Ben Elton - Popcorn

Farrah screamed. Velvet screamed. Even Kirsten thought about protesting, but then she remembered the sacred duty of the newsgatherer: never intervene, not even if the news is being created for your benefit.

‘Please, Wayne, don’t,’ Bruce said.

‘She’s my Mom!’ Velvet sobbed.

Outside, in the command truck, Chief Cornell was in agony. Should he send his SWAT teams in now? If he did, there would certainly be bloodshed. If he didn’t, likewise.

Oh, how he wished that somebody else would take responsibility.

Inside the mansion, Wayne had got up and was studying the ratings on Kirsten’s computer screen.

‘They’re climbing, aren’t they?’

‘Yes they are,’ Kirsten replied, ‘but none the less my producer is saying please don’t kill the woman.’

Farrah sobbed, pulling pathetically at her manacled hand.

In the control truck a lively debate was in progress.

‘We have to terminate the broadcast,’ some were saying. ‘He’s feeding off it. It’s creating his crimes.’

‘He killed plenty of people before there were any cameras to play to,’ others contended. ‘We can’t turn off. We don’t choose the news. We don’t have a right to censor national events just because they’re unattractive.’

‘But if he’s creating the news for us?

‘We can’t take responsibility for his actions.’

‘Can we take responsibility for our own?’

The cameras stayed on, as no one had doubted for a moment that they would, and the ratings continued to climb.

Inside the lounge Wayne showed off his guns to the camera. ‘Hurry up now, y’all,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to miss it, do ya?’

When the ninety seconds ran out Wayne shot Farrah dead.

‘OK, hit it,’ said Chief Cornell, and silently, through the doors, the windows and even the roof, the SWAT teams began to enter Bruce’s house.

In the siege room the shot still resonated.

‘You bastard! When will this end!’ Bruce had rushed over and was holding Velvet, who sobbed hysterically, still handcuffed to the lampstand beside her dead mother.

‘You saw the ratings, man. They went up. Blame the couch potatoes.’

‘You hypocritical swine!’ Bruce shouted. ‘ You killed her – no one else did! What is it you’re saying? That the media, the public, is responsible for the fact that you’re a murdering lunatic?’

‘I’m just saying I wouldn’ta shot her if people hadn’t switched to The Simpsons .’

‘You are responsible!’

‘Yes. I’m responsible for me, but you are responsible for you and they are responsible for them. I don’t see anyone doing much about that. I’ve got an excuse, I’m a psycho. What’s your getout?’

Kirsten received a message from the producer. She turned to Bill. ‘Get down! There’s a SWAT team coming in!’

‘No!’ Wayne shouted into the camera.

Above them they could hear the sound of the roof being breached. Wayne grabbed Scout by the hand, and addressed the camera. ‘Wait! Hold it. I’ll give myself up, Scout too, I swear. Stop the attack. Keep the cameras rolling. We’ll give up.’

Outside, Chief Cornell signalled that his forces should pause. Was it possible that they could get out of this nightmare without further bloodshed?

Wayne continued to shout at the camera. ‘But we give ourselves up to the people. The people are responsible. They decide our fate, the fate of everybody in this room.’ He had hold of the ratings computer now. ‘It’s up to you, the people out there… the lives of us all are in your hands. Here’s how it is. When I’ve finished talking, if everybody watching switches off their TV, I swear me and Scout will walk out of here with our hands up… But if you keep on watching, I will kill every last mutha in this room, including myself and Scout. Not a bad show, huh? Exciting, right? And to see it, all you have to do is stay tuned for another few seconds. Well, you’re responsible. Are you gonna turn off your TV?’

INTERIOR. THE LOUNGE. DAY.

Wide shot. The room eerily still. Wayne stands with Scout before the television camera. In one hand he carries his weapon, in the other the ratings computer.

Closeup on Wayne from the TV camera’s point of view. Grainy, videostyle quality to the picture.

WAYNE

(Snarling into camera)

I said, are you gonna turn off your TVs?

Whip pan down from Wayne ’s distorted face to the ratings computer. Picture turns to sudden hard focus. We see what is clearly some kind of graph climbing. Wide shot of room. Wayne hurls the computer to the ground.

WAYNE

(Shouting)

No you ain’t!

Cut to…

INTERIOR. THE TV CONTROL TRUCK. DAY.

Chief Cornell and the others are watching Wayne on the screens. Fast jagged, staccato zoom on to Wayne ’s image on one of the screens. Mid two shot of Cornell and the SWAT commander.

CHIEF CORNELL

Take him.

EXTERIOR. THE ROOF OF THE MANSION. DAY.

SWAT officers blast their way through.

Jump cut to…

EXTERIOR. A WINDOW OF THE MANSION. DAY.

SWAT officers swing through windows on abseiling ropes, smashing glass.

Jump cut to…

INTERIOR. OUTSIDE THE LOUNGE DOOR AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRWAY INSIDE THE MANSION. DAY.

SWAT officers smash door down.

Jump cut to…

INTERIOR. THE LOUNGE. DAY

Extreme wide shot. Wayne and Scout at centre.

Mute sound. Slow motion.

SWAT officers burst through the windows and doors. Wayne and Scout open fire.

A little later the room was filled with strange green figures. Green jump suits, green rubber boots and gloves, green face masks. The green figures were tracing the outlines of the dead. One of them tried to draw a line around Wayne. The chalk made little impression on the sticky swamp of congealing blood in which his body lay. The green man tried using some white tape but nothing much sticks to blood soaked shag pile.

The whole room was alive with flashing light, the effect was almost stroboscopic. Hundreds and hundreds of photographs were being taken for further analysis. The contorted features of the corpses flickered in brief moments of glorious illumination. Their grotesquely twisted limbs seemed almost to twitch in the jaggedly pulsating light.

Hundreds of bullets and cartridge cases were being tweezered from the floor, more prized from the walls. Hairs were plucked from clothing, bloodied thumb prints carefully preserved. The green men and women missed nothing. A pair of pink Doc Martens, freckled with a few spots of blood, were photographed where they lay then placed in a plastic bag marked LAPD. Lab. Likewise a can of hair mousse, a pair of panty hose, a tiny glass, miraculously still upright and containing a splash of crème de menthe.

There was little point in this forensic zeal. Everyone knew who’d killed whom, who had died and who had survived. The whole thing had been captured on television and would shortly be available on video in all good stores.

There is however a process and the green figures had a job to do. A full inquiry into the events of that terrible Oscar night had already been promised. The authorities were anxious to show that, despite everything, they remained in control.

Outside Bruce’s house the survivors were carried away in screaming ambulances. Other ambulances waited for the dead.

Bruce survived Wayne and Scout’s bloody confrontation with the officers of the law but his career never recovered from the terrible events for which many felt he was partly responsible. He now makes tired, cynical movies in France. He has written a book about the night Wayne and Scout entered his life, called Who Is Responsible?. In it he divides the blame equally between Wayne and Scout, the media, the police and the millions of people who did not turn off their TVs.