Midnight Movie

by Tobe Hooper

  From what I was told, it was only the two of us that afternoon, just me and Scott. Apparently our hockey game consisted of me whacking the puck at his net, then him taking a whack at mine. I’d bet that every once in a while, I stopped that hard orange plastic round thing with my gut or my chest, but most of the time, the damn thing probably went right in between my legs or over my shoulder. I’d also bet that I didn’t get a single goal off old Scotty.

  Our street wasn’t ever busy during the day. The neighborhood was all stay-at-home moms and their little rug rats, and there weren’t too many two-car families, so while the daddies were at work, the road was free and clear. And even when cars did come by, they’d just honk their horns, and we’d get our asses onto the sidewalk. Except for that red fucker.

  I found out later that the Corvette wasn’t actually red red: it was Roman Red. Those Corvette dickheads can call it whatever they want to, but I’ve been to Rome, and I didn’t see anything that shade of red.

  I remember seeing the red Corvette plow around the corner, and I remember waking up in the hospital with a fucking turban around my head.

  I remember the doctors poking and prodding the shit out of me, and I remember it hurting like hell, the worst physical pain I’ve felt. Ever.

  I remember my mother telling me that I flew fifteen feet in the air, and landed face-first on the pavement, and cracked my skull. Some of my brain fluid apparently leaked onto the street. The next time it rained, my memory was washed into the sewer.

  And I remember my mother saying that Scotty flew about twenty-five feet. He went headfirst into a streetlamp. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  Fuzzy memory, man. So when that beautiful girl in the Cove’s parking lot asked me what the deal was with Destiny Express, I told her the truth: “I don’t fucking know.”

  JANINE DALTREY:

  He introduced himself as Tobe Hooper, then we shook hands. His hand was kind of clammy, which I chalked up to it being unseasonably warm, like a zillion degrees. He seemed like a nice old fart, so I asked him, “Can you take a guess what it’s about?”

  He said, “I’d rather let the movie speak for itself. All I’ll say is that it’s probably a combination of funny and bloody. That’s me in a nutshell: funny and bloody.”

  I said, “If there’s a lot of blood, there probably won’t be much laughing. Plenty of screaming, I’d bet.”

  He scratched his beard, then said, “Yeah, but here’s the thing: It’s scarier if there’s some humor involved, because life, although it is generally fucked-up beyond recognition, is oftentimes pretty damn funny. If something’s funny, it becomes more real, and if it’s more real, it becomes more scary.”

  I said, “I suppose I see your point. But, if I can be honest …”

  He said, “I’d hope for nothing less.”

  I said, “Look at those Scream movies. Or look at the Freddy Krueger movies. They were pretty funny, but they were less scary than The Ring. That wasn’t funny at all.”

  He smiled, then patted me on the shoulder and said, “Honey, if I wasn’t old enough to be either your older father or your younger grandpa, I’d ask you to dinner and a movie.”

  I said, “And I’d accept.”

  He said, “Ah. That’s nice. It appears that we’re having a moment here.”

  And before he could go on, this beat-up car flew into the parking lot, then screeched to a stop right behind my car. The door opened, and this fat guy practically fell out of the car, looking as drunk as your typical Cove patron. He walked over, and the first thing I noticed was the orange stain on his white T-shirt; it looked like he’d gotten into a fight with a bowl of buffalo wings. The second thing I noticed was that he smelled like salami. Gross. He looked me up and down and said, “Nice tits. I don’t know why you got fired. Me, I think B-cups are awesome.” Then he turned to Tobe and said, “What do you think, Toeb? What’re your favorite-size breast-a-sauruses? Are you a double-D man? Do you like sticking your face in the cleavage and doing a bronski? Or do you like flat, perky ones like this chick here?”

  Tobe coughed loudly and spit a loogie at the guy’s feet, then said, “Dude McGee, I presume.”

  TOBE HOOPER:

  I was this close to punching him in the face, but I was out of shape, and he had about three thousand pounds on me, so I hawked a couple of yellow ones by his shoes. He just laughed, then cut a huge fart that you could smell even though we were hanging out in the great outdoors. I did, however, say, “If you mispronounce my name again, I’ll hit you. And if you speak to this girl like that again, I’ll cut you.”

  Dude belched, then, with what was some impressive aim, spit a goober right on top of one of my goobers and said, “You don’t have a knife on you, Tobe.” He pronounced it right. Hallelujah, praise Jesus. “And even if you did, it’d probably be in your safe, and even if it was in your safe, you’d probably be too lazy to get it. Don’t write a check with your ass that your cock can’t cash. Or something like that.” Then he wiped his hand on his pant leg and offered it up for a shake. “Pleasure to meet you.”

  I’m from the South, and southerners are gentlemen, so I’ve never refused a handshake in my life … but there’s a first time for everything. I said, “Sorry, Mr. McGee, but I have a terrible cold, and I left my Purell back at the hotel. I’ll have to owe you that shake.”

  He said, “And I’m holding you to that. Wait here.” Then he went into his car trunk, pulled out a film canister, and said, “Here it is, the moment you’ve been waiting for. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you the one, the only, Destiny Express!” He held it out to me, then said, “Would you like to check it out? Or are you afraid that you’ll give it your terrible cold?”

  Over the years, I’ve developed a pretty good bullshit-o-meter, and this dude was pinging in the red. I took a deep breath, counted to five, then said, “I’d love to check it out, Mr. McGee.” I reached for it, then he yanked it away.

  He said, “Say ‘please.’ ”

  Then the pretty blond girl said, “Jesus Christ, just give him the movie!”

  McGee leered at her chest and said, “Only because you asked me so nicely.” And then he handed it over.

  The canister—which certainly looked to be the original one—was clean and dust free, but it still smelled musty, kind of like wet newspapers. On the label, I’d written in some sort of marker, “TOBE HOOPER’S ‘DESTINY EXPRESS.’ DO NOT VIEW WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF THE DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER!!!” I don’t remember doing that, obviously, but it sure sounded like something that the teenage version of yours truly would come up with: pretentious and snotty.

  I opened it up, and there it was, the only existing print of my teenage dabbling into the great world of moviemaking. I took out the reel and unspooled a few frames, but it was too dark to really see anything. I asked Dude, “Have you watched this?”

  He said, “Have I? Have I?!”

  The pretty girl said, “Yeah. Have you?”

  He said, “I have …”

  I said, “What did you think?”

  He said, “You didn’t let me finish. Not. I have not watched it. Wait, that’s a lie. I watched ten minutes of it. That’s all I could stomach.” Then he patted his fat gut and said, “And that’s saying something.”

  I said, “Does that mean it was too gross for you?”

  He belched again, then said, “Something like that.” Then he pointed to the club and said, “Shall we?”

  I gave him back the film and said, “You go ahead. I’ll meet you.”

  As we watched him go, the pretty girl said, “If that’s your audience, remind me never to make a horror movie.”

  I said, “Shit, girl, remind me never to make a horror movie.”

  FROM: GaryChurch@gmail.com

  TO: Church_Warren@LTDLaw.com

  SUBJECT: Blast from the past

  DATE: March 15, 2009

  Greetings, O Brother of Mine—

  You’re not going to believe this one. Guess what arri
ved in the mail today … and not an e-mail, mind you, but an honest-to-goodness letter. A note from our ol’ pal Tobe Hooper. Long time no hear from that sumbitch, right? Doesn’t he still owe you a few bucks? But seriously, folks …

  So yeah, he sent me a handwritten note! No e-mail for the Hooperman. No shocker there, though. I bet he’s a total technophobe. I wouldn’t be surprised if he still edits his movies by hand. Anyhow, the note was short and sweet. He invited me to some music convention in Austin that’s showing that movie of his I was in when I was, what, 16? 17? 14? Who can remember? Clearly not me, because I didn’t even remember its existence until that very moment. And he must’ve wanted me there badly, because included in the envelope was a first-class ticket to Dallas and a voucher for a limo to Austin.

  Good timing. I just wrapped that Shawn Levy thing—my first foray into comedy, after decades of horror, so you can finally get off my ass about spreading my acting wings—and I have a spare couple of weeks.

  No clue how he got my address. But I don’t really care. It’ll be great to see the guy. He is, as they say, a good egg. I’ll send you a report.

  Love,

  Gary

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: As far as I know, no other member of the Destiny Express team was summoned to the screening. Hooper professes no knowledge of who sent Church his invitation. One can assume it was McGee, but that can be neither confirmed nor denied.

  TOBE HOOPER:

  And then, right as I was falling half in love with the girl who was named Janine Daltrey, a limo rolled up, and I started laughing. How could I not? I mean, a limousine pulling into the parking lot of the Cove is like a giant ruby levitating out of a huge pile of human excrement. The limo door opened, and out came a blast from the past: Gary Church. Gary goddamn Church. Man, I almost shit a ruby on the spot.

  Like I said, I don’t remember much about my early childhood, but my teen years are a little clearer, and I sure as hell remember Gary. Because in my neck of the woods, which was populated mostly with hammerheads and dullards, Gary stood out.

  The best thing about Gary was, he was a stand-up dude. Like if you made plans to meet at a restaurant at 6:00, he’d be there at 5:58. Unfortunately, I’d usually show up at 6:58, but he was such a good guy that he’d hang out until I got there and only complain a tiny bit. If I was waiting for me at a restaurant, and I showed up an hour late, I’d have complained my ass off, then I probably would’ve kneed myself in the balls for good measure.

  Gary brought a helluva lot to the table. In high school, he was a brainiac who always got straight A’s, but unlike the other brainiacs in our school—all four of them—he wasn’t the least bit uncool. He managed to balance work with play better than anybody I’ve ever met, before or since. It helped that he had an innate intelligence that allowed him to finish a two-thousand-word paper on Chaucer, or Homer, or astro-fucking-physics in two hours. That all left him with plenty of time to wreak havoc. With me. Which we did. All the damn time.

  I remember once we got ahold of a full bottle of blackberry brandy, which, at the time, I thought was the elixir of the gods, but I now realize is the foulest shit you can drink. We slammed that thing down in a couple of hours, then, for the hour before we puked up our collective guts and passed out, we took a baseball bat to every mailbox in a five-block radius. Juvenile shit, man, but it was fun.

  Our hijinks weren’t always of the innocent variety. We stole probably a hundred books and magazines from good ol’ Mr. Ralph’s newsstand, which we didn’t need to do, because our respective parents gave us plenty of spending money, plus the local library had everything we could ever want. Why did we do it, then? Because there was something outlaw about reading a stolen piece of merchandise. Knowing they were hot made those pulp mysteries and horror tales come across as creepier. And cooler.

  We dug reading. During the summer, the two of us would sit in one of our backyards, on the lawn, and spend the entire afternoon poring over whatever book we’d ripped off that day. I gravitated toward guys like Jim Thompson, and Spillane, and Chandler, whereas Gary was into nonfiction crap like … well, truth be told, I don’t remember exactly what kind of nonfiction crap. Once in a while, just for the fuck of it, one of us would bring along something heavy, like Atlas Shrugged, or Critique of Pure Reason, or maybe some Genet thing. Our other friends thought we were odd, and our enemies thought we were complete fucking morons. Me and Gary, we didn’t grow up in the most intellectual of areas, which is why we clung on to each other for dear life.

  Girl-wise, Gary was way ahead of the game, just like Scott Frost was. I mean, the dude was balling a twenty-four-year-old when he was fifteen. Seemed like everybody in town was getting older ladies into the sack but me. Gary told me all about it, but in a respectful way, like he wouldn’t say shit like, “I blew my load all over her huge tits.” That wasn’t the way he was wired. No, good ol’ Gary liked to talk about how sweet her hair smelled, and how smooth her skin was, and how her entire body tasted like caramel. Sometimes I wish I could’ve taken that kind of approach with the ladies—especially with a certain Oscar-nominated brunette who shall remain nameless. Anyhow.

  Gary was into everything: history, sports, music, philosophy, and, of course, movies. He wanted to be an actor practically from day one. He’d drag my ass to the Ernest Lord Theater at least twice a week, and we’d see a Hitchcock flick, or some John Ford, or some John Wayne, or something—cross your fingers, please, please, dear Lord—with Kim Novak. I initially watched all these flicks just to watch, to be entertained, but not Gary. He was all about camera angles, and the finer points of acting, and story development, and all the kind of shit that even today I need to brush up on. I suppose if you break it down, if there’s no Gary Church, there’s no Leatherface.

  After we finished up high school, he went out to California to make it as an actor. Now, he wasn’t particularly good-looking—we’re talking five foot eight and a buck forty soaking wet, with a too-early-in-life receding hairline—but he had a charisma that charmed casting directors and looked great on the big screen. Unfortunately, since he was so short and average looking, nobody gave him a shot at carrying a movie. They didn’t even give him a chance at helping carry a movie. He became, for my money, the greatest horror third banana in Hollywood. If you needed a sympathetic best friend to kill off in the second act, Gary was your man. And the dude knew how to die a good death.

  I moved out to Hell-Lay after Chainsaw hit, and for a while, it was like old times for me and Gary, except without the broken mailboxes and cherry bombs. When I was hard up for cash, he’d take me out for a meal, and when I was lonely, he’d set me up on a blind date, and when I wanted to show a studio exec a script, he’d do his damnedest to get me an appointment. Gary was a mensch, man, a true mensch.

  When I started getting busy directing, and he started getting busier acting, we lost touch, and I have to foot a larger part of the blame for that one. I’d get so wrapped up in a movie—“obsessed” is a better word, I suppose—that I wouldn’t meet him for lunch, or grab a drink, or even return a damn phone call. When we managed to connect, I told him he shouldn’t take any of it personally, because I didn’t return anybody’s phone calls or meet anybody for lunch. But after a while, how can you not take it personally? I couldn’t blame Gary when he stopped reaching out. After all, I’d stopped years before.

  We’d run into each other around town—if you’ve been in the industry for a while, you eventually run into everybody at some point or another—and it was always pleasant. He’d talk about his many acting gigs, and I’d talk about my too-few directing gigs, and we’d make promises to get together, and, of course, it never happened. I felt so guilty about the whole thing that I started avoiding him at parties and premieres, so when he stepped out of that limo at the Cove, well, that was the first time I’d seen him in almost a decade. My initial reaction was, Man, I’m a dick for blowing this guy off. But when I got a gander at his smiling face, all the regret, all the guilt, and all the self-flage
llation fell by the wayside, and I ran over and gave him a big-ass bear hug.

  JANINE DALTREY:

  Tobe and his friend yipped and jumped around like little kids, and it was the sweetest thing. If you talked to Tobe for a minute or two, you might think he was kind of a crusty fellow and blow him off. But if you saw him hugging his pal like that, you’d give him a second chance.

  Tobe held Gary by his shoulders at arm’s length and said, “As I live and breathe, it’s Gary Church. My God, brother, you look amazing.” And I have to admit, Gary did look pretty good … and pretty familiar. I guessed that since he rolled up in a limo, and since he was buddies with a fancy director like Tobe Hooper, that he was a somebody. I made a mental note to look up Gary Church on IMDb when I got home.

  Gary took a playful swipe at Tobe’s scraggly old beard and said, “I wish I could say the same for you. Manscape much?”

  Tobe smacked Gary’s hand away, then laughed and said, “Nobody gives a rat’s ass about how we working stiffs behind the camera look. You pretty boys, you’re the ones who have to do the … what did you call it?”

  Gary said, “Manscaping.”

  Tobe laughed. “Right. Yeah. Manscaping. Maybe that’s what I’ll call my next flick. The pitch: Yuppie dude gets attacked by a haunted lawn mower. You can play the lawn mower.”

  Gary said, “It would be my honor. And it’d be nice to work together again.”

  Tobe said, “Yeah, right. Again. Say, do you remember what the fuck this movie was about?”

  He shrugged and said, “Meh.”

  FROM: GaryChurch@gmail.com