Hollywood Hack Job

by Nathan Allen

  He stabbed the rusty pipe into the air as he emphasized each point.

  “Tonight, you can all be set free,” he continued. “You have been blessed with an ocean of material riches, but you now have the opportunity to advance to the next stage of spiritual prosperity.” He aimed the pipe at Aimee. “Brother Martin has delivered us this whore to be cleansed. Only by driving the demons from her body will true salvation be within your reach.”

  Jefferson turned to Martin Krauth. “Step forward, Brother Martin,” he said.

  Martin shuffled a few steps closer. Jefferson offered the pipe in his outstretched hands. His ninety-three year old arms trembled under the weight of the heavy implement.

  “We are here tonight because of you, therefore you may have the honor of being absolved first.”

  Martin tentatively accepted the pipe. He studied it for a short moment, then wrapped his palms tight around one end, gripping it like a baseball bat. He looked up at Aimee.

  “No, Martin ...” she whimpered. Her eyes conveyed a desperate pleading. She didn’t know what was happening here, or what they were going to do with her, but she knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. “Please ... please don’t do this.”

  “Commence the cleanse!” Jefferson commanded.

  Martin swung the pipe back behind his head. “Ave domini inferni!” he boomed.

  “Martin, no!” Aimee shouted.

  Her pleas went ignored, and the pipe slammed hard into Aimee’s torso. The sound of her ribs cracking echoed through the otherwise silent building. A hot blade of pain unlike anything she had ever experienced screamed through her entire body. A blood-curdling wail of anguish tore from her mouth.

  “Ave domini inferni!” Martin repeated, swinging the pipe back for a second hit. It smashed even harder into Aimee’s shoulder. Her collarbone snapped like a dry twig.

  “Ave domini inferni!”

  Another crack, and another piercing scream of agony as Aimee felt her spleen rupture.

  “Do not stop!” Jefferson ordered. “Evilness lies within her being!”

  “Ave domini inferni!”

  The pipe smashed into Aimee’s face. Her jaw was decimated, and several teeth knocked loose. Part of her tongue became severed. Some of the cultists flinched at this most confronting display of brutality. But none looked away.

  “You must show her no mercy!” Jefferson demanded. “The demons must be driven from her! She must be made pure!”

  “Ave domini inferni!”

  Another crack, this one across her leg. Her right fibula fractured. Tears bled from her eyes. Every brutal hit was felt in every one of her body’s nerve endings, the pain refusing to cede.

  “You must destroy the demons to save yourself!” Jefferson said.

  “Ave domini inferni!”

  Martin lined up Aimee’s head. He swung the pipe back.

  Aimee squeezed her eyes closed in preparation for the blow that, with any luck, would be the final one. The hit that would end her misery and bring this horrid nightmare to an end.

  But it never came. Instead, there was a loud thump as the pipe hit the floor.

  An abrupt rush of air swept through the room. A whoosh, like something sucked into a powerful vacuum.

  She opened her eyes. Jefferson and his followers were still in place. But Martin was nowhere to be seen.

  A desperate silence followed.

  “Brother Martin has achieved absolution!” Jefferson proclaimed to the room. “He has departed this mortal earth and is on his way to eternal paradise!”

  The assembled followers watched on in incredulity. None of them were entirely sure what they had just witnessed. It looked like some sort of magic trick, but that was simply not possible. This was no illusion. There were no trapdoors in this rickety old building. There was no questioning the authenticity of what they saw.

  Martin Krauth had disappeared. He had literally vanished into thin air, right before their eyes. All that remained was his robe and his clothes, in a pile on the floor where he last stood.

  A moment passed as this all sunk in.

  “Those who wish to join him know exactly what you must do,” Jefferson said. “You need to reserve your place in the kingdom of infinite riches!”

  The robed followers remained in their spots as if held in place by magnets. Everyone was too stunned to react, too reticent to be the first to act.

  “Hurry!! Before it’s too late!”

  The talk show host was the first to move. He sprung forward to snatch up the pipe from the floor. “Ave domini inferni!” he shouted.

  He swung the pipe into Aimee’s body. She heard and then felt the crunch as her shattered ribs were further pulverized.

  This triggered a free-for-all as the rest of the group fell into line. The followers tore the room apart, looking for anything heavy enough be used as a weapon. An old seat was destroyed to produce a number of crude batons and clubs. The teen heartthrob uncovered a wooden fence stake with several sharp nails sticking out. Floorboards were torn up. A Golden Globe-winning actor removed his sock and filled it with heavy stones. Everyone hurried to get a piece of the action while they still had the chance.

  “Ave domini inferni!” they shouted as they joined in the mass clubbing.

  The blows were as vicious as they were unrelenting. There was nothing Aimee could do as she became a human pinata for this group of Hollywood cultists, this twisted showbiz Illuminati, all hellbent on securing their spot in heaven. The beatings were inexorable and came from every angle, twisting her body out of shape until it ceased to resemble anything human. She reached a point where shock set in and the pain no longer registered. An all-encompassing numbness had taken over.

  Whoosh! The talk show host vanished through the floor, leaving behind a messy pile of clothes.

  The followers paused momentarily, then resumed their frantic pummeling. The hits came harder and harder, each assailant well aware of their rapidly-shrinking window of opportunity. The fear of being left behind grew with each passing second.

  Whoosh! The supermodel disappeared.

  Whoosh! The Canadian pop star went next.

  Blood poured from Aimee’s mouth at a frightening rate, the result of her broken teeth and severe internal bleeding. Her whole body going into shutdown. She was as limp as a rag doll, barely grasping onto her final threads of consciousness.

  Jefferson Slade observed his fanatical crew of devotees from afar, impassive save for the wicked, black-toothed grin spread across his jaundiced face. The flicker from the torches lent his eyes a glowing, almost reddish quality. The multiple sources of light cast numerous shadows against the crumbling brick walls.

  In the midst of her delirium, Aimee would experience one final, brief moment of lucidity. It would last only a couple of seconds, but it was long enough for one particular detail to catch her eye.

  A strange illusion was projected against the far wall, directly behind where Jefferson stood. It was his shadow. It appeared to show two small pointed horns protruding from the top of his head; perfect half-moon crescents on either side. There was a perfectly logical explanation for this – it was the two unruly tufts of hair sticking out from Jefferson’s otherwise bald scalp that created this odd impression.

  But there was no logical reason, as far as she could tell, as to why the silhouette also appeared to show him with a spiked tail.

  Or why each robe and pile of clothes left behind from the absolved celebrities was encircled by a thin, barely-noticeable ring of fire.

  Whoosh! Two more followers commenced their journey into the next world, evaporating with a tiny puff of smoke.

  As Jefferson Slade’s rabid disciples transitioned into the afterlife, and as Aimee moved closer and closer towards taking her final breath, she consoled herself with the knowledge that each of these followers was likely to end up in the opposite place to where they thought they were going.

  The last thing Aimee would see was the British comedian lifting a bowling ball-sized rock above his
head, and the last thing she would hear was his voice screaming, “Ave domini inferni!” at the top of his lungs.

  The rock crashed down on top of her skull. The comedian was sucked into the floor, and the ceremony finally ended.

  PART III.

  THE SHARPEST KNIVES

  IN

  THE DRAWER

  Chapter 15

  The Santa Monica headquarters of Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company were exactly as Cameron Knight and Eric Haas had pictured them. It was as if a thirteen year old boy had won first prize in the lottery shortly after he stopped taking his Ritalin medication. The walls were covered with one-sheets from his many blockbuster films – Armageddon, Bad Boys, Transformers, The Rock – alongside framed photographs of the director posing with a who’s who of Hollywood royalty.

  Four life-sized Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stood watch in each corner of Michael Bay’s main office, a room bigger than many family homes. A row of vintage pinball machines occupied space against a far wall. Glossy catalogs advertising the very latest in luxury sports cars were spread across a coffee table that doubled as a retro Galaga arcade game. His MTV Movie Award and a gold-plated Optimus Prime figurine both adorned his mantlepiece. His Saturn Award took pride of place at the center of his solid Balinese cedar desk, while his two Golden Raspberries doubled as paperweights.

  Cameron and Eric were still a little overwhelmed by the sensory overload of their garish surroundings, and had failed to notice that the A-list director, who was also producing the film they had been hired to write, had reached the final page of their completed screenplay. It wasn’t until they heard the dull thud of it landing on his desk that they realized he had finished.

  An uneasy silence gripped the room. Eric’s stomach knotted as he awaited Michael’s response. Cameron eyeballed the floor in front of him.

  “Well,” Michael began. “I can honestly say I’ve never read anything quite like that before.”

  Half-smiles appeared on both writers’ faces, until the ambiguity of the preceding statement became apparent. Was he saying he liked it? Hated it? It was impossible to tell; the vacant look on Michael’s face gave nothing away. It was an expression of pure ambivalence, the same one he wore when he played Candy Crush Saga on his phone.

  “Much of the writing here is very good,” Michael continued. “Exceptional, even. But I have to be honest with you; it’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

  Cameron and Eric traded sideways glances.

  “I’m not quite sure what you mean by that,” Eric said.

  “Well for a start ...” Michael flicked through a few pages of the script. “It’s a little full-on with the highbrow literary references, don’t you think? Proust, Dante, Camus, Kafka, Greek mythology. You guys really threw everything in there.”

  “Sure, but our aim was to write something a little more intellectually stimulating,” Cameron said. “Too many films these days speak down to their audience. They treat them as fools with low IQs and infinitesimal attention spans. It’s a trend that’s been ongoing for some time, and we were hoping to arrest that slide.”

  “I can appreciate that,” Michael said. “I’m just not sure it’s right for this particular film. You know ... a horror film.”

  “We acknowledge we haven’t delivered what might be termed a traditional horror narrative. What we’ve attempted is more of a ...” Cameron paused as he tried to conjure up the appropriate adjective. “... a more impressionistic take on the genre.”

  “The horror is implicit rather than explicit,” Eric added. “Which, in our opinion, makes it all the more terrifying. See, at the beginning of the film our protagonist enters into a kind of Faustian pact. She wants to be successful. She craves fame. There’s nothing she’s not willing to do to make this happen. And then it does happen, only it happens in a way she could have never predicted. So by the end of the film, when she’s being followed by news cameras and hounded by the press, she comes to realize the true cost of this unadulterated celebrity. Her humanity was lost in the process. Great wealth and worldwide fame may be coming her way, but she sold her soul to get there. The ultimate tragedy of the story is that she’s now going to die alone.”

  Michael leaned back in his chair and heaved out a lungful of air. Cameron and Eric were both intelligent guys – talented writers, Ivy League graduates – but they were a little slow to pick up on what he was trying to say. He saw that he would have to be a little more direct with his words.

  “Guys, it’s great that you’re trying to do something different,” he said. “There will always be room in Hollywood for creativity and original ideas. But you have been hired to write the screenplay for Wrong Turn. It’s not a reimaging of Shakespeare or Chekov, or whatever else you studied previously. It’s a movie about horny co-eds getting drunk and getting it on in the woods before being terrorized by a bunch of inbred cannibals. It’s a remake of a film starring that chick from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that other chick from that one Hinder video. It’s dumb, unpretentious slasher stuff. You know, spikes penetrating heads. Bones being snapped in half. Hot young women disrobing, then being dismembered and disemboweled. In other words, a film your average fifteen year old boy wants to watch with his friends. Not one that reminds him of his homework.”

  Seconds passed as Cameron and Eric took this all in.

  “We were only trying to raise the bar a little,” Eric said.

  “With all due respect, you’re looking at someone whose films have grossed seven-point-three billion dollars worldwide. That didn’t happen by any bars being raised. That happened by knowing what the audience wanted to see and then giving it to them. And I get that you both dropped six figures on your college education and you now want to show off everything you’ve learned, but there’s a time and a place for that sort of thing and it’s not here.”

  “I think this is exactly the place to do it,” Cameron said, a defensive tone entering his voice. “Maybe there are fifteen year old boys out there sick and tired of being served up the same thing week in week out.” His volume increased. “Maybe they want something that won’t insult their intelligence for a change.”

  Eric jumped in before Cameron could work himself up any further. “I think what Cameron is trying to say is that we wanted to respect our audience.”

  “Like I said, if you really want to respect your audience you should give them exactly what they want,” Michael said. “Not what you think they should want.”

  “You know what, Michael, maybe you’re the one who’s out of touch with modern audiences,” Cameron said. “Our friends have read this script, and they all thought it was brilliant.”

  Michael smirked. “I’m sure they did. But I doubt there’s a great deal of overlap between the people you socialize with and the typical cinemagoer. Your friends won’t be lining up for tickets on opening weekend. The Comic-Con crowd will be, and so that’s the demographic we have to cater to.”

  Painful silence was followed by more painful silence as Michael’s blunt assessment sunk in. Cameron and Eric could only squirm in their seats as the sense of defeat descended upon them.

  “Look, this isn’t the end of the world,” Michael continued. “This is what first drafts are for – experimenting with new ideas, seeing what works, ironing out the kinks and so on. Now we just have to throw out everything that doesn’t work, which is most of it, and take another stab at it.”

  He chuckled at his unintentional pun.

  “Let’s see if you can come up with a script that doesn’t require Cliff Notes to understand. Aim for something that’ll play at the multiplexes rather than the art houses. Get the page count down to under one-twenty, because this ...” He lifted the two hundred and seventeen page doorstop up off his desk. “This is basically unfilmable. I may as well put forty million dollars in a pile and set fire to it.”

  The door opened and Michael’s assistant, a willowy young blonde, poked her head inside. Eric recognized her as the woman they had encoun
tered shortly after they arrived. She was in the car park, washing Michael’s Porsche 918 while wearing a skimpy pink bikini.

  “Michael, you have a delivery you must sign for,” she said in a lilting Russian accent.

  “Not right now, Liliya,” he said.

  “It is that new robot butler you have ordered. It has arrived now from Japan.”

  “What?” Michael leaped out of his chair. “Why didn’t you say so? Send it it, send it in!”

  He power-walked to the door.

  “And for God’s sake, take all that religious symbolism out of your script,” he said before leaving. “Trust me on that. Religion is the one hornet’s nest you definitely do not want to poke.”

  Platinum Dunes had recently purchased the intellectual property rights to a stack of horror titles, many of dubious quality, including Wrong Turn, Urban Legend, Re-Animator, Candyman, Hellraiser, Final Destination, Child’s Play and Leprechaun. Michael Bay planned on producing an entire a series of films that took place in an interconnected world he dubbed the Platinum Dunes Cinematic Universe. Heroes and villains from the various titles would cross over and make cameos in each other’s films, and a teaser for the next release in the series would appear during the post-credits sting.

  This was part of a wider industry trend, described by some commentators as a new and exciting way of immersing the audience and extending the boundaries of traditional storytelling, and derided by others as a gluttonous cash-grab and the death knell of original cinema. Wrong Turn was scheduled to be the first release as part of the Platinum Dunes Cinematic Universe.

  Remakes and reboots had become increasingly common in recent years, to the point where it was almost impossible to get any film produced that wasn’t already associated with a recognizable brand. Horror films in particular were often repackaged and resold with little regard for quality before being hawked to undiscerning viewers. The fact that remade horror movies rarely matched or improved on their source material – it was difficult for a film to build tension and scare an audience when a familiar plot was being rehashed – did little to deter studios from attempting to revive many classics of the genre.