Geoff Nicholson - Gravity’s Volkswagen

♦

And that’s why, in the loose company of a lot of other people, I’m standing here in Burbank, on the sound stage, waiting for a Volkswagen Beetle to be filled with cement, a scene that bears not even the slightest resemblance to anything that happened in my original novel. That’s all right by me. I have no false pride, not much real pride either. We’re in the world of illusion, naturally, and it comes as no surprise to learn that the car here is not really being filled with real cement. They’re using some kind of lightweight, silicon-based, non-setting, but nevertheless utterly convincing, substitute. They have experts who specialise in this stuff and make it look authentic: nice work if you can get it.

In fact there are now video clips on the web that show what actually happens when you fill a Beetle with cement. Nothing at all happens for quite some time until the tyres blow because of all the increased weight, then the windows pop out from the internal pressure, and then cement flows out through every seam and crevice of the car; slowly at first, then very rapidly. It’s sort of interesting though it’s really not all that exciting.

But this is the movies. This will be far more dramatic, more visually intense, far cooler. I know this because I’ve seen the storyboards. This movie Beetle, which isn’t a real Beetle at all of course, just a prop, just a construct, will fill up like a balloon. Tyres, windows and windscreen will remain miraculously intact, and the car will bulge, expand, become stretched to breaking point, until it is close to spherical. There will be all sorts of tension. Then the car will explode, violently, disastrously, but gracefully, in ultra-slow motion, seen from multiple angles by multiple cameras. Cement and Volkswagen components will then fly in all directions, carving parabolas of glittering, spinning debris and light as they’re propelled from the centre, expelled outwards, falling with infinite, balletic slowness, each following its own natural trajectory.

And then, just when things are starting to settle, from the centre of the explosion, from the heart of the remains of the exploded Beetle, a figure will very slowly emerge, a man, a man covered in glop, his features and body caked in cement substitute, but even so you can see he’s no ordinary man. He is a big man, strong, dense, heavily muscled, a mountainous monster of a man, and if you know your freak-show personnel you will certainly recognise him as Motor-head Phil. He looks good. He’s been working out a lot. The muscles are bigger and more pumped, the bulge that used to be around his waist is long gone. He’s a man who’s found his second act.

He stands there alone, very still, very powerful, the fake cement running down him like lava, evoking a world of movies of varying degrees of cheapness and popularity: The Incredible Hulk, Swamp Thing, Hell Boy , and no doubt a lot of others that I’ve never heard of. This, I’m told, is perfectly intentional. It’s playfully, knowingly self-referential: it’s a homage. The kids love this stuff. But here’s the twist. While Motorhead Phil is pulling himself together, shaking off the effects of the explosion, he’s suddenly attacked from all sides by velociraptors, swarms of them, a pack, a horde, an exaltation, a murder. He’s doomed. It won’t end well. Or quickly.

Of course we won’t see all of this today. We won’t see very much of anything. But we will, at least, sooner or later, see the car being filled. That, at least is being done for real, in real time, here on the sound stage. The explosion will be done later, elsewhere, using a scaled-down model. Then it will be computer enhanced. Then the shots of Motorhead Phil will be cut in. Then the velociraptors will be digitally inserted. What we’re watching here and now is a necessary part of the process, but in truth, at least when you’ve been standing around for half a day, it certainly doesn’t seem like the most interesting part.

I’ve come back to California by myself. Again Caroline decided not to come, and I didn’t try to persuade her. She said she’d feel like a gatecrasher, and she had a point. I feel much like a gatecrasher myself, even though without me there’d be no party at all.

There’s been idle talk that some later scenes may be shot on a beach in Baja, in Mexico, where the living is easy and the union regulations lax. There’s a trailer park down there they could use. How this would fit in with what’s already been shot in Fon-tinella I have no idea. But if it happens then we’ll all go down there and perhaps Caroline will join me at last; or perhaps she won’t. I find myself vaguely wondering what Josh Martin would have thought about the movie being shot in Mexico, but in general I’ve stopped wondering what Josh Martin would think about anything.

Beside me on the sound stage, watching events, or non-events, are Leezza and Barry. They are together, happy together, a couple, an item, a partnership, a love thing. Who’d have thought it? Well, lots of people probably, the sort of people who understand the human heart a little differently from the way I do, the sort of people who like happy endings.

It turns out Leezza wasn’t trying to kill Barry after all. She was trying to motivate him, trying to give him an incentive to lose weight, to encourage him to get out of his car, to do something with his life. Having sex with me all over her Beetle while forcing Barry to watch was part of the same battle plan. Go figure, as they say. It worked too, I suppose.

Leezza is now employed on the movie as a stunt driver, a good career move for her, and the kind of obvious, sensible use of resources that might even have occurred to Josh Martin. And Barry? Well, Barry has indeed been losing weight, effectively and decisively, but under medical supervision so as to ensure that it’s not too much too fast. He looks better: how could he not? He’s got a long way to go, no doubt, but he’s cleaned up his act, cleaned up himself. At least he’s moving around now, walking, driving, getting back to his own self, whatever the hell that was.

He now turns to me with a warmth and friendliness I find surprising, considering all that’s happened between us, and says, “So, Ian, is this the way you imagined it?”

If you hear a screaming that comes across the sky, across the tarmac, across the speedway or the sound stage, you shouldn’t worry. It’s probably not a flying bomb. It’s probably not heralding an explosion. The chances are it’s just the engine of a Volkswagen Beetle being stressed to breaking point, being thrashed to within an inch of its air-cooled life. Alternatively it may be the sound of the poor author trying to express himself.

(in not quite alphabetical order)

Beetle:the most common name in English for the Type 1 Volkswagen saloon and convertible, made between 1948 and 2003.

Also sometimes called the Bug, a more common usage in the US than in Britain. I’ve met people who insist there’s a taxonomic distinction to be made between a Beetle and a Bug, but their attempts at explaining the difference have left me none the wiser.

Incidentally, ‘Beetle’ was a nickname invented and embraced by the general public and actually taken on as a model name by Volkswagen in 1967. Is there any other example of a motor manufacturer responding in this way?

Many countries in the world have also chosen similar nicknames beginning with B: in Croatia the Buba; in Denmark the Bobble; in the Czech Republic the Brouk: in Romania the Brosco.

Others have taken different linguistic routes. Pakistan has gone for the Martiny; in the Philippines it’s the Kotseng Kuba, literally the hunchback car; in Israel it’s apparently known as the Hiposhit, which I thought was just a silly joke, and it probably is, but even so it seems to be quite a widespread one. And my favourite, if some sources are to be believed, and I’m not absolutely sure they are, comes from Finland where apparently the Beetle is known as Hitlerin Kosta; Hitler’s Revenge.