Pirate Cinema

by Cory Doctorow

  “You don’t know their names,” Jem said, grinning. I could tell I was getting through to him.

  Cora laughed like a drain. “Trent doesn’t know anything unless he can google it. But I do. The novel was invented by Cervantes five hundred years ago: Don Quixote. And the detective story was invented in 1844 by Poe: The Purloined Letter. A fella named Hugo Gernsback came up with science fiction, except he called it scientifiction.”

  I nodded at her, said, “Thanks—”

  But she cut me off. “There’s only one problem, Trent: The novel was also invented by Murasaki Shikibu, halfway around the world, hundreds of years earlier. Mary Shelley wrote science fiction long before Hugo Gernsback: Frankenstein was written in 1817. And so on. The film camera had about five different inventors, all working on their own. The problem with your theory is that these creators are creating something that comes out of their heads and doesn’t exist anywhere else, but again and again, all through history, lots of things are invented by lots of people, over and over again. It’s more like there are ideas out there in the universe, waiting for us to discover them, and if one person doesn’t manage to make an idea popular, someone else will. So when you say that if you don’t create something, no one will, well, you’re probably not right.”

  “Wait, what? That’s rubbish. When I make a film, it comes out of my imagination. No one else is going to think up the same stuff as me.”

  “Now you sound like me,” Jem said, and rubbed his hands together.

  Cora patted my hand. “It’s okay, it’s just like you said. Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we’re all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between ‘creators’ isn’t their imagination—it’s how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard. There’s probably a million geezers out there who love Scot Colford films, but none of them can be arsed to make something fantastic out of them, the way you do. The fact is, creativity is cheap, hard work is hard, and everyone wants to think his ideas are precious unique snowflakes, but ideas are like assholes, we’ve all got ’em.”

  I sat down. 26 gave me a cuddle. “She’s right, you know.”

  I made a rude noise. “Of course she’s right. She’s the brains in the family, isn’t she?”

  Cora curtsied, and Jem clapped once or twice. “Well, that was invigorating. Who wants coffee?”

  * * *

  Cora called Mum and Dad later that afternoon, shutting herself in my bedroom for what seemed an eternity. 26 and I amused ourselves by googling the locations mentioned in Beneath the City Streets, checking out satellite and streetview images, as well as infiltration reports from intrepid urban spelunkers. A surprising number of the abandoned deep tube stations had virtually no information on them, which was exciting news—if no one had been going down there, perhaps we could. Rabid Dog and Chester wandered in at some point and demanded to know what we were doing with our stacks of library books, then they, too, caught the excitement and began to google along with us. We were booked to take the White Whale down to the Sewer Cinema at nine that night, once the foot traffic had basically vanished, and they suggested that we visit some of the more promising sites beforehand, just to scout them in person.

  We were all so engrossed that we didn’t even notice when Cora came down the stairs and sat down on the sofa. And then I looked up and saw her sitting there, her eyes sunken and red-rimmed. I nudged 26—she had been emailing her day’s lessons to her teachers so that she wouldn’t be reported as truant. She looked at Cora for a moment, then elbowed me in the ribs. “Go talk with her,” she hissed.

  I got up and held my hand out to Cora. Her hand was clammy and cold. I helped her to her feet. “Let’s go for a walk, okay?”

  She let me lead her up to the top floor, out the fire door, and down the back stairs. We circled around the Zeroday and crossed the empty lot, striking out for the Bow high street.

  “How’d that go, then?” I said, finally.

  I saw her shake her head in my peripheral vision. “They’re furious,” she said. “They think you lured me away. They think you’re a drug addict or a prostitute or something.”

  I felt like I’d been punched in the chest. I found that I was bunching my shirt in my fist. When I didn’t say anything, Cora went on.

  “I told them they were being stupid, that you had a place to live and that you were doing good stuff, but they weren’t hearing any of it. As far as they’re concerned, there was only one reason you could possibly have cut them off, and that’s because you’re ashamed of what you’re doing here. And now they think I’m going to end up selling my body or something daft.”

  I chewed on air, trying to find words. I choked them out. “All right, the fact is, I am ashamed to call them. I’m living in a squat, eating garbage, begging to make cash. But it’s not like they think it is. I’m doing something I care about. I don’t know, maybe we should charge admission to our films, or I should ask for donations for my online videos or something.”

  Cora shrugged. “You know what? I think that whatever you’re doing here, it’s not one millionth as scary as Mum and Dad assume it is. The silence is worse than anything else. You were right about that—now that I’ve called them, they’re not nearly so freaked out about me.”

  “It wasn’t me that told you to call them, it was 26.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s a lot smarter than you,” Cora said. “I like her.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  We walked some more, passing boarded-up storefronts, kebab shops, cafés advertising cheap meals. One of them had a telly in the window, and something on it caught my eye. It was a scene from D’Artagnan’s Blood-Oath, a film I knew down to the last frame. But it wasn’t the film as it was being shown in cinemas.

  It was a scene from my remix: D’Artagnan’s big, stupid swordfight remade as a big Bollywood dance number through the judicious use of loops and cuts to Sun-King!, a Bollywood film set in old-time France I’d found. And it was showing behind a Sky newsreader who then cut away to a serious-looking old bastard in a suit who was talking very quickly and angrily. A moment later, a caption appeared beneath him: SAM BRASS, MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION (UK).

  We’d finally made the news.

  * * *

  As we hurried back to the Zeroday, Cora kept talking about her conversation with our parents. “I just couldn’t stand it anymore. They were always in a panic—no money, on me about my grades, worried about my SAT scores, demanding to know where I was all the time. Since you’d gone, they’ve gone all paranoid, convinced that I was up to something horrible. And the fact that I had to spend all this time out of the house to do my homework only made it worse. I just couldn’t take it anymore, you know?”

  As miserable as this made me feel, I was also feeling elation, excitement. That snatch of SkyTV had lofted me to the clouds. After nothing had come of our raid on Leicester Square, I’d been shattered. Working on Sewer Cinema had been a welcome distraction, but it hadn’t really offset the awful feeling that nothing I did really mattered. Now I found myself daring to hope that I could make a difference.

  We pelted up the fire stairs and then back down into the pub room. I grabbed my lappie and began to google.

  “What is it?” 26 demanded.

  I shook my head and kept searching, then showed her my screen. It was the same newsreader, announcing that our little films had gone viral. Our remixes were being downloaded at speed from all corners of the globe, along with our message:

  Buying film tickets only encourages them. Every penny you spend goes to buying more crap copyright laws. Your children are being sent to prison to protect rubbish like this.

  This seemed to have tipped the scales for Mr. Motion Picture Association, an American who seemed to be based in London, or maybe Brussels. He called us every name in the book: terrorists, thieves, pirates, then compared wha
t we’d done to murder, rape, and pedophilia. By the time he was done, we were all grinning like loonies.

  “Well, better late than never,” Jem said. “Did you see the vein in his forehead throbbing? Poor bastard’s going to have an aneurysm if he’s not careful. Needs to take up Tai Chi or something. You should send him a letter, Cecil.”

  We cackled like a coop full of stoned hens—and then Jem started to spin up some of his monster spliffs and the cackling got even more henlike. Getting high with my baby sister felt weird and awkward at first—I veered from being embarrassed to smoke in front of her to wanting to tell her off for taking a turn when the joint came around to her. But after a few puffs, we were all too blotted to care, and very little happened for a couple of hours while we moved in a slow-motion daze. As I started to sober up, I thought to myself (for the millionth time) that smoking weed always turned out to be a lot more time-consuming than I’d anticipated.

  As it was, we were too late to reconnoiter the ghost tube stations we’d planned on visiting, and rushed into town in the White Whale to finish up the Sewer Cinema. Our grand opening was only two days away, and we all reckoned that with the publicity from the enraged film industry fatcats, we’d have a full house and then some.

  Chapter 6

  THE WAR HOTS UP/HOMECOMING/DROWNING IN FAMILIARITY

  Opening night was upon us before I knew it. Right up to the time that we opened the house, I was convinced we’d never pull it off. Aziz’s beloved White Whale had packed in the day before, leaving us without wheels with which to move in the last of the goods. Instead, we ferried massive armloads of junk down to the cinema on the buses in enormous black rubbish sacks, getting filthy looks from the other riders. Without the White Whale, we couldn’t erect our temporary hoardings and we didn’t have our hi-viz vests and safety hat disguises, so we just scurried through the door and hoped that no one called the filth. We got away with it, though no one left again until it was truly the middle of the night.

  But Aziz came through with new transmission gubbins for his van—it turned out he had two more vans just like it up on blocks that he cannibalized for parts, drafting us all as unskilled manual labor. So we were able to ferry our audience down to the Sewer Cinema entrance in groups of twelve, picking them up at prearranged spots all over town, sticking them in the back of the van (we’d papered over the windows so that no one could see where we were going), then pulling right up to the hoarding and ushering them out in hi-viz and helmets that we stripped off and tossed back into the van so it could go for the next ferryload of passengers.

  I’d left Jem in charge of making people feel welcome while we filled up. Most of the attendees knew one another from Confusing Peach parties or other social events, but we’d asked our friends to put the word out to their friends and friends of friends and had got a rush of RSVPs in the last few minutes. The Honey Roasted Landlords played three sets, Chester and Dog tended bar—we set out a donation cup to cover the drink we’d brought in, and plenty of people showed up with bottles of something or other that went into the communal pool—Cora and 26 made sure nobody fell into the open sewer.

  Aziz and I dropped off the last load at 11:00 P.M., four hours after we’d started, exhausted but grinning like holy fools. Aziz revealed two musty, wrinkled tuxedos he’d dredged up from one of his boxes and we both changed. Mine was way too big, but I rolled up the sleeves and turned up the trousers, then shrugged into my hi-viz and helmet and ducked inside to the most roaring, exciting, ridiculous, outrageous party I’d ever seen.

  As I took it all in from the doorway, nervousness took possession of my belly, gnawing at my guts. The tux was redonkulous in the extreme, I looked like an idiot, my film was stupid, they were all going to hate it and me, I’d dragged them all into a sewer—

  I knew that I had to grab the mic and start talking right then or I never would. So I did.

  “Erm, hullo?” I said, holding the mic in a death grip. “Hello?” No one seemed to notice my amplified voice around the edges of the conversation-blast.

  Jem grabbed the mic from me and pointed it into the nearest amplifier. Immediately, a feedback squeal that rattled my teeth. All conversation ceased instantly, as people shouted and clapped their hands over their ears. Jem handed me back the mic, and said, “You’re welcome.”

  “Thanks,” I said, my amplified voice loud in the sudden silence. I’d had a whole flowery speech worked out, thanking people for coming and introducing our project and so on, but I couldn’t think of any of it just then. All those faces turned toward me, all those eyes staring. The whispers.

  “Erm,” I said. “My name’s Cecil B. DeVil. My friends and I made some films. Let’s watch them, okay?”

  Of course, 26 wasn’t expecting this, so she wasn’t ready, and the lights stayed on and no films played on the screen. Everyone was still staring. Someone giggled. “Well,” I said, “Well. Erm, while we’re waiting, erm.” I felt for something to say. Then, the words came. “You know TIP, right? Theft of Intellectual Property Act?” People booed good-naturedly. My heart thudded and my fingertips tingled. “The thing is—” The words were right there, tip of my tongue. Faces stared at me. Smiling, nodding, wanting to hear what I had to say. Twenty was frowning at her screen, trying to get the beamer working.

  “I left home a year ago, when they took away my family’s Internet access because I wouldn’t stop downloading. I couldn’t stop downloading. I know that sounds stupid, but I was making films, and to make films, I had to download films. I don’t use a camera. I use other films and editing software. But I think my films are good.” I swallowed. “Forget that. I don’t care if my films are good or not. They’re mine. They say something I want and need to say. And I don’t hurt anyone when I say it. They say we have a free country, and in a free country, you should be able to say what’s in your heart, even if you have to use other peoples’ words to say it.” The words were tumbling out now. “We all use other peoples’ words! We didn’t invent English, we inherited it! All the shots ever shot were shot before. All the dialog ever written is inspired by other peoples’ dialog. I make new words out of them, my words, but they’re not like, mine-mine, not like my underpants are mine! They’re mine, but they’re yours to make into your words, too!

  “So they took away my family’s Internet, and my Mum couldn’t sign on for benefits anymore, and Dad couldn’t work on the phone-bank anymore, and my sister—” A lump rose in my throat as I looked at Cora. I swallowed hard and looked away, but my voice was breaking now. “My little sister couldn’t do her schoolwork anymore. It destroyed my family. I haven’t spoken to my parents for a year. I—” I swallowed again. “I miss them.”

  I had to stop and swallow several times. The room was dead quiet, every face on me, solemn. “Now they’ve passed this new law, and kids like me are going to jail for creating things in a way that the big media companies don’t like. They passed this law even though no one wanted it, even though it will destroy more families.

  “It’s got to stop. It’s got to stop. We have to stop being ashamed of downloading. We have to stop letting them call us thieves and crooks. What we do is creative and has at least as much right to exist as D’Artagnan’s Blood-Oath!” People chuckled. “So let’s do it. Me and my mates made these films. Some of you make films. Some of you have films inside you, waiting to get out. Just make them! Sod the law, sod the corporate bullies. They can’t put us all in jail. Let’s tell them what we do, go public with it. It’s time to stop hiding and spit right in their eyes.”

  The beamers sprang to life and blinding light hit me in the face. 26 was ready to show the films. I shielded my eyes and looked at the faces behind the swimming blobs of light that oozed across my blinded eyes. “Okay,” I said. “Looks like we’re ready. I hope you like our films. Thanks for coming.”

  The applause was so loud in the bricked-in vault that it made my ears ring, and as I stepped off the little stage, people started to shake my hand and hug me, strangers and frie
nds, faces I couldn’t make out behind the tears that wouldn’t stop leaking out of my eyes. Finally I was holding Cora and Cora was holding me, and we were both crying like we hadn’t done since we were little kids.

  Behind us, the movie had started, and we dried our eyes and watched along, watched the audience watching the films, laughing, gasping, nudging one another and whispering. I don’t think I’d ever felt prouder in my life. It swelled me up like a balloon in my chest and the big, stupid grin on my face was so wide it made my cheeks ache, but I couldn’t stop it.

  They applauded even louder when my film finished, and 26 kept the final frame paused until the applause died down before starting Chester’s film. We had an hour’s worth of footage lined up, and hundreds of strangers and friends watched with rapt attention, right to the last second, and then there were drinks and dozens of shouted, indistinct conversations. Everyone had something to say, something they loved, something they wanted to make, and it all blurred into a jumble of hands pounding my shoulders, lips shouting encouragement in my ears while the Honey Roasted Landlords played through the night.

  * * *

  Our Leicester Square caper had taken weeks to be noticed by the rest of the world. But Sewer Cinema was an instant hit. It turned out that there were reporters from Time Out and The Guardian in the audience, and we were on the front door of both websites the next morning—including a close-up photo of my face. Dozens of reviews of our films appeared, mostly very complimentary (though some people hated them, but even those people were taking them seriously enough to write long rants about why they were rubbish, and I found that even these made me proud).