Will Self - Walking to Hollywood

The happy detective was being played by himself — he’d even grown his own trademark brown moustache for the role. It was a relief, of course, because I never knew before I actually saw someone who would be impersonating them, and even then if it was a good method actor it could still take a while to identify which one. As for me, Mac didn’t seem to care who had the part, only remarking, ‘You look well, man,’ before moving straight to business: ‘So, you’ve got a case for me?’

I filled him in on the conflagration at Pinewood and my escape with the quadrumanous cartoon dog. Then there was the episode on Century, and my discovery of the adulteration taking place at the Coca-Cola Bottling Plant. I alluded to the car fight at the La Brea Tar Pits, but didn’t go into too much detail, then went over the horrific riot outside Grauman’s so exhaustively that by the time I’d finished we were both staring down at matching tartes tatin . Of anything to do with Thetans I said nothing — this was a litigious town, and then there were the Scientologists.

I suppose we must have had Ipswich clam rolls and polenta cakes but saving Mr Ford’s finer feelings it was all plaster casts to me — prop food that had me gulping down glass after glass of water, then calling the waiter to get more. The unemployed actor could barely conceal his annoyance, and every time he plonked down the flask he grunted like a woman tennis pro serving an ace.

Mac sucked his moustache and tousled his own hair. ‘You’re racking up enemies with your behaviour, man,’ he said, as weary as a walrus. ‘You got any protection?’

I explained about the Jeffs.

‘You’re screwing up big time, aren’tcha.’

‘I’m sorry?’.

‘Well, if you’re right and the movies were murdered — not just accidentally killed — then you’re a real slow-moving target. Personally, I think your initial strategy was the right one — be filmed or get drilled. Now how’re you gonna keep safe?’

‘Tomorrow morning I’m going right into the heart of the machine.’ I stabbed a finger towards the Sony lot. ‘It’s the last place anyone will think of shooting me.’

‘And then?’

‘That’s where you come in. Listen.’ I dropped my voice conspiratorially and, leaning towards him, took a forkful of his tarte .

‘Hey!’ Mac was outraged, and struck out at my fork with his own. We began fencing with the cutlery, until the waiter broke it up. ‘You were saying?’ Mac asked, picking bits of caramelized apple off the lapels of his corduroy sports jacket.

‘I can’t keep track of all the leads — that’s the trouble with a victim that’s a representational medium —’

‘You say that, but everyone knows who murdered portrait painting — the camera, right?’

‘Right, but portraits in oils were slow fucking food, man, one frame, hanging around on walls — they had it coming. The movies are something else — sixteen, twenty-two frames every second; for over a century they sopped up the world like a celluloid sponge, they saw everything — they depicted everyone. Sometimes they mocked up real events; other times those events were staged for them. As for the actors — they played characters based on real people; real people played themselves — or else made-up characters. That’s too many linkages, Mac, too many suspects. Have you seen the titles at the end of an average Hollywood movie nowadays, there’s thousands of the—’

An old homeless man, who had been standing watching us from the far side of the waist-high canvas partition penning off the patrons from the sidewalk, now approached, his hand outstretched. I looked at its dirty and cracked nails — there was an open sore on the leathery palm. ‘Please,’ the poor fellow croaked. ‘Please, gennlemen, I only need a few cents to get a sammich. I’d be obliged.’

He bore an uncanny resemblance to the Indian-born British novelist Sir Salman Rushdie, what with his straggling grey beard and dishevelled pride, so I dropped a few coins into his hand, then said, ‘But tell me one thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘How come you’re begging — I would’ve thought that with your sales you’d be set up for life.’

‘Oh, yeah, sales.’ He shrugged philosophically. ‘It’s true, the books sell well enough but that’s chickenfeed; the real money is in movies, and they option stuff and option it again — then they drag me out here for meetings with execs and like a sap I come. Then nuthin’ happens — nuthin’ at all.’

He shuffled away disconsolately, and turning back to Guffin I deftly changed the subject: ‘So, Calista Flockhart, her cunt’s still wedding-fresh, right?’

The happy detective spat a chunk of pastry on to the table, while all around us the baboon diners rose to their bandy legs.

‘Ferchrissakes,’ Mac said, recovering himself, ‘d’you wanna get us lynched, or what?’

‘I was only asking — I’m sure it’s a question that’s on everyone’s lips.’

‘Maybe, but they kinda slurp it back down.’

The baboons were settling back down as well, their muzzles dropped to their arugula. We sat in silence for a while.

‘I dunno,’ he resumed eventually. ‘I’m not sure I want to take this one on — we’ve got troubles of our own down at the Times .’

‘Your man Zell?’

‘The word is we’re looking down the barrel of a gun.’

‘And people are going to get fired?’

‘Absolutely — and you wanna know why? It’s the same as your movie case: the readership can’t suspend disbelief in newsprint any more, it’s just dead meaning swatted on the page to them. They want something that lights up, scrolls down, they want inset full-motion videos and pop-up—’

‘Idents.’

‘Right.’

Dusk was fingering along Culver Boulevard, together with the traffic and the No. 11 Nocturne played with a jazz twist. There was a lazy intimacy to the scene — they didn’t call Mac the happy detective for no reason; whatever his own problems — and he had them — he always succeeded in infusing any scene with a comfortable tannin vibe, ironic considering that when:

‘You turn up people get dead — now don’t they?’

He wasn’t taken aback. ‘So that’s how it is, is it, you’ve got a third act problem.’

‘I guess.’

‘So you think: bring in Mac and the body count’ll rise.’

‘Something like that had occurred to me.’ I took out a miniature Effie Perrine and she took out a miniature bag of Bull Durham and fiddled a cigarette into tubular existence. ‘Anyway,’ I resumed, ‘what’s your scruple? You say people’re gonna get dead anyway, leastways in my scenario they get dead in the service of a decent cause — finding out who clipped the most beautifulest narrative medium the goddamn world has ever seen!’

He stood up and, pulling a rawhide wallet from his pocket, dealt a couple of twenties on to the table. ‘You’re fucked up, Will,’ he said conversationally. ‘I don’t believe you give a damn who killed the movies.’

‘Frankly?’

‘Yeah, frankly . In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out you’d killed them yourself in some guarana-fuelled blackout.’

‘That’s harsh.’

‘You think so? Well, try this on: you were a spotty brat jerking off over Ornella Mutti in the London burbs. Then you grew up and began writing your dismal fucking tales — a depressive’s exercise in wish fulfilment: slash your wrists and the world slashes with you. Against all the odds you got successful enough to come out here — and whaddya find? An industry that doesn’t give a damn about you, ‘cause you’re a cheapie, a peanut grafter, you’re so goddamn small no one could even focus on you—’