’s footprints.
And then Donald Duck’s footprints.
And then back into the Johnny Cruise footprints.
What a feeling of bliss it is to know that he has written himself into the same Hollywood history book as the legends around him. He is one of them. Part of the club. The top rung of the social ladder - as high as one can possibly get in life.
In other words, Heather is such an idiot for choosing Alex over him. Big mistake, Heather. Big fucking mistake.
SCENE NINETEEN
Morning has broken on Hollywood Boulevard, scattering the incoherent bums like cockroaches in a charge-by-the-hour motel room. The bums are replaced by the early-bird tourists, gawking at the bronzed stars and desperately scouring the boulevard for a celebrity sighting.
The volume of traffic grows to a much more audible level. Lawyers in their Mercedes Benzes head to the office. Executives in their Porsches head to the studios. Actors in their Maseratis head to their early calls. Young hopefuls in their rusty Buicks head to...well, nowhere important - maybe a Cybercafe or an audition for a commercial if they’re lucky. Maybe to their jobs at Starbucks. Maybe back to LAX to abandon the dream and return East.
The Hollywood Boulevard “characters” take their posts along the sidewalk in front of the Chinese Theater forecourt. These are unemployed actors or - in many cases - bums or drug addicts or sex offenders who dress up as their favorite Hollywood movie characters and take pictures with tourists for tips. Some are young and others are old. Some are male and others are female. Some are sober and others are completely shit-faced.
“We take tips for the photos, ladies!” yells the man dressed as Batman. “Yes, tips! For the photos!”
The Batman character is pissed because a small group of teenage girls didn’t leave a tip after taking a photo with him. At first, the girls think Batman is kidding around - like it’s all part of the show - but then he starts dropping F-bombs and they realize they should probably start walking faster.
“No, don’t go over to Superman! We take tips! For the photos!”
Needless to say, he’s causing a bit of a scene.
“What are you looking at?!” he yells at all the tourists staring at him.
“Not much,” says a plump Tennessean tourist wearing a Universal Studios shirt.
“’Not much’? Ha! That all you got? Clown!”
Other characters on the boulevard include two Freddy Kruegers, an Elmo and a SpongeBob SquarePants. Then there’s Shreck, Pinhead from Hellraiser, a Chucky doll (played by a midget), three Jack Sparrows, about twelve Spidermans and also a Superman who looks so much like Christopher Reeves it’s uncanny.
“Hello, ladies,” says Superman to a group of attractive young foxes dressed in scantily-clad clothing. “Too bad my X-ray vision isn’t working today. Hee. Hee. Hee.”
In the forecourt behind the characters, a Mexican laborer hoses down the cement autographs and footprints, being sure to get all the grime and cigarette snipes out of every little crevice. It’s not the best job he’s ever had, but it’s better than hanging out at Home Depot begging shoppers for an odd-job as they leave the store. This is what he used to do when he first came to America and it made him regret the day he jumped the border. The condescending look the customers gave him was so humiliating he doesn’t even want to think about it.
A few squares of concrete over from the Mexican is a group of Japanese tourists. They remove their shoes and place their naked feet into the footprints of their favorite stars. Little do they care that a million pairs of dirty feet have stood in those very prints; what's more important to them is that their bare flesh has touched the very spot where their favorite celebrity once stood.
The tourists hop into Marilyn Monroe’s footprints and Shirley Temple’s footprints and Mary Pickford’s footprints and Bette Davis’ footprints and Eddie Murphy’s footprints and Harrison Ford’s footprints, but they steer clear of Johnny Cruise’s footprints. This is mainly because there is a bum sleeping on the ground beside them. Well, in their minds it’s a bum. But it’s really just John, curled up in the fetal position like a swaddled baby.
John’s lips smack and his eyelids flutter open. Consciousness slowly starts to regain itself and John is confused as to where he is. Maybe if he picks the early-morning crust out of his eyes he’ll be able to better acclimate himself.
Yes, after a pick or two, his vision clears and he sees the Johnny Cruise autograph staring him right in the face. It suddenly hits him where he is and how he got there. John could have sworn last night was all a dream, but here he is with his cheek pressed hard against the cool forecourt cement - drool dripping out the corner of his mouth.
He rolls over to his side, sits upright and looks out onto the bustling boulevard. It’s possible that he’s still half-asleep, but there is a face hovering high in the smoggy sky that looks extremely familiar. He has to rub his eyes again to make sure the face is who he thinks it is, but - holy shit! - there’s no doubt about it. It’s Johnny Cruise...on a billboard.
John looks a tad to the left and - whoa! - sees another billboard with Johnny Cruise’s face on it. Then, he looks a tad to his right and - whoa shit! - sees yet another Johnny Cruise billboard. And in the very far distance - probably somewhere on Sunset, he suspects - he sees yet another Johnny Cruise. And then in the even greater distance (probably on Santa Monica) there’s another Johnny Cruise. Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise!! Johnny Cruise!!! Johnny Cruise is everywhere!
John stumbles onto his feet and totters closer to the boulevard. The tourists see him (or smell him) and make an effort to keep their distance, as they still think he’s nothing but a crack-head who smells like a dumpster.
He leaves the forecourt and takes a step onto the walk-of-fame, right between a Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers who are busy startling tourists. He looks both ways down the boulevard and - holy shit! - there’s absolutely nothing in the sky except Johnny Cruise.
“Am I dreaming now?”
He gives his flesh a pinch with his overgrown fingernails, but, no, he’s clearly awake. ‘What happened? Why’s this happening?’ he wonders. And he knows exactly where to go for an answer.
He bolts it across the boulevard and nearly gets smashed by a rusty mini-van in the process. Meep! Beep! Beep! Meep! He weaves through the cars like he’s Frogger.
“Fucking crack-head!” shouts one of the drivers.
“Crazy asshole!” shouts another.
"You little fuck!" shouts yet another.
He makes it to the other side of the street in one piece, bolts it down the sidewalk and heads straight for the newsstand he got the boot from last night. But he doesn’t even have to walk into the place before he gets his answer, because it’s right on a news-rack outside:
“GOLDEN-BOY TURNED BAD-BOY!” shouts the headline of “A-List Magazine”. “JOHNNY CRUISE SEX-TAPE! JOHNNY CRUISE SEX-TAPE! JOHNNY CRUISE SEX-TAPE!”
John swipes the tabloid from off the rack, flips to the first page and sees a greenish, night-visioned photograph of Johnny half-naked in bed with Playboy model Pamela Lopez. Their eyes beam from the infrared like nocturnal animals in the woods.
He turns the page and sees another grainy photograph showing Pamela on the bed posing like a dog on all fours (her private parts blocked out with black rectangles labeled ‘censored’). And then he turns another page and sees Pamela giving Johnny head (again, with the naughty parts blocked out). And then he turns another page and there’s a blurred photo of the two of them humping like dogs.
‘This is amazing,’ John thinks as he turns the page and finds a brief blurb:
Bloggers are abuzz over a new sex tape featuring golden-boy Johnny Cruise and Playboy model Pamela Lopez. The sex tape was leaked onto the Internet this morning and has gotten so many views that servers all over the Internet are crashing at unprecedented rates. A source told “A-list Magazine” that, although Johnny is upset about the tape, he feels pulling it from the web will be more legal trouble than it’s worth.
John turns to the next page, but - suddenly - there is a voice:
“Help you with something?”
It’s the same gray-eyed clerk from the night before.
“Um...uh....” The question catches John off guard.
The clerk’s eyes widen and then squint as he takes a better look at his customer.
“Wait a minute...don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, that face...it looks mighty familiar.”
O Shit! John completely forgot that he’d more than likely be recognized now that Johnny is hot again. But if he’s caught looking the way he does right now, it could ruin everything!
“I was in here last night...that must be it.”
“No, that’s not it. You look...kinda like...”
“Um...uh...gotta go,” John says as he quickly covers his face and makes a bee-line for the boulevard.
He bursts onto the walk-of-fame and starts sprinting over the marble like a juiced-up Carl Lewis. He runs past the souvenir shops. Past a Hooters. Past El Capitan theater…
While he runs, he hears a buzzing noise in his ears. It’s a strange murmuring...or mumbling. The noise seems to be coming from every single tourist and hopeful and bum and tranny and Scientologist on the boulevard: “Johnny Cruise, Johnny Cruise, Johnny Cruise.” It’s just the name ‘Johnny Cruise’, meshed together, into a constant buzz.
“JohnnyCruiseJohnnyCruiseJohnnyCruiseJohnnyCruise.”
John jaywalks (or jay-runs) across the boulevard and nearly causes another messy accident:
Meep! Beep! “Motherfucker!”
He runs past the Kodak Theater and leaps over a red carpet (tonight is the premiere of NATIONAL TEASURE meets THE MUMMY), runs past the kiosks of the Hollywood-Highland Mall. Past the run-down apartments with their satellite dishes and browned palm trees and pale stucco. Past the Hollywood Bowl. Past the Sunset Ranch...
Past the Hollywood sign, with the smell of gardenia perfume still trapped in the air...past the homeless encampments and the used condoms and the eucalyptus trees and the rattlesnakes and the lemon trees....
He claws his way up a dusty hill, hops over a rusted guardrail and finds himself back on the tortuous Mulholland Drive. Here, he takes a moment to collect himself, gather his druthers, and pat the dust out of his clothes. But, then...
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerch!
A roaring vehicle burns its way around one of the road’s hairpin turns. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeerch. The vehicle does about eighty and guns itself right at John. He has to jump out of the way lest he be splattered like a bug against the grill!
Rooooooooooooom! The vehicle roars right past him. It’s an SUV. A Yukon. And John would recognize that damn Yukon from anywhere: it’s TEX!
Fortunately, John doesn’t think Tex recognized him, but...eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerch! He was wrong. The Yukon squeals to an abrupt halt about fifty yards past John.
Tex pops his head out the SUV’s window, peering into the side-view mirror with a squint of suspicion.
“Johnny! That you?!”
John freezes for a brief moment, standing to the side of the road like a deer staring into headlights. He says nothing...and moves nothing...
But then - BOOM! - he darts across the road like the roadrunner and starts clawing his way up another dusty hill.
Tex slams on the gas pedal and fishtails it the fuck out of there. He knew it looked like Johnny! He’ll cut him off at the top of the hill for sure.
John claws and claws and claws his way up the dirty hill. Rattlesnakes are all around him, hiding out in the clumps of chaparral. They're shaking. Rattling. And hissing.
“Agh!”
The hill gets so steep at times he might as well be scaling Everest. His long fingernails bend backwards as he digs them into the yellow silt and rocks. Ouch! He should’ve made more of an effort to trim those fuckers!
He finally makes it to the hill’s summit, straddles his way over another rusty guardrail and topples onto Mount Olympus Drive. Phew. Safe. Well, so he thinks.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerch!
Fuck, Tex’s SUV is just about a couple hundred yards down the road, heading right for him! John jumps back on his feet and starts sprinting faster than the T-1000 in Terminator 2.
Tex floors the SUV, doing about eighty, not giving a shit that he’s putting both himself and others in extreme danger.
John rounds a curve. He hops a (dead) rattlesnake. He leaps over a square garbage barrel. He dodges a speeding Bentley driven by a successful rap artist. Meep! Beep! “Asshole!”
But Tex is still hot on his trail, just like a heat-seeking missile...or one of those pesky triangular-winged flies that go for your head. There’s no way John’s going to shake this bastard. The only thing he can hope to do is beat him to the mansion.
And Hallelujah! After what seems like miles, John is relieved to see the tip of his golden gate appear above the hazy horizon of Mt. Olympus concrete. It has never looked so damn beautiful. He fixates his eyes on the glimmering ‘JC’ initials and runs as fast as he can towards them.
Tex, however, is gaining on John. Big-time! He’s about fifty yards behind him. No, forty yards. No, twenty yards. No, ten yards....
John runs and he huffs and he runs and he puffs.
Tex gains and gains and gains.
John runs and pukes in his mouth and runs and he’s almost there. He’s almost there. He’s almost fucking there...
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeerch! Tex rips the Yukon past John, peels into a U-turn right in front of the golden gate and screeches to a stop. He bursts out of the driver’s seat with his camera locked, loaded and ready to snatch a soul.
But John’s gone.
“Huh?”
The paparazzo scours every inch of the road, the mailbox and especially the gate...but he’s gone. John is gone.
“No! No!! No!!!!!!!!!!”
A boulder drops into the ground behind the Johnny Cruise mailbox. It’s the entranceway to John’s bunker. Somebody’s just gone down into it. It’s John, of course. He’s made it back to the mansion safe...and relatively sound.
SCENE TWENTY
The dungeon door bursts open. John leaps into Transylvania, pushes the door shut behind him and slams his back up to it. He breathes in and out. In and out. In and out. Christ, he’s sweating like a bastard. His shins burn. His joints ache. His head pounds. His heart races. ‘Get a hold of yourself. Get a grip.’
His eyeballs gravitate towards something on the floor, only a few feet in front of him. It’s his bowl. There’s likely to be a half or a quarter of nug left in that thing. Certainly a hit or two will bring his frazzled body back to a healthy equilibrium.
He swipes the bowl up from off the floor, whips his Humphrey Bogart lighter out of his pocket and bakes the weed nice and swell. He kisses the bowl with his lips and takes a deep inhale. The weed fills his lungs and the THC travels up his spine. His pain numbs. His mind fogs. Already, he feels one-hundred-percent better.
“Mary Jane’s the only woman who loves me,” he can’t help but say out loud for no particular reason.
High as a kite, John floats his way out of Transylvania and into Movieland, where he collapses onto the haunted couch and melts into the cushions. Like the rest of his senses, his eardrums are numb, but they begin to hear muffled sounds in the far distance. Voices, maybe. ‘Probably just the ghosts,’ he figures. ‘But, fuck, let the ghosts speak. Ghosts need to speak, too,’ he reasons as he buries his face deep into the couch. Hell, the voices could be coming from a stalker or the devil himself, and John wouldn’t give a shit. He’s so baked that he wouldn’t care if he was sitting in the eighth circle of Dante’s hell right now.
The voices increase in volume and become more coherent.
“Ok, Pamela. I love you, baby. See ya soon.”
A door slams somewhere deep into the house and John suddenly gets the feeling that he isn’t alone. His subconscious senses an energy coming from the far corner of the room. He lifts his head out of the couch cushions and sees Johnny staring at him with an eerily blank expression.
“Didn’t sleep ‘til noon today?” he asks.
“Oh, Johnny...please don’t,” says John, burying his face back into the cushions.
Johnny swaggers over to the Casablanca coffee table and swipes the remote control into his possession. As soon as he presses the ‘power’ button, the JumboTron shouts...
“Johnny Cruise!”
He changes the channel.
“Johnny Cruise!”
He switches channels again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
Johnny jumps atop the Casablanca coffee table and pounds his chest like Tarzan.
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Say it again!” Johnny shouts at the television.
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Say my name again!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Say! My! Name! Bitch!”
“Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise!!!”
“Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwww!!!!!!!”
All right, John has had enough of this frigging nonsense. This is absolutely ridiculous. So immature. So sophomoric.
“Turn it off, Johnny.”
Johnny whips his head away from the Jumbotron and leers into John’s line of vision. His face is freakier-looking than an eel’s.
“What?!”
“Turn the fucking TV off,” says John with the most confidence he’s had in a really long time.
Johnny suddenly becomes muzzled with submissiveness - like a puppy who’s just been scolded – and he does what he’s told. The TV shuts off.
“Well...we’re mighty assertive this morning. Aren’t we?”
“We gotta talk about what’s next.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s gotta be something big. Like another trip to Somalia or something.”
“John, those refugees are amazing heroes to me. They make me so grateful for what I have. But I’m not gonna have time to go there.”
“Why not?”
“John, look...Pamela and I...we’ve decided to get married.”
The word “married” kills John’s high almost instantaneously.
“Married? What are you talking about?”
“Pamela and I are in love. We’ve decided to get married.”
John leaps off the couch, grabs Johnny by the arms and starts shaking him like some twisted Au pair would shake a baby.
“No. No! No way!!! There’s no fucking way you’re getting married!!!”
“Get the fuck off me,” says Johnny, slamming John into the carpet.
“Right now, everybody thinks you’re a sleaze-wad who makes sex-tapes with sluts! You gotta go to Israel and help promote peace or something!”
“No, we gotta capitalize on the moment. Right now, everybody’s talking about Johnny and Pamela. Johnny and Pamela this...Johnny and Pamela that. If we get married right now, we’re gonna be America’s biggest power-couple - hands-down. We’ll be the next Beyonce and Jay-Z! Another Clark Gable and Carole Lombard!!!”
“No, this isn’t right. I’m gonna fix this right now!”
“Fix what?! Twelve hours ago the Johnny Cruise brand was dead! You should be kissing my ass. I saved your career!”
“MY CAREER?! Ha! It’s not my career anymore. It stopped being MY career a long time ago! It’s YOUR career!”
“Yeah, well that’s because you don’t know how to manage your career. If it wasn’t for me you’d already be back East now, working at Shop N’ Save. You’d be washed up! A has-been. A never-was!”
John’s eyes start to water and burn.
“Jesus, you see what I mean? You cry over every little thing. Pussies like yourself don’t have successful careers, John. Pussies like you work in a supermarket and live with your parents your whole life!”
The tears stream down John’s cheeks. For a brief moment, Johnny realizes he’s being too harsh. He decides to show a little sensitivity.
“I’m sorry.”
“Take it back, Johnny.”
Johnny kneels to the floor and rubs John’s back.
“I take it back. I take it back. Come on, buddy. Chin up, now.”
He gives John’s back a few more rubs, like a husband would do to a wife. Then he whips a rolled Playboy magazine out of his back pocket and opens to the centerfold.
“Look, John. Take one good look at Pamela. Take one look at Pamela and try to tell me she isn’t the hottest piece of ass in Hollywood right now.”
John sniffs up his tears and takes a peek at the magazine.
“Look at those tits. That ass. Think about all the girls who rejected you in high school. What are they gonna say when they see you with Pamela? Huh? Ya know?”
“Look, Johnny. I’m not gonna let you marry a girl you don’t love.”
“I LOVE Pamela. I LOVE her.”
“That’s bullshit. You love Hea...”
“YOU love Heather. YOU love her!!!”
“Shut up, Johnny! Shut up!!!”
Johnny has had enough of John’s impertinence. He clenches his fist and winds his arm up for a nasty punch.
But John snatches his fist in midair! And whips it to the ground!
“Don’t fuckin’ touch me! Get back! I control you! I made you and I control you!!!”
For the first time, Johnny actually looks a little scared.
“Whoa...ok. No need to get so worked up. Relax.”
He rests his hands to his side and gives John a little room to breathe.
“I’m outta here,” says John. “This is ridiculous. I’m leaving this house. I’m leaving Hollywood.”
He hobbles his way up from the floor and heads for Transylvania. But he can’t even make it halfway across the room before Johnny says:
“Heather doesn’t love you, John.”
John stops dead in his tracks, but refuses to turn around. He takes a deep breath and musters up the confidence to move forward.
“Heather NEVER loved you.”
John stops in his tracks again.
“Heather and her husband are curled up in their bed right now, holding each other tight, talkin’ about how great it was fucking each other last night.”
John’s knees start shivering and he collapses to the floor.
“But you know what she’s gonna do when she rolls outta bed, turns on the TV and hears about the sex tape? Know how she’s gonna feel? She’s gonna suddenly realize how much sex you’ve been having without her and how amazing it must be. And then she’s gonna wish that sex with Alex could be more amazing. And then she’s gonna see how hot Pamela is and she’s gonna see you get married and she’s gonna beat the shit out of herself knowing she coulda had you, but it’s too late, bitch. ‘Oh, just kidding. Come, here, hun. Let me hold you all night long. No, it’s too late, BITCH!!!’ You’re gone from her forever with a girl who’s got better boobs, nicer ass, cuter face...the list doesn’t end, motherfucker.”
Johnny starts spitting out every word like some beast from a J.R. Tolkien movie.
“That stupid bitch is gonna live out the rest of her life in complete misery knowing she missed the boat with you. Too late, you fucking bitch!”
His beastly spits turn into all-out barks.
“Too late!!!!!!!!!!!!”
John’s eyes glaze over, like they’re being put under a spell.
“No, Johnny. You’re messing with my mind. I’m not listening to you. I’m the only one here. You don’t exist.”
He regains his confidence and gets back on his feet.
“I’m leaving this house.”
This time, he successfully makes it out of Movieland and even makes it into Transylvania, but when he gets into Transylvania, he finds that the door leading to the outside world is blocked...by Johnny. It’s almost as though he ‘beamed’ himself there, like a character in Star Trek!
“You’re not going anywhere,” growls Johnny like a guard dog.
“Yes I am, Johnny. I’m leaving this house.”
John charges at the door and plows into Johnny, but Johnny swats him away like a fly.
John charges at him again, but Johnny easily pushes him away like he weighs about two pounds.
John fucking lunges at Johnny, but Johnny sweeps John’s legs and slams him into the floor, belly-first.
“Ouch! You fucking asshole!” yells John from the floor.
Johnny tries to grab John by the hair, but John slaps his hand away.
“Get back! Get back!!!”
Johnny cautiously takes a step back.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore, Johnny! I don’t even see you! You don’t exist.”
Johnny says nothing - just stares at John with an unsettling stoicism.
“I’m leaving now.”
John pushes himself up from the floor, limps to the door, grabs the brass ring and begins to pull it open.
“All right, tough-guy,” Johnny says from behind. “Go out there and fix things. Let the world see your face. Your hooked-nose. Your craggly skin...”
John can’t pull the door open any further.
“...How about your yellow teeth?! The eczema on your upper back. Your left arm that’s bigger than your right arm due to excessive masturbation with the left hand. Let them see your thick eyebrows and uneven sideburns...”
John slams the door closed with his face and starts bawling uncontrollably.
“Let the public see the REAL you. The guy who sits on his ass all day and never donated one single penny to any charity. How much did you donate to the Red Cross last year? Huh? How many Aids walks did you participate in? How many children with Leukemia did you be a role model to? None. But you sure as hell smoked a lot of weed!”
“Johnny, please stop. Don’t do this,” John pleads as he slides down to the floor, trying ever-so-desperately to suck the tears back up into his nose.
“Go on and leave the house, you selfish asshole! Boy is Heather gonna be glad she never left Alex for you. Holy shit is she gonna have some pleasant dreams after a long night of riding Alex like a carousel.”
Oh, John can’t bear to have such an image in his mind.
“Johnny, I beg you! Please!!!”
“You walk out that door and you’re buying yourself a one-way ticket back East. Back to the supermarket. Back to your parents’ basement. Back to having no woman. Back to snapping it to porn. Back to fantasizing about how you’ll someday marry Heather when, in reality, you absolutely never will.”
“Johnny! Agh-ha! No! Oh, stop! Please stop!!!!”
“Stop that crying, pussy! You’re one of the most famous motherfuckers in the world. You make twenty million dollars a picture. You’re a bigger brand than McDonald’s! You live in one of the nicest houses in the Hollywood Hills. Stanley Hitchcock’s house. Your favorite filmmaker shot some of your favorite movies right here where we stand and you want to leave it??? Something’s not adding up here, John.”
“Aha-ha! Oh, no! No, Johnny!”
“You always want more and more and more. You’re never happy. Millions are starving in Africa. People are repressed by dictatorships. Soldiers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan! What do YOU have to be sad about?!”
John can’t answer the question. He can only close his eyes and hope that Johnny disappears.
“I said what the fuck do you have to be sad about?!”
“Oh-ho! Johnny! Oh God!!!”
Johnny’s eyes pop out of his face, just like one of those stress-reliever toys that you squeeze.
“Shut up, motherfucker! Shuuuuut!!! Up!!!!!!!!!!!”
John opens his eyes and sees that Johnny has vanished. Only the echoes of his demonic screams remain, reverberating through the foyer like a dragon’s roar.
He sits upright, hugs his knees into his chest and whimpers.
“I need a hug. Somebody give me a hug. Oh, God.”
SCENE TWENTY-ONE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
John sits on the edge of the haunted couch, stuffing a glass tube with a crystallized-looking rock. It’s crack and he’s got a whole zip-lock baggy of this shit on the Casablanca coffee table.
He packs the rock atop a piece of steel wool jammed into the tube to act as a filter. Then he takes his lighter, heats the crack, rolls the tube between his lips - making sure to light the rock evenly - and sucks in a really good hit.
“Yah, Yah, Yah,” says John, as the crack fries his brain like an egg in a pan.
He grabs the remote control from off the coffee table and fires up the JumboTron.
“Johnny and Pamela tie the knot! Hey, everyone, Brian Seacrest here for Inside Entertainment News. We have exclusive new footage of Johnny and Pamela’s Malibu beach wedding that will SHOCK you.”
The JumboTron fills with shaky footage of Johnny and Pamela’s wedding ceremony taken from a helicopter hovering over the Malibu cliffs.
“The lavish affair turned out to be a who’s-who of Hollywood, as just about every A-lister in the industry was in attendance. Everyone from Arnold Stallone to Bridget Zellweger to Rene Welch to Amanda Zeta Jones made an appearance. The five-million-dollar wedding will go down as being the most expensive in Hollywood history, even topping the Liza Minneli/David Guest wedding, which reportedly cost 3.5 million dollars.”
John gives his pipe another crackle and his brain another sizzle.
“Johnny and Pamela are now the most powerful couple in Hollywood, with a combined net-worth of over 800 million dollars, according to Forbes magazine.”
John lets the sweet-smelling smoke ooze out of his chest. Damn, he feels so fine right now. ‘So very fine. Like the juice.’ But, suddenly, he hears commotion heading its way into the room.
“Yeah-yeah! Yee-haw! Whooooooooooo!!!”
Johnny bursts into Movieland with his arms spilling articles of fan mail all over the carpet. He wears a black tuxedo with his bowtie casually dangling from his snow-white collar.
“Look, John! Look at how much mail there is! This is unbelievable!”
“Huh? Wha?” mumbles John from the couch. He’s so fried he doesn’t know what the hell Johnny’s saying to him right now.
Johnny drops all of the mail onto the carpet, tramples over it with his shiny tuxedo shoes and leaps onto the Casablanca coffee table.
“Look, John…me and Pamela…we’ve been doing some talking.”
John rolls his head up to Johnny, his mouth agape like a mentally handicapped vegetable.
“We want to have children.”
John’s not sure if he heard right. It’s entirely possible that he’s just high as fuck.
“Children?”
“Yes, John. We’re gonna have a child.”
It takes a while for John’s mind to process Johnny’s words. The crack seems to have damaged the connections between the synapses.
“No. No. No....”
“Yes, John. Yes.”
“No. No! No!!! No kids!”
“Pamela and I are in love and we want to have a child. So, yes, we’re having kids!”
“No, I won’t let you bring kids into all this! This is where I draw the line! I’m putting a stop to this once and for all!”
John tries to get up from the couch, but he trips on his way up, falling face-first into the coffee table.
“Ouch! Fuck!!!”
“Come on, John. We have to keep capitalizing on the situation here. People are obsessed with everything Johnny and Pamela. If we don’t do anything, people are just gonna stop paying attention to us. But if we have a kid...”
“No, Johnny! No!!!”
“Think about how gorgeous the kid would be. My good looks. Pamela’s good looks. It’s simple eugenics, John. We’d give birth to the most beautiful fucking child in the world.”
“No, I’m leaving, Johnny! Shut up!”
John finally manages to stumble onto his feet and he wobbles his way out of the room.
“I can see it now,” Johnny growls from behind. “You getting off the plane at the airport and taking the cab straight to Shop ‘N Save to ask for your old job back. Turns out Heather’s there buying her groceries and she sees you...”
He mimics Heather’s voice.
“‘Phew, glad I didn’t end up with John after all. Alex has a much better job in the Financial District, one that can assure that I have security for the rest of my life. Alex will give me a better house...better car...better vacations...and more kids. Oh, plus his dick is about three times bigger than John’s and I love to ride it after he treats me to a nice dinner that John would NEVER be able to afford. Yes, I made a good decision in marrying Alex and I also love to suck his cock.’”
John collapses to the floor before he can make it out of the room.
“O God! O God! Johnny! No!!!”
SCENE TWENTY-TWO - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
John kneels beside the Casablanca coffee table and snorts a long, long, long, long line of coke. And he quickly chases it with a big hit of weed.
“Yeeeeeeeah. He likes it. Hey, Mikey, he likes it. Oh, yeeeeeeeeeeeeah, he likes it.”
He snatches the remote control from off the coffee table and zaps it at the JumboTron.
“Is it a baby-bump?! We’ve got shocking new photos of Pamela Lopez shopping at “Little Seed” on Rodeo Drive today. The world-famous supermodel spent a reported $250,000 at the high-end baby store. This tops Angelina Witherspoon’s recent baby shopping spree, which added up to a reported $125,000.”
John wraps his blistered lips around his crack pipe and sparks up a rock. ‘Yes. I’m actually getting pretty damn high right now,’ he thinks as he twirls the pipe around in his mouth. The crack mixes so well with the coke and weed. In fact, this is probably the highest John’s been in a while. He feels like fucking Atlas, like he could hoist the world up onto his shoulders and toss it into the wastebasket like it was nothing.
But before John can even blow out the hit, he hears a ghostly cry coming from somewhere deep within the house. It’s a baby’s cry.
SCENE TWENTY-THREE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Johnny Cruise...is a dad! Hey everyone, I’m Kristina DePandi for Inside Entertainment News. We’ve got the exclusive first images of Johnny and Pamela’s new baby boy as they carried him out of Cedars-Sinai Hospital today. The adorable Adonis ‘Johnny’ Cruise was born at 6:59am early Tuesday morning and weighed a hefty eight pounds, six ounces. People magazine reportedly spent five million dollars for a first photo of baby Adonis, which tops the 2.5 Million it spent on photos of Angelina Witherspoon’s baby last year...”
John lies like a doped-up Cleopatra on the usual haunted couch, sucking on a fresh bowl of weed that’s laced with coke...or maybe it’s LSD...he can’t really remember which one. Whatever it is, the shit’s actually bringing him to a pretty high place, which is good news to him.
“The news of baby Adonis comes just weeks after Pamela spent a reported $250,000 on a Wizard-of-Oz-themed baby shower at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Everyone from Julia Davis to Gena Roberts to Diane Sarandon to Susan Keaton was present at the who’s-who affair. Keaton reportedly spent $300,000 on her shower gift, which tops the reported $275,000 Lopez dropped for Keaton’s shower gift last year.”
John blows out a thin stream of smoke and suddenly hears the high-pitched scream of a newborn baby. It sounds like the baby’s in the room with him, but he can’t see anything. He looks all over the place, but there’s nobody but him...alone.
Wait! Suddenly, he sees what-appears-to-be a woman in a silky nightgown holding a baby in her arms. But her flesh is transparent and she’s invisible from the ankles down. Plus, it looks like she just walked through the damn wall!
John, of course, believes the visions to be a product of his blazing imagination. The weed must have been laced with LSD, he figures - hence the strange hallucinations. Nevertheless, he still feels he ought to check things out.
He gets up from the couch, stumbles over to the wall where the apparition disappeared and pokes his head into the next room over. It’s Cape Cod (i.e. the parlor). But there’s nobody in there. Strange.
John swears he still hears a baby crying somewhere close. It sounds like it’s in the room with him, but also in the distance. Or, in other words, it’s in the same physical space, but tuning in and out from a slightly different frequency. Yes, this is the best way to describe it. Weird. Very weird.
SCENE TWENTY-FOUR - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“No, no more kids! I’m in control here! No more kids and that’s final!!!”
John and Johnny are in the library, the latter of whom is on the computer, typing ‘Johnny’ and ‘Cruise’ into the Google search engine.
“John, there’s 50 million Google hits here! Holy shit!!!”
“I don’t give a damn how many Google hits there are! This has gone far enough, Johnny! I’m in control, remember! I’m in control!”
“Ok, you’re in control.”
Johnny closes out of Google and opens up the American Airlines website.
“Wha-what are you doing?” asks John.
“Oh, I’m just buying you a one-way ticket back East.”
He double-clicks the mouse a few times to let John know he isn’t bluffing.
“You OK with an aisle seat? Wanna fly direct?”
“Look, I’m gonna have kids with Heather.”
“Oh, Heather...ok, that sounds like a pretty good plan....”
Johnny closes the American Airlines page and opens up Heather’s Facebook profile.
“Heather...hmmm...’Ee-hee-hee, I love my friends, my cat and - most importantly - my HUSBAND. E-hee-hee.’”
Even though John’s heard it about a million times by now, the word ‘husband’ never fails to rip a new chamber into his aching heart.
“Oh, Johnny...please don’t,” says John as he starts dropping to his knees.
But Johnny grabs John by his greasy hair and shoves his face into the computer screen.
“You’re gonna have kids with THIS HEATHER??? This Heather who’s undoubtedly sucking off Alex as we speak? THIS HEATHER?!”
John bursts into sobs and collapses to the floor.
“O Heather!”
SCENE TWENTY-FIVE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
SCENE TWENTY-SIX - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Another baby bump? That’s right...baby number-two is on the way for Johnny and Pamela. Hey, folks, Brian Seacrest for Inside Entertainment News here. A Rep for Johnny Cruise confirmed today that the Hollywood power-couple is already five-months into a second pregnancy.”
John kneels within inches of the enormous JumboTron, peeling the plastic wrapping off a tube of modeling glue.
“The baby-bump was first spotted while Pamela was photographed strolling baby Adonis through Griffith Park. But the rumors of a second pregnancy are hardly rumors anymore. Pamela’s publicist released a statement to the public today, saying: ‘Johnny and Pamela are happy to announce that Pamela is with child and is looking forward to giving Adonis a sibling.’”
John stuffs the spout of the modeling glue up his nose and takes a big whiff. ‘Holy shit, this stuff actually works.’ Yes, it makes his head feel vaporized - like he’s one with the air around him.
But, suddenly, he senses a presence behind him. It’s Johnny...standing atop the Casablanca coffee table.
“She thought she was so cool having sex with Alex every night while you were alone in your twin-sized bed staring up at the ceiling. But now she’s gonna see the wonderful family you have and she’s gonna be, like, ‘Oh, if only I knew John had genes like that and could give me such a great-looking family! Oh, shit! I shouldn’t have married Alex! I should have married John!’ And then you’re gonna be, like, ‘Oh, come here, hun. You want me back, huh? You want me back now? You want me back? OK, come here, hunny. Come here, baby. Let me hold you...NO, get back! Fuck off!!! It’s too late for you! It’s too LATE!!!’”
John stuffs the glue back up his nose and takes another good sniff. This time, he is convinced that his head has turned from a solid to a gas. Everything would be so swell if only he didn’t hear another baby crying somewhere close to him. It’s the high-pitched cry of a newborn...or, wait, maybe two.
He looks all around his surroundings, but as far as he can see, he is the only person in the room.
SCENE TWENTY-SEVEN - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“John-Pam have twins! Yes, you heard me right: Helena and Diana Cruise are the newest additions to Hollywood’s most powerful family. The news comes just weeks after Pamela reportedly spent $500,000 on a Winnie-the-Pooh-themed baby shower, which tops the $250,000 she spent on Adonis’ Wizard-of-Oz-themed baby shower. Such celebrities as Giselle Stefani and Gwen Bundchen were in attendance. Stefani spent a reported $30,000 on two designer exer-saucers for the babies.”
SCENE TWENTY-EIGHT - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
John kneels in front of the JumboTron with a bump of coke spilling off his index finger. He shoves the finger up his nostril and takes a big, long sniff. Dang, it makes him feel real good. So good.
He tops the coke off with a combination of two different painkillers: Vicodin and Demarol. Two pills of each. And he washes them down his throat with a cup of Miller High Life mixed with prescription cough syrup.
“Yeeah. Yeeah. Yeeeeeeeeah!”
He feels so damn very good right now. Real very-good. Perhaps the best way to express the way he feels is by saying:
“Baga baga baga baga baga baga boo. Baga baga baga baga baga baga boo. Baga baga baga baga baga baga boo. Baga baga baga baga baga baga booooooooo.”
He falls ass-backwards onto the carpet and gazes up to the looming JumboTron:
“And...the Oscar goes to...”
Angelina Witherspoon (the presenter) leans her glossy lips and Veneered teeth into a microphone on the Kodak Theater podium. Her long, blonde hair hangs like royal drapes over her sparkling Oscar De La Renta gown.
“Johnny Cruise! For SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION meets DANCES WITH WOLVES!”
The pit orchestra swells into the theme from SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION meets DANCES WITH WOLVES and the Kodak Theater erupts into applause - especially George Pitt, Brad Clooney and the other Best Actor nominees who have just lost to Johnny. They clap much harder than the others and squeeze a teethy smile out onto their faces. They know it’s not good for their image to be perceived as sore losers.
As for Johnny, he plays the situation as modest as he can and shyly rises from his seat. Pamela gives him a kiss and the producers of SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION meets DANCES WITH WOLVES give him hugs. Then he makes his way to the stage, looking shocked and dazed and confused.
He wades his way through a sea of hands patting him on the back.
“Congratulations, Johnny!”
“You deserve it, man!”
“Way to go!”
He eventually ascends the Kodak stage, graciously accepts the Oscar from Angelina Witherspoon and gives her a gentleman’s kiss on the cheek in thanks.
“Wow...just...wow,” he says as he begins his acceptance speech. “Haha.”
The audience erupts into a second wave of cheers, which gradually turns into an all-out standing ovation.
“Thank you. Haha. Thank you.”
The audience is crazy!
George Pitt is ecstatic!
Brad Clooney hoots and hollers!
Pamela is so proud!
After a whopping thirty seconds of thunderous roars and cheers and whistles and hollers, the applause finally fades and everybody in the theater takes their seats.
“I want to thank my agent, my manager, my publicist and Carl Weinstein at Universal. I want to thank God, my wonderful wife Pamela and my three amazing children...”
Pamela blows Johnny kisses from the audience.
“It’s just so hard to believe that only ten years ago I was sitting in my trailer home watching these awards on TV while my dad was working eight jobs and my mom was taking care of my eight brothers all by herself.”
Johnny has to take a couple of seconds to gather his composure, as he is overwhelmed by his emotions. After a long, dramatic pause, he raises his Oscar high into the air and yells:
“This is for my brother who was hit by a car when he was eight! Thank you!”
The orchestra swells into a melodramatic melody as Johnny exits stage right. The emotionally-manipulative music, combined with the roar of the audience, creates the impression that the greatest moment in world history has just taken place on the Kodak Theater stage.
As for John, he finds it difficult to be excited (vicariously) through Johnny’s win, mainly because he’s just come to the realization that he’s had one drug too many. It suddenly feels like there’s a category-five hurricane in his stomach, slowly making its way up his esophagus...up into his mouth...out of his mouth...and all over the Movieland rug. In other words - blaaaaaaaah - he has just puked everywhere, and, Christ, he’s just given new meaning to the term ‘projectile-vomiting’.
He hangs his head down to the carpet - the strings of post-vomit saliva dangling from his mouth - when, suddenly, he hears the sounds of little children circling around him and giggling playfully. He smears the saliva to the side of his cheek and searches the room for the source to this commotion.
But there’s nothing. John is alone. He can hear the voices all around him, but he can’t see a damn thing.
SCENE TWENTY-NINE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Kristina DePandi here speaking with Johnny Cruise outside the Vanity Fair Oscar party. Congratulations, Johnny.”
“Thank you. Thank you.”
“When you were a little boy, would you ever dream about holding that Oscar in your hand?”
“Yeah, I used to sit in the bathtub - holding the shampoo bottle in my hand - and I'd rehearse my acceptance speech.”
“Was it anything like what you said tonight?”
“Um, no, actually. Haha. Honestly, I didn’t even prepare anything for tonight cuz I didn’t think I’d win.”
“Oh, come on, there was no tiny inkling in the back of your mind???”
“No, honestly. I was up against some amazing actors. I mean, George Pitt is one of my heroes. I almost feel like I should give the Oscar to him. He deserves an award so much more. You know, he donated a million dollars of his own money to Hurricane relief last year. And then there’s Brad Clooney. A true genius and I don’t say that about a lot of people. He volunteers at a homeless shelter on Skid Row once a week.”
“How’s the fam?”
“Oh, they’re amazing. Really amazing. Yeah, just amazing.”
“Anything else you wanna say to your fans?”
“Dreams really do come true. Support your troops!”
SCENE THIRTY - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Whoo!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Give it to me!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Yeee-haw!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“What’s my name?!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Whooooooo!”
Johnny rolls around the Movieland floor, zapping the remote control at the JumboTron with the energy of a hyperactive child.
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!!!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Say my name!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
Meanwhile, John’s head hangs off the haunted couch, drooling into a wastebasket of vomit. There’s also some blood mixed in with the stomach acids because all the dang crack has given him ulcers.
“Change the channel!” Johnny shouts at John, stuffing the remote into his face.
“Johnny, please, I’m not well.”
“Change the channel!”
“Let me be, Johnny. I’m very ill.”
“You listen to me,” Johnny grumbles with a demonic growl. “I am your master. And your master says change that fuckin’ channel!”
John reluctantly changes the channel.
“Johnny Cruise!” shouts the TV.
“Change it again!”
“Johnny, please...”
“Change it again!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Again!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Again!!!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Again!!! Change that channel again!!!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“And again!!!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“And again!”
“Tobey Gyllenhaal!”
Tobey Gyllenhaal?! Needless to say, the name is rain on Johnny’s parade.
“Again!”
“Dennis Norton.”
“Again?!”
“Edward Hopper.”
“Again???”
“Amanda Diaz.”
“Shit!”
SCENE THIRTY-ONE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Johnny cheating on Pamela? That was the rumor circulating Hollywood today when Pamela was spotted checking into the Chateau Marmont late last night. Pamela allegedly found out about the affair after finding a suspicious text message on her husband’s Blackberry.”
SCENE THIRTY-TWO - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“She cheated on me first, John!”
“You’re an asshole! You have kids, for Christ sakes! How do you think this is going to affect them?!”
John has returned to Transylvania. His hand grips the door to the outside world. And he’s absolutely adamant about walking out that damn thing!
“That’s it. I’m really leaving the house this time,” he says as he pulls the door open.
Johnny stands only a few feet away from him - desperately trying to inch his way closer, like a man preventing his friend from committing suicide. Of course, in this case, it’s CAREER suicide.
“’I love you, Alex,’” says Johnny in his best Heather voice. “’To think that a guy who works as a cashier in a supermarket and lives with his parents thought I would leave you for him. Hahahahaha. Don’t you think that’s ridiculous, Alex?’”
John collapses to the floor and whimpers like an injured puppy.
“Oh, Johnny...stop. Please.”
“’Yes, John is ridiculous,’” says Johnny in an obnoxiously deep voice meant to mimic Alex. “‘Now, suck my big, awesome cock that’s bigger than John’s.’ ‘Sure thing, Alex! Don’t have to ask me twice!’”
He slurps his tongue over and over again. Over and over again. Slurp. Suck. Slurp. Slurp. Slurp. Suck.
O Misery! John can’t get the horrid image out of his mind: Heather sucking off Alex! O what a horrible sight!
“No! O NO! Stop it! Stop it!! Stop it!!!!!!!!”
SCENE THIRTY-THREE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
SCENE THIRTY-FOUR - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“And Pamela has had enough! Hey, everyone: Kristina DePandi for Inside Entertainment News here. We all know that the John-Pam marriage has been on the rocks for several months now, but, today, Pamela officially filed for divorce, citing infidelity. Such a move could mean BIG BUCKS for Pamela. Johnny reportedly did NOT have his wife of two years sign a pre-nup before the marriage.”
The channel on the JumboTron switches to ZMT.
“Yeah, I got Pamela outside Spider Club with some really young-looking boy-toy,” says the long, blonde-haired surfer-dude. “She was lookin’ hot, actually. Enjoying the single life.”
“Good for her,” comments one of the black paparazzos. “I say ‘you go girl!’”
Everybody in the ZMT studio laughs hysterically.
SCENE THIRTY-FIVE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“What are you doing?! Stop doing that! Stop it!”
John (not Johnny) hovers over Johnny (not John) - an interesting reversal of roles. Johnny looks like the living dead, lying gray-faced on the haunted couch, taking long guzzles from a handle of Jack. His wrinkled clothes and untamed facial hair exude an appearance of a man who has hit rock bottom, though it’s a little over-the-top. A tad too contrived.
“She took everything from me, John. I can’t live without her and the kids.”
“You never loved her. And you don’t give a shit about the kids. They’re nothing but trophies to you!”
He tries to snatch the whiskey out of Johnny’s arms, but Johnny has too strong a grip on it.
“I have a problem, John. I need some help.”
SCENE THIRTY-SIX - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Hey, everyone, Brian Seacrest here for Inside Entertainment News. In a move that is bound to shock the world, Johnny Cruise checked himself into rehab last night, allegedly because of an alcohol problem. A Rep for Cruise released a statement today, saying, ‘Mr. Cruise has decided to address a personal problem he’s been dealing with for quite a while now. He asks that you please respect his privacy during this difficult time.’ Pamela Lopez’ camp has yet to comment on the stunning news.”
SCENE THIRTY-SEVEN - END OF MONTAGE SEQUENCE
John chokes his upper arm with a leather belt, forcing the blood to surge into the area of his inner elbow. He makes a fist and his veins swell. Then he pricks a syringe into the plumpest vein and injects it with a dark-brown liquid.
“Oh, God....”
His pupils become pinpoints.
“UUUuuuuuuugggghhhhhhh...” he groans like a zombie in Night of the Living Dead.
The shit’s called black-tar-heroin and it’s straight off the streets of Tijuana and it’s eighty-mother-fucking-percent pure, if not more. Oh, it’s so damn good. As soon as this stuff enters your system you feel like you’re getting wrapped in a giant, warm blanket that will forever protect you from all the bullshit in the world. It’s like being back in the womb and, therefore, closer to NOT being alive and, therefore, closer to God.
“Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah.”
John releases the belt from his arm and it slithers down to the carpet like a timid snake. Submerged with worry-free euphoria, he grabs the remote control from off the Casablanca coffee table and gives the JumboTron a zap.
The screen scrambles for a signal and then an image of Johnny appears. He is at a press conference outside a rehabilitation center in Pasadena.
“I don’t know," he says into a bouquet of news station microphones. "I just wanna thank God for helping me through this. And I’m looking forward to a fresh start.”
“What’s next for you?!” shouts a reporter.
“I got a film coming out tomorrow called BLAIR WITCH PROJECT meets THE RING.”
“Is it true that you signed on to make a MRS. DOUBTFIRE meets SCHINDLER’S LIST?!”
“Sorry, guys, I can’t say anything about that. But I will say that SPEED meets LETHAL WEAPON TWO will be out next summer.”
Click! John switches the channel to another image of Johnny. This time, he’s back on the set of Dr. Winfrey.
“No, it was a very scary time. A VERY scary time. I...I...”
He loses his composure and starts to cry.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” says Dr. Winfrey, patting Johnny’s knee in consolation. “Take your time.”
Johnny swipes a tear from his cheek and continues.
“But life is full of challenges. I mean, for a guy who grew up in the projects and saw people getting shot by gangbangers every day...I felt like I could get through anything.”
“How did you make it through the days?”
“I focused my attention on God and how beautiful life is when you’re sober.”
“And you’ve since become a born-again Christian?”
“Yes, tha....”
The studio audience bursts into cheers.
“That’s correct. Yes.”
The audience gives Johnny a standing ovation.
“Thank you. Really. Thank you.”
John sparks up a bowl and tops off his heroin high with some really good weed. But before he can even get a good hit into his chest, he hears a noise in the far distance of the house. A door opens and shuts. Somebody’s coming.
John rolls his eyes over to the far end of Movieland and suddenly sees Johnny staring at him...holding two suitcases by the handles.
“Well, aren’t you gonna congratulate me?” Johnny asks after a good ten seconds of saying nothing at all.
John coughs the weed out of his lungs.
“For what?”
“My sobriety.”
“Fuck you, Johnny.”
Johnny releases his grip on the suitcases and they thud their way to the floor.
“Whad you say?”
John’s eyelids are so damn heavy from the heroin that his eyeballs are nothing but small, shivering slits.
“I said...FUUUUUUUUCK...UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.”
Johnny marches over to John and - WHACK!!! - gives him a mean slap across the face.
“Don’t you ever say ‘Fuck you’ to me. I OWN YOU! Hear me?! I got your ass!”
The problem is John doesn’t really hear him. The heroin has filled his eardrums with a sound that is akin to a digital radio losing a satellite signal. It’s like he’s tuning in and out of reality’s frequency.
“Look at this!” Johnny yells, snatching the remote control out of John’s hands.
“Johnny Cruise!” screams the TV. “Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise!!!”
The sound of his name makes Johnny cackle in delight.
“Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!”
He shoves his ass into John’s face.
“Kiss my ass!”
John nods in and out of alertness.
“Huh?”
“Kiss my ass!”
“I’m not kissing your ass.”
“Kiss it, motherfucker! Kiss it!!!”
He grinds his ass into John’s face, nearly suffocating the poor bastard.
“Johnny, stop. Please, stop. Ouch.”
John gasps for oxygen. But Johnny keeps smothering him.
“Johnny! I can’t breathe! Stop it!!!”
“Kiss it!”
“Johnny, please...”
“Kiss it!”
“Johnny! Agh!”
“Kiss it!”
“Johnny!”
“Kiss it!”
“No, Johnny!”
“By the way, you can’t hang out in here anymore,” Johnny says to John as he finally takes his ass out of the poor bastard’s face.
“What?”
“Yeah, I signed on to do this cool Reality TV show and they’re gonna be taping it here at the house. Think BREAKING BONADUCE meets THE BACHELOR.”
“Reality TV show?! You’re not doing any Reality TV show!”
“Yes I am. I already signed the contract. So, come on, get off the couch and go upstairs.”
“I’m not going anywhere. If you’re doing a Reality TV show, I’m staying right here.”
“But this is where most of the show’s gonna be taped!”
“Well, that’s fine, Johnny.”
“Oh yeah...that makes for some really good TV. Watching you sit on the couch, shooting dope into your vein. Yeah, that’s good, quality entertainment.”
“Johnny...don’t do this. Please....”
“Remember that time you were videotaped in video production class and you couldn’t believe how ugly you looked, cuz you had that cold sore on your lip? Don’t you remember that, John?”
“No, not this time, Johnny! I don’t hear you. You don’t exist. If what they want is reality, then I’m reality. You’re a sack of lies!”
“’Hey Alex, come here a moment,’” Johnny says in his Heather voice. “’What the hell is this show? Who’s that loser sitting on the couch shooting heroin into his vein?’” he says in his Alex voice. “‘Can you believe this is that guy I told you about who said he was in love with me?’ ‘That schmuck? Ha!’”
“Johnny, please! Stop this!”
“‘Can you believe that guy thought there was a fat chance in hell that I would leave you for him?’ ‘Ahahaha-hahaha-hahaha...stop it, Heth. I can’t breathe!’ ‘Why isn’t that motherfucker off the air already? Come on, Alex, let’s go have some seeeeeeeeeeeex!’”
“Oh, Johnny! No! Oh-ho! I need a hug!!!”
SCENE THIRTY-EIGHT
John sits Indian-style in the darkness of the master bedroom’s giant walk-in closet. The place is desolate except for a few dust-bunnies, spiders and an abandoned clothes-hanger or two.
John places a Tic-Tac-sized chunk of heroin onto a silver spoon and squirts some water onto it with a syringe. He mixes the water and heroin together with a wooden toothpick and heats the bottom of the spoon with his Humphrey Bogart lighter. His mouth waters with Pavlovian intensity as he watches the heroin dissolve into a bubbly goo.
Once the heroin’s cooked, he drops a Skittle-sized piece of cotton into the spoon to soak the juice into a glob and filter out the crap. Then he takes the syringe, pricks the needle into the cotton and sucks up the dirty juice.
He rolls up his sleeve, finds the plumpest vein, pricks the needle into it and shoots the junk straight into his bloodstream.
“Uuuuuuuuuugggggggghhhhhhh.” Warmth. Endless warmth. The feeling of a million hugs...all at once. Just what Doctor Feelgood ordered.
He drops the dirty syringe onto the carpet and falls backwards into what-feels-like a bottomless pit. He closes his eyes and - for a moment or two - he is consumed by a total feeling of unreality. The thorns of life-on-earth are no longer digging into his soul. All is fine. All is well.
But then he hears voices. Mumbles. Ghostly chatter. He opens his eyes and lifts his head up from the carpet. Christ, there are shadows flickering beneath the closet door. Yes, there’s definitely people in the master bedroom! He better check things out lest he allow his home to be overrun by stalkers while he’s under the influence of this wonderful drug.
He crawls over to the closet door, reaches up to the doorknob, gives it a twist and pushes the door open a crack. Damn, Johnny’s lying in bed being filmed by two cameramen wielding hi-definition video cameras. There’s lighting and sound equipment all over the place. There’s also a guy with headphones, holding a boom-mic. And there’s a grip holding up a large, white board, bouncing light into Johnny’s face.
Johnny is on the phone for this particular shot, talking to his ex-wife Pamela while lying in bed with two scantily-clad girls who look like strippers. John can’t quite make out what Johnny’s saying or what exactly the strippers are doing in the bed, but he has to admit that whatever’s going on is intriguing as hell and will undoubtedly make for some really good television.
Johnny, however, spots John in his periphery and flashes him an evil look that would make Beelzebub blush. To John’s amazement, the ‘look’ ends up crushing his feelings more than he would have thought, perhaps because all the drugs in his system are making him more emotionally sensitive. He sheepishly pulls his head back into the closet and cooks up another rig to bring back that cozy feeling.
SCENE THIRTY-NINE
John sits amidst the center of what-is-now a rather large pile of dirty syringes covering the carpet to the walk-in closet. He finishes cooking himself up another hit and shoots it straight into his vein. Unfortunately, his body has become desensitized to the positive effects of the drug and the highs are now starting to turn sour on him. His body feels as though there's an army of red ants crawling all over his flesh.
He scratches and scratches and scratches, but can’t get rid of the itchiness. Dried skin flakes off of him like he's a molting rattlesnake. It falls onto the closet carpet like ash from a wildfire.
SCENE FORTY
John sits in the center of an even larger pile of dirty syringes, injecting himself with an even greater dose of heroin. This time, however, he chases the heroin with a full syringe of coke, which collectively is known in the drug world as a “speedball”. The trick here is to basically shoot enough heroin into your vein so that you go low enough to see Death staring you right in the face, but then quickly shoot enough coke to bring you back up before Death can actually sink its grip into you. It’s like teasing the Reaper. And it’s a hell of a rush.
But John’s speedball doesn’t go according to plan. Perhaps he did just a little too much coke, because he’s hearing more voices in his head...or at least he thinks it’s because of the coke. Plus, he’s talking to himself.
“Know what, Johnny? I’m leaving the closet now. I’m leaving the closet right now.”
He stumbles up from the pile of rusty syringes and the needles dig into the soles of his bare feet. There’s probably a seventy-five-percent chance that his blood is now contaminated with strings of Hepatitis C bacteria, but John’s too high to really care. He wobbles his way over to the closet door. He clasps the knob. He creaks the door open a couple of inches. He pokes his head out...
Johnny’s not in the bedroom. Neither are the strippers. Or the cameramen. Or the sound guys, or the grips. But somebody else is: a little girl, who looks likes she’s just stepped out of the 1930s. She has long, curly chestnut hair, the locks of which drape over a blue dress with white lace. She stands beside the king-sized bed, holding an axe that’s dripping with fresh blood.
Two bloody corpses “sleep” atop the bed’s blood-soaked sheets: a man and a woman in their late 40s or early 50s. Their bodies are massacred in ways that nobody should ever be able to imagine. Their innards spill out of the orifices in their bodies, onto the bed, and drape down to the floor. The walls and carpets are splattered with blood and bone and brain matter.
The girl stands at the foot of the bed, staring at the massacred corpses - as though admiring the work she did on the bodies. But then she slowly turns away from the bloody mess and stares deep into John’s eyes. Her face is that of an innocent girl with cute dimples and freckles on her cheeks. But her ink-black eyes are those of a demon.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!” John screams.
He pulls his head back into the closet and slams the door shut behind him. It didn’t quite register in his mind at first, but, suddenly, it hits him that what he has just seen was more than likely the ghost of Shirley Garland.
“What do you want from me?!” he yells.
There is no answer. Just silence.
But maybe he’s seeing things. Maybe he shot too much coke and he’s having hallucinations. ‘Yes, too much coke,’ he concludes. It’s probably in his best interest to level things off with some more heroin.
SCENE FORTY-ONE
The walk-in closet has become a sea of dirty syringes, spoons, candles, soiled cotton balls and the jagged bottoms of aluminum soda cans (functioning as bigger “spoons”). The air is polluted with Hepatitis C and germs and cold viruses and the smell of farts and bad breath and body odor and something that smells like rotten sex, though this wouldn’t make much sense, seeing that John hasn’t been getting any rotten sex.
John high-steps his way through the grimy paraphernalia, pacing the width of the closet and mumbling incoherent phrases to himself. His pants are rolled up to his knees like a hiker wallowing through a murky marsh.
“No, Johnny. I’m leaving now. I control you. Do you understand what I’m saying to you right now? I control YOU. YOU!”
He loses his balance and crashes through the closet door, landing headfirst into the master bedroom. For a moment, he is dazed and dizzy, but then he remembers the ghost of Shirley Garland and quickly scurries into an upright position to protect himself.
But she’s gone. So aren’t her parents. And all the blood. The bed is made and clean and everything is back to normal. Yes, the coast is clear for John to stumble to his feet and get out of that fucking room.
However, he finds it extremely difficult to maintain balance. He’s done so much heroin and coke in the past forty-eight hours (or has it been longer?), that his motor skills are completely out of whack. He looks like a cross between Herman Munster and a baby taking his first steps.
He manages to make his way into the hallway, and past the Oscar trophy cases...trips once or twice on his way down the Bela Lugosi stairway...and then manages to get through Transylvania without too much of a hassle, and past Cape Cod and all the way into Ancient Rome...but not before tripping one more time and smashing his face rather hard on the stone floor. He stumbles back on his feet and clumsily bumps his way through a bunch of TV crewmen and lighting gear and grip equipment and coffees and donuts that are all over the place. Despite the fact that he’s acting like a complete mental retard, nobody in the room seems to acknowledge his presence. They don’t even see him. It’s like he’s not there.
John takes a closer look at the crewmen and notices that they aren’t completely whole. Certain limbs are see-through and other appendages are missing altogether. They are like ghosts! ‘Very odd,’ he thinks. ‘Very strange. Rather peculiar.’ If John weren’t part-retarded right now, maybe he’d be a little more concerned about such a mysterious phenomenon.
He stumbles his way through a pair of open French doors and steps onto the outdoor patio, where - beside the green-lit pool - there is a long line of beautiful women standing shoulder-to-shoulder with one another. They’re very dolled up, wearing lovely evening gowns, high heels, sparkling silver anklets and colorful corsages.
Johnny stands in front of this “line-up” - facing all the lip-glossed women. He wears a handsome tuxedo and brandishes a red rose with a twelve-inch stem.
“Bianca, please step forward,” he says.
A blonde, Malibu-Barbie-looking girl steps forward from the line. Her skin is the color of Ernie (from Sesame Street) and her teeth are whiter then the keys of a piano.
“Bianca...I think you’re amazing,” says Johnny.
“Thank you,” Bianca whispers, misting with tears of joy.
“BUT...I’m not sure you’re here for the right reasons. I don’t think you love me for who I really am.”
Bianca’s smile fades and she grows extremely nervous.
“Johnny, I...I think you’re amazing. I’ve never felt the way I feel about you right now. I just want to be with you forever. Please have faith in me.”
Johnny nods his head down to the patio and takes a long, dramatic pause. But, suddenly, there’s a shout in the background:
“Johnny!”
Johnny lifts his head from the patio and turns to see John, wobbling around a catering table like a person who just stepped off a merry-go-round.
“Oh, shit,” Johnny mumbles to himself. “Cut! Cut!!!”
“What’s the matter?” asks the director, running into the scene with a pair of headphones dangling from his neck.
“Just give me a second.”
“All right, everybody!” shouts the director, stressfully running his fingers through his hair. “Take five!”
Johnny scoots away from the director and over to the catering table, where he tries to restrain John as discretely as possible.
“What the hell are you doing?” he whispers, grabbing John by the arm and leading him back into the house. “You’re gonna ruin everything.”
“Johnny, I...house...leaving,” John slurs.
“Jesus Christ, you’re talking like a retard.”
“Johnny...no...Johnny....”
SCENE FORTY-TWO
“I’m not staying in here! I’d rather be back East than in here! Working at the supermarket! Living with my parents! Snapping my carrot to porn!”
Johnny whips John against the drywall to the walk-in-closet and shuts the door tightly behind him. He has a hammer and a bunch of metal bolts, chains and shackles in his arms.
“Do you know how many people out there would die to be in the position you’re in right now? You won the fucking American Dream and all you do is cry about it every second of the day!”
“This is no dream, Johnny! This is a nightmare!”
Johnny is absolutely shocked by what he’s just heard. He gives John a scolding slap to the face.
“Owe!”
“You watch that mouth, you ungrateful shit. You know what Heather’s gonna say when the first episode of the show airs? She’s gonna stop banging Alex. She’s gonna put on some pants, for Christ sakes. And then she’s gonna say, ‘man, I’m so stupid for not leaving Alex for John...’”
“No, Johnny, shut up!!!”
“’...Now he’s the star of one of the hottest new TV shows and, boy, wouldn’t it be nice to fuck a TV star. Yeah, I really should’ve left Alex for John. I’m such a stupid cunt.’”
“Shut up Johnny! Shut up!!!”
Johnny shackles John’s wrists and ankles in chains, choking his flesh so hard that it leaves bruises.
“’Yeah, I wish I hadn’t let John get away from me. I wish that when he said he loved me I had the brains to leave Alex right then and there and marry one of the most famous motherfuckers in history...’”
“Please! Stop it!!!”
“’...somebody who was really gonna leave his mark in this earth. Write a place for himself in history. Man, so many years I wasted riding the wrong dick!’”
“No, Johnny! I’m not listening to you!”
“Stop your whining! There’s people in Cambodia being blown up by mines as we speak! There’s people being beheaded! There’s children who are starving and can never find one bite to eat! You’re on your high perch here in the Hollywood Hills and you have everything in the world and you’re crying like a big baby. A big fuckin’ baby!”
“Johnny! No!!!”
Johnny shoves his lips into John’s face and barks out an ear-bleeding...
“Shut the fuck up!!!”
John suddenly finds himself shackled to the closet wall like a poor bastard in a medieval dungeon. Johnny has now disappeared, but the echoes of his last ‘Shut the fuck up’ linger in the closet.
“Help. God. Somebody.”
SCENE FORTY-THREE
Only God knows exactly how long it’s been since John’s been shackled in the closet, but - from the looks of it - it’s probably been a pretty long time. His hair is much longer and greasier than before. His clothes are more ripped and stained. His cheekbones protrude out of his emaciated face. His ribs pierce through his skin like a starving Ethiopian. The closet smells like a cross between a porter-potty and a garbage truck. What an awful mess.
John nods in and out of consciousness, partly because of hunger, but mostly because of dehydration. He hears voices from somewhere deep in the mansion, but they are fainter than when he was in the closet before. They gradually fade and, soon, there is nothing but silence. Total silence.
But, then, a door squeaks open in the master bedroom. Two footsteps creak against the hardwood floor as they approach the walk-in closet. Then, the shadow of two feet appear in the crack between the door and the closet floor...
Click. The doorknob twists and the closet door opens. A silhouette stands within the doorway.
“Hey, bud.”
It’s Johnny.
John’s eyes flicker open, but his neck is still too weak to stop him from nodding.
“The show...” he says in a feeble voice. “What’s happening with the show?”
Johnny steps further into the closet and takes a seat on the floor across from John.
“I’m sorry, John. The network passed on a second season. It’s all over.”
John’s neck muscles give out completely and his head dangles down to the carpet, completely limp.
“What now?”
“Well, that’s the thing. There’s nothing else to do.”
“Time to go back East, then.”
“No, John. It’s time to die.”
John’s head rises back up...slowly, but surely.
“What?”
“I’m spent,” says Johnny while he rolls up his shirtsleeve. “People are sick of Johnny Cruise.”
He slides his belt out the loops of his pants and wraps it around the upper part of his arm.
“No...no, you don’t have to do that. I don’t want this anymore. I wanna go back home. I miss the East.”
“You go back home and I die. But if I die right here - right now - I live forever.”
Johnny chokes the belt tight around his arm and drops three chunks of black tar in the base of a grimy soda can.
“Ready?”
“Wha-wait a minute. I’m in control here. I’m not gonna let you kill yourself. This is ridiculous! I’m not gonna let you do that. I can fix things!”
Johnny stops what he’s doing...for a moment.
“OK, fine.”
John struggles to free himself from the wall - pulling and tugging at the chains - but it’s no use.
“Unchain me!”
Johnny doesn’t move.
“Unchain me!!!”
Johnny ignores him and resumes preparing the rig.
“You know what’s gonna happen if you go back home? I’m gonna become one of those stars on Hollywood Boulevard, the ones people go up to and say, ‘Who the fuck is that..?’”
He douses the heroin with water and heats the bottom of the can with John’s lighter.
“...then some Japanese tourist is gonna come outta the Chinese Theater, look at my footprints and say ‘Johnny Cruise? What the hell were they smoking when they decided to give HIM a spot here?’ And then eventually they’re gonna dig me up and throw me in the basement with all the other mistakes.”
Yes, the “mistakes”. The rumor is that the Chinese Theater basement is filled wall-to-wall with the cement blocks of washed-up stars and one-hit-wonders. The theater’s owners (Sid Grauman and those who came after him) reportedly dug up the handprints and footprints of anyone they thought didn’t deserve to have a place in the forecourt anymore...in order to make room for the more “worthy” stars.
“Johnny, I don’t care about all that. I just want to go home.”
But Johnny doesn’t listen to him. He drops a half of cotton ball into the gooey heroin and it sucks up the juice like a super-absorbent diaper. Then he grabs a dirty syringe from off the floor and fills it up as much as he can with all the filthy junk.
“No, Johnny, stop!” yells John.
But Johnny still doesn’t listen. He stabs the syringe into his arm and shoots in the juice.
“Think about it, John! Do you think James Dean woulda been the legend he is today had he lived to be, like, 80 years old? Or Marilyn Monroe or Elvis or Michael Jackson or all the other motherfuckers? No, they’d all be has-beens and nobody would give a fuck about them. It’s definitely time to die!”
“Heather!” shouts John as he pulls and tugs at his chains. “I love Heather! I’m gonna go back East and find Heather!”
Johnny rips the syringe out of his arm, smashes it against the closet wall and grabs another one from off the floor. He pricks the needle into the gooey cotton ball and fills it up with as much heroin as he can get into that fucking thing.
“Johnny, listen to me!”
“For the last time, John: Heather doesn’t love you. Heather gave up on you long ago when she saw how wonderful your life with Pamela was and when she saw you become a father and have your own TV show! You’re such a fucking idiot. She hasn’t thought of you in the longest time!”
John finally manages to rip one of the chains out of the drywall, but he’s still got three more limbs to go.
“You know what Heather’s doing right now? She’s giving Alex a big blowjob, and....”
“No, Johnny! That’s enough!”
“...And while she’s sucking him off, she’s thinking, ‘Ultimately, I’m glad I ended up marrying Alex. Because John has acne on his upper back. And, oh yeah, his teeth are as yellow as my piss. And he’s got a unibrow.’”
“Oh, Johnny! Stop!!!”
John rips another chain out of the drywall.
Johnny stabs another syringe of heroin into his vein.
“You know she knew about your porn addiction. You know she knew how pathetic you were, lying awake in bed all night, fantasizing about how you would someday marry her...”
“Oh, God, Johnny! Stop!”
John rips his ankle free from the wall.
Johnny fills another syringe with junk.
“All this while she’s sucking and fucking her husband, John! You’re a piece of shit!”
He stabs the third hit of heroin into his vein. And, this time, he’s gone over the line.
“No, Johnny! No!!!”
Johnny’s pupils shrink to the size of pinpoints. His lips turn blue. His muscles start to spasm.
“No, Johnny! Stop it!!!”
John struggles and struggles and struggles to free himself. Finally, he rips his last ankle free from the wall and immediately dives at Johnny’s arm to rip the syringe out. But he’s too late. All the dope has gone into the vein.
“Oh, no, Johnny!”
Johnny’s body convulses while John tries to cradle him in his arms like a baby.
“Wake up, Johnny!” he shouts, slapping him in the face. “Wake up!!!”
But Johnny is out of it. His convulsing turns into sporadic twitches and, soon, he lies in John’s arms - completely lifeless.
“Wake up!” shouts John, bursting into tears. “Wake ah-hup!!!”
He shakes and slaps and punches Johnny, but it’s all done to no avail. Johnny is completely gone.
“Fucking idiot!!!”
He jumps up from the floor and bursts his way out of the closet. The chains from his legs drag behind him. Pieces of drywall crumble off the bolts and leave a powdery trail along the closet carpet.
John runs through the master bedroom...into the hallway...past the Oscar trophy display case...down the Bela Lugosi staircase. The chains clang and bang against each step he descends.
By the time he makes it into Transylvania, John starts to hear a buzz echoing in the air:
“JohnnyCruiseJohnnyCruiseJohnnyCruiseJohnnyCruise.”
The buzz is like the call of the Sirens. It seductively leads John all the way into Movieland, and he can’t believe what he sees on the enormous JumboTron:
“Johnny Cruise’s demons caught up with him today...” says a news reporter positioned outside the Johnny Cruise estate. “The actor has allegedly died of a drug overdose.”
The channel changes by itself, as though from an invisible force. There is a different news reporter from a different news station, also positioned outside the Johnny Cruise estate.
“The nation and much of the world is in a state of mourning as we remember Johnny Cruise: one of the brightest stars ever to shine in Hollywood.”
John can’t believe what he’s hearing. This can’t be possible. The channel changes again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“Johnny OD’s?! Hey, everyone, I’m Brian Seacrest for Inside Entertainment news. Johnny Cruise was found dead in the walk-in closet of his Hollywood Hills home today...and he was SURROUNDED by drug paraphernalia. Although the corpse still has to undergo an autopsy, the cause of death is most likely due to a heroin overdose, as much of the drug was found in the closet with the body. No foul play is suspected.”
The channel switches again.
“Good evening, folks, and welcome to World News Tonight. Our top story comes to us from Los Angeles where actor Johnny Cruise was found dead today in his Hollywood Hills mansion. The exact cause of his death is still unknown, though illegal drug paraphernalia and prescription pills were found in various parts of the home. The Los Angeles County Coroner will release a preliminary toxicology report to the public within 48 hours.”
The channel switches again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“I can’t believe it,” a fan says to a news reporter, drenched in her mascara-stained tears. “I keep on saying to myself, ‘This isn’t happening. When am I gonna wake up from this bad dream?’”
And again.
“Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise!!!”
And again.
“It’s being reported in America that Hollywood actor Johnny Cruise has died,” says a BBC news anchor. “The news of his death has been treated with shock and disbelief.”
And again.
“Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“It’s awful,” says another fan drenched in tears. “This didn’t have to happen.”
One more time.
“Again, Johnny Cruise - the king of Hollywood - dead at the age of 33.”
John is in absolute shock. He unconsciously takes a few steps backwards, but trips on his chains and falls ass-first into the floor.
“Umph!”
He stumbles back onto his feet and runs the hell out of the room - back into Transylvania - plows his way out of the dungeon door and enters the outside world without even thinking twice about it.
He leaps out onto the driveway with his chains rattling on the cobblestones behind him. On the other side of the goldfish fountain, he spots the coroner wheeling a black body bag into a van.
“Hey, wait a minute!” John yells at the coroner. But the coroner doesn't hear him.
He runs up to the gurney and unzips the top portion of the body bag. Johnny’s lifeless eyes stare right into him. His face is pale as chalk, kind of like how E.T. looks when he dies three quarters of the way into the movie.
“Jesus,” John says under his breath.
“Hey, wait. I’m not dead,” he says to the coroner. “This isn’t me. I’m the real Johnny Cruise.”
The coroner doesn't hear him.
“Hey! Hello!!!” John shouts, waving his arms within inches of the coroner's face. But he still isn't heard.
John takes a closer look at the coroner and notices that he is not solid. He's a see-through apparition. A ghost!
“What the hell???”
He freaks out and runs the hell out of there. Around the goldfish pond. Past the caged white African tiger. Through the Garden of Eden. Down the spiraling driveway...
His chains drag and spark against the concrete behind him. He looks like a strung-out version of Jacob Marley.
He runs up to the giant golden gate and sees an entire camp of media people on the other side of the bars. Vans and reporters and paparazzi and Tex and bee-a-leeps and spotlights and cameras and microphones. They’re all waiting for a first shot of the body as it leaves the estate.
“Hey! It’s me! I’m alive!” he shouts through the bars. But, still, nobody hears him.
A news reporter positions himself a few feet or so from John, purposely framing himself in front of the ‘J’ and ‘C’ initials.
“Ok, ready?” he asks his cameraman.
“Five...four...three...two...one...”
He morphs into his on-air personality:
“Johnny Cruise was known for his charm, his wit and his grace - both on and off the screen. He was a man of great faith. A philanthropist. A gentle soul...”
“Hey! Listen to me!!! Hello!!!” John shouts from behind the bars. But the reporter can’t hear him.
“...Close friends would describe him as a man’s man...a gentleman...a GOOD man....”
John tries to grab and shake the golden bars. But he can’t even get a grip. His hands go right through them.
“What the???”
He moves one of his legs through the bars.
And then his other leg.
And then the rest of his body.
“This is fucked,” he says in astonishment.
He turns to the reporters and screams off the top of his lungs.
“Hello! Hello!!! Listen to me! Why can’t you hear me?!”
But it’s no use. Nobody acknowledges him.
“Hello! Hello!!!”
He gets into the face of every living soul in the vicinity.
“Hello! Hello! Look at me! Hello!”
But nobody hears him. Not even Tex.
“Stupid fucks!!!”
He runs all the way down Mt. Olympus Drive, trips and rolls down the dusty hill to Mulholland. Runs down Mulholland. Trips and falls down another hill. Runs past the Hollywood Sign...
Here, the smell of gardenias is intense. And, Christ there’s a woman standing right in John’s pathway! She’s dressed in 1930s clothing and looks extremely sad and, fuck, it may be Peg Entwistle. Is it???
The strange lady-figure stares deep into John’s line of vision. Her face is filled with desperation and her eyes are as wide as a bug’s.
“Take...take...take me to the light!!!” she screams.
“What?! Who are you?!” John shouts. But the apparition says nothing else. Just stares with her bugged eyes.
“Fucking creep!” John shouts at her.
He runs a wide circle around this spooky specter and stumbles down Mount Lee, past the Sunset Ranch and the Hollywood Bowl. Down Franklin and past the Highland Mall. Down Hollywood Boulevard. Past El Capitan, Hooters and all the tacky souvenir shops. Past the newsstand...stops...backtracks to the newsstand:
“Johnny Cruise OD’s!” shouts a tabloid.
“Johnny Cruise is dead!” shouts another.
“Was it a suicide?!”
“Homicide?!”
“Remembering JC!”
“The King of Hollywood is dead!”
“The King is dead!”
“Special Johnny Cruise tribute!” shouts Time Magazine.
“Johnny Cruise edition!” shouts Newsweek.
“Johnny Cruise: Commemorative Issue!” shouts People.
“Johnny Cruise: a life in pictures!” shouts Life.
“This can’t be,” says John in complete shock.
He and his chains resume sprinting the hell down the boulevard - over all the charcoal marble and the pink marble and the bronze. He eventually arrives at one particular Hollywood star with an enormous amount of people gathered around it. It’s the Johnny Cruise star!
He cuts through the dense crowd and makes his way closer to the star, which is enshrined with flowers, candles, burning incense, handwritten cards, notes and ceramic angels. The fans take turns genuflecting at the foot of the star, mumbling prayers and respects and meditations. Catholics kneel. Buddhists chant. Muslims bow.
“I was in a Starbucks,” explains one of the fans being interviewed by a local news station. “And somebody got a text message and yelled ‘Johnny Cruise is dead!’, and...and you could just hear everyone gasp. I truly love Johnny Cruise and it’s so sad to hear that he’s gone.”
“I just want him around right now,” adds a weeping five-year-old girl...also being interviewed by a news station.
John kneels down to his star and reads one of the cards that a fan has left behind:
“To our beloved Johnny: you have given the world so much. You will forever be our wing of pride! We love you!”
John feels like he may definitely puke. He can’t believe all this bullshit. This nonsense! This balderdash...
“What the fuck is wrong with you all?!” he shouts to the fans. “I’m Johnny! I’m alive! I’m the one you want! I’m right here!!!”
But they don’t hear him.
John grabs the shoulders to one of the kneeling fans and tries to shake some sense into him. But his hands go right through the body! And he goes tripping to the ground.
“Ouch!” John yells as he nails his chin on the sidewalk marble. “What the fuck is happening?!”
He rolls onto his back, jumps to his feet and bolts across the boulevard. He doesn’t give a fuck that there are about a dozen cars speeding right at him. But he doesn’t get hit by them, anyway. The cars speed right through him like he’s nothing but a puff of smog.
John makes it to the other side of the street, leaps over the marble and busts his way into the forecourt of the Chinese Theater. Another huge crowd has gathered around Johnny’s footprints and the situation is similar to the one at the star: flowers and candles and incense and photos, but also DVDs and action figures. There are even Johnny Cruise impersonators and ‘characters’ dressed up as memorable Johnny Cruise movie roles, such as Lightning Man.
“That isn’t me!” John yells at the fans. “THIS is me! I’m Johnny Cruise! I’m Johnny Cruise!!!”
The fans and the impersonators and the Lightning Mans don’t hear him. All they do is cry as they genuflect around the perimeter of Johnny’s cement square and show reverence to the fallen king of Hollywood.
“I’m Johnny!” shouts John. “I’m Johnny! I’m Johnny! I’m...I’m...”
He collapses to his knees and breaks into a desperate cry:
“Nooooooooo! Noooooooooo! Noooooooooooooooooo!!!”
He faints and his face slams into the cement.
SCENE FORTY-FOUR
The mourners are gone. The flowers have withered. The candles have flickered out. The notes have disintegrated. And the DVDs have been stolen. The Johnny Cruise footprints are completely forsaken.
A bum is passed out beside the footprints. It’s John. The small handful of tourists milling around the forecourt don’t notice him...or don’t even see him.
A bus squeals its brakes in the far distance. The hiss of the hydraulics brings John out of his coma. His ears twitch and his eyelids flutter open. Consciousness slowly returns to him.
Though his vision is blurred, he sees a Greyhound bus parked on Hollywood Boulevard, parallel with the forecourt. A young man in his twenties takes a step off the bus and grabs his suitcase from the lower luggage compartment. He wears a backwards Yankees cap, a three-quarter sleeve baseball-type Jersey, tan cargo shorts and Birkenstock sandals.
For some reason, John finds himself drawn to this youngster. It reminds him of the man he was ten years ago, when he first came to Hollywood. In fact, it’s almost as though he’s looking at himself in the past, sort of like how Scrooge does in that movie A Christmas Carol.
The youngster rolls his suitcase over the sidewalk and into the forecourt and atop all the footprints. His face looks so energetic and full of idealism and ambition and hope. He shuffles his feet into Clark Gable’s footprints and Jimmy Stewart’s footprints and Humphrey Bogart’s footprints and Marilyn Monroe’s footprints and - finally - he comes to Johnny’s footprints.
“Wow,” he says. “Johnny Cruise.”
Little does this youngster know that Johnny Cruise (in a sense) is right under his nose. But he doesn’t notice him, which is something John doesn’t understand in the least.
John scurries onto his knees and looks up to the youngster with confusion, as though to say, ‘Hello, don’t you fucking see me?!’ But he still isn’t noticed.
The youngster slips off his Birkenstocks and places his naked feet within the crevices of Johnny’s footprints. They fit almost perfectly.
“Go home!” John wants to shout, but nothing comes out of his mouth.
“LEAVE HERE IMMEDIATELY!” he tries shouting again. “LEAVE! GO HOME!” But the words still don’t materialize. It’s like he’s in one of those bad dreams and he needs to shout, but nothing comes out.
The youngster jumps out of the footprints and into an empty square of cement. He grinds his feet into the concrete, as though to leave his own mark amidst all the Hollywood greats.
“Go home! Get the fuck out of here! Run! Leave!!!”
John tries like hell to yell, but all that manages to come out is a muffled moan. But then the moan grows in volume. And grows. And grows some more. It’s like all his yelling has collectively created some sort of negative energy with a negative noise.
John listens to this noise for a moment or two and realizes he sounds just like Axl Rose at the beginning of “Welcome to the Jungle”, which also makes him realize that he sounds almost exactly like the ghosts in his mansion. Such a disturbing realization makes him want to scream even louder...but all this does is make the negative noise increase in intensity. Now, it sounds like an all-out howl.
“Whooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
The youngster stands bare-footed atop the cement for another few seconds or so - shutting his eyes and soaking in the fact that he’s finally in Hollywood, smack-dab in the middle of the Chinese Theater forecourt. So awesome! So cool! So amazing! But then he gradually evaporates into thin air. All the other tourists on the forecourt vanish as well. Same with all the boulevard characters. Every living person disappears. The sounds of Hollywood traffic become muffled with silence. Even the light Santa Ana breezes die.
Then, the bright California sun dims, leaving John in silent darkness. He is scared and angry and confused. He screams even louder. And louder. And louder. And louder! And louder!! And louder!!!
But all that leaves his mouth is the Axl Rose howl.
“Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
It’s probably no coincidence that Axl wrote “Welcome to the Jungle” in reaction to how he felt when he first moved to Hollywood from Indiana. Maybe Axl heard the moans of restless spirits as well. They’re everywhere in the town if you listen carefully enough.
SCENE THREE
By now, at least some time has passed. Instead of being 4:20, it’s now...oh, wait: it’s still 4:20. A pile of marijuana soot has grown to about the size of an anthill on the Casablanca coffee table.
John allows one last hit of weed to seep through the gaps in his rotting teeth and then he shows the first significant signs of life. He lays his bowl to rest on the coffee table and slowly rises from the couch, like the dead becoming the living dead in some zombie movie. He pivots, moves away from the couch and walks past the amplifier Marty McFly explodes at the beginning of Back to the Future.
He leaves Movieland and enters the foyer to the house, which still has the Transylvanian theme from the Shirley Garland days. The wax candles are lit and the cobwebs are still fake and there’s also an L-shaped staircase running up to the second floor, looking almost like an exact replica of the one Bela Lugosi descends in the original Dracula. The room even has a thin layer of dust on the floor that looks suspiciously placed, like a set-designer comes through every hour or so and sprinkles some flour around to help maintain the castle ‘feel’.
He leaves Transylvania and enters a room with a very New-Englandy feel: the parlor. The chairs and couches are made out of oak and there’s some ships in a bottle, lobster-trap-type coffee tables, a (whale) oil-lamp or two, as well as buoys and fish-netting decorating the walls. The interior designer said the inspiration behind this room was Cape Cod; she wanted to create the illusion that one was sitting in a cottage during a summer vacation in Hyannis or maybe Chatham. John thought this was a good idea, seeing that some of his fondest childhood memories were of his vacations spent on the Cape. But the energy didn’t turn out to be the same. Even if one of the mansion’s rooms were designed to look like heaven – whatever heaven looks like – there would still be a feeling of imminent doom, as though somebody was about to come around a corner and chop off your head with an axe.
He leaves Cape Cod and enters Ancient Rome (i.e. the kitchen). This is another room preserved from the Shirley Garland days, looking exactly the same as it did when the psycho child actress went Jack Nicholson (circa Shining) on her parents. The entranceway to this room is comprised of two white, ridged columns - in the vein of the Parthenon - and the room’s walls were built with stone that was supposedly dug up by some archeologists at some Ancient Roman ruins site that John never really gave a shit about.
In terms of its functionality as a place to prepare food, the kitchen is Julia Child’s wet dream realized. In fact, it looks like it could probably be used as a set for the Julia Child show, and this is maybe what stands out the most about it: that is, it doesn’t quite look like a real kitchen. It looks like a kitchen SET. Even the view in the rear window of the room is a little too pretty. It’s like the fake green trees and blue skies you would see outside Child’s window as she was doing her show.
Hanging from the kitchen ceiling are the best pots, pans and colanders a chef could get his hands on. The brick oven is big enough to feed the whole Brady Bunch. The state-of-the-art “touch-screen” range is something out of that sci-fi movie Blade Runner. And the stainless steel refrigerator is large enough to stock a whole nursing-home’s-worth of food...but instead of having Tapioca pudding and Breakfast shakes, there are sodas, water bottles, Vitamin Waters and enough Red Bulls to give a person a heart attack.
John opens this amazing fridge, grabs one of the Red Bulls, cracks it open and guzzles enough of the drink to substitute for a decent line of cocaine.
“Oh, that actually DOES go pretty good with the weed,” he can’t help but comment aloud. The Red Bull’s sugar takes him to an even higher place than he was before.
He sips the remainder of the delicious beverage as he makes his way out of Ancient Rome and finally arrives at his destination: the “library” or “study” - whatever you want to call it.
This room screams worldliness in a much more literal way than the other rooms. There are various world maps on the walls, as well as Globes atop wooden bookshelves, and also wooden podiums with open atlases collecting layer upon layer of dust. More noticeably, the room is filled with rows of bookcases full of leather-bound books - everything from WAR AND PEACE to TALE OF TWO CITIES to LOLITA to HUCKLBERRY FINN to PARADISE LOST to WORDSWORTH to POPE to STUART MILL to SHAKESPEARE. John always liked the vintage-looking leather binding these books more than the books themselves. In fact, he’s never read one page of them (and realizes he probably never will, no matter how much he tries to convince himself otherwise).
But John isn’t in the library for the books...or the atlases or the maps or any of that stuff. He’s in here for the super-duperly-large personal computer that’s nestled in the far corner of the room - one of the most high-tech, state-of-the-art computers in existence. Enormous twenty-four-inch flat-screen monitor. State-of-the-art Bose speakers with insane subwoofer. Wireless mouse. Thinner keyboard than a Matzo wafer. Blue-tooth wireless Internet. DVD-R drive with DVD-R burner. Firewire 800 port. USB ports up the wazoo.
The computer’s hard-drive itself is one Terabyte in size. In simple terms, this means the hard drive has 1,024 Giga-bytes of memory. In even simpler terms, this means the hard drive is so big that John will never possibly come anywhere close to filling even one-eighth of it. But this is Hollywood; and in Hollywood, bigger is always better.
John nestles his bony bum into a swiveled leather office chair that has the ability to massage your back while you sit (a feature John rarely utilizes, mainly because his back has developed scoliosis and has become very frail from slouching on the couch too much). He awakens the computer from its sleeping state. He clasps the wireless mouse and drags the mouse arrow up to the Firefox web browser. He double-clicks. The web browser opens...
John immediately goes to his bookmarks...or maybe it’s more accurate to say ‘bookmark’, as he only has one of them entitled “Heather”. He clicks on “Heather” and a Facebook profile opens up onto the page. In the top left corner of the profile, there is a wonderful photo of a beautiful girl named Heather Huckle. John stares at the photo for a good twenty or thirty seconds. A tear of love materializes in his eyes, momentarily burning away the marijuana fog like a drop of Visine.
Heather Huckle has long, chestnut hair running down to her shoulders and green eyes that have ‘Libra’ written all over them (or so John would say). Her pink lips surround a set of perfect, white teeth with just the perfect teeth-to-mouth ratio (meaning she doesn’t smile like a horse). Her skin is pale, but not in a pasty kind of way, which would be a bad thing. It is more like milk. Sweet-tasting skim milk. Warm skim milk...no, let’s say two-percent milk. The kind of milk your mother made you drink to settle your stomach before you went to bed. And maybe there’s some honey mixed in there as well.
In short, Heather is an angel sent from heaven-above and John can’t take his eyes away from her godsend of a Facebook pic. He knows it sounds cheesy, but every time he looks at her photograph, something inside of him vibrates that no woman has ever made vibrate before. He’s come to believe that this is his soul and that it vibrates at the sight of Heather because she is his soul mate. There is a theory that when a child is born, he or she exits the womb as a half-spirit: that is, not as a complete being. And the point of life is to find the ‘other half’ of his or her spirit so as to exist in a state of completeness. This, of course, is where that cliché “she makes me feel complete” comes from.
John is convinced that this is the case with him and Heather: that is, he exists right now as half-a-spirit and he needs to be with Heather in order to be complete. Of course, there’s one little problem...
He clicks on the 'info' tab, scrolls down the page and comes to the “About me” section:
“Hi, I’m Heather. I love my friends. I love my cat. And, most importantly, I love my husband!”
Husband!
Husband!!
Husband!!!
O Horrible! The word “Husband” is a hand with sharp fingernails that pierces through John’s chest, rips out his heart and chucks it onto the floor where it lies for days and rots and is eventually consumed by maggots.
Husband.
Husband!
Husband!!!
The love drains out of John’s eyes. Sheer rage replaces it. The rage builds and builds and builds like the finale to an orchestral overture. It crescendos. It peaks. O Horrible! O Terrible! O Misery! John can’t take it anymore! He explodes out of his chair like a cannonball and runs the hell out of the library.
SCENE FOUR
The home movie theater deep in the bowels of the mansion has an old-cinema-theme going on, like something seen in Cinema Paradiso or The Last Picture Show. Old-fashioned 16mm film reels are mounted on the walls, as well as original movie posters for films like Gone with the Wind, Giant, Citizen Kane, Chinatown, It Happened One Night, Clockwork Orange, Rocky, Schindler’s List and other Best-Picture winners from the past 100 years. More notably, there is a one-of-a-kind, six-sheet Frankenstein poster that is estimated to be worth about three-million dollars. It is known amongst Hollywood memorabilia people to be THE most valuable movie poster in the entire world.
In the back of the theater, there is a mini-refreshment stand, complete with popcorn-maker and soda fountain. There is also a glass display case filled with Goobers, Milk Duds, Good N’ plenty and Ju Ju Bees. (The latter candy is John’s favorite because it brings back pleasant childhood memories of seeing Follow that Bird with his mother at the local multiplex.)
John kneels beside the theater’s 75-foot, hi-definition, plasma, back-projected movie screen and places a DVD into the tray of a five-disc DVD player that also possesses the ability to play Blu-rays. He allows the movie a few seconds to gear up and goes to sit down in one of the theater’s blood-red recliners. The seats were supposedly used in 2001: A Space Odyssey during the International Space Station scenes, but John has always been skeptical as to whether that was actually true.
A DVD menu pops onto the movie screen. It’s for a movie called E.T. meets EDWARD SCISSORHANDS - John’s breakout film, the one that made him a star. John grabs a box of Ju Ju Bees from his chair’s cup-holder, pops a few into his mouth and presses ‘play’ on the DVD remote.
The epic Universal Studios logo is the first thing to come onto the screen; now, this is the early 1990s version - the one with the earth spinning and the yellow ‘Universal’ logo orbiting around it. Underscoring the logo, of course, is that epic music:
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
The music successfully creates a feeling of significance and importance. It’s almost as if it says, ‘The following movie is God’s gift to the world. It is the most important thing ever created. It will change your life. You’ve seen a lot of movies, but THIS is the one. This is THE movie. The movie of all movies. This thing is going to alter the Universe FOREVER.’
After the logo fades, a person’s face appears on the screen. The face looks a little familiar. VERY familiar. It’s John...well, not quite.
“Johnny Cruise...in....” reads a title card.
Where John Cruise looks like complete shit, Johnny Cruise looks like he got shat out of Dr. 90210. John is scrawny and Johnny is ripped. John’s teeth are yellow and Johnny’s teeth are bleach-white. John’s skin is discolored and Johnny is nicely tanned. John’s nose has a slight hook to it (the only indication of his Jewish background) and Johnny’s nose is Gentile-perfect. John’s chest is flat and Johnny has rather nice pectorals. John’s hair is long and un-groomed while Johnny’s is short and has a Julius Caesar, George Clooney-esque style going on. In simple terms, Johnny is better-looking than John. MUCH better-looking.
John chomps on a few Ju Ju Bees and gazes at his near-perfect-looking movie persona. Even though he’s seen it a million times, he tries to tattoo the image onto his mind, like a person would do when watching a beautiful - but ephemeral - sunset. He grabs his bowl of weed from his cup-holder and lights up a quick toke to assist in savoring the moment.
But the movie inevitably cuts away from the image of Johnny and goes into a long opening title sequence that John isn’t as interested in. He stops the DVD, rewinds, and plays the movie from the very beginning:
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum....”
John closes his eyes and listens to the Universal theme roar out of the theater’s 7.1 Digital Surround Sound speakers. The music, combined with the weed, takes him onto one of the highest clouds he’s ever been on. He imagines the earth being exactly what the Universal logo portrays it to be: that is, a place where such magical music is playing all the time and all is fine and all is swell. Oh, what a wonderful reality that would be. If only his reality could always be that reality.
Again, the logo fades from the screen and Johnny’s face appears like before. John rips a decent hit from his bowl, stops and rewinds the DVD again. The Universal logo replays.
He stops and rewinds and the logo plays.
He stops and rewinds and the logo plays.
He rips a really good hit of weed.
The logo plays.
He stops and rewinds and the logo plays.
John repeats this process more times than he can count. The feeling he gets when he sees his face appear on the screen after the Universal logo is indescribable. He, John Cruise (aka Johnny Cruise), is in a friggin’ Universal Picture! It makes him feel like he is the ruler of the universe, and that Heather - ‘the cunt’ - dropped the ball with the ruler of the universe. ‘Fuck that girl.’ He’s so much better than that. He’s on top of the world, for Christ sakes. He’s Mr. Universe. Definitely.
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
SCENE FIVE
Having gotten a sufficient ego-boost from the Universal logo, John returns to the haunted couch in Movieland, lights up a fresh bowl and grabs a remote control from off the Casablanca coffee table. The remote itself has about a hundred buttons on it and accesses more than a thousand digital-cable channels, a quarter of which are sports channels. John always wondered what the point was to having about a hundred “classic” sports channels to choose from. Are there really people out there who are idle enough to sit down and watch a bunch of juiced-up “athletes” play baseball games from ten years ago? Doesn’t the excitement involved in watching sports rely on NOT knowing the outcome of the game?
Maybe these channels are for the disabled and unemployed. Maybe they’re for the retired. Or maybe they’re for the retarded. It’s more likely, however, that they’re for the lazy “Joe Six-Packs” of American society, a segment of the population that seems to be growing larger and larger every day that goes by. But John shouldn’t talk: all he does is sit on a couch and smoke weed all day. Besides, it’s these same Joe Six-packs that watch his movies and make him tens of millions a picture. So who is he to complain?
John presses ‘power’ on the remote and a ginormous, wall-mounted widescreen TV fires up on the other side of the room. The TV is so damn large that it's actually comprised of nine separate widescreen televisions. In fact, it was once a JumboTron at the Staples Center. John had heard they were auctioning it off and he felt it was completely necessary to have a television of this size mounted on the wall of his living room. He wanted to create the feeling of being inside the television whenever he was watching it - another semi-successful attempt to make his REAL world a REEL world.
The JumboTron takes a few seconds to warm up and an image of Johnny Cruise gradually materializes from the zillions of pixels. Johnny sits on the set of late-afternoon talk show host Dr. Winfrey, looking completely perfect, but not even in an annoying way. Johnny has somehow perfected the art of how to be perfect in an imperfect way. That is, his demeanor exudes a genuineness and down-to-earth-ness that no member of the Good Housekeeping demographic could ever resist. Every successful celebrity knows that, in order to be liked, one must give off the impression that ‘I’m just like you’.
“How did it feel when you got your first big break?” asks Dr. Winfrey with a look of reverence that would make one think she was interviewing Jesus Christ.
“It was pretty surreal, actually,” says Johnny, being sure his responses contain the perfect balance of wit, charm and sincerity. “My mom raised five children on her own while my dad worked fifteen-hour days at the factory. So it was pretty amazing when I could pay them back for all the love and support.”
The studio audience gives Johnny an enormous round of applause. They clearly love him more than they love their own mothers.
Meanwhile, John heats up another nugget of weed and hits his bowl as hard as he can. ‘Oh, God, this is actually a really good hit,’ he thinks to himself as he zaps the TV with the remote and changes the channel.
Another image of Johnny immediately pops onto the JumboTron. This time, Johnny sits at a desk positioned in a window overlooking Rockefeller Center in New York City. He sits with two news anchors, one of whom is a middle-aged man with a spray-on tan and a five-year-old’s face (Botox). The other anchor is a woman who used to be gorgeous in the 80s, but now is mostly nothing but lip implants, pasty-white skin and glassy eyes (Xanax).
“What’s the secret to your success?” asks the anchor with the Botox face.
“My dad’s last words before he died of cancer when I was eight were ‘Always tell the truth. Always.’ And that’s my secret. That’s what I do.”
“Any advice for those trying to make it?”
“Yeah. Just...be true to yourself.”
Click! John changes the channel and hits the bowl pretty good this time.
Yet another image of Johnny appears on the JumboTron. This time, he is on the “red carpet” for the Golden Globes, strategically positioned in front of a white wall covered with Playstation logos. He is being escorted by three very attractive women: one is White, one is Black and the other is Asian. They hover around Johnny and collectively create a tableaux of political-correctness.
“Who did you want to win tonight?” asks a disturbingly thin reporter from “Inside Entertainment” television. Somewhere down the line, this poor woman got it in her head that starving herself to the point of looking like a Holocaust survivor was a turn-on.
“Everyone who won I wanted to win. I’m really glad Matt Affleck got Best Actor, though. He came from a broken home and was repeatedly abused by his stepfather. Plus, I thought it was pretty amazing to see him dedicate the award to his sister who was killed by a drunk driver when she was eighteen.”
“How do you think Billy Martin did as host?”
“I thought Billy was amazing, actually. Yeah, Billy’s just a real amazing guy with great comedic timing. He donates about a fourth of what he makes on his TV show to the Special Olympics.”
The channel changes and another image of Johnny appears on the JumboTron. This time, he’s standing in front of his private jet, dressed in a robe with a Taqiyah (Muslim cap). A bouquet of local news microphones is positioned on a podium in front of him, each displaying their respective station numbers.
“You go to a country like Somalia,” says Johnny, “and it really makes you thankful for everything you have. These people are lucky if they get one solid meal a week. I mean, I thought I had it bad when I grew up in a trailer home and had to wait in line every time I went to the bathroom.”
The channel changes again - this time, to a local news report.
“Among the celebrities at the charity run were Johnny Cruise.”
The channel changes to another news report.
“The animal shelter was funded in large part by Johnny Cruise.”
The channel changes again. This time, it’s Gene Ebert and Roger Siskel talking movies:
“WEDDING CRASHERS meets FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL starring Johnny Cruise is one of the most original comedies to come around in a long time.”
The channel changes again. This time, it’s a trailer for a movie.
“Critics are calling SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION meets DANCES WITH WOLVES one of the best films of the year. ’Johnny Cruise does it again,’ says Wesley Mitchell of the New York Times. ‘This is Johnny Cruise at his best’ says Amy Kael of the Washington Post.”
The channel changes again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“Johnny Cruise!’
One more time.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again. This time, it’s ZMT: the tabloid news show.
“Yeah, so I got Johnny Cruise outside The Grill,” says a surfer-looking dude with long, blonde hair and a backwards baseball cap.
The show cuts to some amateur mini-DV footage of Johnny exiting The Grill and speed-walking to his custom-made Ferrari parked out front.
“Notice the pick of the nose as he drives off,” the surfer-dude says with a facetious scoff.
Everybody in the ZMT studio lets out a collective “Eeeeeeeeeew.”
“I don’t care what y‘all have to say,” says a porky Black paparazzo sitting in a cubicle. “Johnny so sexy he make pickin’ his nose a turn-on. Aha-yah!”
Everybody in the ZMT office laughs at the banal comment, especially the editor of ZMT (Marv Levin), who is so amused he has to take a break from writing “Johnny Cruise at Grill” onto his see-through grease-board.
John changes the channel.
“Johnny Cruise!” screams the television.
He changes the channel again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
He scans the digital cable box from channel 70 to channel 120.
“Johnny Cruise!”
He scans it again, from channel 120 to channel 215.
“Johnny Cruise!”
Then, from channel 215 to 300.
“Johnny Cruise!”
He surfs from 300 to 350.
“Britney Lohan!”
Wait...Britney Lohan? He must have heard incorrectly. Yes, that’s got to be it. Perhaps if he scans from channel 350 to channel 405...
“Angelina Witherspoon!”
Huh? No, his ears must be deceiving him. Certainly if he scans from channel 405 to 470...
“Tom Pitt!”
Or from 470 to 471...
“Paris Spears!”
Maybe on channel 472...
“Michael Clooney!”
John finally comes to realize that his ears aren’t deceiving him, no matter how stoned he is. Sheer panic sets in. This is no laughing matter! His remote control skills become frantic.
“Jessica Duff! Julia Swank! Richard Hanks! Tom Gere!”
John surfs his way well past channel 1,000 on the digital cable box and not once does he hear the name ‘Johnny Cruise’ anywhere. This is not good. This is not good at all. This is so bad. This is so damn bad.
John tosses his steaming bowl of weed onto the Casablanca coffee table and makes a sprint for the library.
SCENE SIX
John jumps his buttocks into the leather, massage-capable office chair and does a three-sixty-degree swivel into the computer desk. He grabs the wireless mouse and immediately opens up the Firefox web browser. Then he types “Google.com” on the wafer-thin keyboard and - within a millisecond - he gets the search engine. On a normal day, John will pretend that he has other computer business to tend to before he starts doing something like this, but this time there is no beating around the bush. He shamelessly types two words into Google: ‘Johnny’ and ‘Cruise’.
Immediately, a bunch of hits pop up on the computer screen, but not nearly enough as far as John is concerned. According to the numbers at the bottom of the screen, Google is “displaying 10 hits of approximately 16,300,000.” Sixteen-million Google hits may be good for a D-lister, but John is A-list, and for an A-lister, sixteen-million Google Hits sounds like shit.
He pulls a spiral notebook out of a nearby file cabinet and flips open to a page rather deep into the middle. On one of the wide-ruled pages there is a hand-drawn graph reporting the number of Google Hits ‘Johnny Cruise’ received on a given date. According to the report, Johnny received a whopping 48,000,000 only a week ago. This means that - in just one week - he’s had a twenty-four-million drop in Google Hits. How could this have happened?! This is crazy. It’s an all-time low.
“O fuck me.”
There must be something wrong here, though. This couldn’t be accurate. Perhaps there’s a bug in the Google server. Maybe if he just refreshes the web browser the numbers will be better. He gives this a try, but no! Not only are they still low, but they are even lower - now down to about 14,000,000 hits. This couldn’t be! Google’s server must have been hacked and contaminated with a worm by some Dorito-eating computer nerd. Yes, there’s got to be viruses and/or spy-ware and/or Trojan thingys to blame for all this. There’s only one way to find out.
SCENE SEVEN
John darts into Transylvania (i.e. the front foyer to the mansion). The room is dark and musty like a castle would be. The only light comes from the Gothic wax candles and some daylight seeping through the room’s wrought-iron-barred windows.
John starts pacing in front of a dungeon-like double-door with brass rings for handles. He is dressed in camouflage pants, a black-hooded sweatshirt, steel-toe combat boots and dark sunglasses. He looks like a Navy SEAL about to execute some sort of covert operation.
He rips one last toke from his bowl and stuffs it into his side pocket for safekeeping. ‘Oh, that’s one of the better hits I’ve had today,’ he remarks to himself. Then, he grabs one of the brass rings and opens the massive door wide enough to slip his scrawny body through. For the first time in months, John has officially stepped foot outside the house.
SCENE EIGHT
Like much of the home’s interior, the mansion’s outer facade hasn’t changed much since the Shirley Garland days either. The creamy stucco walls, clay roof tiles and wrought-iron windows are part of a “Spanish-styled” architecture that, for some reason, was all the rage in Hollywood back in the early part of the century. Maybe this was because of the area’s Spanish roots. Or maybe it was because the architecture appeared to be exotic and thus made anybody who lived in the home appear exotic as well. Hollywood, after all, has always been about appearances.
The Spanish influence extends to the mansion's driveway, which is composed of faux cobblestones that look like somebody should be riding a horse-and-buggy over. The cobblestones form a perfect circle around an amazing Valencia fountain filled with pennies, goldfish and blue food-dye. A grounds-keeper stocks the fountain with new fish about once a week because none of them live very long. Apparently goldfish don’t thrive well in a fountain-full of blue-number-one. Who knew?
But back to John.
The camouflaged recluse bursts out the front door to his mansion, hops down to the driveway, dives behind the goldfish fountain and takes cover here for a moment. Despite the fact that he is wearing sunglasses, the intense Southern California sunlight makes his eyes squint into slits. He feels like he’s just stepped out of a Matinee and into the harsh daylight of the outside world.
He sits with his back flush against the base of the fountain, trying to conceal as much of himself as he can from all possible vantage points. It’s always a possibility that some bold paparazzo snuck onto the property and John needs to be extremely careful of this. One single photograph of him looking like he does could damage the Johnny Cruise image forever, even with all the camouflage shit.
John takes a peek around both corners of the fountain to be sure nobody’s watching him, but the coast appears to be clear - no signs of a stalker as far as he can see. He’s about to make his next move when he hears a helicopter hovering in the not-too-far distance. He decides he better wait a bit longer, just to be sure it isn’t coming close to his area. Sometimes the paparazzi will rent a chopper to get some aerial shots of his compound; but it’s more likely that the helicopter is the LAPD searching for a gang-banger or car thief or drug dealer or sex-offender or bank-robber or serial killer or child-molester or kidnapper or O.J. Simpson. ‘Christ, how can anyone be a cop in LA?’ John wonders as he ducks his head lower to the ground. Because a criminal is never just your average criminal. And a crime is never just an average crime.
Take the case of the 1981 Wonderland murders: the four people in that apartment weren’t just murdered. They were BRUTALLY bludgeoned over and over again with lead pipes, their guts and brains splattering all over the carpets and walls. What drives a person to the point where they’re capable of doing such a thing? John Holmes - the porn star notorious for having the biggest unit in the business - was said to be somehow involved with the murders, though he was ultimately exonerated from the crime.
And then there’s the 1947 Black Dahlia murder, where some wack-job sawed Elizabeth Short’s body in half, severed all parts of her flesh with near-artistic precision, drained her blood in a bath tub and left her body parts in a vacant lot to be found by some poor unfortunate soul. Like with Wonderland, they never found the wacko who did it. Who the hell on earth could have gotten away with these murders? Heck, maybe it wasn’t anybody on earth. Maybe it was the devil himself.
And then, of course, there’s the 1969 Manson murders, which weren’t exactly typical crimes either. The Manson family repeatedly stabbed a pregnant Sharon Tate in her Hollywood Hills home, tying a rope around her neck for no logical reason, writing “Pig” on a door with Tate’s blood. Why did they do it? Manson claimed the Beatles White album was filled with hidden messages that told him to murder (or at least order the murders). It was all to trigger a race war that would create a new world order and so on and so forth.
Of course, a lot of fucked-up murders happen in other cities, but LA undeniably has the strangest ones. Perhaps the place really is a latter-day Babylon, as it has been nicknamed ever since Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle was accused of killing starlet Virginia Rappe by stuffing a champagne bottle up her crotch. Maybe it’s because everybody in Hollywood is desperate for two things: popularity and profit (Manson, after all, wanted to be a big rock star and was bitter about his failure). And when you’re on a pathway towards popularity and profit, you’re on a path away from God. And when you’re away from God, you’re closer to the devil. And when you’re close to the devil, you’re capable of doing some really fucked-up things.
But maybe it’s not because of the money or even the fame. Perhaps it just makes sense that in a place that is home to the most creative people in the world, the amazing amounts of constructive energy can sometimes go the other way and become the most amazingly destructive.
Whatever it is, one would think a police officer would get depressed in a place where humanity always seems to be operating at its worst level. What is even the point of their job? They stop one bad guy and three more are born right after him. There’s basically no hope of ever fully restoring order. It’s like putting a Band-Aid over an infected wound…
But, alas, such thoughts are depressing to John and must be ignored at once. It’s not the proper time for him to ponder all these issues, anyway. He’s a man on a mission and now that the helicopter has clearly faded into the distance, it’s time to make his move.
He hops out from behind the fountain and makes a run down the long, serpentine driveway. The driveway snakes through a plush, green lawn fertile with exotic-looking plant-life, creating an Amazon jungle-like feel. Many of the palm trees were imported from some exotic island in the Caribbean John never made an effort to remember the name of.
Beneath one of the palms, there is a rectangular steel cage housing a rare, white African tiger worth thousands. John bought the beast a few years back to help scare off stalkers and other unwanted trespassers of his property. Of course, he has to keep the tiger caged (and heavily sedated with tranquilizers), so it wouldn’t be able to do anything should it come face-to-face with a stalker. But John thought the presence of the tiger was a good deterrent, nevertheless - a “turn-the-fuck-around” kind of warning. “You are not welcome!”
John runs past the tiger cage, cuts through the rest of the lawn and the driveway soon becomes one, long downward spiral lined with cypress, eucalyptus, sycamore, olive, lemon, orange and more palm trees. By the looks of all the plant-life, one would think John were running through the Garden of Eden. Of course, the smog in the sky kind of shatters the illusion. Take the plants away and he might as well be running through Moscow.
The driveway spirals downward for two or three minutes and eventually brings John to a golden gate that looks like the entrance to a giant canary cage. The thick, golden bars reach high into the sky and get lost in the dense smog. Jewel-encrusted ‘J’ and ‘C’ initials are mounted in the center of it, interwoven with each other like Tony Montana's. Altogether, it’s like the gate of heaven...only with about a dozen security cameras positioned on each spike along the top (pointing in every which direction).
John dives to the side of the amazing golden gate and takes a moment to collect himself before he makes his next move. For once in his life, he feels that - perhaps - it MAY be a good idea to cut down on the weed, as he is extremely out-of-breath from the run. His chest also hurts him like hell and his throat burns. The good news, however, is that he’s pretty sure he made it down the driveway unseen. He purposely had his gardeners plant the tallest junipers they could get their hands on so as to shield every inch of his estate from the public view. Total privacy...except from the helicopters. No way to conceal himself from those.
After a little breather, John whips a handy set of Sharper Image binoculars out of his pocket and scopes out the scene on the other side of Mt. Olympus Drive. He pans from the left to the right, checking a long line of Italian cypress trees for anything suspicious. He sees one tree that looks pretty normal, and then another tree that also looks pretty normal, and then a tree with a weird-looking branch, and then a...WAIT! He pans back left - to the tree with the weird-looking branch. He realizes that what he’s seeing isn’t a branch at all. He’s pretty sure this mysterious anomaly...is a telephoto lens!
John peels the binoculars away from his eyes and takes a quick peek down both ends of Mt. Olympus Drive. If his inkling is correct, there’s bound to be a random, out-of-place-looking vehicle parked somewhere to the side of the road. Maybe a Chevy Suburban SUV. Or a GMC Yukon.
He peers down the northbound side of Mt. Olympus Drive and all looks clear down there, but when he looks southbound, he notices a black, SUV-like vehicle about 100 or 200 yards down. He blinks a few times to refocus his eyes and ultimately determines that, yes, it’s definitely an SUV. A very familiar-looking SUV! A Yukon! Shit!
John knew this little mission of his wasn’t going to be easy. On one hand, he was hoping there would be no paparazzi so he could easily open the gate and accomplish what he set out to do. But on the other hand, he’s glad there’s at least SOME paparazzi on the scene. This means his popularity hasn’t waned as much as he thought it might have. He’s still hot enough to be a paparazzi target, which is a really good sign. Then again, ever since ‘ZMT’ came about, anybody with the least bit of fame in his blood is a paparazzi target. All you have to be is a contestant on American Idol or the star of a popular YouTube video or the mistress of an adulterous sports figure to be considered prime paparazzi meat.
John remembers the days - not too long ago - when only the most A-list of A-list celebrities were stalked by the paparazzi. At that time, there were literally only a handful of photographers providing content to only a handful of tabloid magazines that were in circulation. But, today, there are virtually thousands of media outlets thirsty for anything and everything celebrity. And there are literally thousands of photographers roaming the streets of Hollywood trying to meet the market’s demand...
Like the one hiding behind the cypress tree right now.
John nestles his eyes back into the suctions of his binoculars, adjusts focus a bit and sees that the telephoto lens is throbbing for some action. John reckons the lens must be about as long as John Holme’s unit - maybe even longer. 500 millimeters, maybe? Possibly 600? Whatever it is, it’s definitely one of the longest lenses he’s seen. And he knows it belongs to one of the best paparazzos in the business: a man named Tex.
Tex is a potbellied feller with a frosty goatee and a Texan accent (hence the name Tex). But Tex, of course, isn’t his real name. All the photographers in LA go by pseudonyms, partly because it’s fun and makes them feel like spies or something, but also because - deep down - they don’t want their photo-subjects to know their real identities (lest a disgruntled celebrity send a hit-man out to murder their family, friends or other loved ones). Besides, nobody goes by their birth-name in a town where people go to reinvent themselves. Or lose themselves.
As far as the paparazzi go, Tex is actually on the older side of the median, as is indicated by his unstylish Wrangler shorts, shin-high tube socks and Velcro sneakers. He’s considered a veteran photographer, actually, and is somewhat well-respected within the paparazzi circle. He constantly tells Rookie photographers about the “good old days” when he didn’t have to engage in fast, Princess Diana-esque car chases or stalk out celebrity homes for hours on end. His line of work used to mainly consist of hanging out at a popular restaurant or club, blending into the scenery and unobtrusively snapping a shot or two as a celebrity goes to their car. A wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of a deal.
But now he finds himself stalking out celebrity homes on a regular basis. He is well-aware of how absurd it all is, but he also knows that, if he doesn’t do it, somebody else will. Somebody else will get that first photograph of Celebrity X taking out the garbage without any make-up on. Or someone else will get the first shot of the paramedics arriving when Celebrity Y overdoses on painkillers. Or someone else will get a shot of Celebrity Z’s wife skidding out of the driveway when she discovers she’s being cheated on. The “first shots” of whatever are always the ones that make him the most money - sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. Christ, he knows one guy who got 1.5 Mill for a first photo of Angelina Witherspoon’s newborn baby. Not too shabby.
People constantly ask Tex how it is he can stoop down to such a low level - hanging out at celebrity homes all day - just to get a stupid photo. And he always tells them that this is how he pays his bills. It’s his job! And most people accept this as a reasonable response, what with the struggling economy and financial crisis and all that shit. These days, every “working man” in America is to be left alone, no matter what that man does for “work”. Besides, Tex has a mother in a nursing home to support, and the doctor’s got her on all sorts of meds, and he’ll be damned if the insurance company is paying for even a quarter of all that shit.
One day, however, somebody had a response to Tex’s “It’s my job” response that bothered him on a certain level:
“Hey, Tex, how is it that you can hang out at celebrity homes all day, just to get a stupid photo?”
“It’s my job. It’s how I make my money.”
“Yeah, that’s what the Nazis said.”
‘That’s what the Nazis said’? Tex didn’t quite understand what this person meant, but it still bothered him on a subconscious level. ‘That’s what the Nazis said’. The remark’s been eating at him for quite some time now. He’s tried to smoke a bowl or two to forget about it, but that only helps in the short term. ‘That’s what the Nazi’s said’. ‘That’s what the Nazi’s said’. Eh, fuck it. ‘How dare that motherfucker compare me to a Nazi. I’ve got a sick mother in the nursing home, goddammit. Don’t fuckin’ judge me.’
“Bee-a-leep! Tommy Timberlake’s at Guitar Center! Bee-a-leep!”
Tex’s Nextel Bee-a-leeps with possible leads as he hides behind the cypress tree, surveying the Johnny Cruise estate like Richard Dreyfuss in that movie Stakeout. Over the years, Tex has accumulated a vast network of “informants” sprinkled throughout the greater Los Angeles area. They are people who work at hot clubs or bars or restaurants or stores where celebrities are likely to hang out. Whenever the informant sees a celebrity, they give Tex an alert on his Nextel. In return, he gives them a little something-something - usually just a few twenty-dollar bills...sometimes more. In many cases, the informant may be a disgruntled cousin or father or ex-wife or desperate manager looking to make a little extra money. Sometimes it’s even the celebrity’s best friend.
“Bee-a-leep! Jeremy Knoxville at In and Out Burger! Bee-a-leep!”
The leads coming in today, however, don’t sound very appealing. Besides, Tex woke up this morning with his sights set on one - and only one - celebrity: Johnny Cruise. Speaking of which, he decides it’s probably a good time to poke his head out from behind the cypress and make sure nothing’s going on at the ‘JC’ gate:
Alas, all is quiet on the Johnny Cruise front - nothing going on as far as he can see. He must resume his waiting. Patience is key. ‘Hang in there. You’ll get your shot,’ he tells himself. He’s ready to wait hours longer if he has to.
By this time, John has concealed himself well from the sneaky paparazzo’s view, crouching behind a lemon tree planted to the side of the golden gate. He realizes he’ll have to resort to “Plan B” in order to accomplish the mission he set out to do. “Plan B” involves him accessing a secret underground bunker that turns into a secret underground tunnel that turns into another secret bunker that leads up to a secret manhole right behind his mailbox on Mt. Olympus Drive.
John had this bunker system installed a number of years ago by a specialized engineering company so as to have an alternative entrance/exit to his estate. The company had designed a similar system at Camp David, the Vice President’s Naval Observatory, the Greenbriar Hotel in West Virginia and also the Walton family compound (i.e. founders of Walmart), as well as at the homes of several other major Hollywood celebrities.
In fact, the company found itself particularly busy in Hollywood after 9/11 when everybody was freaking out about weapons of mass destruction and biological warfare. The Hollywood elite wanted to ensure their survival of a nuclear attack and having an underground bunker was one way in order to do this. They justified the multi-million dollar investment with a Darwinian philosophy: as long as they had enough money to build the bunkers, they must be the “fittest” to survive mass destruction.
As for John, he was more concerned about having a place where he could be safe from stalkers than a place he could be safe from nuclear apocalypse. He wanted to have peace-of-mind in knowing there was somewhere he could go if the obsessed fans ever decided to unite and blitzkrieg his estate, the ramifications of which would be so disastrous he’d much rather not think about it.
The entrance to John’s bunker is concealed by a grove of gardenia bushes not far from the golden gate and disguised in the form of a small boulder (like you would see in any yard or garden). John tiptoes his way into the gardenias, kneels beside the boulder and inserts his fingers into a crevice that functions as a kind of door handle. He lifts the rock up from the ground - just like a door on a hinge - and a manhole-sized pit appears beneath it.
John gives the sky one last check for helicopters and descends his way into the underground via a series of metal rungs functioning as a ladder. He goes down and down and down and down and down until he hits a dusty, concrete floor. His surroundings are nothing but a dark, echoey abyss of seemingly endless space.
Although he is now protected from the threats of the world above, John proceeds through the pitch-black bunker with extreme caution, as rattlesnakes have been known to find their way into the tunnels. One bite from those bastards and John would’ve been better off going through his gate, even if it meant being photographed by the pesky paparazzo.
John blindly feels his way through the bunker and then meanders through a dusty tunnel or two. Aside from the rattlesnake worries, he finds himself blessed with a feeling of complete peace. It is a feeling of total security that he so rarely feels anymore. The only other place he’s felt this secure was when he used to lock himself into a windowless bathroom, like in a New York hotel room nobody knew he was staying at. Everywhere else he goes, there’s always the chance of a paparazzo or a stalker or a fan or a telescope or a pair of binoculars or a web cam or a camera phone or an Ipod watching his every move. Even in his own home he always has the feeling that a creep may be camping out in one of the guest rooms and peeping at him all day.
Unfortunately, the feeling of security John experiences in the bunker is short-lived, for it dissipates when he comes to a dusty ray of light at the end of a tunnel. This light comes from another manhole leading back up to the outside world. “So long, security,” he mumbles to himself as he clasps a metal rung and heads back up to the uncomfortable world above.
Meanwhile - above ground - Tex is still under the impression that all is quiet on the Johnny Cruise front. He takes a soft-pack of Camel Lights out of his pocket and boldly lights one up, even though there are countless ‘no smoking’ signs lining the street. Due to the dryness in the Hills and the gusty Santa Ana winds, cigarette-smoking is strictly prohibited, especially during the summer/early-fall dry season. One piece of cigarette ash literally has the power to ignite all of Laurel Canyon into a conflagration within minutes.
In fact, it’s almost a miracle that Los Angeles hasn’t been destroyed by fire yet - or by an earthquake, for that matter. Scientists predict that “The Big One” (i.e. a really big fucking earthquake) will more than likely strike the Los Angeles area within the next twenty years. It will reach a magnitude of eight-plus on the Richter scale and most of Los Angeles is predicted to suffer a catastrophic amount of damage. As a scientist once commented: “LA was made to be destroyed.”
Perhaps this feeling of imminent destruction explains why there’s no overwhelming appreciation of history in LA. Maybe this is why people didn’t think twice before tearing down the Garden of Allah (where the Marx Brothers and Humphrey Bogart once resided) to make room for a parking lot. And why they demolished a place like Schwab’s drugstore (the place Lana Turner was supposedly discovered) to make room for a mini-mall. What’s the point of preserving history if an earthquake could come tomorrow and destroy everything anyway? Might as well capitalize on the property while you can.
And maybe this also explains why it’s so important that a Hollywood movie grosses well during its opening weekend (much more important than how it grosses throughout its overall shelf-life). In a place where everything could be gone tomorrow, studios need a melodramatic movie like Titanic that razzles and dazzles an audience immediately, as opposed to a more sophisticated film that slowly pulls an audience in over a longer amount of time. In Hollywood’s eyes, the hare always wins the race…mainly because the tortoise isn’t even given a number to compete. There is no patience for a slowpoke movie when everything could be taken away in a heartbeat. Immediacy is key. Instant gratification is essential. Anybody who thinks otherwise is a sucker.
But, again, back to John.
On the other side of the Cruise estate, the lid to another manhole (also disguised as a rock) jiggles and slowly opens. John’s head rises from the hole like that gopher in Caddyshack and he already has his binoculars glued to his face. Fortunately, Tex is still behind the cypress and still focused on the gate (not the mailbox). The coast is clear to execute his final move.
He jumps out of the manhole and makes a run for his gigantic mailbox, which is about fifty yards away from the gate. The mailbox is massive and - like the gate - also sports interwoven ‘J’ and ‘C’ initials on the side of it. Of course, this particular receptacle is for fan mail only. All of John’s important mail (like bills and checks) are delivered straight to his accountant, lest they be stolen by an obsessed fan or idiot or asshole or general menace to society. John hasn’t paid a bill himself in years. His accountant takes care of all his financial affairs.
In fact, John doesn’t really have any need for a mailbox outside his house, as he could easily have all his fan mail delivered to his agent’s office. He wanted it, however, for an occasional ego-boost. Even though he’s been an A-list celebrity for about ten years and has probably received nearly a billion fan letters, the feeling of worthiness a single letter gives him never gets old. Not only do the kind words justify his existence on the earth, but they also provide tangible evidence that proves Heather made an enormous mistake in NOT marrying him, that bitch.
“Yeah, that bitch,” John repeats to himself as he stands in front of the mailbox, taking one more quick peek over his shoulder to be sure Tex’s 600mm telephoto lens isn’t focused on his ass. It’s not - thankfully. So it’s time to make the last move.
He grips the handle to the mailbox with his clammy hand. He opens it up. He takes a look inside...
O horrible! O terrible! O shit!!!
His suspicions have been confirmed: there is the most puniest of all piles of mail in the box. Ten or twelve envelopes at the very most. Some of it is possibly junk. Useless coupons. And bogus credit card offers. Maybe even a Publisher’s Clearing House package. This is not good. This is not good at all. This is so damn bad.
John has to remove his sunglasses so he can see the mail with his own naked eyes, but, god-damn, there’s no doubt about it: the volume of mail is the smallest it’s ever been. This is NOT the mail of an A-list celebrity. This is not even the mail of a D-list celebrity. Hell, John got more mail than this when he was a ‘nobody’ living in a one-bedroom apartment off Hollywood Boulevard. What the hell is going on?!
Sheer panic turns into paralysis and it runs through John’s veins like a hit of weed laced with something rotten. He loses grip of his sunglasses and they fall to the pale-gray concrete below. The lenses pop out of their frames. They make a noise. The noise is somewhat loud...well, at least loud enough to get Tex’s attention.
The scheming paparazzo negligently stomps his cigarette into some dry chaparral and instinctively fires up the power to his camera. He hops out from behind the cypress, turns in the direction of the noise and gets ready to photograph anything that fucking moves.
But the only thing that moves...is another Italian cypress tree to his right...and another one to his left...and another one...and another one. The trees are moving because Tex isn’t friggin’ alone! Ten or twelve or twenty other paparazzos jump out from behind the trunks of the cypresses, brandishing their 600mm telephoto lenses like a platoon of Vietnam soldiers.
They spot the mysterious man standing by the mailbox and immediately start charging at him - locking and loading their cameras - ready to rape the movie star’s soul of everything it has to offer.
“Hey, Johnny! That you?!” shouts Tex as he tries to keep up with the others.
John hears the galloping behind him and knows he’s a sitting duck right now. But he’s still too paralyzed to get the hell out of there.
“Hey, Johnny, what’s up!” shouts another one of the photographers.
“Hey, Lightning Man!” shouts a paparazzo with a miniDV video camera, alluding to a superhero movie John did a few years back entitled SUPERMAN meets SPIDERMAN.
John’s motor skills refuse to return to him, but fortunately - for now - his back is towards the photographers, denying them a good shot.
“Johnny! Hey, Johnny! Johnny!!!” The photographers surround John on all sides. He has nowhere to run now. He’s definitely fucked.
But, suddenly, there’s a sound in the distance. An “eeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrccccccccccccchhhhhhhhhh” sound. It’s the sound of rubber tires peeling the shit out of hot concrete. A red, custom-made Ferrari F430 Spider appears about a hundred yards down Mt. Olympus Drive. It burns and fishtails and peels its way down the street.
Tex knows this car from anywhere. “It’s Johnny!” he yells.
The Ferrari does about seventy miles-per-hour down the road, bombs past John, scorches into a U-turn, peels back in front of the mailbox and skids to a stop - blocking the paparazzi from a clear shot of John.
“Get in!” Johnny yells to John, kicking the passenger door open and pulling the seat forward.
John turns his head halfway towards Johnny, but the rest of his body is still in a state of shock. It doesn’t budge.
Tex and the other photographers form a suffocating half-circle around the car.
“Hey, Johnny. How are ya?” asks Tex, firing off about three shots a second.
“Johnny, what’s up bro?” asks another photographer.
“It’s Lightning Man. Hey, Lightning Man,” says the one with the video camera.
Johnny turns towards the cameras and gives them a milky-white smile, like the one you would see on the wall of a dentist office.
“Hey, what’s goin’ on, guys?”
FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! The camera-shudders sound like an endless deck of cards being shuffled.
Johnny gives them a few good shots and then turns back to John, who still hasn’t budged from the mailbox. Johnny’s camera-friendly smile fades and a demonic look surges into his face, one that would make the devil shiver.
“Get into the fucking car!” he spits at John.
The demonic outburst snaps John out of his paralytic shock. He swipes the pile of mail from the mailbox and dives into the backseat of the Ferrari.
Johnny slams the car door shut and power-locks the doors.
“Keep your head down,” he says to John.
He revs the Ferrari’s engine. The wheels scorch the pavement, making it squeal in pain. Then he peels it into drive, burns into a U-turn and guns it for the golden-gate.
Tex and the other photographers chase after the car, constantly snapping one shot after another shot, after another shot.
“Johnny! Who’s your friend?! Over here, Johnny! One smile!!!”
Johnny’s Ferrari screeches up to the golden gates and fishtails to a halt. The gate begins to open, but it’s so damn big that it takes a full thirty seconds to actually open wide enough for a car to go through. In other words, there’s plenty of time for the photographers to immediately swarm the car like flies on you-know-what.
Johnny rolls down his window and is - once again - all smiles for the camera:
“Hey guys, how are ya?”
The videographer shoves his camera into Johnny’s face.
“Lightning Man, where’s your costume?!”
“Ha ha ha. It’s at the cleaners. Ha ha.”
The other photographers swarm the windshield to the Ferrari, snapping off one photo after another photo. There is not much effort put into style, composition or exposure - as long as Johnny turns up in the shot, they know the photo is good enough to make them several hundreds of dollars.
“Johnny, who’s your friend?” asks Tex.
“Huh?” Johnny pretends to play dumb.
“Who’s your friend in the car?!”
Fortunately, the golden gates are wide enough now for Johnny to get the Ferrari through and ignore Tex’s question.
“All right, guys, I gotta go.”
He revs the engine hard, slamming down on the brake so his tires can start skidding and put the road in a terrible state of misery. EEEeeeeeeeeeerch!
But the photographers don’t get the hint.
“Johnny, one more! Who you dating these days?!”
“All right, guys,” repeats Johnny.
“Wait, Johnny! Come on, bro! One more!!!”
Snap! Click! Snap! Click! Snap! Click! Snap! Click! Snap! Click!
“All right, guys. You gotta get outta the way. I gotta go.”
He revs the engine even harder, but the crazy paparazzi bastards still don’t move. They jump on top of each other like a bunch of hyenas fighting over a carcass. Their jumping soon turns into pushing. Their pushing becomes shoving. And then their shoving becomes actual fighting...as is the case with two paparazzos named Ron and Corey.
“Get off me, bro! Don’t fuckin’ touch me, bro!”
“Go fuck yourself, you faggot!”
Insulted by the ‘faggot’ remark, Corey whacks Ron’s camera out of his hands and the $3,000 machine shatters to pieces on the pavement. Ron doesn’t think twice before he lunges at Corey and starts beating the shit out of him.
“Get off me, bro! What the fuck, bro!”
Johnny realizes things are beginning to go sideways and that it’s a good time to make a final exit. He eases off the brake and starts fishtailing the car away from the paparazzi.
“Wait! One more, Johnny!” they yell.
But Johnny doesn’t wait. He buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurns the Ferrari through the golden gates, goes about ninety up the driveway and disappears around a corner within seconds. The photographers are left to cough and gag and curse from all the dust and exhaust.
Tex, in particular, is pissed off because he didn’t get all the shots he wanted. He has the tempting urge to chase after the Ferrari, but knows it’s not worth the potential legal repercussions he will face for trespassing onto the Johnny Cruise property.
Instead, he decides he better break up the fight between Ron and Corey, which is getting uglier and uglier by the second. He figures it’s probably in his best interest to do this, lest somebody get killed and make the paparazzo profession appear even more pathetic to the public than it already is. Tex is sick of the public hating his guts. He must maintain a certain level of honor, for his ill mother’s sake.
SCENE NINE
Johnny’s Ferrari burns its way up the tortuous driveway, peels the shit out of the cobblestones and rips its way around the goldfish fountain. He skids the car to a complete stop in an open space amidst a black Maserati (orange interior), silver Rolls Royce (black interior), and a Harley Davidson motorcycle (no interior).
The driver’s-side door bursts open and Johnny jumps out onto the driveway. He’s wearing a vintage-looking ‘Pepsi-Cola’ T-shirt and a pair of boot-cut Abercrombie & Fitch jeans with intentional man-made holes in the knees. For footwear, he sports a pair of early-1980s, Jeff-Spicoli-style low-top Vans with no laces. Overall, the look gives off the impression of being ‘old-school’ when, in fact, much of the clothing was manufactured only weeks earlier in some sweaty, third-world factory. Johnny chose this particular outfit - not because he likes the clothing, necessarily - but because he has multi-million deals with Abercrombie, Vans and Pepsi-Co. He must wear one article of each brand’s clothing in public “no less than three times a week” (as the contracts stipulate).
Johnny pulls the driver seat forward in the Ferrari and yanks John out of the car by his long, greasy hair.
“Owe! Stop it!” John yells.
“Shut up!” barks Johnny.
He drags John over the cobblestones, past the goldfish fountain and up the front steps to the mansion.
“Johnny, you’re hurting me!”
Johnny says nothing in response. He drops John on the landing of the Mexican-styled front steps and takes a quick peek over his shoulder...just to be sure no photographers followed him up to the house. He knows that he could sue any paparazzo who trespasses his property, but he also knows that if he pisses any photographer off with a lawsuit it could mean stigmatization (in the form of less attention from the paparazzi). This means less publicity, which ultimately means less popularity.
Johnny and the other major celebrities would never admit it, but the paparazzi basically control Hollywood...or, if they don’t already, they will soon. Back in the golden age, it used to be the five major studio heads who had all the power - Mayer at MGM, Laemmle at Universal, Zukor at Paramount, Cohn at Columbia and Harry Warner at Warner Bros. And then for a certain period of time it was the agents or publicists or whoever. But now it’s the paparazzi. How else did a person like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan or Anna Nicole Smith or Britney Spears become such international sensations? It wasn’t a studio-head that did it. It wasn’t an agent or manager or publicist, either. It was a paparazzo. A paparazzo MADE those people.
Fortunately, Johnny doesn’t see that any photographers have decided to come onto his property, but he’s sure that the day one does, he and all the other celebrities out there will be completely fucked. The paparazzi clearly don’t realize the power they possess. They can do whatever the hell they damn want. Nobody can touch them, so long as that ‘nobody’ wants to remain a ‘somebody’ in Hollywood. The only thing holding the paparazzi back is the scant amount of morality that has yet to leave their souls, though this will more than likely wither completely away in due time.
Johnny kicks open the door to the mansion and tosses John onto the hard stone of the Transylvanian foyer.
“Ouch!” yells John as his skull slams into the floor.
Johnny hurries into the mansion and shuts the door tightly behind him, locking it inescapable with a metal latch.
John squirms on the dusty floor like an injured worm. His skull bleeds and swells. He starts to whimper like a toddler would do before warming themselves up for a good cry.
“Don’t even think about it!” yells Johnny, circling around him like a hawk. “If I see one tear roll down your cheek, I’m gonna rip your fuckin’ eyeballs out!”
“Ok, Johnny. Ok. It’s cool.”
But he still can’t stop the whimpers from coming. Sure enough, a tear materializes in the pit of his eye socket and rolls down his cheek.
“Johnny...please. I can’t help it. Oh, God!”
For a brief moment, Johnny almost seems to look compassionate, but this look is immediately oppressed by boiling-hot rage. He leaps over to John, winds up his leg and boots him in the face with his Vans.
“Aaaaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhhh!!!” John howls in pain. The scream echoes throughout the entire mansion like a police siren in the middle of Manhattan. Blood spurts all over the place. It sprays onto the floor. And splatters on the walls.
Johnny picks John up by his hair and whips him at one of the stone, Transylvanian walls.
“Umph.”
John’s back snaps against the wall like a twig and he buckles over to the ground. Then Johnny swaggers over to him and proceeds to absolutely kick his ass in, ramming his fists into John’s head like he’s hammering a stake into the ground.
“Ouch, Johnny! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze!!!”
The whole scene gives off a disturbing vibration similar to a late-night fight on the Sunset Strip. Johnny is like a doped-up club-rat pounding his knuckles into a dude who bumped into his beer or looked at his girlfriend the wrong way. All sense of love and compassion for his fellow man entirely suppressed by the evil energies of club-drugs.
“Johnny! Pleeeeeeze!!!”
John could easily get up and run away, but he takes every blow that comes to him, almost as though he thinks he deserves it. Or maybe it’s because - deep down - he WANTS it. Or maybe he even LIKES it.
Umph! Umph! Umph! Johnny gives John one last boot to the ribs and lays off the poor bastard for a bit.
“If I see you outside this house again, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you. Hear me?!”
John can do nothing but moan and wail and maybe burp out a little scream.
“Owe. Ouch. Pleeze.”
“I said, ‘DO YOU HEAR ME?!’”
“Yes. Yes, I hear you, Johnny.”
Johnny lets out a deep sigh and shakes his head with a look of disgust that hurts John more than any violent kick to the ribs or vicious punch to the jaw. It reminds him of the look his mother would give him when he was back East, like when he didn’t get the right grade on an exam or when he got stood up for Prom or when he didn’t make the team or get a good job. The look made him feel like his entire existence was a complete disappointment to his mother. And to his society. And to the world. And to the Universe. And to God.
“Johnny, just listen to me for a second...” John pleads between his moans and groans.
He slides the pile of fan mail out of his sweatshirt’s front pouch and tosses it on the floor in front of him.
“What’s that?” asks Johnny.
“Fan mail.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is today’s fan mail.”
“What do you mean it’s today’s fan mail?”
“That’s all there is. This is all that was in the mailbox.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“No, Johnny. There’s less mail. There’s less phone calls. There’s less Google hits...there’s....”
Before John can even get another word out, Johnny darts out of Transylvania like one of those characters in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. He sprints through Cape Cod, past Movieland, through Ancient Rome and hops his ass into the computer chair of the library.
He immediately fires up Google, types in the magic words (‘Johnny’ and ‘Cruise’) and realizes that John isn’t full of shit after all. In fact, now there are only about 12 million Johnny Cruise Google hits. Yes, 12 million Google Hits! The Johnny Cruise brand is officially in the middle of a serious crisis!
“Holy shit.”
Johnny books it out of the library, bolts through Ancient Rome and bursts into Movieland where he sees John’s silhouette already standing in front of the enormous JumboTron, flipping through hundreds of channels.
“Seth Smith!”
“Will Rogen!”
“Jude Dicaprio!”
“Leonardo Law!”
Johnny’s face turns as white as paste while he listens to the giant television shout out the names.
“Angelina Witherspoon!”
“Reece Jolie!”
“Mary Kate Cyrus!”
“Miley Olson!”
The high-profile names go on and on and on and on and on, but there isn’t one ‘Johnny Cruise’ to be heard.
“See...there’s no Johnny Cruise!” John shouts over the loud TV, nursing his fractured rib cage with his bruised hand. “You’re practically obsolete!”
“Barbara Midler!”
“Whoopi Williams!”
“Robin Golberg!”
“Mark Piven!”
“Jeremy Whalberg!”
Johnny can’t bear to hear any more of the names.
“Turn it off!” he yells.
“Ashton Efron!”
“Zac Kutcher!”
“Turn it off!!!”
John nervously fumbles with the remote control and does what he’s told. The screen goes blank, crackles with static, and is then silent.
“Fuck,” mutters Johnny under his breath. He turns away from the television and starts pacing the floor.
John limps closer to Johnny, but also tries to maintain a good distance from him (lest he get another royal ass-beating).
“Johnny, if you just let me leave the house...I can take care of this, Johnny.”
“Shut up!!!”
John flinches from the outburst and even burps out a girlish wail.
“Just shut up for a minute,” repeats Johnny in a calmer tone of voice. “Let me think.”
“But Johnny...”
“You’re NOT leaving the house!”
Johnny grabs the gray cushions from off the haunted couch and starts chucking them at John with unprecedented force. The energy behind these throws is so maliciously negative. The abuse looks even worse than it did when he was kicking John in the face.
“Ouch. Owe. Stop! Please, stop, Johnny!”
John cowers to his knees and shields his face with his hands. The zippers to the cushions stab John in the head as they whip into him. Fortunately, there are only a few cushions to be thrown. And Johnny’s just thrown the last of them.
“This calls for something really big,” says Johnny when he finishes. “I mean...HUGE.”
He paces and paces and paces and paces some more, and - suddenly - an idea pops into his head.
“Sex scandal.”
Still on his knees, John pokes his face out from his hands.
“Sex scandal? What are you talking about?”
“This calls for a sex scandal.”
“Oh, no, Johnny. No, Johnny. No sex scandal. No-no Johnny.”
“Shut the fuck up, John.”
John flinches a bit, but tries to stay strong.
“They’re gonna think you’re a scumbag if you do that.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“What about your image as a golden-boy?”
“I’ll just market the bad-boy image for a while. And if people don’t end up liking it, I’ll go back to Africa. Do another telethon. Cancer-walk. Some shit like that. It won’t be anything I can’t recover from.”
“But, Johnny...”
“Shut up! I’m in control here!”
John sucks in a deep breath of confidence and shakily erects himself from the floor.
“No, Johnny. I’m in control here. This is MY career. I control YOU.”
“Oh yeah? Then control me.”
Johnny swaggers over to John and gets within inches of his face.
“C’mon. Here I am, John. Control me. Go on. Control me.”
John tries ever-so-hard to mask his face with a look of confidence (when, of course, what he really wants to do is piss his pants). He stands straight and tall, staring deep into Johnny’s eyes like a UFC fighter would do to his opponent. After staring for a while, he begins to notice something that seems completely inhuman. It is like a demon getting ready to burst out of Johnny’s skin and bite John’s fucking head off. But John knows this dark entity won’t strike unless he allows it to. He knows that he has the power to control this horrible thing. Yes, it feeds off of his fear.
“Let’s go, pussy. Control me, pussy,” Johnny keeps repeating.
John tries and tries and tries and tries to stand his ground. But he just can’t do it. His fear overpowers him and he allows the demon to be unleashed.
“CONTROL ME!!!” Johnny growls with the voice of a death-metal singer.
“Agh!” John is so scared he stops, drops and rolls away from Johnny like a youngster doing a fire drill.
“That’s what I thought,” says Johnny as he turns to leave the room. “That’s what I thought.”
“What about Heather?!” shouts John from the floor.
The word ‘Heather’ stops Johnny in his tracks.
“What about Heather?”
“How’s Heather gonna react to a sex scandal?”
“It doesn’t matter how she reacts to a sex scandal. She rejected you, John. You will NEVER have her. NEVER. She’s out of the picture.”
“But...but...”
Johnny marches back towards John.
“No, Johnny. Please don’t touch me.”
“I’m not gonna hurt you. Come on.”
He tries to grab him by the arm, but John resists.
“Where we goin’?”
“I just wanna show you something.”
“No, I don’t wanna go.”
“Come here!”
Johnny grabs a handful of John’s greasy hair.
“Agh! Johnny! Let go! Let go of me!”
He drags John out of Movieland, through Cape Cod, through Ancient Rome and into the library, dropping him onto the floor in front of the computer with a tremendous...
“Umph!”
“Get up.”
John does as he’s told.
“Still got her under your favorites?” Johnny asks in a condescending tone.
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“Ye-yes. What of it?”
Johnny takes a seat in the computer chair, opens up Heather’s Facebook page and finds her “About me”.
“’Hi, my name’s Heather,’” says Johnny, reading off the screen in a fake female voice that he purposely makes sound ditsy as hell. “‘Hee hee hee. Well, I love my friends, my cat...and - most importantly - my HUSBAND. Eee-hee-hee.’”
John can’t bear to hear that last word: ‘HUSBAND’. A tear squirts out the corner of his eye and slides down his cheek.
“Hey, John, do you know what a ‘husband’ is?”
“Please, Johnny. Don’t do this.”
“DO YOU? Do you know what a ‘husband’ is?”
The word ‘Husband’ eats at John like a parasitic tapeworm. He tries sniffing the pain into his nostrils, but his efforts are done to no avail. He drops to his knees and starts balling his eyes out.
“Oh God! Oh-ho!”
Johnny shakes his head in pity.
“Ya see this, John? She’s making a mockery out of you. While Heather’s living in some nice, middle-class, picket-fenced house where she fucks Alex every night...here you are crying like a big baby. A great big baby.”
John tries to compose himself, but the tears just keep coming in tides.
“’Oh, goodness, look at how pathetic John turned out to be after I rejected him,’” says Johnny in his Heather voice. “’Look at that big baby crying on the floor while I’m more than likely screwing Alex. A-hee a-hee hee hee. I’m really glad I stayed with Alex because his chest is much more broader than John’s. Plus, it doesn’t have acne all over it. Or is it eczema? Whatever it is, it’s gross and I’m glad I don’t have to rub my hand up and down it like I do with Alex when I ride his cock. Speaking of cocks, Alex’s is much bigger than John’s.’”
“Oh, Johnny! Please! I can’t take it!” John pleads from the floor.
“You gonna let her say that about you, John? You gonna let her get away with that shit?”
“Oh, God. Oh, God. I don’t know.”
“Or ya gonna let me have a little sex scandal? Ya know...give Heather a big FUCK YOU. ‘Yah, Hi, Heather, look at how much sex I’m having without you! Look at all the great times I’m having without you in my life! What’s that? You want me back? Oh, OK...OK, hun. All right, dearie. Come here. Let me hold you. Yeah, let me hold you, sweetie. No, get away from me! Don’t fuckin’ touch me! It’s too late for you, Heather. Ya hear me??? It’s too late, you fucking BITCH!!!”
John rolls around on the ground, nearly drowning himself with his tears.
“Oh-ho! God! No!!!”
But he suddenly realizes he is alone. Johnny has vanished, though the echoes of his demonic screams reverberate in the room like a ghost’s moan.
SCENE TEN
John sits on the edge of the haunted couch, preparing a line of uncut coke for himself on the Casablanca coffee table. Well, at least it’s supposed to be uncut. There’s always the chance the fucking dealer could have mixed it with baby powder or baking soda or some other rubbish. It’s happened before, and it could definitely happen again. Maybe he ought to have a little taste, just to be sure.
He licks his index finger, dabs it in the coke, wipes a little powder along his upper gum and processes the effects. ‘Oh it’s really fucking pure,’ he concludes after experiencing a brief wave of artificial happiness - just a taste of what’s to come.
He resumes chopping the pile of cocaine with a razorblade, knowing that the thinner he gets the line, the less it will burn his (already rotted) septum.
After a moment or two, he finishes preparing the line and immediately snorts it up his nostril with the help of a twenty-dollar bill.
“Oh...God...”
He freezes a moment as he feels the chemical enter the bloodstream and flow through his veins. ‘Oh, yeah, this is gonna be a good one’ he can’t help but remark to himself. He snatches the remote control from off the coffee table and fires up the JumboTron.
A montage of early, “before-he-was-famous” Johnny Cruise photos assault various parts of the enormous television screen. They zoom in and zoom out. They zoom fast and zoom slow. They flip and twirl and spin and push and grow large and grow small. “The Good Life” by Kanye West underscores the whizzing images.
“Welcome to the good life...yeah, it’s the good life...I’m gonna get on the TV, mama...it’s the good life...yeah, the good life.”
The music gradually fades to a lower volume and a gravely voice-over starts narrating:
“All alone in Hollywood, sleeping on a sheet-less mattress and living off Big Macs, Johnny had to work five jobs in order to support himself.”
Johnny’s “childhood friend” (as the subtitle at the bottom of the screen indicates) sits in a smoky, dimly-lit pool hall, wearing a leather jacket and smoking a non-filtered cigarette:
“Oh, man, Johnny was just nuts. He took this one job where he had to dress up as a lobster at some seafood place and - you know - he’d stand on the sidewalk and hand out coupons to everyone who walked by....”
More “before-he-was-famous” images of Johnny zoom and whizz and spin their way on and off the screen. The camera moves in Matrix-esque fast-motion to slow motion. Fast zoom-outs and slow pans to the right.
“Exhausted from working long hours and discouraged from all his rejections, Johnny started to show signs of depression.”
The camera pans along an extreme close-up of Johnny’s old, coffee-stained journal. In an overly melodramatic voice, a bad actor reads one of the entries:
“I am the most miserable man on the face of this earth.”
The close-up of the journal then cuts to an old E! NEWS interview with Johnny from a few years back.
“Yeah, I mean, I never had the gun to my head,” says Johnny. “But I definitely thought about doing myself in at one point. Yeah. Definitely.”
The audio to the interview fades to silence and the image of Johnny melts into a dramatic, slow-motion blur.
“But little did Johnny know that everything was about to change for him...literally overnight.”
The “E! True Hollywood Story” stops and a digital cable menu pops onto the JumboTron screen. The “Hollywood Story” was actually something John found under the cable’s “On Demand” service, which offers a thousand or so more hours of additional television programming.
John tosses the remote control onto the Casablanca coffee table and tries to process the various emotions running through his head at warp-speed. The coke, combined with the “True Hollywood Story”, has successfully convinced him that his life is much more wonderful than he thought. Like the story said, “Everything changed for him overnight.” He’s living proof of the American Dream, for cry eye. He should be happy with his accomplishments. Yeah, Heather made a huge fucking mistake marrying Alex and not him. BIG MISTAKE. BITCH.
John holds this thought in the foreground of his mind while he sits on the couch feeling the coke run through his veins like small metal bee bees traveling at a speed of three-hundred miles per hour. Sometimes it feels like marbles. Yes, it’s like that old Nintendo video game “Marble Madness” in his bloodstream right now. Definitely.
But, suddenly, he hears moaning sounds in the distance. And some distant groaning sounds. ‘Probably just the ghosts in the house,’ he figures. But then they grow louder. And louder. And, then, even louder. They’re different from the usual Axl-Rose-like howls that he usually hears.
He figures it’s probably in his highest and best interest to go and check the situation out. But, then again, what if it’s a stalker? Or burglar? A homeless man? A creep? Pervert?! Schizo?!
Better make a trip to the weapons room...just to be on the safe side.
SCENE ELEVEN
The “weapons room” in the East wing of the mansion has an old-world, Japanese, Samurai-esque theme to it and is located not too far from Transylvania. Mounted on the walls of the room are antique Samurai swords, old Japanese figurines, ceramic dragons and a hand-drawn caricature of Johnny dressed in a kimono. Along the room’s back wall is a massive bullet-proof-glass cabinet with enough artillery to arm a Swat Team. John has a vast collection of Glocks, Berettas, Magnums, Uzis, shotguns, Ak47s, throwing-knives, machetes and even a Sniper Rifle - the last of which will never serve any practical purpose to John, other than to look threatening and add to his overall feeling of security.
To the right of the weapon’s case, there is a glass, soundproof door that opens into John’s own personal firing range. Every now and then, he’ll come in here and try out a weapon he feels he needs more experience with. He figures he ought to be an expert at operating every weapon he owns, just in case the shit REALLY goes down one day. Then he’ll be ready.
John comes stumbling into the weapons room - his heart still rapping against his chest from the coke - and unlocks the weapons cabinet with a key he keeps hidden inside the neck of an antique Japanese doll. He’s not quite sure which weapon he should choose, as there are so many excellent choices. So he does a brief eni-meeni-mini-mo session and ultimately goes with a black, sawed-off shotgun that he’s pretty sure will NOT leave anybody standing.
As he gives the gun a good pump, he hears more moans and groans in the far distance of the house. It occurs to him that he might simply be imagining these sounds. Cocaine, after all, has undoubtedly made him hallucinate in the past...although not usually when he's just snorting it. Either way, it’s better to be safe than sorry. He must investigate. He must!
He leaves Japan and makes his way back into Transylvania, hugging the butt of the shotgun tight into his inner arm. From in here, the moans are a bit louder and sound like they’re more than likely coming from upstairs. He fingers the trigger to the shotgun and cautiously ascends the L-shaped Bela-Lugosi staircase. If he sees anything move, he’s gonna blow it’s fucking face off. He’s not even kidding right now. This is his property. Nobody should be here!
He scales the stairs one step at a time and reaches the first landing without having to use his weapon. From here, the moans start to sound a little different. He identifies them as being sexual in nature. In layman’s terms, they sound like humping - lots and lots of humping.
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
He continues up the stairway - step by step...by step by step...and, Jesus Christ, those moans definitely sound like humping now.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!”
He reaches the upstairs and turns into a long, dusty hallway with no definite end in sight - only an abyss of darkness in the far distance. In terms of its interior design, this area of the house more or less sticks to the Transylvanian theme, meaning there are more candles and cobwebs...but also portraits of creepy-looking people who seem to follow you with their eyes. The hall is dim from the candlelight, but there are illuminated glass display cases lining both walls. The cases hold a plethora of Oscars, Screen Actor’s Guild Awards, Golden Globes and People’s Choice Awards. There are also dozens of framed photographs - Johnny posing with other A-list celebrities, politicians, athletes, American troops, royalty figures and socialites. There is even a photograph of Johnny with the President...right next to a photograph of Johnny with the Pope.
John eyeballs the awards as he tiptoes his way down the hallway. These emblems of his success again assure him that Heather made a terrible mistake in not marrying him. She probably thought that John wasn’t going to amount to much, but these awards prove something different. These awards prove she was fucking wrong.
Heather, however, is not the issue right now. The issue at hand is the origin of these mysterious sounds that grow louder and louder as John moves further down the hall (of fame). They are undoubtedly sexual in nature. Somebody is definitely humping in his house...and not just in his house, but in his very bedroom!
Yes, John surmises the sounds are definitely coming from the master bedroom, the door to which is open a crack, spilling warm, orangey light into the hallway. John gives his shotgun a kiss, pushes his back up to the hallway wall and sidesteps his way towards the bedroom door. He stops at the edge of the doorway. He leans his head into the crack. He takes a peek inside...
The master bedroom is like a New Hampshire hunting lodge, complete with bear-skin-rug, wall-mounted deer head, and a roaring fireplace. In the middle of the room, there is a wooden-framed, king-sized bed with a fifty-inch-widescreen TV that can rise at the foot of the bed with the push of a button. The bed’s champagne-colored sheets are in disarray and there is movement beneath them. The movement comes from two distinct human figures that (given their placement beneath the sheets) look like ghosts in some old Walt Disney cartoon.
“Oh yeah! Yes! Yes!!! Yes!!!” yells a high-pitched female voice that sounds like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Betty Boop.
John stands in the crack of the door, breathing somewhat heavily while he watches the whole scene like a creepy Peeping Tom. It takes him a moment to recognize the other voice beneath the sheet:
“Oh, yeah. C’mon. Give it to me. Yeah.”
It’s Johnny.
John can’t help but be a little turned on by what he’s witnessing right now. His heart starts beating faster. His mouth salivates. His scrotum starts to shift positions involuntarily. Blood rushes into the appropriate places.
He gives the door a light tap with his bony knuckles. But Johnny doesn’t hear him.
“Yes, give it to me. Yeah.”
He gives it a louder knock. But Johnny still doesn’t hear him.
“Yes. C’mon.”
BANG! BANG! BANG! John gives the door some goddamn BANGS.
Needless to say, Johnny hears him this time. He pops his winded head up from under the sheets and sees John standing in the doorway.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters under his breath.
“Who is that?” asks the girl beneath the covers.
“It’s nobody. Stay under there. I’ll be back in just a second.”
Johnny rolls out from under the covers and heads out to the hallway. He is buck naked with a body as perfect as a porn-star - no speck of body hair or unappealing tan-line or freckled blemish to be seen. He temporarily presses ‘pause’ on a small, mini-DV camcorder that is nestled into his right palm. It’s not quite clear what the camera is for, but John certainly smells something rotten in Denmark.
“What the fuck are you doing?” asks Johnny as he scoots into the hallway and shuts the bedroom door tightly behind him. “What’s with the gun?”
“I heard moans. I didn’t know what was going on.”
“Haha...yeah, she’s a noisy one. All I gotta do is make out with her and she moans like a donkey.”
“Who is that in there?”
“Pamela Lopez.”
“Pamela Lopez is under there?”
“Yeah, she’s fucking hot.”
“So that’s your sex scandal?”
“Yep, gettin’ the whole thing on tape. Once this thing gets leaked, EVERYBODY’S gonna be talkin’ about it.”
“Oh...I don’t know about this, Johnny. I don’t have a good feeling.”
“Look, John...I’m sorry I got so rough with you earlier. But this is what we need to do. This is what’s gonna save Johnny Cruise.”
John sighs and looks down to the floor.
“All right...but let me get a piece of the action. I need to get laid.”
“Huh?”
“C’mon, Johnny. I wanna have some sex.”
“No. I’m takin’ care of this. Go back downstairs and do more coke.”
He turns to go back in the room, but John gives his shotgun a cock...and aims the barrel right at Johnny’s head.
Johnny freezes in place. And he slowly turns around.
“John, what the fuck are you doing?”
“I order you to let me have sex with that girl! I’ll kill you right here, right now! Johnny Cruise will die, you hear me? I don’t give a shit.”
Johnny stares John straight in the eye for a few seconds, saying or doing nothing. But, then, he snatches the gun right out of John’s hands - fast as lighting - and shoves the barrel between John’s eyes.
“How about I kill you?! There won’t be any more John Cruise! Just Johnny! What do ya think of that shit?!”
John shivers in his pants.
“I’m...I’m sorry, Johnny. I just wanna have some sex - that’s all. I need to get laid.”
“You don’t even know how to have sex.”
“Wha-what are you talking about?”
“Come on, John. Don’t make me use the word. You’re a virgin. You’ve never had sex with a girl.”
BOOM! The word ‘virgin’ sends a shocking jolt of electricity through John’s body. It’s so intense that it makes his body hair stand on end.
“You got a dick the size of a baby carrot. And your ass is hairier than a barber’s chair at the end of a long day.”
John‘s back slams into the wall behind him and he slowly slides to the floor, tears surging into his eyes.
“Pamela Lopez is Grade-A pussy. She wants somebody who knows how to press her buttons. Not some inexperienced virgin who doesn’t know one hole from the other. Jesus, you’re thirty-three and you’ve never had sex. That’s absolutely pathetic! You’d go in there and start fucking her in the ass and she’d be, like, what the hell does this motherfucker think he’s doing? Obviously this guy’s a virgin. I wasn’t born yesterday!!!”
“No, Johnny. I’m not listening to you! I’m not gonna listen to you!!!”
John tries to stop the tears from streaming down his cheeks, but he fails miserably.
“Jesus, John, you don’t even know how to kiss a girl the right way. Remember that time you had seven minutes in heaven with Heather and you went to go kiss her and didn’t know what the fuck you were doing, so you just kinda moved your tongue around in circles, hoping you were doing the right thing? Well, you know what, John? You WEREN’T doing the right thing. You were doing the WRONG thing. Heather HATED the way you kissed her. That’s probably what made her not like you anymore.”
“No, Johnny! These are lies! I’m not listening to you!”
“Pamela Lopez needs a real man. Somebody who’s humped something other than a pillow cushion! Somebody who doesn’t get a major wet-on as soon as a girl holds his hand!”
“Oh-ho! No!!!”
“Yes, John. A REAL man. Not somebody who cries over every little thing. Christ, you have everything in the world a man could want! And what do you do? You sit on the floor crying and crying and crying and crying...and crying!”
“Johnny, please stop. I feel so awful. I need a hug.”
“Go back downstairs and do more coke! My God, I can’t believe you fill yourself with all that poison. There’s little children with leukemia who would kill to have a healthy body like yours. And what do you do? You sit on your ass and fill your body with toxins all day. You might as well be giving them a big slap in the face! See you in hell, John. I’ll definitely see you in hell!”
“Ah-ho! Please, Johnny! Please stop! I need a hug, Johnny! Please, just give me a hug!”
Johnny releases a great, big sigh of disgust...just like John’s mother used to do. O Horrible! That sigh! John can’t bear to hear that sigh!
“No, Johnny! Don’t do that! Please don’t do that!”
Johnny empties the chamber to the shotgun and chucks the bullets down the dark hallway with the speed of a juiced-up Roger Clemens. Then he drops the gun onto John’s foot and leaves the poor bastard to wallow in his puddle of tears.
“Sorry ‘bout that, Pamela,” says Johnny as he steps back into the bedroom, shutting the door tightly behind him.
John huddles himself into the fetal position and burps out piercing wails.
“Oh-ho. No. Oh no. God. I need a hug. Somebody. Give me a hug. Please.”
SCENE TWELVE
John snorts a nice thin, long line of coke from off the Casablanca coffee table. The line reminds him of a miniature ski slope, which further reminds him of a fun ski trip he took to Waterville Valley one time with his Junior High classmates. ‘Oh, God, this is actually taking me higher than I expected,’ he can’t help but note to himself. He snatches a DVD remote from off the couch and presses ‘play’.
An old movie starts playing on the JumboTron. It’s a scene taking place in a room that looks familiar. Extremely familiar.
John stumbles his stoned ass off the couch, trips over the coffee table and crawls within inches of the giant JumboTron, practically stuffing his face as close to the TV as he can possibly get it. The scene from the movie consists of two, middle-aged women talking to a younger man in a living room, but this isn’t what’s important to John. What IS important is that the room the scene takes place in is the same room John is in RIGHT NOW. At this very moment!
John pulls his eyes wide open with his thumbs and index fingers, basically trying to suck the image of the REEL living room into his head. Then he shuts his eyes tight to hold the image in...whips himself away from the television screen...opens his eyes...and looks at the REAL living room.
“Oh, God, yes,” he says with near-orgasmic delight.
With the help of the coke in his veins, the thought of standing in the very room that is inside that goddamn TV gives John the best fucking rush in the world. It’s like he is standing in the movie right fucking now!
‘Maybe a hit of weed will make this high even higher,’ he hopes. So he quickly crawls over to the coffee table, grabs his bowl and rips a really good hit. ‘Oh, it’s true. I feel really good right now. I feel really fucking good.’
SCENE THIRTEEN
The bar in the west wing of John’s mansion is a small, self-sufficient salon with a black-and-white checkered floor and walls covered in abstract, Jackson-Pollock-esque paintings that are possibly worth millions. John never understood the meanings of the paintings and, for all he knows, some scheming bastard could have taken a brush, slapped some paint on a canvas and convinced an art-dealer it was a masterpiece. Nevertheless, the presence of the works in the house functions as a means of assuring John that he is, indeed, ‘high-cultured’, despite the fact that he spends the majority of his life making banal ‘popcorn movies’ for a mainstream audience.
Running along the far wall of the room is a fully-functional bar that has a lavish display of every hard liquor a man could ever want. There are also several different beers on Tap, including Guinness, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Stella Artois, Budweiser and John’s favorite: Miller High Life. The High Life flows out the tit of a ceramic woman sculpture, which was a prop used in the Moloko Milk Bar scenes of A Clockwork Orange.
John kneels atop the bar’s pine counter, sucking down guzzles of High Life and staring into a widescreen TV mounted on the wall across from him. The television is obviously smaller than the JumboTron, but still has a screen that stabs your eyes with the sharpest images technology has the ability to produce.
John rips a hit from his bowl, chases it with a guzzle of High-Life and watches the same movie he was just watching on the JumboTron...only - this time - the scene takes place in a different setting: a bar...the very bar John is in right now!
He widens his eyes and soaks the image of the REEL bar into his head. He shuts his eyes tight. He rips a really good toke. He turns away from the TV. He looks at the REAL bar...
And, yes, it’s like he’s in the movie. It really is. It’s like he’s in it right now. It feels so damn good.
SCENE FOURTEEN
John now finds himself standing on his outdoor patio that surrounds an in-ground, kidney-shaped pool. The perimeter of the pool is lined with small, stone frogs that spit fountains of water. The frogs - combined with a greenish light at the base of the pool - create a ‘pond theme’, which gives John pleasant memories of childhood fishing-trips in New Hampshire.
Directly across from the pool is another small, Hawaiian-resort-themed bar covered by a grass hut and decked out with Tiki-torches, grass umbrellas and glass pineapple straw-holders. There is a flickery image of a movie projected on a giant wall behind the bar and, yes, the same movie John was watching on the JumboTron and in the mansion’s main bar is currently playing. This time, however, it is a scene taking place on a patio...surrounding a pool...with frog fountains...and greenish water...that looks like a pond.
John imprints the image of the REEL pool into his mind. He closes his eyes. He turns away from the TV. He opens his eyes. He looks at the REAL pool...
But - SHIT! - it didn’t work this time. He didn’t get the high he was looking for.
He starts all over again: looks at the REEL pool, then at the REAL pool. He takes a hit of weed. He allows the hit a few seconds to soak in. But, fuck, he doesn’t get high!
He starts from scratch: REEL pool...REAL pool...REEL pool...REAL pool...hit of weed...REEL pool...REAL pool...REEL pool...REAL pool...maybe some more weed will do it.
But his efforts are done to no avail! By now, the coke has stopped pumping fake euphoria into John’s brain and it suddenly hits him how pathetic he would look if anybody ever saw him doing this.
“This is stupid,” he mumbles to himself. “I’m leaving this house. This is ridiculous! Yes, I’m leaving this house. I really am.”
But, deep down, he knows he’s full of shit.
SCENE FIFTEEN
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
John has returned to his home movie theater, sitting in one of the blood-red 2001: A Space Odyssey recliners and smoking a fresh bowl. He watches the Universal logo play over and over and over and over and over again. And over and over and over again. And over and over and over again.
As he listens to the epic music at maximum volume - nearly blowing his eardrums out - John wonders how it’s possible that he’s been feeling so goddamn insecure about himself. He’s on top of the universe, goddammit! Heather thought she was doing a smart thing marrying somebody like Alex; maybe she thought Alex would give her a better life or had a better gene pool or something. But, man, she was wrong. She was so very wrong.
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
‘Yes, I’m the master of the universe,’ John reiterates in his mind. ‘I’m the master of the universe. Alex has nothing on me. I’m the master of the fucking universe. I’m the master of the universe.’
Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosh!
John chucks the fucking-mother-fucking DVD remote at the movie screen so hard that it shatters into five easy pieces, and ‘fuck, that’s a movie with Jack Nicholson, but that’s not important right now’.
“This is pathetic,” he concludes. “I’m leaving this house.”
And, this time, John isn’t bluffing.
SCENE SIXTEEN
John paces the floor to Transylvania, toking small hits of weed out of his bowl like a baby sucking on a pacifier.
“I’m in control here,” he mutters to himself. “I control YOU, Johnny. I control YOU.”
He reaches for the brass ring hanging from the enormous dungeon door, but stops himself in the process. No, he’s not quite ready to go through with all this. He’s just not high enough. Perhaps another small toke will get rid of his remaining fears.
He wraps his lips around the bowl, re-heats the weed with his Humphrey Bogart lighter and takes the biggest hit of weed that he has probably EVER taken. He inhales the shit for literally ten seconds, filling up his chest until it's about to explode like an overinflated tire.
He plucks the bowl out of his lips, holds the hit in his lungs for as long as he possibly can and then slowly lets the smoke seep out of his chest. It seeps and seeps. And seeps. And it seeps. And seeps. Seeps. A cloud of smoke forms around him and refuses to dissipate. Christ, John looks like Pig-Pen in that Charlie Brown comic strip.
He tosses the bowl over his shoulder and it clinks against the stone of the floor.
Now he’s ready to go.
SCENE SEVENTEEN
The golden ‘JC’ gate glimmers from a full California harvest moon, which is a warm-orange and almost the size of the one Eliot rides his bicycle by in E.T. The moon illuminates the dark smog, which (combined with the urban light pollution), gives the sky an orangey, purplish tint. In fact, the Hills are actually pretty at night, what with the colorful sky and twinkling lights from the valley below. But all the coyotes howling in the far distance still give it an unsettling feel. Christ, their howls sound like police sirens. And they never stop. What is it they are even howling at? Are they angry? Sad? It’s been about a hundred years since the Angelenos started colonizing the Hills with their eccentric lifestyles. Did the coyotes never get over this? Do they want their Hills back??? Or maybe the howls are emanating from the spirits that reside in the long-forgotten Indian burial grounds. Maybe the Indians are sick of being trodden on, trampled over and built on. Maybe they want their hills back...
Across the street from the Johnny Cruise estate are five or six black Suburban/Yukon SUVs, all belonging to the paparazzi. They shamelessly park outside Johnny’s house all night, just to make sure they don’t miss anything juicy. Each of the vehicles has tinted windows and several of the rear windows have black curtains covering them. The curtains allow the photographers to poke their 600mm telephoto lenses out the windows, snap off a few shots of a celebrity, and remain unseen. This method is preferable when they want the celebrity to act natural and not be aware that somebody is watching them. Several good shots - like a pick of the nose or scratch of the butt - can come out of this unobtrusive approach. However, it is more often a good idea for the paparazzo to make his presence known in order to provoke the targeted celebrity, which may result in a middle finger being drawn, which then results in an extremely lucrative photo-op. There’s nothing more shocking to the public than seeing some Disney-Channel, Mickey-Mouse-Club, golden-girl goody-two-shoes giving a photographer the bird. The magazines pay very good money for something like that. Everybody loves to see the first indications of a good girl going bad. That’s the type of shit people love masturbating to.
“Bee-a-leep! Brad Clooney at the Viper Room! Bee-a-leep!”
Tex sits alone in the driver seat of his Yukon, paging through the day’s tabloid magazines like any serious professional would look through the trades. After all, he needs to keep on top of who’s getting shots of what. It’s his job. This is what he does. It’s how he supports his mother, so ‘don’t even think about judging me’.
He is particularly displeased to see that somebody managed to get a shot of Jerry Richards (the washed-up sitcom star) picking through a garbage barrel at The Farmer’s Market - well, so it appears. Even if Richards was really just looking for his wedding ring or car keys or something, Tex knows a shot like that probably made the photographer at least $30,000 on the spot, but probably more.
“Bee-a-leep! George Pitt at Spago! Bee-a-leep!”
The leads coming through the Nextel tonight don’t sound very appealing, but, still, he’s not getting shit outside the Johnny Cruise estate. Besides, Johnny’s become so damn cold lately that his photos aren’t really worth enough to justify Tex parking outside his house all night. Maybe he’ll eat a taco and if nothing’s brewing after that he’ll pack up shop. Yes, that sounds like the best plan.
He unwraps a soft-shelled taco from Chipotle - complete with rice, chicken, black beans, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and sour cream - and he takes a big bite. But before he can even swallow the damn thing, all is suddenly NOT quiet on the Johnny Cruise front. There’s action at the golden gate. It’s starting to open!
“Jesus,” Tex exclaims as he nearly chokes on the Chipotle. “We’ve got action.”
He chucks the taco onto the passenger seat, grabs his camera. Locks. And loads.
“Showtime!” he shouts in a manner reminiscent of Roy Scheider in All That Jazz.
On the other side of the golden gate, John hides in the shadows of a gardenia bush, intending not to reveal himself until the ‘J’ and ‘C’ fully separate from each other. As he watches the gates open, he comes to the full realization that his soul is about to do the same thing. That is, the “real” Johnny Cruise is about to reveal himself to the paparazzi and, in turn, the world. ‘Am I ready for that?’ Certainly he is. Or is he???
His mind suddenly starts racing with the ramifications of what he’s about to do. Once they see him, then that’s it. The Johnny Cruise image will be forever altered, if not completely killed. The public will see the real pathetic, ugly loser he really is. He’ll no longer be loved by the people. He probably won’t be able to get a job. He’ll have to leave Hollywood and return to the East. Everything he built here would be destroyed.
Then again, maybe the public will LIKE the real him better. Maybe he can convince them that he’s better than Johnny. Maybe they’ll see Johnny for what he really is: that is, a giant heap of bullshit and lies, that phony! Yes, he’s the real star and that’s who they should love!
‘No, that’s never going to happen’, he concludes. Not within the current reality that is this early twenty-first century. The public simply won’t like what it sees. They want perfection. They won’t accept his flaws.
But, fuck, who cares what the public thinks, anyway? What does John have to look forward to by staying inside the mansion but more boredom? More drugs. More loneliness. More ghostly moans and groans driving him insane. More relentless abuse from Johnny. Yes, he just wants to get as far away from that fucking house as possible. And if that means revealing his true self and leaving Hollywood and going back East, then so be it. Maybe things will work out for him back home. Maybe Heather will get divorced. Maybe they’ll get together and maybe they’ll have a family and maybe they’ll find true happiness and they’ll be truly at peace. Yes, it’s time to leave the house! Definitely.
By now, the gate is just about fully open. John pokes his head out of the shadows and peeks out to Mt. Olympus Drive. Sure enough, Tex and the other photographers are outside their SUVs - cameras to their eyes - waiting for something - anything - to happen.
“One...
John shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath.
“Two...”
He steps out of the gardenia bush, but is still too much of a shadow to be seen.
“Three...”
He freezes in place and doesn’t move an inch further.
“Three...”
He still doesn’t move.
“Three...”
He doesn’t budge.
Meanwhile, Tex and the other paparazzi feel like complete schmucks, hovering at the edge of the driveway, not knowing what the hell is going on.
“Where the fuck is he?”
“Maybe the gate just malfunctioned.”
“Maybe it opened for the pizza man.”
“Or the Chinese Man.”
“Maybe he’s just fucking with us.”
Tex looks every which way for a person, a shadow...anything. But nothing’s going on. He feels like a total ass.
“Bee-a-leep!” yells his Nextel from inside the SUV. “Paris Simpson’s at the Spider Club! Bee-a-leep!”
Tex’s ears perk like a dog who’s just heard the word “walk”. He runs over to his Yukon, reaches through the passenger window and grabs the Nextel from off the seat.
“Bee-a-leep! I need confirmation on Paris being at Spider Club! Bee-a-leep!”
“Bee-a-leep! I’m looking at her right fucking now, Tex! Get over here! Before somebody else does! Bee-a-leep!”
Suddenly, Tex hears a whole shit-load of other bee-a-leeps coming from every which direction.
“Bee-a-leep! Paris Simpson at the Spider Club! Repeat...Paris Simpson at Spider Club!”
After all, Tex isn’t the only paparazzo who has informants at Hollywood hot-spots.
“Bee-a-leep! Paris at the Spider Club! Bee-a-leep! Holy shit! Bee-a-leep!”
Tex clips his Nextel onto his belt and takes another quick look around the perimeter of the Johnny Cruise estate: nothing is going on as far as he can see. The only action on Mount Olympus Drive is the occasional shadow from a rabid coyote bolting its way across the road.
“Fuck Johnny Cruise. I’m gettin’ Paris.”
He jumps into his SUV, twists the key into his ignition and peels it the hell out of there. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerch!
The other paparazzi see Tex taking off and figure they ought to follow his lead, lest they miss out on a shot that’s going to make them some serious moolah. They all jump in their Suburbans and eeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrcccccccchhhhhhh the fuck out of there.
The SUVS burn and churn and fishtail and peel all over the place, stirring up a cloud of Mojave desert dust that grows to be about fifty feet in height. Then they burn their way down Mt. Olympus Drive, rip around a corner and - within seconds - they are all gone. Only the dust remains.
Over by the wide-open ‘JC’ gate there is the shadow of a person. The shadow says...
“Three.”
It’s John, looking puzzled and confused. He has, indeed, decided to reveal himself to the outside world...but he’s just a few moments too late. The paparazzi have forsaken his estate.
“Wha...where’d they go?” he wonders.
And he can’t help but feel insulted.
SCENE EIGHTEEN
Mulholland Drive is one of the most famous roads in all of Hollywood, and probably THE most famous road in the Hollywood Hills. It also happens to be the most dangerous road.
John thoroughly disliked driving on Mulholland when he first came to town. The road is so curvy that he felt the need to go about twenty-miles-per-hour so he wouldn’t lose control at one of the road’s many "dead-man's curves". Of course, this would have been fine and swell if it wasn’t for the asshole driving the Mercedes 6.3 AMG in back of him wanting to go about eighty. Insane wack-job idiots. It’s almost as though they WANT you to die...but maybe that shouldn’t be such a shocking concept.
And what’s so strange about the road is that there’s only about a foot-high guardrail protecting you and your car from going off its cliffs. It’s like the Hollywood Department of Public Works also WANTS you to die, or they at least get their jollies in making the drive a challenge. Hell, maybe the DPW workers are failed actors who are bitter towards the celebrities in the Hills. Maybe it’s their way of getting revenge.
Whatever it is, John is just glad he isn’t driving on the road right now. Instead, he’s walking it...which, of course, isn’t too much safer. Some lunatic blazing on a medicine-cabinet-worth of drugs could easily come around a sharp curve, smash into John, drag his body fifty yards, and not even think twice about the light thud he thought he heard but it’s probably just the Ambien making him hallucinate.
And if it’s not a drug-fiend that kills John, it could easily be one of the massive houses that are built into the cliffs above. These things look like they are about one tremor away from toppling down the hill and crushing him to the bones. John never understood why anybody would want to live in a place like that. Personally, it would give him a constant feeling of uneasiness - like he was literally living too close to the edge. But maybe that’s the thrill of it for the residents. Maybe they get off on the fact that a simple mudslide could come around and send them over the edge.
Speaking of mudslides, John suddenly feels a light mist falling from the sky. Damn his luck! The one day he decides to leave the house is the day it decides to rain (after all, it rains about once a century in LA)! And of course he has to be on Mulholland Drive, walking under a bunch of heavy houses, dangling from the cliffs, just dying to slide atop the head of a person like John. Better get off the road. Better get off it fast.
He bangs a quick left and descends a hill sprinkled with beautiful jasmine, crimson and gardenia bushes. The hill gradually changes into a more level, wooded area where - every 100 feet or so - John passes a circle of stones and maybe a mattress or shopping cart or smashed TV or tarp or used condom. These are remnants of old, inactive homeless camps...or maybe, in some cases, still-quite-active homeless camps. The strange thing about the Hollywood Hills is that you are in the country, but also in the city. That is, you are surrounded by the landscape of the country, but you feel the same intense energy you would feel if you were to walk through the city. This means that - even though you are weaving your way through luscious, sweet-smelling gardenia bushes and sweet-tasting lemon trees - you still have the feeling in the back of your mind that some bum could come up on your back and mug the shit out of you, just as if you were in a grimy urban alleyway.
In fact, John has this feeling right now (i.e. that he’s about to get jumped) and he comes to the realization that there is no escaping feelings of uneasiness in Hollywood. He would never admit it to anyone, because nobody in this town likes a “Debbie-Downer”, but everywhere he goes he feels uncomfortable. Is there actually a safe-haven somewhere? A place to feel secure? And safe? Maybe in his bunker...or maybe in the locked hotel bathroom of the Roosevelt Hotel (wait, no, that place is rumored to be haunted by Montgomery Clift)...but that’s about it. Everywhere else he feels uneasy.
John is somewhat relieved, however, when a clump of eucalyptus trees spit him out onto a clearing in the wood located atop a high hill; at least here there is no place for a bum to hide and jump out to jack his ass. On the far side of the clearing and at the edge of the hill stands an enormous, billboard-type sign with massive metallic letters. At first, John doesn’t know what he’s looking at...but then it hits him: it’s the Hollywood sign! Of course! He didn’t realize it at first because he’s so used to seeing it from the front, and from a distance. He’s never been so close to it! This is amazing.
He moves closer to the towering sign and immediately notices how weathered the thing looks from the rear. The letters are dirty and grimy and covered with graffiti, none of which looks very appealing to the eye. Most of the graffiti consists of ‘tags’, autographs of people desperate to leave their marks somewhere in Hollywood. For some reason, these people get off on immortalizing themselves like this, even if it’s on the back of the sign and basically invisible to anybody looking at it from the valley. As long as it’s somewhere on there, though, then that’s good enough for these hopeless hopefuls; their name is - at least in some way - written into Hollywood history.
John moves even closer to the Hollywood sign and is shocked by how tall the damn letters are, probably about fifty feet in height, much taller than what he would have expected. He notices the rungs of a ladder built into the side of the letter ‘H’ and it reminds him of a story he once heard about some 1930s starlet named Peg Entwistle who took her own life by jumping off the sign. Entwistle suffered one too many rejections from the studios, so she got drunk one night in 1932, clawed her way up to the Hollywood sign and jumped off the letter ‘H’. Ironically, two days after she jumped, a letter came to her house offering her a lead role in a Beverly Hills Playhouse production (which was quite an honor in those days). But it came too late. Entwistle was already dead.
The coroner surmised that the official cause of Entwistle’s death was internal bleeding due to severe pelvic fractures. He also surmised that it’s likely she didn’t die on impact, which meant she experienced a slow death, most likely with a sufficient amount of suffering. Her body wasn’t found until two days later by a passing hiker. For some reason, the hiker remained anonymous when telling the police about their discovery, but apparently there was no foul play involved. According to the coroner, Entwistle had clearly taken her own life.
As one might expect from such a tragic death, there is a rumor that the ghost of Entwistle haunts the area of the Hollywood sign to this day; several hikers and rangers claimed to have seen the starlet’s apparition on countless occasions. They all say she wears 1930s clothing and appears to be very sad. They also say her ghost emits a gardenia-like scent, which is supposedly her perfume.
It’s with this in mind that John takes a whiff of the air and, yes, there is a gardenia-like scent, but there are so many exotic flowers in the Hills that he’s skeptical of whether it’s actually Entwistle’s perfume. The Santa Ana breezes could easily bring all sorts of aromas into the area and fool some gullible bastard into thinking it was paranormal.
Nevertheless, the thought of (potentially) having an encounter with Entwistle’s ghost kind of freaks John out...but also fills him with an overwhelming feeling of sorrow. If only he could have been there on that fateful night in 1932. He could have helped her, maybe. He could have convinced her that it’s not as bad as it seems - that there’s more to life than what Hollywood makes you think. Just because you’re a failure in this town, doesn’t mean you’re a failure in life. There’s something else out there. Really, there is. Well, maybe there is.
‘Regards, Peg,’ John wants to say. ‘I’m so sorry you were sad here.’ But perhaps it’s best that he keep his mouth shut. If it is Peg’s ghost, she’s probably not a happy ghost and shouldn’t be provoked in any way. Yes, leave her alone. Let her be. Someday she’ll find the light and leave this place. If there’s any just God in this world, He’ll eventually show the poor woman some mercy.
As a show of respect to the fallen starlet, John takes a few steps backwards - away from the ‘H’ - and heads over to the letter adjacent to it: the ‘O’.
Like the ‘H’, the ‘O’ has another metal-runged ladder running up its edge. John mounts the ladder, climbs a few rungs and takes a seat inside the ‘O’, his feet dangling down to the bright-lighted valley below.
Christ, Hollywood looks a lot better from up here than it does from down there - so beautiful and peaceful. There’s the Capitol Records building. And the red, neon Roosevelt Hotel sign. That’s probably the Scientology building right over there. And, look, the few skyscrapers of downtown LA in the far distance.
But even though the view is pretty, John finds himself feeling differently than he would have thought. He remembers being a child, watching movies and looking at photos and seeing TV shows and they would all show the Hollywood sign and it would look so damn awesome. He would look at it and say, “Man, THAT is THE place to be. I gotta get out of the East and go West. To California: the land of milk and honey. And to Hollywood: the place where dreams are made.”
Flash forward twenty-five years or so and John’s there! He’s literally AT “the place to be”. But it doesn’t feel like he thought it would. In fact, he feels no different from how he felt back East. There’s still the feeling of raw reality that - as stupid as it sounds - he thought he could shake once he went to Hollywood. And what’s worse is that - even though he’s at “the place to be” - there’s still a voice in his mind telling him that he’s NOT there, that “the place to be” is still somewhere else. But, no, it’s bullshit! He’s sitting right within the “O” to the Hollywood sign! This is THE PLACE! THIS IS THE PLACE!
So what happens now? Where is the grass greener? Nowhere. You can’t go any further, really, before hitting the East again and finding yourself right back where you started. This is the end of the line - the last stop of the human family’s manifest destiny. So if things aren’t going to work out here, then they’re not going to work out at all.
Perhaps this explains why Los Angeles is so full of depression and despair and people are killing each other and getting fucked up on drugs and doing all sorts of other weird shit. Maybe everybody escapes to this place - the “land of milk and honey” - and realizes that, fuck, this is it. This? Is it??? Well, yeah, there’s nowhere else to go. So if you can’t find happiness here, then you will never be happy. And this is a realization that fills people with despair. And they eventually go a little screwy. And some of them do bad things...to both themselves and to others.
It’s on this depressing note that John decides it’s probably a good idea to hop down from the ‘O’ and leave the Hollywood sign completely. As long as he stays away from the sign - the literal “place to be” - his mind will remain filled with a false hope that there is, indeed, a better place out there for him...somewhere, over the rainbow, or whatever the song says. And he won’t despair.
...
John discovers a narrow hiking trail that snakes its way down Mount Lee (the technical name for the hill the Hollywood Sign lies atop of), through Beachwood Canyon and past a random cattle ranch that looks like something out of High Noon. Apparently somebody’s dream when they came out to the ‘dreamland’ that is Hollywood was to live in the Wild West...and, hell, that’s fine. At least their dream wasn’t to start a race-war, as described in code within the lyrics of the Beatles’ White album.
The hiking trail leads John around the perimeter of the “Sunset Ranch” (as it is named) and he nearly gets bitten by a scheming rattlesnake lying in the center of the pathway.
“Sneaky bastard,” John says to the serpent.
The snake rattles. And rattles. And rattles its tail. And rattles. And rattles. And rattles...
Could this snake be construed as an omen? John can’t help but wonder. Was it a bad idea for him to leave his house tonight? Who knows what other bad things are waiting for him outside in this frightening world? Maybe he should turn back. Maybe he’s better off being a recluse in his gigantic mansion.
No, nonsense. That is not an option. He must stick to this trail...wherever it may take him.
As it turns out, the trail eventually leads John all the way down to the bottom of the Hills and he’s ultimately spat out onto the pale-gray concrete of Franklin Avenue. ‘Phew!’ John feels somewhat proud of himself as he takes his first step onto the road. He has significantly distanced himself from the monster that is Johnny - that damned persona and all the bullshit that is attached to it. Yes, it’s time to shake the dust of that image off his person and move forward with his life. If this were a movie, now would be the time to have a long fade-out as John walks into the sunset as a new man who has just experienced “self-discovery” or has just “come of age” or something along those lines. But, alas, this is not a movie. There is no fade-out. Time marches on. Reality continues.
John tries to remain optimistic as he makes his way down Franklin, but his optimism turns back into depression when he finds himself surrounded on both sides by several low-rent apartments, the outer facades of which are a far cry from the architectural masterpieces in the Hills above. The buildings are comprised of a pale-yellow stucco reminiscent of watery mustard squirted out of a bottle that wasn’t shaken well. Palm trees and other exotic plant-life grow in the apartment forecourts, but much of their limbs are brown and saggy and sickly - an unsuccessful attempt to disguise the fact that the building is a complete shit-hole.
But what stands out the most about these apartments is that - on each windowsill - there is a small cable satellite dish, pointing way up into space and sucking endless hours of entertainment into each of the units. The crack-heads and sex offenders and Internet porn directors and other residents can hardly come up with the eight-hundred dollars needed to make rent every month, but they still - somehow - find a way to afford the best cable package America has to offer. Amazing.
John moves beneath the rectangular balconies to the apartments above. His nose gets tickled by wafts of second-hand marijuana smoke and his ears are assaulted by the hottest shows on prime-time television: American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and CSI: WHEREVER. Maybe it’s been a while since he’s left his house, but John is surprised to find that he's the only person on the street, which may be normal for a quiet suburban neighborhood, but - fuck - he’s in a city right now. He feels a tad alienated being there on the streets, maybe even a little creepy - like in a sex-offender kind of way.
Wasn’t it Ray Bradbury who once got arrested for taking a walk at night in Los Angeles? Maybe that’s just an Old Wive’s Tale, but it wouldn’t surprise John if something like that were actually true. The LAPD is probably just so used to everyone staying inside and entertaining themselves to death that a man who enjoys a little exercise and some time to think (without a TV blasting in front of his face) is considered abnormal and more than likely up-to-no-good. Or maybe it’s part of a broader conspiracy to keep people in their homes, in front of their TVs and passively complacent. People who are distracted and don’t think make it easier for the world’s “elite” to do what they want, like start needless wars in oil-rich countries, or pass “Homeland Security” bills that take away the very freedoms Americans are supposed to be bringing to the countries they’re “liberating”. Yes, keep the people passive in front of their television sets while the powers-that-be pave the way for a “new world order”, one filled with liberalism and democratism and, of course, lots and lots of corporationalism, not to mention any names Halliburton, Lockheed Martin and Blackwater. Pay no attention to the torture that takes place at Guantanamo or the Wall Street Ponzi schemes or the fact that nobody saw an actual plane fly into the Pentagon. After all, if you unglue yourself from the television, the terrorists might get you, especially that boogeyman Osama Bin Laden who may or may not already be dead but let's pretend that he's alive because we need to justify our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and basically any other country who doesn't see eye to eye with us. We also need to justify the fact that - little by little - our country is becoming one, giant police state that shoves its hands down five-year-olds' crotches at airports, creates "no-fly lists" for anti-war protesters and places security cameras on pretty much every corner of every street. Go tune into the latest Kardashian reality show and ignore the fact that 9/11 may have been an inside job or that corporations are buying up water rights or that Global Warming is a myth created by greedy men interested in making billions off of carbon credits, taxes and new "green" technology both in America and in third-world countries that don't have the money for such technology so let's help those poor countries out because we're nice guys not that this is a disguised form of imperialism or anything.
Ugggh. Good grief. This is too much thinking for John to handle, especially when he doesn’t have a good bowl of weed to fog up his thoughts as soon as they get too troubling. In fact, this is the longest he’s been away from his bowl for probably years now, or at least months. It’s no wonder why his mind has started to clear. Of course, he’d much rather be smoking the weed. He’d choose a foggy head over a clear head any day. The clearer his mind is, the more he is faced with the horrifying truth around him.
After walking down Franklin for a mile or so, John comes to Highland Avenue, which eventually brings him to the corner of Hollywood and Highland. There is a large commercial mall here with your Abercrombie ‘N Fitches, American Eagles, California Pizza Kitchens and what-have-you, but back in the day this was the location of a place called the “Hollywood Hotel". This was actually the birthplace of the “Hollywood Star” tradition, which eventually gave birth to the Hollywood walk-of-fame on Hollywood Boulevard.
As the story goes, there was a trendy restaurant at the Hollywood Hotel that was considered “the place to be seen” - anybody from Cecil B. DeMille to Greta Garbo to Gloria Swanson to Louis B. Mayer could be found there on any given night. In fact, so many celebrity “regulars” went there that the management used to place stars above certain seats where the celebrities liked to sit. The stars would have the celebrities’ names on them and would essentially function as a means of reserving the given seat at all times. By the time the hotel closed in the 50s, there were so many of these stars on the ceiling that they decided to transfer them to the sidewalk outside and, thus, the famous Hollywood walk-of-fame was born!
Of course - back then - only the really special celebrities would get Hollywood stars. The cream of the crop. The most A-list of the A-list. But, today, anybody who’s famous for fifteen minutes can get one as long as they have the $25,000 required to get one...well, so it seems, anyway. As for John...he’s never even seen his star before. Johnny wouldn’t let him attend the ceremony. He doesn’t even know where the damn thing is, exactly.
‘Yeah, where is that damn thing?’ John wonders as he turns onto Hollywood Boulevard and begins his journey down the charcoal-marbled walk-of-fame. He peers far down the boulevard and can’t help but have his line of vision assaulted by endless amounts of billboards, sprouting out of the sidewalks like mushrooms in a fungus-filled lawn. They all have familiar faces plastered on them, like Britney Lohan, George Pitt and late-night show host Dave Leno. Christ, they look so awesome and powerful and important up there - bigger than life. It occurs to John that you could probably take any face, slap it on a billboard and instantly deify that person. He remembers the first time he ever saw his own face on a billboard...or Johnny’s face, if you want to be technical. It made him feel like God.
Speaking of which, one billboard amongst the several hundreds has a face that looks very familiar. Indeed, it’s Johnny’s face...well, it’s some of Johnny’s face. A laborer is actually in the process of painting over the face and pasting up another George Pitt to replace it. Though he doesn’t want to admit it, John can’t help but feel extremely offended by this. It’s like a big slap in the face, seeing his persona be obliterated like that. He LIKES being on billboards. He LIKES being bigger than life. He LIKES feeling like God.
In fact, now that he mulls it over in his mind a little more...this may not be something he’s ready to let go. Is he really ready for this whole Hollywood thing to end? And what does he have waiting for him back East? His parents’ basement and a shit-job at the local supermarket. Heather’s never gonna go for that shit. O Terrible! What has he done?!
He darts across the street to a 24-hour newsstand to check and see if the situation is as dire as he fears. If his career still has a pulse, the tabloids should have at least two or three stories about Johnny Cruise. Sure, the stories will be complete fabrications and overall horse shit, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that there’s SOMETHING about Johnny Cruise, which means the public is still interested, which means his career is not yet over...or Johnny’s career. No, his career. Whatever. It’s all the same.
The newsstand is nestled between two different souvenir shops selling plastic Oscar trophies and two-for-five-dollar Hollywood shirts. Like most places in this town, the walls are covered with autographed photos of stars, most of which are dead, which kind of gives the place a strange, haunted feel. In fact, Hollywood is probably the most haunted place in the world - not necessarily because there are actual ghosts running around (though there certainly are) - but because there are so many photographs of dead stars all over the place, not to mention handprints and footprints and statues and murals and waxed mannequins. In Hollywood, nobody ever completely leaves the earth when they die. They stick around.
Woooooooosh! John bolts through the entrance to the newsstand and immediately claws through the wide selection of tabloids lining the shelves. He pages through them and pages, and pages and, wow, Britney Lohan wasn’t wearing panties under her miniskirt again, and pages and pages, and pages, and...O horrible! His suspicions have been confirmed: there is absolutely nothing about Johnny Cruise in any one of them!
“Help you with something?” asks the store clerk, who seems to have appeared out of nowhere. He has long, white, Gandalf-like hair and - by the look of his gray eyes and skin - John suspects he’s been basking in the smog of Hollywood since around the Manson Family days. Maybe longer.
The clerk’s question gives John a good startle. After all, he hasn’t talked to a person from the outside world in quite some time. But he gives the clerk the best (toothless) smile he can possibly conjure, assuming he will be recognized as a major celebrity.
“Hey, how ya doing?”
The clerk, however, does not recognize him. In the clerk’s eyes, John is just another Hollywood crack-head from off the boulevard.
“Help you with something?” he asks again.
John’s gap-toothed smile fades.
“Um...yeah...got anything on Johnny Cruise?”
“Johnny who???”
Huh? Did he hear right? Did this fucking clerk just say, ‘Johnny who???’
John’s face turns a ghostly white. His heart starts to race at near horror-movie speed. Either this clerk is part-retarded or...well, the Johnny Cruise brand is in worse a state than he could ever imagine.
“Did you hear what I said? Johnny Cruise. The movie star.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Johnny Cruise. The movie star,” John repeats.
“I said I’ve never heard of him.”
O HORRIBLE! John can’t believe what he’s hearing. It’s like he stepped into an episode of the Twilight Zone.
“You never heard of him?”
“That’s what I said. You gonna buy something???”
What a nightmare! John knew a star could rise and fall overnight in this town, but this is, like, way too literal. It’s as though Johnny Cruise never even existed.
“Um...no. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to bother you.”
He turns to leave the store and can hear the clerk mutter “get a job” under his breath. O Misery! The remark is just the icing on John’s cake of despair. ‘Get a job’...ah, the ultimate insult in a country where financial independence is what makes the man. Does he really look like a bum? Has he really let himself go to such an extent? Apparently this is the truth.
He sulks out of the newsstand and resumes his journey down the sidewalk of bronzed stars, his head hanging down to the marble in a walk of shame. A random bum or two brushes past his shoulders, muttering twisted obscenities to themselves. They are strange phrases like “the dog fucked my wife, I’m gonna get that sunavabitch” and “you think you know me, but you’re the one wearing the dress”. No coherence to anything these lost souls say. At least the bums back East made sense. Maybe because Meth wasn’t as prevalent out there as it is in LA. Wait, Meth?
Yes, Meth. Or crystal...crank...bitch...Tina...whatever you want to call the shit; it’s the most dehumanizing drug ever concocted. Meth makes you feel like Jesus Christ, but it also fries away all sense of logic, rationale and civility. Everything a man says or does while on this shit makes perfect sense to him (hell, it’s fuckin’ gospel to him), but makes absolutely no sense to anybody who’s tuned into a normal (i.e. sober, or at least somewhat-more-sober) frequency. There’s probably no other drug out there that allows you to lose yourself in such a greater depth of unreality...and this is perhaps what’s so frightening about it. Because when a man is so out-of-touch like this, there’s no predicting what he is capable of doing.
Case in point: just a few yards down the walk-of-fame there is a young, twenty-something bum who looks like a cross between Harry Potter and Skippy from Family Ties. Judging by his appearance, John would probably consider this quasi-nerdy-looking dude to be somewhat normal; that is, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s jacking off on the friggin’ sidewalk right now! That’s right: his pants are dropped to his ankles like a toddler who’s being potty-trained. And his abnormally large penis is as hard as the Washington monument. But giving the disturbing scene an almost humorous twist is the fact that the bum is wearing a maroon Harvard University sweatshirt. John feels that there is some sort of metaphor or symbolism or irony at play here: the bum is jerking his dreams away, or something like that. No, maybe it’s a comment on the state of Harvard graduates these days, or the state of young intellectuals in general. Yes, it’s the state of an intellectual in a non-intellectual society…in a society that rejects the ‘thinker’. Something like this.
At any rate, John wishes he had a camera so he could photograph the junky jerking and what-not. The photo would definitely be considered ‘deep’. Win some awards. Maybe even get in a museum.
Instead, John walks a wide circle around the disturbed intellectual, being sure to keep a wary distance from this man who is more than likely raving on a lab’s-worth of Meth (if his pimply ‘meth-sores’ and rotting ‘meth-mouth’ are any indication). But as he circles around him, John’s eyes catch sight of the bronze movie camera the bum is currently jizzing on. It’s one of the Hollywood stars! But not just any star. It’s the Johnny Cruise star!!!
John’s first reaction, of course, is “Wow...so that’s where it is!” But then his mind registers what’s being done to it and he gets feckin’ fumed! What disrespect! How dare this bum masturbate atop his star! He oughta tackle this motherfucker!!! But he resists the urge, partly out of fear, and partly out of an unbreakable habit to never upset anybody lest it potentially hurt his career. His publicist taught him early in the game to always play the PC-card and not ruffle anybody’s feathers...even if they’re jizzing on your star. ‘Hi, Sir, I see you’re jizzing on my star. Very, good, Sir. Thanks very much, Sir. Peace and love and God bless.’ Yes, John decides it’s best to leave this Harry Potter look-alike alone and continue down the boulevard.
After a block or two, he notices the Grauman’s Chinese Theater across the street and figures it would probably be a good idea to check on his footprints there, just to be sure nobody’s jizzing on those things. Plus, it would be nice to actually SEE the footprints for once, since Johnny didn’t let him attend that particular ceremony either. Yes, it was at the premier of his film BASIC INSTINCT meets FATAL ATTRACTION where the “honorary mayor” of Hollywood (Johnny Grant) bestowed the honor upon Johnny Cruise. Every member of his family was in attendance: his mom, his dad, his brothers and sisters...even his grandmother. They were all so proud of him - Johnny, that is. Not John. If they saw John, they probably wouldn’t have been so proud.
MEEP! BEEP!
A Jaguar and BMW or two honk at John as he jaywalks across Hollywood Boulevard, hops over a red curb and enters the cement forecourt of the Chinese Theater. The place is dark and deserted at this hour, with the exception of one creepy character sitting on one of the cement squares and smoking a cigarette. ‘Maybe it’s the ghost of Victor Kilian,’ John wonders, remembering how the former character actor was rumored to be haunting the forecourt. Or maybe it’s another movie star like him who’s never personally seen his footprints. Whoever it is, John lets this shady spirit be, just in case he, too, is a Tweaker preparing to do something godless like the others.
John frolics his way deeper into the forecourt and can’t help but allow a big smile to curl up his face. His eyes twinkle as he gawks at all the autographed squares of cement, just like they did when he first came to Hollywood. He skips his way from Marilyn Monroe’s footprints to Shirley Temple’s footprints to Clark Gable’s footprints, kind of like a schoolboy playing hopscotch. And from Clark Gable’s footprints into Fred Astaire’s footprints, and into Rock Hudson’s footprints, and into Humphrey Bogart’s footprints, and into Groucho Marx’s footprints. He eventually comes to a newer square of cement with a greenish hue to it and - huzah! - there they are: the Johnny Cruise footprints.
He stands at the edge of the green cement, looking down to the prints in complete awe. He can’t help but get off on the fact that - right there in that spot - HIS footprints are nestled among Marilyn Monroe’s, Humphrey Bogart’s, Shirley Temple’s, Clark Gable’s, Jimmy Stewart’s, Groucho Marx’s...the list goes on and on.
He closes his eyes and takes a step into the footprints. Then he lifts his head high into the air and gets so damn giddy from the feeling of having made his mark in Hollywood...just like Gable and Bogart and Astaire and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and Roy Rogers and Gloria Swanson and all the other greats. A light Santa Ana breeze whistles through his ears and it’s just the perfect touch to the greatest high he’s ever had while NOT smoking weed.
He leaps into Clark Gable’s footprints.
He leaps into Marilyn Monroe’s footprints.
And then into Tom Hanks’ footprints.
And then Darth Vader’s footprints.
And then Donald Duck’s footprints.
And then back into the Johnny Cruise footprints.
What a feeling of bliss it is to know that he has written himself into the same Hollywood history book as the legends around him. He is one of them. Part of the club. The top rung of the social ladder - as high as one can possibly get in life.
In other words, Heather is such an idiot for choosing Alex over him. Big mistake, Heather. Big fucking mistake.
SCENE NINETEEN
Morning has broken on Hollywood Boulevard, scattering the incoherent bums like cockroaches in a charge-by-the-hour motel room. The bums are replaced by the early-bird tourists, gawking at the bronzed stars and desperately scouring the boulevard for a celebrity sighting.
The volume of traffic grows to a much more audible level. Lawyers in their Mercedes Benzes head to the office. Executives in their Porsches head to the studios. Actors in their Maseratis head to their early calls. Young hopefuls in their rusty Buicks head to...well, nowhere important - maybe a Cybercafe or an audition for a commercial if they’re lucky. Maybe to their jobs at Starbucks. Maybe back to LAX to abandon the dream and return East.
The Hollywood Boulevard “characters” take their posts along the sidewalk in front of the Chinese Theater forecourt. These are unemployed actors or - in many cases - bums or drug addicts or sex offenders who dress up as their favorite Hollywood movie characters and take pictures with tourists for tips. Some are young and others are old. Some are male and others are female. Some are sober and others are completely shit-faced.
“We take tips for the photos, ladies!” yells the man dressed as Batman. “Yes, tips! For the photos!”
The Batman character is pissed because a small group of teenage girls didn’t leave a tip after taking a photo with him. At first, the girls think Batman is kidding around - like it’s all part of the show - but then he starts dropping F-bombs and they realize they should probably start walking faster.
“No, don’t go over to Superman! We take tips! For the photos!”
Needless to say, he’s causing a bit of a scene.
“What are you looking at?!” he yells at all the tourists staring at him.
“Not much,” says a plump Tennessean tourist wearing a Universal Studios shirt.
“’Not much’? Ha! That all you got? Clown!”
Other characters on the boulevard include two Freddy Kruegers, an Elmo and a SpongeBob SquarePants. Then there’s Shreck, Pinhead from Hellraiser, a Chucky doll (played by a midget), three Jack Sparrows, about twelve Spidermans and also a Superman who looks so much like Christopher Reeves it’s uncanny.
“Hello, ladies,” says Superman to a group of attractive young foxes dressed in scantily-clad clothing. “Too bad my X-ray vision isn’t working today. Hee. Hee. Hee.”
In the forecourt behind the characters, a Mexican laborer hoses down the cement autographs and footprints, being sure to get all the grime and cigarette snipes out of every little crevice. It’s not the best job he’s ever had, but it’s better than hanging out at Home Depot begging shoppers for an odd-job as they leave the store. This is what he used to do when he first came to America and it made him regret the day he jumped the border. The condescending look the customers gave him was so humiliating he doesn’t even want to think about it.
A few squares of concrete over from the Mexican is a group of Japanese tourists. They remove their shoes and place their naked feet into the footprints of their favorite stars. Little do they care that a million pairs of dirty feet have stood in those very prints; what's more important to them is that their bare flesh has touched the very spot where their favorite celebrity once stood.
The tourists hop into Marilyn Monroe’s footprints and Shirley Temple’s footprints and Mary Pickford’s footprints and Bette Davis’ footprints and Eddie Murphy’s footprints and Harrison Ford’s footprints, but they steer clear of Johnny Cruise’s footprints. This is mainly because there is a bum sleeping on the ground beside them. Well, in their minds it’s a bum. But it’s really just John, curled up in the fetal position like a swaddled baby.
John’s lips smack and his eyelids flutter open. Consciousness slowly starts to regain itself and John is confused as to where he is. Maybe if he picks the early-morning crust out of his eyes he’ll be able to better acclimate himself.
Yes, after a pick or two, his vision clears and he sees the Johnny Cruise autograph staring him right in the face. It suddenly hits him where he is and how he got there. John could have sworn last night was all a dream, but here he is with his cheek pressed hard against the cool forecourt cement - drool dripping out the corner of his mouth.
He rolls over to his side, sits upright and looks out onto the bustling boulevard. It’s possible that he’s still half-asleep, but there is a face hovering high in the smoggy sky that looks extremely familiar. He has to rub his eyes again to make sure the face is who he thinks it is, but - holy shit! - there’s no doubt about it. It’s Johnny Cruise...on a billboard.
John looks a tad to the left and - whoa! - sees another billboard with Johnny Cruise’s face on it. Then, he looks a tad to his right and - whoa shit! - sees yet another Johnny Cruise billboard. And in the very far distance - probably somewhere on Sunset, he suspects - he sees yet another Johnny Cruise. And then in the even greater distance (probably on Santa Monica) there’s another Johnny Cruise. Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise!! Johnny Cruise!!! Johnny Cruise is everywhere!
John stumbles onto his feet and totters closer to the boulevard. The tourists see him (or smell him) and make an effort to keep their distance, as they still think he’s nothing but a crack-head who smells like a dumpster.
He leaves the forecourt and takes a step onto the walk-of-fame, right between a Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers who are busy startling tourists. He looks both ways down the boulevard and - holy shit! - there’s absolutely nothing in the sky except Johnny Cruise.
“Am I dreaming now?”
He gives his flesh a pinch with his overgrown fingernails, but, no, he’s clearly awake. ‘What happened? Why’s this happening?’ he wonders. And he knows exactly where to go for an answer.
He bolts it across the boulevard and nearly gets smashed by a rusty mini-van in the process. Meep! Beep! Beep! Meep! He weaves through the cars like he’s Frogger.
“Fucking crack-head!” shouts one of the drivers.
“Crazy asshole!” shouts another.
"You little fuck!" shouts yet another.
He makes it to the other side of the street in one piece, bolts it down the sidewalk and heads straight for the newsstand he got the boot from last night. But he doesn’t even have to walk into the place before he gets his answer, because it’s right on a news-rack outside:
“GOLDEN-BOY TURNED BAD-BOY!” shouts the headline of “A-List Magazine”. “JOHNNY CRUISE SEX-TAPE! JOHNNY CRUISE SEX-TAPE! JOHNNY CRUISE SEX-TAPE!”
John swipes the tabloid from off the rack, flips to the first page and sees a greenish, night-visioned photograph of Johnny half-naked in bed with Playboy model Pamela Lopez. Their eyes beam from the infrared like nocturnal animals in the woods.
He turns the page and sees another grainy photograph showing Pamela on the bed posing like a dog on all fours (her private parts blocked out with black rectangles labeled ‘censored’). And then he turns another page and sees Pamela giving Johnny head (again, with the naughty parts blocked out). And then he turns another page and there’s a blurred photo of the two of them humping like dogs.
‘This is amazing,’ John thinks as he turns the page and finds a brief blurb:
Bloggers are abuzz over a new sex tape featuring golden-boy Johnny Cruise and Playboy model Pamela Lopez. The sex tape was leaked onto the Internet this morning and has gotten so many views that servers all over the Internet are crashing at unprecedented rates. A source told “A-list Magazine” that, although Johnny is upset about the tape, he feels pulling it from the web will be more legal trouble than it’s worth.
John turns to the next page, but - suddenly - there is a voice:
“Help you with something?”
It’s the same gray-eyed clerk from the night before.
“Um...uh....” The question catches John off guard.
The clerk’s eyes widen and then squint as he takes a better look at his customer.
“Wait a minute...don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, that face...it looks mighty familiar.”
O Shit! John completely forgot that he’d more than likely be recognized now that Johnny is hot again. But if he’s caught looking the way he does right now, it could ruin everything!
“I was in here last night...that must be it.”
“No, that’s not it. You look...kinda like...”
“Um...uh...gotta go,” John says as he quickly covers his face and makes a bee-line for the boulevard.
He bursts onto the walk-of-fame and starts sprinting over the marble like a juiced-up Carl Lewis. He runs past the souvenir shops. Past a Hooters. Past El Capitan theater…
While he runs, he hears a buzzing noise in his ears. It’s a strange murmuring...or mumbling. The noise seems to be coming from every single tourist and hopeful and bum and tranny and Scientologist on the boulevard: “Johnny Cruise, Johnny Cruise, Johnny Cruise.” It’s just the name ‘Johnny Cruise’, meshed together, into a constant buzz.
“JohnnyCruiseJohnnyCruiseJohnnyCruiseJohnnyCruise.”
John jaywalks (or jay-runs) across the boulevard and nearly causes another messy accident:
Meep! Beep! “Motherfucker!”
He runs past the Kodak Theater and leaps over a red carpet (tonight is the premiere of NATIONAL TEASURE meets THE MUMMY), runs past the kiosks of the Hollywood-Highland Mall. Past the run-down apartments with their satellite dishes and browned palm trees and pale stucco. Past the Hollywood Bowl. Past the Sunset Ranch...
Past the Hollywood sign, with the smell of gardenia perfume still trapped in the air...past the homeless encampments and the used condoms and the eucalyptus trees and the rattlesnakes and the lemon trees....
He claws his way up a dusty hill, hops over a rusted guardrail and finds himself back on the tortuous Mulholland Drive. Here, he takes a moment to collect himself, gather his druthers, and pat the dust out of his clothes. But, then...
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerch!
A roaring vehicle burns its way around one of the road’s hairpin turns. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeerch. The vehicle does about eighty and guns itself right at John. He has to jump out of the way lest he be splattered like a bug against the grill!
Rooooooooooooom! The vehicle roars right past him. It’s an SUV. A Yukon. And John would recognize that damn Yukon from anywhere: it’s TEX!
Fortunately, John doesn’t think Tex recognized him, but...eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerch! He was wrong. The Yukon squeals to an abrupt halt about fifty yards past John.
Tex pops his head out the SUV’s window, peering into the side-view mirror with a squint of suspicion.
“Johnny! That you?!”
John freezes for a brief moment, standing to the side of the road like a deer staring into headlights. He says nothing...and moves nothing...
But then - BOOM! - he darts across the road like the roadrunner and starts clawing his way up another dusty hill.
Tex slams on the gas pedal and fishtails it the fuck out of there. He knew it looked like Johnny! He’ll cut him off at the top of the hill for sure.
John claws and claws and claws his way up the dirty hill. Rattlesnakes are all around him, hiding out in the clumps of chaparral. They're shaking. Rattling. And hissing.
“Agh!”
The hill gets so steep at times he might as well be scaling Everest. His long fingernails bend backwards as he digs them into the yellow silt and rocks. Ouch! He should’ve made more of an effort to trim those fuckers!
He finally makes it to the hill’s summit, straddles his way over another rusty guardrail and topples onto Mount Olympus Drive. Phew. Safe. Well, so he thinks.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerch!
Fuck, Tex’s SUV is just about a couple hundred yards down the road, heading right for him! John jumps back on his feet and starts sprinting faster than the T-1000 in Terminator 2.
Tex floors the SUV, doing about eighty, not giving a shit that he’s putting both himself and others in extreme danger.
John rounds a curve. He hops a (dead) rattlesnake. He leaps over a square garbage barrel. He dodges a speeding Bentley driven by a successful rap artist. Meep! Beep! “Asshole!”
But Tex is still hot on his trail, just like a heat-seeking missile...or one of those pesky triangular-winged flies that go for your head. There’s no way John’s going to shake this bastard. The only thing he can hope to do is beat him to the mansion.
And Hallelujah! After what seems like miles, John is relieved to see the tip of his golden gate appear above the hazy horizon of Mt. Olympus concrete. It has never looked so damn beautiful. He fixates his eyes on the glimmering ‘JC’ initials and runs as fast as he can towards them.
Tex, however, is gaining on John. Big-time! He’s about fifty yards behind him. No, forty yards. No, twenty yards. No, ten yards....
John runs and he huffs and he runs and he puffs.
Tex gains and gains and gains.
John runs and pukes in his mouth and runs and he’s almost there. He’s almost there. He’s almost fucking there...
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeerch! Tex rips the Yukon past John, peels into a U-turn right in front of the golden gate and screeches to a stop. He bursts out of the driver’s seat with his camera locked, loaded and ready to snatch a soul.
But John’s gone.
“Huh?”
The paparazzo scours every inch of the road, the mailbox and especially the gate...but he’s gone. John is gone.
“No! No!! No!!!!!!!!!!”
A boulder drops into the ground behind the Johnny Cruise mailbox. It’s the entranceway to John’s bunker. Somebody’s just gone down into it. It’s John, of course. He’s made it back to the mansion safe...and relatively sound.
SCENE TWENTY
The dungeon door bursts open. John leaps into Transylvania, pushes the door shut behind him and slams his back up to it. He breathes in and out. In and out. In and out. Christ, he’s sweating like a bastard. His shins burn. His joints ache. His head pounds. His heart races. ‘Get a hold of yourself. Get a grip.’
His eyeballs gravitate towards something on the floor, only a few feet in front of him. It’s his bowl. There’s likely to be a half or a quarter of nug left in that thing. Certainly a hit or two will bring his frazzled body back to a healthy equilibrium.
He swipes the bowl up from off the floor, whips his Humphrey Bogart lighter out of his pocket and bakes the weed nice and swell. He kisses the bowl with his lips and takes a deep inhale. The weed fills his lungs and the THC travels up his spine. His pain numbs. His mind fogs. Already, he feels one-hundred-percent better.
“Mary Jane’s the only woman who loves me,” he can’t help but say out loud for no particular reason.
High as a kite, John floats his way out of Transylvania and into Movieland, where he collapses onto the haunted couch and melts into the cushions. Like the rest of his senses, his eardrums are numb, but they begin to hear muffled sounds in the far distance. Voices, maybe. ‘Probably just the ghosts,’ he figures. ‘But, fuck, let the ghosts speak. Ghosts need to speak, too,’ he reasons as he buries his face deep into the couch. Hell, the voices could be coming from a stalker or the devil himself, and John wouldn’t give a shit. He’s so baked that he wouldn’t care if he was sitting in the eighth circle of Dante’s hell right now.
The voices increase in volume and become more coherent.
“Ok, Pamela. I love you, baby. See ya soon.”
A door slams somewhere deep into the house and John suddenly gets the feeling that he isn’t alone. His subconscious senses an energy coming from the far corner of the room. He lifts his head out of the couch cushions and sees Johnny staring at him with an eerily blank expression.
“Didn’t sleep ‘til noon today?” he asks.
“Oh, Johnny...please don’t,” says John, burying his face back into the cushions.
Johnny swaggers over to the Casablanca coffee table and swipes the remote control into his possession. As soon as he presses the ‘power’ button, the JumboTron shouts...
“Johnny Cruise!”
He changes the channel.
“Johnny Cruise!”
He switches channels again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
Johnny jumps atop the Casablanca coffee table and pounds his chest like Tarzan.
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Say it again!” Johnny shouts at the television.
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Say my name again!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Say! My! Name! Bitch!”
“Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise!!!”
“Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwww!!!!!!!”
All right, John has had enough of this frigging nonsense. This is absolutely ridiculous. So immature. So sophomoric.
“Turn it off, Johnny.”
Johnny whips his head away from the Jumbotron and leers into John’s line of vision. His face is freakier-looking than an eel’s.
“What?!”
“Turn the fucking TV off,” says John with the most confidence he’s had in a really long time.
Johnny suddenly becomes muzzled with submissiveness - like a puppy who’s just been scolded – and he does what he’s told. The TV shuts off.
“Well...we’re mighty assertive this morning. Aren’t we?”
“We gotta talk about what’s next.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s gotta be something big. Like another trip to Somalia or something.”
“John, those refugees are amazing heroes to me. They make me so grateful for what I have. But I’m not gonna have time to go there.”
“Why not?”
“John, look...Pamela and I...we’ve decided to get married.”
The word “married” kills John’s high almost instantaneously.
“Married? What are you talking about?”
“Pamela and I are in love. We’ve decided to get married.”
John leaps off the couch, grabs Johnny by the arms and starts shaking him like some twisted Au pair would shake a baby.
“No. No! No way!!! There’s no fucking way you’re getting married!!!”
“Get the fuck off me,” says Johnny, slamming John into the carpet.
“Right now, everybody thinks you’re a sleaze-wad who makes sex-tapes with sluts! You gotta go to Israel and help promote peace or something!”
“No, we gotta capitalize on the moment. Right now, everybody’s talking about Johnny and Pamela. Johnny and Pamela this...Johnny and Pamela that. If we get married right now, we’re gonna be America’s biggest power-couple - hands-down. We’ll be the next Beyonce and Jay-Z! Another Clark Gable and Carole Lombard!!!”
“No, this isn’t right. I’m gonna fix this right now!”
“Fix what?! Twelve hours ago the Johnny Cruise brand was dead! You should be kissing my ass. I saved your career!”
“MY CAREER?! Ha! It’s not my career anymore. It stopped being MY career a long time ago! It’s YOUR career!”
“Yeah, well that’s because you don’t know how to manage your career. If it wasn’t for me you’d already be back East now, working at Shop N’ Save. You’d be washed up! A has-been. A never-was!”
John’s eyes start to water and burn.
“Jesus, you see what I mean? You cry over every little thing. Pussies like yourself don’t have successful careers, John. Pussies like you work in a supermarket and live with your parents your whole life!”
The tears stream down John’s cheeks. For a brief moment, Johnny realizes he’s being too harsh. He decides to show a little sensitivity.
“I’m sorry.”
“Take it back, Johnny.”
Johnny kneels to the floor and rubs John’s back.
“I take it back. I take it back. Come on, buddy. Chin up, now.”
He gives John’s back a few more rubs, like a husband would do to a wife. Then he whips a rolled Playboy magazine out of his back pocket and opens to the centerfold.
“Look, John. Take one good look at Pamela. Take one look at Pamela and try to tell me she isn’t the hottest piece of ass in Hollywood right now.”
John sniffs up his tears and takes a peek at the magazine.
“Look at those tits. That ass. Think about all the girls who rejected you in high school. What are they gonna say when they see you with Pamela? Huh? Ya know?”
“Look, Johnny. I’m not gonna let you marry a girl you don’t love.”
“I LOVE Pamela. I LOVE her.”
“That’s bullshit. You love Hea...”
“YOU love Heather. YOU love her!!!”
“Shut up, Johnny! Shut up!!!”
Johnny has had enough of John’s impertinence. He clenches his fist and winds his arm up for a nasty punch.
But John snatches his fist in midair! And whips it to the ground!
“Don’t fuckin’ touch me! Get back! I control you! I made you and I control you!!!”
For the first time, Johnny actually looks a little scared.
“Whoa...ok. No need to get so worked up. Relax.”
He rests his hands to his side and gives John a little room to breathe.
“I’m outta here,” says John. “This is ridiculous. I’m leaving this house. I’m leaving Hollywood.”
He hobbles his way up from the floor and heads for Transylvania. But he can’t even make it halfway across the room before Johnny says:
“Heather doesn’t love you, John.”
John stops dead in his tracks, but refuses to turn around. He takes a deep breath and musters up the confidence to move forward.
“Heather NEVER loved you.”
John stops in his tracks again.
“Heather and her husband are curled up in their bed right now, holding each other tight, talkin’ about how great it was fucking each other last night.”
John’s knees start shivering and he collapses to the floor.
“But you know what she’s gonna do when she rolls outta bed, turns on the TV and hears about the sex tape? Know how she’s gonna feel? She’s gonna suddenly realize how much sex you’ve been having without her and how amazing it must be. And then she’s gonna wish that sex with Alex could be more amazing. And then she’s gonna see how hot Pamela is and she’s gonna see you get married and she’s gonna beat the shit out of herself knowing she coulda had you, but it’s too late, bitch. ‘Oh, just kidding. Come, here, hun. Let me hold you all night long. No, it’s too late, BITCH!!!’ You’re gone from her forever with a girl who’s got better boobs, nicer ass, cuter face...the list doesn’t end, motherfucker.”
Johnny starts spitting out every word like some beast from a J.R. Tolkien movie.
“That stupid bitch is gonna live out the rest of her life in complete misery knowing she missed the boat with you. Too late, you fucking bitch!”
His beastly spits turn into all-out barks.
“Too late!!!!!!!!!!!!”
John’s eyes glaze over, like they’re being put under a spell.
“No, Johnny. You’re messing with my mind. I’m not listening to you. I’m the only one here. You don’t exist.”
He regains his confidence and gets back on his feet.
“I’m leaving this house.”
This time, he successfully makes it out of Movieland and even makes it into Transylvania, but when he gets into Transylvania, he finds that the door leading to the outside world is blocked...by Johnny. It’s almost as though he ‘beamed’ himself there, like a character in Star Trek!
“You’re not going anywhere,” growls Johnny like a guard dog.
“Yes I am, Johnny. I’m leaving this house.”
John charges at the door and plows into Johnny, but Johnny swats him away like a fly.
John charges at him again, but Johnny easily pushes him away like he weighs about two pounds.
John fucking lunges at Johnny, but Johnny sweeps John’s legs and slams him into the floor, belly-first.
“Ouch! You fucking asshole!” yells John from the floor.
Johnny tries to grab John by the hair, but John slaps his hand away.
“Get back! Get back!!!”
Johnny cautiously takes a step back.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore, Johnny! I don’t even see you! You don’t exist.”
Johnny says nothing - just stares at John with an unsettling stoicism.
“I’m leaving now.”
John pushes himself up from the floor, limps to the door, grabs the brass ring and begins to pull it open.
“All right, tough-guy,” Johnny says from behind. “Go out there and fix things. Let the world see your face. Your hooked-nose. Your craggly skin...”
John can’t pull the door open any further.
“...How about your yellow teeth?! The eczema on your upper back. Your left arm that’s bigger than your right arm due to excessive masturbation with the left hand. Let them see your thick eyebrows and uneven sideburns...”
John slams the door closed with his face and starts bawling uncontrollably.
“Let the public see the REAL you. The guy who sits on his ass all day and never donated one single penny to any charity. How much did you donate to the Red Cross last year? Huh? How many Aids walks did you participate in? How many children with Leukemia did you be a role model to? None. But you sure as hell smoked a lot of weed!”
“Johnny, please stop. Don’t do this,” John pleads as he slides down to the floor, trying ever-so-desperately to suck the tears back up into his nose.
“Go on and leave the house, you selfish asshole! Boy is Heather gonna be glad she never left Alex for you. Holy shit is she gonna have some pleasant dreams after a long night of riding Alex like a carousel.”
Oh, John can’t bear to have such an image in his mind.
“Johnny, I beg you! Please!!!”
“You walk out that door and you’re buying yourself a one-way ticket back East. Back to the supermarket. Back to your parents’ basement. Back to having no woman. Back to snapping it to porn. Back to fantasizing about how you’ll someday marry Heather when, in reality, you absolutely never will.”
“Johnny! Agh-ha! No! Oh, stop! Please stop!!!!”
“Stop that crying, pussy! You’re one of the most famous motherfuckers in the world. You make twenty million dollars a picture. You’re a bigger brand than McDonald’s! You live in one of the nicest houses in the Hollywood Hills. Stanley Hitchcock’s house. Your favorite filmmaker shot some of your favorite movies right here where we stand and you want to leave it??? Something’s not adding up here, John.”
“Aha-ha! Oh, no! No, Johnny!”
“You always want more and more and more. You’re never happy. Millions are starving in Africa. People are repressed by dictatorships. Soldiers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan! What do YOU have to be sad about?!”
John can’t answer the question. He can only close his eyes and hope that Johnny disappears.
“I said what the fuck do you have to be sad about?!”
“Oh-ho! Johnny! Oh God!!!”
Johnny’s eyes pop out of his face, just like one of those stress-reliever toys that you squeeze.
“Shut up, motherfucker! Shuuuuut!!! Up!!!!!!!!!!!”
John opens his eyes and sees that Johnny has vanished. Only the echoes of his demonic screams remain, reverberating through the foyer like a dragon’s roar.
He sits upright, hugs his knees into his chest and whimpers.
“I need a hug. Somebody give me a hug. Oh, God.”
SCENE TWENTY-ONE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
John sits on the edge of the haunted couch, stuffing a glass tube with a crystallized-looking rock. It’s crack and he’s got a whole zip-lock baggy of this shit on the Casablanca coffee table.
He packs the rock atop a piece of steel wool jammed into the tube to act as a filter. Then he takes his lighter, heats the crack, rolls the tube between his lips - making sure to light the rock evenly - and sucks in a really good hit.
“Yah, Yah, Yah,” says John, as the crack fries his brain like an egg in a pan.
He grabs the remote control from off the coffee table and fires up the JumboTron.
“Johnny and Pamela tie the knot! Hey, everyone, Brian Seacrest here for Inside Entertainment News. We have exclusive new footage of Johnny and Pamela’s Malibu beach wedding that will SHOCK you.”
The JumboTron fills with shaky footage of Johnny and Pamela’s wedding ceremony taken from a helicopter hovering over the Malibu cliffs.
“The lavish affair turned out to be a who’s-who of Hollywood, as just about every A-lister in the industry was in attendance. Everyone from Arnold Stallone to Bridget Zellweger to Rene Welch to Amanda Zeta Jones made an appearance. The five-million-dollar wedding will go down as being the most expensive in Hollywood history, even topping the Liza Minneli/David Guest wedding, which reportedly cost 3.5 million dollars.”
John gives his pipe another crackle and his brain another sizzle.
“Johnny and Pamela are now the most powerful couple in Hollywood, with a combined net-worth of over 800 million dollars, according to Forbes magazine.”
John lets the sweet-smelling smoke ooze out of his chest. Damn, he feels so fine right now. ‘So very fine. Like the juice.’ But, suddenly, he hears commotion heading its way into the room.
“Yeah-yeah! Yee-haw! Whooooooooooo!!!”
Johnny bursts into Movieland with his arms spilling articles of fan mail all over the carpet. He wears a black tuxedo with his bowtie casually dangling from his snow-white collar.
“Look, John! Look at how much mail there is! This is unbelievable!”
“Huh? Wha?” mumbles John from the couch. He’s so fried he doesn’t know what the hell Johnny’s saying to him right now.
Johnny drops all of the mail onto the carpet, tramples over it with his shiny tuxedo shoes and leaps onto the Casablanca coffee table.
“Look, John…me and Pamela…we’ve been doing some talking.”
John rolls his head up to Johnny, his mouth agape like a mentally handicapped vegetable.
“We want to have children.”
John’s not sure if he heard right. It’s entirely possible that he’s just high as fuck.
“Children?”
“Yes, John. We’re gonna have a child.”
It takes a while for John’s mind to process Johnny’s words. The crack seems to have damaged the connections between the synapses.
“No. No. No....”
“Yes, John. Yes.”
“No. No! No!!! No kids!”
“Pamela and I are in love and we want to have a child. So, yes, we’re having kids!”
“No, I won’t let you bring kids into all this! This is where I draw the line! I’m putting a stop to this once and for all!”
John tries to get up from the couch, but he trips on his way up, falling face-first into the coffee table.
“Ouch! Fuck!!!”
“Come on, John. We have to keep capitalizing on the situation here. People are obsessed with everything Johnny and Pamela. If we don’t do anything, people are just gonna stop paying attention to us. But if we have a kid...”
“No, Johnny! No!!!”
“Think about how gorgeous the kid would be. My good looks. Pamela’s good looks. It’s simple eugenics, John. We’d give birth to the most beautiful fucking child in the world.”
“No, I’m leaving, Johnny! Shut up!”
John finally manages to stumble onto his feet and he wobbles his way out of the room.
“I can see it now,” Johnny growls from behind. “You getting off the plane at the airport and taking the cab straight to Shop ‘N Save to ask for your old job back. Turns out Heather’s there buying her groceries and she sees you...”
He mimics Heather’s voice.
“‘Phew, glad I didn’t end up with John after all. Alex has a much better job in the Financial District, one that can assure that I have security for the rest of my life. Alex will give me a better house...better car...better vacations...and more kids. Oh, plus his dick is about three times bigger than John’s and I love to ride it after he treats me to a nice dinner that John would NEVER be able to afford. Yes, I made a good decision in marrying Alex and I also love to suck his cock.’”
John collapses to the floor before he can make it out of the room.
“O God! O God! Johnny! No!!!”
SCENE TWENTY-TWO - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
John kneels beside the Casablanca coffee table and snorts a long, long, long, long line of coke. And he quickly chases it with a big hit of weed.
“Yeeeeeeeah. He likes it. Hey, Mikey, he likes it. Oh, yeeeeeeeeeeeeah, he likes it.”
He snatches the remote control from off the coffee table and zaps it at the JumboTron.
“Is it a baby-bump?! We’ve got shocking new photos of Pamela Lopez shopping at “Little Seed” on Rodeo Drive today. The world-famous supermodel spent a reported $250,000 at the high-end baby store. This tops Angelina Witherspoon’s recent baby shopping spree, which added up to a reported $125,000.”
John wraps his blistered lips around his crack pipe and sparks up a rock. ‘Yes. I’m actually getting pretty damn high right now,’ he thinks as he twirls the pipe around in his mouth. The crack mixes so well with the coke and weed. In fact, this is probably the highest John’s been in a while. He feels like fucking Atlas, like he could hoist the world up onto his shoulders and toss it into the wastebasket like it was nothing.
But before John can even blow out the hit, he hears a ghostly cry coming from somewhere deep within the house. It’s a baby’s cry.
SCENE TWENTY-THREE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Johnny Cruise...is a dad! Hey everyone, I’m Kristina DePandi for Inside Entertainment News. We’ve got the exclusive first images of Johnny and Pamela’s new baby boy as they carried him out of Cedars-Sinai Hospital today. The adorable Adonis ‘Johnny’ Cruise was born at 6:59am early Tuesday morning and weighed a hefty eight pounds, six ounces. People magazine reportedly spent five million dollars for a first photo of baby Adonis, which tops the 2.5 Million it spent on photos of Angelina Witherspoon’s baby last year...”
John lies like a doped-up Cleopatra on the usual haunted couch, sucking on a fresh bowl of weed that’s laced with coke...or maybe it’s LSD...he can’t really remember which one. Whatever it is, the shit’s actually bringing him to a pretty high place, which is good news to him.
“The news of baby Adonis comes just weeks after Pamela spent a reported $250,000 on a Wizard-of-Oz-themed baby shower at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Everyone from Julia Davis to Gena Roberts to Diane Sarandon to Susan Keaton was present at the who’s-who affair. Keaton reportedly spent $300,000 on her shower gift, which tops the reported $275,000 Lopez dropped for Keaton’s shower gift last year.”
John blows out a thin stream of smoke and suddenly hears the high-pitched scream of a newborn baby. It sounds like the baby’s in the room with him, but he can’t see anything. He looks all over the place, but there’s nobody but him...alone.
Wait! Suddenly, he sees what-appears-to-be a woman in a silky nightgown holding a baby in her arms. But her flesh is transparent and she’s invisible from the ankles down. Plus, it looks like she just walked through the damn wall!
John, of course, believes the visions to be a product of his blazing imagination. The weed must have been laced with LSD, he figures - hence the strange hallucinations. Nevertheless, he still feels he ought to check things out.
He gets up from the couch, stumbles over to the wall where the apparition disappeared and pokes his head into the next room over. It’s Cape Cod (i.e. the parlor). But there’s nobody in there. Strange.
John swears he still hears a baby crying somewhere close. It sounds like it’s in the room with him, but also in the distance. Or, in other words, it’s in the same physical space, but tuning in and out from a slightly different frequency. Yes, this is the best way to describe it. Weird. Very weird.
SCENE TWENTY-FOUR - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“No, no more kids! I’m in control here! No more kids and that’s final!!!”
John and Johnny are in the library, the latter of whom is on the computer, typing ‘Johnny’ and ‘Cruise’ into the Google search engine.
“John, there’s 50 million Google hits here! Holy shit!!!”
“I don’t give a damn how many Google hits there are! This has gone far enough, Johnny! I’m in control, remember! I’m in control!”
“Ok, you’re in control.”
Johnny closes out of Google and opens up the American Airlines website.
“Wha-what are you doing?” asks John.
“Oh, I’m just buying you a one-way ticket back East.”
He double-clicks the mouse a few times to let John know he isn’t bluffing.
“You OK with an aisle seat? Wanna fly direct?”
“Look, I’m gonna have kids with Heather.”
“Oh, Heather...ok, that sounds like a pretty good plan....”
Johnny closes the American Airlines page and opens up Heather’s Facebook profile.
“Heather...hmmm...’Ee-hee-hee, I love my friends, my cat and - most importantly - my HUSBAND. E-hee-hee.’”
Even though John’s heard it about a million times by now, the word ‘husband’ never fails to rip a new chamber into his aching heart.
“Oh, Johnny...please don’t,” says John as he starts dropping to his knees.
But Johnny grabs John by his greasy hair and shoves his face into the computer screen.
“You’re gonna have kids with THIS HEATHER??? This Heather who’s undoubtedly sucking off Alex as we speak? THIS HEATHER?!”
John bursts into sobs and collapses to the floor.
“O Heather!”
SCENE TWENTY-FIVE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
SCENE TWENTY-SIX - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Another baby bump? That’s right...baby number-two is on the way for Johnny and Pamela. Hey, folks, Brian Seacrest for Inside Entertainment News here. A Rep for Johnny Cruise confirmed today that the Hollywood power-couple is already five-months into a second pregnancy.”
John kneels within inches of the enormous JumboTron, peeling the plastic wrapping off a tube of modeling glue.
“The baby-bump was first spotted while Pamela was photographed strolling baby Adonis through Griffith Park. But the rumors of a second pregnancy are hardly rumors anymore. Pamela’s publicist released a statement to the public today, saying: ‘Johnny and Pamela are happy to announce that Pamela is with child and is looking forward to giving Adonis a sibling.’”
John stuffs the spout of the modeling glue up his nose and takes a big whiff. ‘Holy shit, this stuff actually works.’ Yes, it makes his head feel vaporized - like he’s one with the air around him.
But, suddenly, he senses a presence behind him. It’s Johnny...standing atop the Casablanca coffee table.
“She thought she was so cool having sex with Alex every night while you were alone in your twin-sized bed staring up at the ceiling. But now she’s gonna see the wonderful family you have and she’s gonna be, like, ‘Oh, if only I knew John had genes like that and could give me such a great-looking family! Oh, shit! I shouldn’t have married Alex! I should have married John!’ And then you’re gonna be, like, ‘Oh, come here, hun. You want me back, huh? You want me back now? You want me back? OK, come here, hunny. Come here, baby. Let me hold you...NO, get back! Fuck off!!! It’s too late for you! It’s too LATE!!!’”
John stuffs the glue back up his nose and takes another good sniff. This time, he is convinced that his head has turned from a solid to a gas. Everything would be so swell if only he didn’t hear another baby crying somewhere close to him. It’s the high-pitched cry of a newborn...or, wait, maybe two.
He looks all around his surroundings, but as far as he can see, he is the only person in the room.
SCENE TWENTY-SEVEN - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“John-Pam have twins! Yes, you heard me right: Helena and Diana Cruise are the newest additions to Hollywood’s most powerful family. The news comes just weeks after Pamela reportedly spent $500,000 on a Winnie-the-Pooh-themed baby shower, which tops the $250,000 she spent on Adonis’ Wizard-of-Oz-themed baby shower. Such celebrities as Giselle Stefani and Gwen Bundchen were in attendance. Stefani spent a reported $30,000 on two designer exer-saucers for the babies.”
SCENE TWENTY-EIGHT - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
John kneels in front of the JumboTron with a bump of coke spilling off his index finger. He shoves the finger up his nostril and takes a big, long sniff. Dang, it makes him feel real good. So good.
He tops the coke off with a combination of two different painkillers: Vicodin and Demarol. Two pills of each. And he washes them down his throat with a cup of Miller High Life mixed with prescription cough syrup.
“Yeeah. Yeeah. Yeeeeeeeeah!”
He feels so damn very good right now. Real very-good. Perhaps the best way to express the way he feels is by saying:
“Baga baga baga baga baga baga boo. Baga baga baga baga baga baga boo. Baga baga baga baga baga baga boo. Baga baga baga baga baga baga booooooooo.”
He falls ass-backwards onto the carpet and gazes up to the looming JumboTron:
“And...the Oscar goes to...”
Angelina Witherspoon (the presenter) leans her glossy lips and Veneered teeth into a microphone on the Kodak Theater podium. Her long, blonde hair hangs like royal drapes over her sparkling Oscar De La Renta gown.
“Johnny Cruise! For SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION meets DANCES WITH WOLVES!”
The pit orchestra swells into the theme from SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION meets DANCES WITH WOLVES and the Kodak Theater erupts into applause - especially George Pitt, Brad Clooney and the other Best Actor nominees who have just lost to Johnny. They clap much harder than the others and squeeze a teethy smile out onto their faces. They know it’s not good for their image to be perceived as sore losers.
As for Johnny, he plays the situation as modest as he can and shyly rises from his seat. Pamela gives him a kiss and the producers of SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION meets DANCES WITH WOLVES give him hugs. Then he makes his way to the stage, looking shocked and dazed and confused.
He wades his way through a sea of hands patting him on the back.
“Congratulations, Johnny!”
“You deserve it, man!”
“Way to go!”
He eventually ascends the Kodak stage, graciously accepts the Oscar from Angelina Witherspoon and gives her a gentleman’s kiss on the cheek in thanks.
“Wow...just...wow,” he says as he begins his acceptance speech. “Haha.”
The audience erupts into a second wave of cheers, which gradually turns into an all-out standing ovation.
“Thank you. Haha. Thank you.”
The audience is crazy!
George Pitt is ecstatic!
Brad Clooney hoots and hollers!
Pamela is so proud!
After a whopping thirty seconds of thunderous roars and cheers and whistles and hollers, the applause finally fades and everybody in the theater takes their seats.
“I want to thank my agent, my manager, my publicist and Carl Weinstein at Universal. I want to thank God, my wonderful wife Pamela and my three amazing children...”
Pamela blows Johnny kisses from the audience.
“It’s just so hard to believe that only ten years ago I was sitting in my trailer home watching these awards on TV while my dad was working eight jobs and my mom was taking care of my eight brothers all by herself.”
Johnny has to take a couple of seconds to gather his composure, as he is overwhelmed by his emotions. After a long, dramatic pause, he raises his Oscar high into the air and yells:
“This is for my brother who was hit by a car when he was eight! Thank you!”
The orchestra swells into a melodramatic melody as Johnny exits stage right. The emotionally-manipulative music, combined with the roar of the audience, creates the impression that the greatest moment in world history has just taken place on the Kodak Theater stage.
As for John, he finds it difficult to be excited (vicariously) through Johnny’s win, mainly because he’s just come to the realization that he’s had one drug too many. It suddenly feels like there’s a category-five hurricane in his stomach, slowly making its way up his esophagus...up into his mouth...out of his mouth...and all over the Movieland rug. In other words - blaaaaaaaah - he has just puked everywhere, and, Christ, he’s just given new meaning to the term ‘projectile-vomiting’.
He hangs his head down to the carpet - the strings of post-vomit saliva dangling from his mouth - when, suddenly, he hears the sounds of little children circling around him and giggling playfully. He smears the saliva to the side of his cheek and searches the room for the source to this commotion.
But there’s nothing. John is alone. He can hear the voices all around him, but he can’t see a damn thing.
SCENE TWENTY-NINE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Kristina DePandi here speaking with Johnny Cruise outside the Vanity Fair Oscar party. Congratulations, Johnny.”
“Thank you. Thank you.”
“When you were a little boy, would you ever dream about holding that Oscar in your hand?”
“Yeah, I used to sit in the bathtub - holding the shampoo bottle in my hand - and I'd rehearse my acceptance speech.”
“Was it anything like what you said tonight?”
“Um, no, actually. Haha. Honestly, I didn’t even prepare anything for tonight cuz I didn’t think I’d win.”
“Oh, come on, there was no tiny inkling in the back of your mind???”
“No, honestly. I was up against some amazing actors. I mean, George Pitt is one of my heroes. I almost feel like I should give the Oscar to him. He deserves an award so much more. You know, he donated a million dollars of his own money to Hurricane relief last year. And then there’s Brad Clooney. A true genius and I don’t say that about a lot of people. He volunteers at a homeless shelter on Skid Row once a week.”
“How’s the fam?”
“Oh, they’re amazing. Really amazing. Yeah, just amazing.”
“Anything else you wanna say to your fans?”
“Dreams really do come true. Support your troops!”
SCENE THIRTY - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Whoo!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Give it to me!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Yeee-haw!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“What’s my name?!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Whooooooo!”
Johnny rolls around the Movieland floor, zapping the remote control at the JumboTron with the energy of a hyperactive child.
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!!!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Say my name!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
Meanwhile, John’s head hangs off the haunted couch, drooling into a wastebasket of vomit. There’s also some blood mixed in with the stomach acids because all the dang crack has given him ulcers.
“Change the channel!” Johnny shouts at John, stuffing the remote into his face.
“Johnny, please, I’m not well.”
“Change the channel!”
“Let me be, Johnny. I’m very ill.”
“You listen to me,” Johnny grumbles with a demonic growl. “I am your master. And your master says change that fuckin’ channel!”
John reluctantly changes the channel.
“Johnny Cruise!” shouts the TV.
“Change it again!”
“Johnny, please...”
“Change it again!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Again!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Again!!!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“Again!!! Change that channel again!!!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“And again!!!”
“Johnny Cruise!”
“And again!”
“Tobey Gyllenhaal!”
Tobey Gyllenhaal?! Needless to say, the name is rain on Johnny’s parade.
“Again!”
“Dennis Norton.”
“Again?!”
“Edward Hopper.”
“Again???”
“Amanda Diaz.”
“Shit!”
SCENE THIRTY-ONE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Johnny cheating on Pamela? That was the rumor circulating Hollywood today when Pamela was spotted checking into the Chateau Marmont late last night. Pamela allegedly found out about the affair after finding a suspicious text message on her husband’s Blackberry.”
SCENE THIRTY-TWO - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“She cheated on me first, John!”
“You’re an asshole! You have kids, for Christ sakes! How do you think this is going to affect them?!”
John has returned to Transylvania. His hand grips the door to the outside world. And he’s absolutely adamant about walking out that damn thing!
“That’s it. I’m really leaving the house this time,” he says as he pulls the door open.
Johnny stands only a few feet away from him - desperately trying to inch his way closer, like a man preventing his friend from committing suicide. Of course, in this case, it’s CAREER suicide.
“’I love you, Alex,’” says Johnny in his best Heather voice. “’To think that a guy who works as a cashier in a supermarket and lives with his parents thought I would leave you for him. Hahahahaha. Don’t you think that’s ridiculous, Alex?’”
John collapses to the floor and whimpers like an injured puppy.
“Oh, Johnny...stop. Please.”
“’Yes, John is ridiculous,’” says Johnny in an obnoxiously deep voice meant to mimic Alex. “‘Now, suck my big, awesome cock that’s bigger than John’s.’ ‘Sure thing, Alex! Don’t have to ask me twice!’”
He slurps his tongue over and over again. Over and over again. Slurp. Suck. Slurp. Slurp. Slurp. Suck.
O Misery! John can’t get the horrid image out of his mind: Heather sucking off Alex! O what a horrible sight!
“No! O NO! Stop it! Stop it!! Stop it!!!!!!!!”
SCENE THIRTY-THREE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
“Da-dum da-dum...da-da-dum.....Da-dum da-dum...da-da dum da-dum.....daaaaaaaaaaa-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.”
SCENE THIRTY-FOUR - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“And Pamela has had enough! Hey, everyone: Kristina DePandi for Inside Entertainment News here. We all know that the John-Pam marriage has been on the rocks for several months now, but, today, Pamela officially filed for divorce, citing infidelity. Such a move could mean BIG BUCKS for Pamela. Johnny reportedly did NOT have his wife of two years sign a pre-nup before the marriage.”
The channel on the JumboTron switches to ZMT.
“Yeah, I got Pamela outside Spider Club with some really young-looking boy-toy,” says the long, blonde-haired surfer-dude. “She was lookin’ hot, actually. Enjoying the single life.”
“Good for her,” comments one of the black paparazzos. “I say ‘you go girl!’”
Everybody in the ZMT studio laughs hysterically.
SCENE THIRTY-FIVE - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“What are you doing?! Stop doing that! Stop it!”
John (not Johnny) hovers over Johnny (not John) - an interesting reversal of roles. Johnny looks like the living dead, lying gray-faced on the haunted couch, taking long guzzles from a handle of Jack. His wrinkled clothes and untamed facial hair exude an appearance of a man who has hit rock bottom, though it’s a little over-the-top. A tad too contrived.
“She took everything from me, John. I can’t live without her and the kids.”
“You never loved her. And you don’t give a shit about the kids. They’re nothing but trophies to you!”
He tries to snatch the whiskey out of Johnny’s arms, but Johnny has too strong a grip on it.
“I have a problem, John. I need some help.”
SCENE THIRTY-SIX - MONTAGE SEQUENCE
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Hey, everyone, Brian Seacrest here for Inside Entertainment News. In a move that is bound to shock the world, Johnny Cruise checked himself into rehab last night, allegedly because of an alcohol problem. A Rep for Cruise released a statement today, saying, ‘Mr. Cruise has decided to address a personal problem he’s been dealing with for quite a while now. He asks that you please respect his privacy during this difficult time.’ Pamela Lopez’ camp has yet to comment on the stunning news.”
SCENE THIRTY-SEVEN - END OF MONTAGE SEQUENCE
John chokes his upper arm with a leather belt, forcing the blood to surge into the area of his inner elbow. He makes a fist and his veins swell. Then he pricks a syringe into the plumpest vein and injects it with a dark-brown liquid.
“Oh, God....”
His pupils become pinpoints.
“UUUuuuuuuugggghhhhhhh...” he groans like a zombie in Night of the Living Dead.
The shit’s called black-tar-heroin and it’s straight off the streets of Tijuana and it’s eighty-mother-fucking-percent pure, if not more. Oh, it’s so damn good. As soon as this stuff enters your system you feel like you’re getting wrapped in a giant, warm blanket that will forever protect you from all the bullshit in the world. It’s like being back in the womb and, therefore, closer to NOT being alive and, therefore, closer to God.
“Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah.”
John releases the belt from his arm and it slithers down to the carpet like a timid snake. Submerged with worry-free euphoria, he grabs the remote control from off the Casablanca coffee table and gives the JumboTron a zap.
The screen scrambles for a signal and then an image of Johnny appears. He is at a press conference outside a rehabilitation center in Pasadena.
“I don’t know," he says into a bouquet of news station microphones. "I just wanna thank God for helping me through this. And I’m looking forward to a fresh start.”
“What’s next for you?!” shouts a reporter.
“I got a film coming out tomorrow called BLAIR WITCH PROJECT meets THE RING.”
“Is it true that you signed on to make a MRS. DOUBTFIRE meets SCHINDLER’S LIST?!”
“Sorry, guys, I can’t say anything about that. But I will say that SPEED meets LETHAL WEAPON TWO will be out next summer.”
Click! John switches the channel to another image of Johnny. This time, he’s back on the set of Dr. Winfrey.
“No, it was a very scary time. A VERY scary time. I...I...”
He loses his composure and starts to cry.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” says Dr. Winfrey, patting Johnny’s knee in consolation. “Take your time.”
Johnny swipes a tear from his cheek and continues.
“But life is full of challenges. I mean, for a guy who grew up in the projects and saw people getting shot by gangbangers every day...I felt like I could get through anything.”
“How did you make it through the days?”
“I focused my attention on God and how beautiful life is when you’re sober.”
“And you’ve since become a born-again Christian?”
“Yes, tha....”
The studio audience bursts into cheers.
“That’s correct. Yes.”
The audience gives Johnny a standing ovation.
“Thank you. Really. Thank you.”
John sparks up a bowl and tops off his heroin high with some really good weed. But before he can even get a good hit into his chest, he hears a noise in the far distance of the house. A door opens and shuts. Somebody’s coming.
John rolls his eyes over to the far end of Movieland and suddenly sees Johnny staring at him...holding two suitcases by the handles.
“Well, aren’t you gonna congratulate me?” Johnny asks after a good ten seconds of saying nothing at all.
John coughs the weed out of his lungs.
“For what?”
“My sobriety.”
“Fuck you, Johnny.”
Johnny releases his grip on the suitcases and they thud their way to the floor.
“Whad you say?”
John’s eyelids are so damn heavy from the heroin that his eyeballs are nothing but small, shivering slits.
“I said...FUUUUUUUUCK...UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.”
Johnny marches over to John and - WHACK!!! - gives him a mean slap across the face.
“Don’t you ever say ‘Fuck you’ to me. I OWN YOU! Hear me?! I got your ass!”
The problem is John doesn’t really hear him. The heroin has filled his eardrums with a sound that is akin to a digital radio losing a satellite signal. It’s like he’s tuning in and out of reality’s frequency.
“Look at this!” Johnny yells, snatching the remote control out of John’s hands.
“Johnny Cruise!” screams the TV. “Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise!!!”
The sound of his name makes Johnny cackle in delight.
“Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!”
He shoves his ass into John’s face.
“Kiss my ass!”
John nods in and out of alertness.
“Huh?”
“Kiss my ass!”
“I’m not kissing your ass.”
“Kiss it, motherfucker! Kiss it!!!”
He grinds his ass into John’s face, nearly suffocating the poor bastard.
“Johnny, stop. Please, stop. Ouch.”
John gasps for oxygen. But Johnny keeps smothering him.
“Johnny! I can’t breathe! Stop it!!!”
“Kiss it!”
“Johnny, please...”
“Kiss it!”
“Johnny! Agh!”
“Kiss it!”
“Johnny!”
“Kiss it!”
“No, Johnny!”
“By the way, you can’t hang out in here anymore,” Johnny says to John as he finally takes his ass out of the poor bastard’s face.
“What?”
“Yeah, I signed on to do this cool Reality TV show and they’re gonna be taping it here at the house. Think BREAKING BONADUCE meets THE BACHELOR.”
“Reality TV show?! You’re not doing any Reality TV show!”
“Yes I am. I already signed the contract. So, come on, get off the couch and go upstairs.”
“I’m not going anywhere. If you’re doing a Reality TV show, I’m staying right here.”
“But this is where most of the show’s gonna be taped!”
“Well, that’s fine, Johnny.”
“Oh yeah...that makes for some really good TV. Watching you sit on the couch, shooting dope into your vein. Yeah, that’s good, quality entertainment.”
“Johnny...don’t do this. Please....”
“Remember that time you were videotaped in video production class and you couldn’t believe how ugly you looked, cuz you had that cold sore on your lip? Don’t you remember that, John?”
“No, not this time, Johnny! I don’t hear you. You don’t exist. If what they want is reality, then I’m reality. You’re a sack of lies!”
“’Hey Alex, come here a moment,’” Johnny says in his Heather voice. “’What the hell is this show? Who’s that loser sitting on the couch shooting heroin into his vein?’” he says in his Alex voice. “‘Can you believe this is that guy I told you about who said he was in love with me?’ ‘That schmuck? Ha!’”
“Johnny, please! Stop this!”
“‘Can you believe that guy thought there was a fat chance in hell that I would leave you for him?’ ‘Ahahaha-hahaha-hahaha...stop it, Heth. I can’t breathe!’ ‘Why isn’t that motherfucker off the air already? Come on, Alex, let’s go have some seeeeeeeeeeeex!’”
“Oh, Johnny! No! Oh-ho! I need a hug!!!”
SCENE THIRTY-EIGHT
John sits Indian-style in the darkness of the master bedroom’s giant walk-in closet. The place is desolate except for a few dust-bunnies, spiders and an abandoned clothes-hanger or two.
John places a Tic-Tac-sized chunk of heroin onto a silver spoon and squirts some water onto it with a syringe. He mixes the water and heroin together with a wooden toothpick and heats the bottom of the spoon with his Humphrey Bogart lighter. His mouth waters with Pavlovian intensity as he watches the heroin dissolve into a bubbly goo.
Once the heroin’s cooked, he drops a Skittle-sized piece of cotton into the spoon to soak the juice into a glob and filter out the crap. Then he takes the syringe, pricks the needle into the cotton and sucks up the dirty juice.
He rolls up his sleeve, finds the plumpest vein, pricks the needle into it and shoots the junk straight into his bloodstream.
“Uuuuuuuuuugggggggghhhhhhh.” Warmth. Endless warmth. The feeling of a million hugs...all at once. Just what Doctor Feelgood ordered.
He drops the dirty syringe onto the carpet and falls backwards into what-feels-like a bottomless pit. He closes his eyes and - for a moment or two - he is consumed by a total feeling of unreality. The thorns of life-on-earth are no longer digging into his soul. All is fine. All is well.
But then he hears voices. Mumbles. Ghostly chatter. He opens his eyes and lifts his head up from the carpet. Christ, there are shadows flickering beneath the closet door. Yes, there’s definitely people in the master bedroom! He better check things out lest he allow his home to be overrun by stalkers while he’s under the influence of this wonderful drug.
He crawls over to the closet door, reaches up to the doorknob, gives it a twist and pushes the door open a crack. Damn, Johnny’s lying in bed being filmed by two cameramen wielding hi-definition video cameras. There’s lighting and sound equipment all over the place. There’s also a guy with headphones, holding a boom-mic. And there’s a grip holding up a large, white board, bouncing light into Johnny’s face.
Johnny is on the phone for this particular shot, talking to his ex-wife Pamela while lying in bed with two scantily-clad girls who look like strippers. John can’t quite make out what Johnny’s saying or what exactly the strippers are doing in the bed, but he has to admit that whatever’s going on is intriguing as hell and will undoubtedly make for some really good television.
Johnny, however, spots John in his periphery and flashes him an evil look that would make Beelzebub blush. To John’s amazement, the ‘look’ ends up crushing his feelings more than he would have thought, perhaps because all the drugs in his system are making him more emotionally sensitive. He sheepishly pulls his head back into the closet and cooks up another rig to bring back that cozy feeling.
SCENE THIRTY-NINE
John sits amidst the center of what-is-now a rather large pile of dirty syringes covering the carpet to the walk-in closet. He finishes cooking himself up another hit and shoots it straight into his vein. Unfortunately, his body has become desensitized to the positive effects of the drug and the highs are now starting to turn sour on him. His body feels as though there's an army of red ants crawling all over his flesh.
He scratches and scratches and scratches, but can’t get rid of the itchiness. Dried skin flakes off of him like he's a molting rattlesnake. It falls onto the closet carpet like ash from a wildfire.
SCENE FORTY
John sits in the center of an even larger pile of dirty syringes, injecting himself with an even greater dose of heroin. This time, however, he chases the heroin with a full syringe of coke, which collectively is known in the drug world as a “speedball”. The trick here is to basically shoot enough heroin into your vein so that you go low enough to see Death staring you right in the face, but then quickly shoot enough coke to bring you back up before Death can actually sink its grip into you. It’s like teasing the Reaper. And it’s a hell of a rush.
But John’s speedball doesn’t go according to plan. Perhaps he did just a little too much coke, because he’s hearing more voices in his head...or at least he thinks it’s because of the coke. Plus, he’s talking to himself.
“Know what, Johnny? I’m leaving the closet now. I’m leaving the closet right now.”
He stumbles up from the pile of rusty syringes and the needles dig into the soles of his bare feet. There’s probably a seventy-five-percent chance that his blood is now contaminated with strings of Hepatitis C bacteria, but John’s too high to really care. He wobbles his way over to the closet door. He clasps the knob. He creaks the door open a couple of inches. He pokes his head out...
Johnny’s not in the bedroom. Neither are the strippers. Or the cameramen. Or the sound guys, or the grips. But somebody else is: a little girl, who looks likes she’s just stepped out of the 1930s. She has long, curly chestnut hair, the locks of which drape over a blue dress with white lace. She stands beside the king-sized bed, holding an axe that’s dripping with fresh blood.
Two bloody corpses “sleep” atop the bed’s blood-soaked sheets: a man and a woman in their late 40s or early 50s. Their bodies are massacred in ways that nobody should ever be able to imagine. Their innards spill out of the orifices in their bodies, onto the bed, and drape down to the floor. The walls and carpets are splattered with blood and bone and brain matter.
The girl stands at the foot of the bed, staring at the massacred corpses - as though admiring the work she did on the bodies. But then she slowly turns away from the bloody mess and stares deep into John’s eyes. Her face is that of an innocent girl with cute dimples and freckles on her cheeks. But her ink-black eyes are those of a demon.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!” John screams.
He pulls his head back into the closet and slams the door shut behind him. It didn’t quite register in his mind at first, but, suddenly, it hits him that what he has just seen was more than likely the ghost of Shirley Garland.
“What do you want from me?!” he yells.
There is no answer. Just silence.
But maybe he’s seeing things. Maybe he shot too much coke and he’s having hallucinations. ‘Yes, too much coke,’ he concludes. It’s probably in his best interest to level things off with some more heroin.
SCENE FORTY-ONE
The walk-in closet has become a sea of dirty syringes, spoons, candles, soiled cotton balls and the jagged bottoms of aluminum soda cans (functioning as bigger “spoons”). The air is polluted with Hepatitis C and germs and cold viruses and the smell of farts and bad breath and body odor and something that smells like rotten sex, though this wouldn’t make much sense, seeing that John hasn’t been getting any rotten sex.
John high-steps his way through the grimy paraphernalia, pacing the width of the closet and mumbling incoherent phrases to himself. His pants are rolled up to his knees like a hiker wallowing through a murky marsh.
“No, Johnny. I’m leaving now. I control you. Do you understand what I’m saying to you right now? I control YOU. YOU!”
He loses his balance and crashes through the closet door, landing headfirst into the master bedroom. For a moment, he is dazed and dizzy, but then he remembers the ghost of Shirley Garland and quickly scurries into an upright position to protect himself.
But she’s gone. So aren’t her parents. And all the blood. The bed is made and clean and everything is back to normal. Yes, the coast is clear for John to stumble to his feet and get out of that fucking room.
However, he finds it extremely difficult to maintain balance. He’s done so much heroin and coke in the past forty-eight hours (or has it been longer?), that his motor skills are completely out of whack. He looks like a cross between Herman Munster and a baby taking his first steps.
He manages to make his way into the hallway, and past the Oscar trophy cases...trips once or twice on his way down the Bela Lugosi stairway...and then manages to get through Transylvania without too much of a hassle, and past Cape Cod and all the way into Ancient Rome...but not before tripping one more time and smashing his face rather hard on the stone floor. He stumbles back on his feet and clumsily bumps his way through a bunch of TV crewmen and lighting gear and grip equipment and coffees and donuts that are all over the place. Despite the fact that he’s acting like a complete mental retard, nobody in the room seems to acknowledge his presence. They don’t even see him. It’s like he’s not there.
John takes a closer look at the crewmen and notices that they aren’t completely whole. Certain limbs are see-through and other appendages are missing altogether. They are like ghosts! ‘Very odd,’ he thinks. ‘Very strange. Rather peculiar.’ If John weren’t part-retarded right now, maybe he’d be a little more concerned about such a mysterious phenomenon.
He stumbles his way through a pair of open French doors and steps onto the outdoor patio, where - beside the green-lit pool - there is a long line of beautiful women standing shoulder-to-shoulder with one another. They’re very dolled up, wearing lovely evening gowns, high heels, sparkling silver anklets and colorful corsages.
Johnny stands in front of this “line-up” - facing all the lip-glossed women. He wears a handsome tuxedo and brandishes a red rose with a twelve-inch stem.
“Bianca, please step forward,” he says.
A blonde, Malibu-Barbie-looking girl steps forward from the line. Her skin is the color of Ernie (from Sesame Street) and her teeth are whiter then the keys of a piano.
“Bianca...I think you’re amazing,” says Johnny.
“Thank you,” Bianca whispers, misting with tears of joy.
“BUT...I’m not sure you’re here for the right reasons. I don’t think you love me for who I really am.”
Bianca’s smile fades and she grows extremely nervous.
“Johnny, I...I think you’re amazing. I’ve never felt the way I feel about you right now. I just want to be with you forever. Please have faith in me.”
Johnny nods his head down to the patio and takes a long, dramatic pause. But, suddenly, there’s a shout in the background:
“Johnny!”
Johnny lifts his head from the patio and turns to see John, wobbling around a catering table like a person who just stepped off a merry-go-round.
“Oh, shit,” Johnny mumbles to himself. “Cut! Cut!!!”
“What’s the matter?” asks the director, running into the scene with a pair of headphones dangling from his neck.
“Just give me a second.”
“All right, everybody!” shouts the director, stressfully running his fingers through his hair. “Take five!”
Johnny scoots away from the director and over to the catering table, where he tries to restrain John as discretely as possible.
“What the hell are you doing?” he whispers, grabbing John by the arm and leading him back into the house. “You’re gonna ruin everything.”
“Johnny, I...house...leaving,” John slurs.
“Jesus Christ, you’re talking like a retard.”
“Johnny...no...Johnny....”
SCENE FORTY-TWO
“I’m not staying in here! I’d rather be back East than in here! Working at the supermarket! Living with my parents! Snapping my carrot to porn!”
Johnny whips John against the drywall to the walk-in-closet and shuts the door tightly behind him. He has a hammer and a bunch of metal bolts, chains and shackles in his arms.
“Do you know how many people out there would die to be in the position you’re in right now? You won the fucking American Dream and all you do is cry about it every second of the day!”
“This is no dream, Johnny! This is a nightmare!”
Johnny is absolutely shocked by what he’s just heard. He gives John a scolding slap to the face.
“Owe!”
“You watch that mouth, you ungrateful shit. You know what Heather’s gonna say when the first episode of the show airs? She’s gonna stop banging Alex. She’s gonna put on some pants, for Christ sakes. And then she’s gonna say, ‘man, I’m so stupid for not leaving Alex for John...’”
“No, Johnny, shut up!!!”
“’...Now he’s the star of one of the hottest new TV shows and, boy, wouldn’t it be nice to fuck a TV star. Yeah, I really should’ve left Alex for John. I’m such a stupid cunt.’”
“Shut up Johnny! Shut up!!!”
Johnny shackles John’s wrists and ankles in chains, choking his flesh so hard that it leaves bruises.
“’Yeah, I wish I hadn’t let John get away from me. I wish that when he said he loved me I had the brains to leave Alex right then and there and marry one of the most famous motherfuckers in history...’”
“Please! Stop it!!!”
“’...somebody who was really gonna leave his mark in this earth. Write a place for himself in history. Man, so many years I wasted riding the wrong dick!’”
“No, Johnny! I’m not listening to you!”
“Stop your whining! There’s people in Cambodia being blown up by mines as we speak! There’s people being beheaded! There’s children who are starving and can never find one bite to eat! You’re on your high perch here in the Hollywood Hills and you have everything in the world and you’re crying like a big baby. A big fuckin’ baby!”
“Johnny! No!!!”
Johnny shoves his lips into John’s face and barks out an ear-bleeding...
“Shut the fuck up!!!”
John suddenly finds himself shackled to the closet wall like a poor bastard in a medieval dungeon. Johnny has now disappeared, but the echoes of his last ‘Shut the fuck up’ linger in the closet.
“Help. God. Somebody.”
SCENE FORTY-THREE
Only God knows exactly how long it’s been since John’s been shackled in the closet, but - from the looks of it - it’s probably been a pretty long time. His hair is much longer and greasier than before. His clothes are more ripped and stained. His cheekbones protrude out of his emaciated face. His ribs pierce through his skin like a starving Ethiopian. The closet smells like a cross between a porter-potty and a garbage truck. What an awful mess.
John nods in and out of consciousness, partly because of hunger, but mostly because of dehydration. He hears voices from somewhere deep in the mansion, but they are fainter than when he was in the closet before. They gradually fade and, soon, there is nothing but silence. Total silence.
But, then, a door squeaks open in the master bedroom. Two footsteps creak against the hardwood floor as they approach the walk-in closet. Then, the shadow of two feet appear in the crack between the door and the closet floor...
Click. The doorknob twists and the closet door opens. A silhouette stands within the doorway.
“Hey, bud.”
It’s Johnny.
John’s eyes flicker open, but his neck is still too weak to stop him from nodding.
“The show...” he says in a feeble voice. “What’s happening with the show?”
Johnny steps further into the closet and takes a seat on the floor across from John.
“I’m sorry, John. The network passed on a second season. It’s all over.”
John’s neck muscles give out completely and his head dangles down to the carpet, completely limp.
“What now?”
“Well, that’s the thing. There’s nothing else to do.”
“Time to go back East, then.”
“No, John. It’s time to die.”
John’s head rises back up...slowly, but surely.
“What?”
“I’m spent,” says Johnny while he rolls up his shirtsleeve. “People are sick of Johnny Cruise.”
He slides his belt out the loops of his pants and wraps it around the upper part of his arm.
“No...no, you don’t have to do that. I don’t want this anymore. I wanna go back home. I miss the East.”
“You go back home and I die. But if I die right here - right now - I live forever.”
Johnny chokes the belt tight around his arm and drops three chunks of black tar in the base of a grimy soda can.
“Ready?”
“Wha-wait a minute. I’m in control here. I’m not gonna let you kill yourself. This is ridiculous! I’m not gonna let you do that. I can fix things!”
Johnny stops what he’s doing...for a moment.
“OK, fine.”
John struggles to free himself from the wall - pulling and tugging at the chains - but it’s no use.
“Unchain me!”
Johnny doesn’t move.
“Unchain me!!!”
Johnny ignores him and resumes preparing the rig.
“You know what’s gonna happen if you go back home? I’m gonna become one of those stars on Hollywood Boulevard, the ones people go up to and say, ‘Who the fuck is that..?’”
He douses the heroin with water and heats the bottom of the can with John’s lighter.
“...then some Japanese tourist is gonna come outta the Chinese Theater, look at my footprints and say ‘Johnny Cruise? What the hell were they smoking when they decided to give HIM a spot here?’ And then eventually they’re gonna dig me up and throw me in the basement with all the other mistakes.”
Yes, the “mistakes”. The rumor is that the Chinese Theater basement is filled wall-to-wall with the cement blocks of washed-up stars and one-hit-wonders. The theater’s owners (Sid Grauman and those who came after him) reportedly dug up the handprints and footprints of anyone they thought didn’t deserve to have a place in the forecourt anymore...in order to make room for the more “worthy” stars.
“Johnny, I don’t care about all that. I just want to go home.”
But Johnny doesn’t listen to him. He drops a half of cotton ball into the gooey heroin and it sucks up the juice like a super-absorbent diaper. Then he grabs a dirty syringe from off the floor and fills it up as much as he can with all the filthy junk.
“No, Johnny, stop!” yells John.
But Johnny still doesn’t listen. He stabs the syringe into his arm and shoots in the juice.
“Think about it, John! Do you think James Dean woulda been the legend he is today had he lived to be, like, 80 years old? Or Marilyn Monroe or Elvis or Michael Jackson or all the other motherfuckers? No, they’d all be has-beens and nobody would give a fuck about them. It’s definitely time to die!”
“Heather!” shouts John as he pulls and tugs at his chains. “I love Heather! I’m gonna go back East and find Heather!”
Johnny rips the syringe out of his arm, smashes it against the closet wall and grabs another one from off the floor. He pricks the needle into the gooey cotton ball and fills it up with as much heroin as he can get into that fucking thing.
“Johnny, listen to me!”
“For the last time, John: Heather doesn’t love you. Heather gave up on you long ago when she saw how wonderful your life with Pamela was and when she saw you become a father and have your own TV show! You’re such a fucking idiot. She hasn’t thought of you in the longest time!”
John finally manages to rip one of the chains out of the drywall, but he’s still got three more limbs to go.
“You know what Heather’s doing right now? She’s giving Alex a big blowjob, and....”
“No, Johnny! That’s enough!”
“...And while she’s sucking him off, she’s thinking, ‘Ultimately, I’m glad I ended up marrying Alex. Because John has acne on his upper back. And, oh yeah, his teeth are as yellow as my piss. And he’s got a unibrow.’”
“Oh, Johnny! Stop!!!”
John rips another chain out of the drywall.
Johnny stabs another syringe of heroin into his vein.
“You know she knew about your porn addiction. You know she knew how pathetic you were, lying awake in bed all night, fantasizing about how you would someday marry her...”
“Oh, God, Johnny! Stop!”
John rips his ankle free from the wall.
Johnny fills another syringe with junk.
“All this while she’s sucking and fucking her husband, John! You’re a piece of shit!”
He stabs the third hit of heroin into his vein. And, this time, he’s gone over the line.
“No, Johnny! No!!!”
Johnny’s pupils shrink to the size of pinpoints. His lips turn blue. His muscles start to spasm.
“No, Johnny! Stop it!!!”
John struggles and struggles and struggles to free himself. Finally, he rips his last ankle free from the wall and immediately dives at Johnny’s arm to rip the syringe out. But he’s too late. All the dope has gone into the vein.
“Oh, no, Johnny!”
Johnny’s body convulses while John tries to cradle him in his arms like a baby.
“Wake up, Johnny!” he shouts, slapping him in the face. “Wake up!!!”
But Johnny is out of it. His convulsing turns into sporadic twitches and, soon, he lies in John’s arms - completely lifeless.
“Wake up!” shouts John, bursting into tears. “Wake ah-hup!!!”
He shakes and slaps and punches Johnny, but it’s all done to no avail. Johnny is completely gone.
“Fucking idiot!!!”
He jumps up from the floor and bursts his way out of the closet. The chains from his legs drag behind him. Pieces of drywall crumble off the bolts and leave a powdery trail along the closet carpet.
John runs through the master bedroom...into the hallway...past the Oscar trophy display case...down the Bela Lugosi staircase. The chains clang and bang against each step he descends.
By the time he makes it into Transylvania, John starts to hear a buzz echoing in the air:
“JohnnyCruiseJohnnyCruiseJohnnyCruiseJohnnyCruise.”
The buzz is like the call of the Sirens. It seductively leads John all the way into Movieland, and he can’t believe what he sees on the enormous JumboTron:
“Johnny Cruise’s demons caught up with him today...” says a news reporter positioned outside the Johnny Cruise estate. “The actor has allegedly died of a drug overdose.”
The channel changes by itself, as though from an invisible force. There is a different news reporter from a different news station, also positioned outside the Johnny Cruise estate.
“The nation and much of the world is in a state of mourning as we remember Johnny Cruise: one of the brightest stars ever to shine in Hollywood.”
John can’t believe what he’s hearing. This can’t be possible. The channel changes again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“Johnny OD’s?! Hey, everyone, I’m Brian Seacrest for Inside Entertainment news. Johnny Cruise was found dead in the walk-in closet of his Hollywood Hills home today...and he was SURROUNDED by drug paraphernalia. Although the corpse still has to undergo an autopsy, the cause of death is most likely due to a heroin overdose, as much of the drug was found in the closet with the body. No foul play is suspected.”
The channel switches again.
“Good evening, folks, and welcome to World News Tonight. Our top story comes to us from Los Angeles where actor Johnny Cruise was found dead today in his Hollywood Hills mansion. The exact cause of his death is still unknown, though illegal drug paraphernalia and prescription pills were found in various parts of the home. The Los Angeles County Coroner will release a preliminary toxicology report to the public within 48 hours.”
The channel switches again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“I can’t believe it,” a fan says to a news reporter, drenched in her mascara-stained tears. “I keep on saying to myself, ‘This isn’t happening. When am I gonna wake up from this bad dream?’”
And again.
“Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise!!!”
And again.
“It’s being reported in America that Hollywood actor Johnny Cruise has died,” says a BBC news anchor. “The news of his death has been treated with shock and disbelief.”
And again.
“Johnny Cruise! Johnny Cruise!”
And again.
“It’s awful,” says another fan drenched in tears. “This didn’t have to happen.”
One more time.
“Again, Johnny Cruise - the king of Hollywood - dead at the age of 33.”
John is in absolute shock. He unconsciously takes a few steps backwards, but trips on his chains and falls ass-first into the floor.
“Umph!”
He stumbles back onto his feet and runs the hell out of the room - back into Transylvania - plows his way out of the dungeon door and enters the outside world without even thinking twice about it.
He leaps out onto the driveway with his chains rattling on the cobblestones behind him. On the other side of the goldfish fountain, he spots the coroner wheeling a black body bag into a van.
“Hey, wait a minute!” John yells at the coroner. But the coroner doesn't hear him.
He runs up to the gurney and unzips the top portion of the body bag. Johnny’s lifeless eyes stare right into him. His face is pale as chalk, kind of like how E.T. looks when he dies three quarters of the way into the movie.
“Jesus,” John says under his breath.
“Hey, wait. I’m not dead,” he says to the coroner. “This isn’t me. I’m the real Johnny Cruise.”
The coroner doesn't hear him.
“Hey! Hello!!!” John shouts, waving his arms within inches of the coroner's face. But he still isn't heard.
John takes a closer look at the coroner and notices that he is not solid. He's a see-through apparition. A ghost!
“What the hell???”
He freaks out and runs the hell out of there. Around the goldfish pond. Past the caged white African tiger. Through the Garden of Eden. Down the spiraling driveway...
His chains drag and spark against the concrete behind him. He looks like a strung-out version of Jacob Marley.
He runs up to the giant golden gate and sees an entire camp of media people on the other side of the bars. Vans and reporters and paparazzi and Tex and bee-a-leeps and spotlights and cameras and microphones. They’re all waiting for a first shot of the body as it leaves the estate.
“Hey! It’s me! I’m alive!” he shouts through the bars. But, still, nobody hears him.
A news reporter positions himself a few feet or so from John, purposely framing himself in front of the ‘J’ and ‘C’ initials.
“Ok, ready?” he asks his cameraman.
“Five...four...three...two...one...”
He morphs into his on-air personality:
“Johnny Cruise was known for his charm, his wit and his grace - both on and off the screen. He was a man of great faith. A philanthropist. A gentle soul...”
“Hey! Listen to me!!! Hello!!!” John shouts from behind the bars. But the reporter can’t hear him.
“...Close friends would describe him as a man’s man...a gentleman...a GOOD man....”
John tries to grab and shake the golden bars. But he can’t even get a grip. His hands go right through them.
“What the???”
He moves one of his legs through the bars.
And then his other leg.
And then the rest of his body.
“This is fucked,” he says in astonishment.
He turns to the reporters and screams off the top of his lungs.
“Hello! Hello!!! Listen to me! Why can’t you hear me?!”
But it’s no use. Nobody acknowledges him.
“Hello! Hello!!!”
He gets into the face of every living soul in the vicinity.
“Hello! Hello! Look at me! Hello!”
But nobody hears him. Not even Tex.
“Stupid fucks!!!”
He runs all the way down Mt. Olympus Drive, trips and rolls down the dusty hill to Mulholland. Runs down Mulholland. Trips and falls down another hill. Runs past the Hollywood Sign...
Here, the smell of gardenias is intense. And, Christ there’s a woman standing right in John’s pathway! She’s dressed in 1930s clothing and looks extremely sad and, fuck, it may be Peg Entwistle. Is it???
The strange lady-figure stares deep into John’s line of vision. Her face is filled with desperation and her eyes are as wide as a bug’s.
“Take...take...take me to the light!!!” she screams.
“What?! Who are you?!” John shouts. But the apparition says nothing else. Just stares with her bugged eyes.
“Fucking creep!” John shouts at her.
He runs a wide circle around this spooky specter and stumbles down Mount Lee, past the Sunset Ranch and the Hollywood Bowl. Down Franklin and past the Highland Mall. Down Hollywood Boulevard. Past El Capitan, Hooters and all the tacky souvenir shops. Past the newsstand...stops...backtracks to the newsstand:
“Johnny Cruise OD’s!” shouts a tabloid.
“Johnny Cruise is dead!” shouts another.
“Was it a suicide?!”
“Homicide?!”
“Remembering JC!”
“The King of Hollywood is dead!”
“The King is dead!”
“Special Johnny Cruise tribute!” shouts Time Magazine.
“Johnny Cruise edition!” shouts Newsweek.
“Johnny Cruise: Commemorative Issue!” shouts People.
“Johnny Cruise: a life in pictures!” shouts Life.
“This can’t be,” says John in complete shock.
He and his chains resume sprinting the hell down the boulevard - over all the charcoal marble and the pink marble and the bronze. He eventually arrives at one particular Hollywood star with an enormous amount of people gathered around it. It’s the Johnny Cruise star!
He cuts through the dense crowd and makes his way closer to the star, which is enshrined with flowers, candles, burning incense, handwritten cards, notes and ceramic angels. The fans take turns genuflecting at the foot of the star, mumbling prayers and respects and meditations. Catholics kneel. Buddhists chant. Muslims bow.
“I was in a Starbucks,” explains one of the fans being interviewed by a local news station. “And somebody got a text message and yelled ‘Johnny Cruise is dead!’, and...and you could just hear everyone gasp. I truly love Johnny Cruise and it’s so sad to hear that he’s gone.”
“I just want him around right now,” adds a weeping five-year-old girl...also being interviewed by a news station.
John kneels down to his star and reads one of the cards that a fan has left behind:
“To our beloved Johnny: you have given the world so much. You will forever be our wing of pride! We love you!”
John feels like he may definitely puke. He can’t believe all this bullshit. This nonsense! This balderdash...
“What the fuck is wrong with you all?!” he shouts to the fans. “I’m Johnny! I’m alive! I’m the one you want! I’m right here!!!”
But they don’t hear him.
John grabs the shoulders to one of the kneeling fans and tries to shake some sense into him. But his hands go right through the body! And he goes tripping to the ground.
“Ouch!” John yells as he nails his chin on the sidewalk marble. “What the fuck is happening?!”
He rolls onto his back, jumps to his feet and bolts across the boulevard. He doesn’t give a fuck that there are about a dozen cars speeding right at him. But he doesn’t get hit by them, anyway. The cars speed right through him like he’s nothing but a puff of smog.
John makes it to the other side of the street, leaps over the marble and busts his way into the forecourt of the Chinese Theater. Another huge crowd has gathered around Johnny’s footprints and the situation is similar to the one at the star: flowers and candles and incense and photos, but also DVDs and action figures. There are even Johnny Cruise impersonators and ‘characters’ dressed up as memorable Johnny Cruise movie roles, such as Lightning Man.
“That isn’t me!” John yells at the fans. “THIS is me! I’m Johnny Cruise! I’m Johnny Cruise!!!”
The fans and the impersonators and the Lightning Mans don’t hear him. All they do is cry as they genuflect around the perimeter of Johnny’s cement square and show reverence to the fallen king of Hollywood.
“I’m Johnny!” shouts John. “I’m Johnny! I’m Johnny! I’m...I’m...”
He collapses to his knees and breaks into a desperate cry:
“Nooooooooo! Noooooooooo! Noooooooooooooooooo!!!”
He faints and his face slams into the cement.
SCENE FORTY-FOUR
The mourners are gone. The flowers have withered. The candles have flickered out. The notes have disintegrated. And the DVDs have been stolen. The Johnny Cruise footprints are completely forsaken.
A bum is passed out beside the footprints. It’s John. The small handful of tourists milling around the forecourt don’t notice him...or don’t even see him.
A bus squeals its brakes in the far distance. The hiss of the hydraulics brings John out of his coma. His ears twitch and his eyelids flutter open. Consciousness slowly returns to him.
Though his vision is blurred, he sees a Greyhound bus parked on Hollywood Boulevard, parallel with the forecourt. A young man in his twenties takes a step off the bus and grabs his suitcase from the lower luggage compartment. He wears a backwards Yankees cap, a three-quarter sleeve baseball-type Jersey, tan cargo shorts and Birkenstock sandals.
For some reason, John finds himself drawn to this youngster. It reminds him of the man he was ten years ago, when he first came to Hollywood. In fact, it’s almost as though he’s looking at himself in the past, sort of like how Scrooge does in that movie A Christmas Carol.
The youngster rolls his suitcase over the sidewalk and into the forecourt and atop all the footprints. His face looks so energetic and full of idealism and ambition and hope. He shuffles his feet into Clark Gable’s footprints and Jimmy Stewart’s footprints and Humphrey Bogart’s footprints and Marilyn Monroe’s footprints and - finally - he comes to Johnny’s footprints.
“Wow,” he says. “Johnny Cruise.”
Little does this youngster know that Johnny Cruise (in a sense) is right under his nose. But he doesn’t notice him, which is something John doesn’t understand in the least.
John scurries onto his knees and looks up to the youngster with confusion, as though to say, ‘Hello, don’t you fucking see me?!’ But he still isn’t noticed.
The youngster slips off his Birkenstocks and places his naked feet within the crevices of Johnny’s footprints. They fit almost perfectly.
“Go home!” John wants to shout, but nothing comes out of his mouth.
“LEAVE HERE IMMEDIATELY!” he tries shouting again. “LEAVE! GO HOME!” But the words still don’t materialize. It’s like he’s in one of those bad dreams and he needs to shout, but nothing comes out.
The youngster jumps out of the footprints and into an empty square of cement. He grinds his feet into the concrete, as though to leave his own mark amidst all the Hollywood greats.
“Go home! Get the fuck out of here! Run! Leave!!!”
John tries like hell to yell, but all that manages to come out is a muffled moan. But then the moan grows in volume. And grows. And grows some more. It’s like all his yelling has collectively created some sort of negative energy with a negative noise.
John listens to this noise for a moment or two and realizes he sounds just like Axl Rose at the beginning of “Welcome to the Jungle”, which also makes him realize that he sounds almost exactly like the ghosts in his mansion. Such a disturbing realization makes him want to scream even louder...but all this does is make the negative noise increase in intensity. Now, it sounds like an all-out howl.
“Whooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
The youngster stands bare-footed atop the cement for another few seconds or so - shutting his eyes and soaking in the fact that he’s finally in Hollywood, smack-dab in the middle of the Chinese Theater forecourt. So awesome! So cool! So amazing! But then he gradually evaporates into thin air. All the other tourists on the forecourt vanish as well. Same with all the boulevard characters. Every living person disappears. The sounds of Hollywood traffic become muffled with silence. Even the light Santa Ana breezes die.
Then, the bright California sun dims, leaving John in silent darkness. He is scared and angry and confused. He screams even louder. And louder. And louder. And louder! And louder!! And louder!!!
But all that leaves his mouth is the Axl Rose howl.
“Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
EPILOGUE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WE GOT FUN N GAMES
WE GOT EVERYTHING YOU WANT
HONEY WE KNOW THE NAMES
WE ARE THE PEOPLE THAT YOU CAN FIND
WHATEVER YOU MAY NEED
IF YOU GOT THE MONEY, HONEY
WE GOT YOUR DISEASE
IN THE JUNGLE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WATCH IT BRING YOU TO YOUR KNEES, KNEES
I WANNA WATCH YOU BLEED
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WE TAKE IT DAY BY DAY
IF YOU WANT IT YOU’RE GONNA BLEED
BUT IT’S THE PRICE YOU PAY
AND YOU’RE A VERY SEXY GIRL
THAT’S VERY HARD TO PLEASE
YOU CAN TASTE THE BRIGHT LIGHTS
BUT YOU WON’T GET THEM FOR FREE
IN THE JUNGLE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
FEEL MY, MY, MY SERPENTINE
I, I WANNA HEAR YOUS-CREAM
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
IT GETS WORSE HERE EVERYDAY
YA LEARN TA LIVE LIKE AN ANIMAL
IN THE JUNGLE WHERE WE PLAY
IF YOU GOT A HUNGER FOR WHAT YOU SEE
YOU’LL TAKE IT EVENTUALLY
YOU CAN HAVE ANYTHING YOU WANT
BUT YOU BETTER NOT TAKE IT FROM ME
AND WHEN YOU’RE HIGH YOU NEVER
EVER WANT TO COME DOWN, YEAH!
YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE
YOU’RE IN THE JUNGLE BABY
YOU’RE GONNA DIE
IN THE JUNGLE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WATCH IT BRING YOU TO YOUR KNEES, KNEES
IN THE JUNGLE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
FEEL MY, MY, MY SERPENTINE
IN THE JUNGLE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WATCH IT BRING YOU TO YOUR KNEES, KNEES
IN THE JUNGLE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WATCH IT BRING YOU TO YOUR
IT’S GONNA BRING YOU DOWN
HA!
-- AXL ROSE
EPILOGUE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WE GOT FUN N GAMES
WE GOT EVERYTHING YOU WANT
HONEY WE KNOW THE NAMES
WE ARE THE PEOPLE THAT YOU CAN FIND
WHATEVER YOU MAY NEED
IF YOU GOT THE MONEY, HONEY
WE GOT YOUR DISEASE
IN THE JUNGLE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WATCH IT BRING YOU TO YOUR KNEES, KNEES
I WANNA WATCH YOU BLEED
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WE TAKE IT DAY BY DAY
IF YOU WANT IT YOU’RE GONNA BLEED
BUT IT’S THE PRICE YOU PAY
AND YOU’RE A VERY SEXY GIRL
THAT’S VERY HARD TO PLEASE
YOU CAN TASTE THE BRIGHT LIGHTS
BUT YOU WON’T GET THEM FOR FREE
IN THE JUNGLE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
FEEL MY, MY, MY SERPENTINE
I, I WANNA HEAR YOUS-CREAM
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
IT GETS WORSE HERE EVERYDAY
YA LEARN TA LIVE LIKE AN ANIMAL
IN THE JUNGLE WHERE WE PLAY
IF YOU GOT A HUNGER FOR WHAT YOU SEE
YOU’LL TAKE IT EVENTUALLY
YOU CAN HAVE ANYTHING YOU WANT
BUT YOU BETTER NOT TAKE IT FROM ME
AND WHEN YOU’RE HIGH YOU NEVER
EVER WANT TO COME DOWN, YEAH!
YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE
YOU’RE IN THE JUNGLE BABY
YOU’RE GONNA DIE
IN THE JUNGLE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WATCH IT BRING YOU TO YOUR KNEES, KNEES
IN THE JUNGLE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
FEEL MY, MY, MY SERPENTINE
IN THE JUNGLE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WATCH IT BRING YOU TO YOUR KNEES, KNEES
IN THE JUNGLE
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WATCH IT BRING YOU TO YOUR
IT’S GONNA BRING YOU DOWN
HA!
-- AXL ROSE
