Ben Elton - Popcorn

Down below, in the armoured police command vehicle, Chief Cornell was almost quivering with excitement. Wayne Hudson was playing right into his hands.

‘Get me the equipment he wants,’ the chief barked at Murray. ‘That little ENG crew is going to be composed of armed operatives from Special Forces. We are sending in an undercover SWAT team. Two seconds after my men get in there, they will have neutralized that maniac, plus the fucking shedevil he hangs with.’ The police chief was already preening himself for the press conference that would follow this heroic operation.

The phone rang again. Both men grabbed it.

‘Now, I know what you’re thinking, guys,’ they heard Wayne ’s voice say. ‘You’re thinking ‘bout putting a bunch of damn commandos on me, right? Well forget it. The crew you send me best be the smallest crew there is. I am talking one camera operator and one recordist. That is two people, OK? Two. TWO. What is more, they have to come barefoot and wearing only their underwear. Y’hear me? Underwear, that’s all, and I ain’t talkin’ no baggy longjohns or old lady’s bloomers here. I am talkin’ ‘bout the smallest, tiniest, skimpiest fuckin’ bits of nothing a person can wear and still keep their modesty. I’m going to check every inch of the people you give me, plus their equipment, and if I get even the idea that there might be a piece, a stun grenade, even a fucking penknife, within about fifty yards of those two motherfuckers, I’m gonna holler to Scout to spray bullets into every hostage we got, and you know she’ll do it, on account of how she loves me and she does what the fuck I tell her. So basically what I’m saying here is that if you fuck with me, cop, four more innocent people gonna get very dead real soon, and it will be your fault, man, and every TV station in America’s gonna see it. Byebye, now.’

The phone went dead again.

This time it was the newsman’s turn to quiver with excitement. Disaster had been averted. Police Chief Cornell, had, through his crass, macho zeal, been on the verge of hijacking what was clearly a cathartic media event and turning it into a police matter. Television had nearly been prevented from taking up its rightful position at the very centre of the drama, not just covering the story but being part of it. This, the news and current affairs chief felt, was what news and current affairs had been invented for. To get cameras and, if possible, personalities deep, deep inside events, moulding them, shaping them, actually being the news; while the old forces of authority – the cops, the politicians, the civic leaders – could only watch impotently from the sidelines.

He had so nearly lost it. For a moment there it had looked like the cop was getting ready to grab all the glory. Thanks, however, to the villain himself having a proper sense of proportion and society’s natural pecking order, the media would be centrestage where they belonged.

Bruce’s mind was no longer reeling. It was reeling, jigging, jitterbugging and doing the mashed potato.

‘You are bringing a TV crew in here? Into my home ?’

‘That’s right, Bruce, and you, me and Scout are going to make a statement.’

‘I will not make a statement with you, you crazy bastard. You can shove your damn statement up your ass!’

Bruce scarcely knew what he was saying. Farrah and Velvet gasped at his audacity, but on this occasion Wayne did not seem to mind being cheeked.

‘That’s right, Bruce, get all that profanity out of your system. Don’t want to go using no lewd words on TV, now, do we? It might affect the ratings.’

Scout was absolutely thrilled. ‘Are we really going to be on the TV, honey?’

‘Yes, we are, baby doll, and so’s Bruce here, because if he doesn’t I’ll kill his darling little girl.’

‘What kind of statement? What the hell do you want me to say?’

‘Well, Bruce, let me tell you. You are going to announce to the whole of the USA – and believe me it will be the whole of the USA because between you and us we got more celebrity right here than Elvis making out with Oprah, using Roseanne for a mattress – you are going to announce to the whole of the USA that Scout ‘n’ me are your fault.’

Wayne smiled as if to say, ‘Great plan, huh?’ Bruce had known it was coming but it was still a blow.

‘You are going to say that having met us and talked to us, quietly, person to person, one on one, you realize that we are just dumb, stupid, poor white trash and that you and your glamorous Hollywood pictures done corrupted our po’ simple minds.’ He took up the bag which had recently contained the severed head and pulled out a bundle of bloodstained magazines and newspapers. He quoted from one: ‘You’re going to say you understand that your “wicked, cynical exploitation and manipulation of the lowest, basest elements of the human psyche has so disturbed-” ’

‘No, I won’t do it!’ Bruce nearly gagged at the man’s audacity.

Wayne ’s strolled across the room to where Velvet had gone to stand with her mother. ‘Open your mouth, darling.’

Velvet burst into tears again. Unmoved, Wayne took his pistol and forced its barrel between Velvet’s closed lips so that the metal pressed against her clenched teeth.

‘I’ll bet you’ve had a lot of expensive dental work over the years, huh, baby? Let me tell you now, a bullet going through all that is liable to do a powerful lot of damage.’

Having made his point, Wayne removed his gun from Velvet’s lips, turned back to Bruce and waved the bloodied magazines in his face.

‘You, Bruce, are going to say that we are “products of a society that celebrates violence”. You are going to say that we are weakwilled, simpleminded creatures who have been “seduced by images of sex and death”, images you create, man, and for which you have just been honoured with an Oscar. You are going to say that your eyes have been opened and you are ashamed. In fact, I got an idea, man – oh yeah! You’re going to return your Oscar. Live on TV, you’re going to give it back out of respect for your victims. The people you killed through me and Scout.’

Bruce was not a callous man. He knew that other people had problems greater than his. He was aware that two people were already dead and that another was clearly dying. Nevertheless, at this point he could think only of the dreadful fate Wayne had prepared for him. To make the kind of statement Wayne was proposing that he make, and to make it to the entire nation, would be the most profoundly humiliating thing imaginable. Career suicide. Intellectual disgrace. The complete loss of every ounce of the credibility he currently enjoyed. The immediate end of his life as an artist. And for a lie.

He struggled to find an argument to sway Wayne from his terrible course. ‘It won’t work, Wayne. It can’t. Whatever I say, it won’t change the law. You’re guilty and the law will get you.’

‘That’s bullshit, Bruce, and you know it. The law is whatever people want it to be. It ain’t never the same thing twice. It’s one thing to a white man, another to a black, one thing to the rich, another to the poor. The law is a piece of fuckin’ Play Dough – no one knows what shape it’s going to be in next. Man, after you’ve made your broadcast me and Scout here won’t be no punk killers no more. We’ll be a hundred things. We’ll be heroes to some, victims to others, we’ll be monsters, we’ll be saints. We will be the defining fuckin’ image of a national debate. A debate which will go to the very core of our society.’

Wayne ’s eyes shone with the glory of his idea. He assumed the deep, censorious tone of the typical TV news anchor: ‘ America will look at itself and ask itself the questions “Who are we? Where are we going? Did Wayne and Scout act alone? Is Bruce Delamitri to blame, or do we all share something of their guilt?” ’