FICTION: TOJ, Chapter 4: Off The Grid

FICTION: Excerpt from Transit of Jupiter, Chapter 4: Off The Grid

Jake said he felt it in his gut.  Extreme Impact was cursed.  “Cursed like Heaven’s Gate.”  Howard didn’t get him.  Jake said, “Cursed like The Last Action Hero!”  Howard got him.

Brice Hammonds, Jake was saying, this guy couldn’t act his way out of a playpen! 

But Howard convinced Jake to complete shooting.  It would all work out in the end. “It’s all about the score cards!” he told his partner. Howard was a big believer in the power of test screenings and score cards.  Directors generally disliked them; a couple off-hand audience comments could send their films back to the editing room for weeks, or worse, back out on location to reshoot an ending.  Producers loved them. They were free marketing research. With scorecards, a producer could find out what worked, what didn’t, then have everyone go into a room and agree to meet audience expectations. By the time Extreme Impact was ready to go to market, Howard had lined up test screenings in California, Iowa and Delaware.

At a Riverside Cineplex, Howard and Jake stood with Jett Traynor in the rear of the theater as the audience grew restless.  No one laughed at one of the opening scene’s key jokes. (Hammonds tells a terrorist he’s got a solution, “It’s a no brainer,” he says, then blows off the man’s head.  “We paid twenty grand for that fuckin’ joke,” whispered a Jake, panicked.) Twenty minutes into the screening, the PowderKeg chiefs knew they had a problem.  Audience members had folded their scorecards into airplanes and were winging them at the screen.  A man led his family of four toward the exit signs. Others followed.  Jake looked at Howard.  His mouth was working but no sound came out.  Jake slapped open an exit door and disappeared into the lobby. Howard felt he had to do something to keep the audience there for the grand finale, the record-setting detonation (with twenty-five-angle coverage!).  He walked down the aisle, stood in front of the screen so that his shadow cut a sharp silhouette into the white vinyl, and announced, “You are going to love the last ten minutes.” 

Hostile voices emerged from the darkness.  

“What about the first two hours?” 

Scorecards sliced toward Howard on steep trajectories as he blocked the projectionist’s beam with a hand.  Howard huffed it up the aisle and joined Jett and Jake in the lobby.  A sea of walk-outs followed.  The PowderKeg execs looked more and more ashen.  At last, music swelled as the end credits rolled.  The theater doors swung open. Of the original one hundred-forty spectators, only fifty or so remained.  One stalwart who had gutted it out to the end found Howard standing by the ticket booth.  The man recognized him from his desperate speech down front. 

“Cyborgs?” the man said incredulously.  “The terrorists are cyborgs?”  He handed a half-finished popcorn bucket to his son and moved in close to Howard. He was as solidly built as a bricklayer.  “Did you direct this piece of shit,” he asked.  

“No,” said Howard defiantly.  “I produced it.”

“Who’s gonna believe all those explosions are all tied together?  There’s no story.  Nobody’s that stupid.” 

Howard took in the guy’s shirt: black, block-stencilled with ID-4. 

“You look like you might be that stupid,” said Howard.

The man decked him in the nose. 

Howard doubled over and dabbed his wrist. There was blood.  The guy was already walking out the front doors.  “Asshole,” he growled over his shoulder. 

Howard walked toward Jake and Jett, veering slightly, as he tipped his head back and sniffed up blood. 

Jett had draped his long legs over both arm rests of a cushioned lobby chair and was thumbing through messages on his smart phone, playing nonchalant.  In a stoned Spiccoli drawl he went, “So, what did his scorecard say, Howard?”

“You’re not gonna believe it,” still dabbing his nose and praying to God his off-the-cuff rejoinder would beat back the tears.  “Too much action.”