King of the Worlds

by M. Thomas Gammarino

  “Okay, Daniel, picking up at line 124.”

  “Act 3, scene 2?”

  “Right.”

  Daniel began:

  “Why should you think that I should woo in scorn?

  Scorn and derision never come in tears.

  Look, when I vow, I weep. And vows so born,

  In their nativity all truth appears.

  How can these things in me seem scorn to you,

  Bearing the badge of faith to prove them true?”

  He read with all the passion and nuance of some twentieth-century AI. (To be sure, he wasn’t one—at least not as far as Dylan knew.)

  “Okay, Daniel,” Dylan said. “Not bad, not bad, but remember: you love this girl. She doesn’t believe you, but you know that your future happiness depends utterly on convincing her of it. Imagine this is your only chance to persuade her, and if you fail, you die. That’s what it has to feel like.”

  “But he doesn’t really love her though, right?”

  “Au contraire, he definitely does love her. He’s crying to prove it, and these are no crocodile tears. That what he’s trying to persuade her of.”

  “What are crocodile tears?” somebody asked.

  “Phony tears. Fake tears.”

  Daniel balked some more: “But he only loves her because Puck put the juice on his eye, right?”

  “That’s true, Daniel. Good point. That’s why he loves her, and we know that, but the key thing here is that he doesn’t know it. He feels himself overwhelmed by love and that’s that. I can see how it might bother you that the reason he’s so powerfully in love is because for all intents and purposes he’s been drugged, but the truth is, Daniel, if you were to ask a biochemist, they’d tell you that love is always a matter of chemicals. It’s always a drug. It comes on strong and then wears off over time. The only difference here is the chain of causality, but whether the love causes the chemicals or the chemicals cause the love, subjectively speaking I don’t suppose it makes much difference, and as an actor your primary concern is always with subjectivity. Subjectivity is your bread and butter. Do you get what I’m saying to you?”

  “Not really,” Daniel admitted.

  “Okay, well just try putting some more passion into it, would you, Daniel? See if you can’t work up some tears for us.”

  “I’ll try,” Daniel said. His hair vibrated.

  “That’s all anyone can reasonably ask of you,” Dylan assured him.

  Daniel was just about to begin when Tiffany spoke up from the curtains, “How come you’re so much nicer today, Mr. G?”

  “Am I nicer today?”

  “About a thousand times.”

  “Well, I got a good night’s sleep for one thing. That may have something to do with it.”

  It was true. Last night he’d made a point of sleeping on the living room sofa so he could follow Dr. Cohen’s advice and omni up some tinnitus-masking white noise without disturbing Erin. Sure enough, he’d slept like the proverbial baby, and it no longer bothered him so much if Daniel Young wasn’t the greatest Shakespearean actor in the universe; indeed, as Daniel proceeded to act out his scene there in the classroom, it was clear that, despite overwhelming odds, he didn’t have a Shakespearian atom in his body.

  Surprises were possible, of course.

  • • •

  Back when Dylan was fourteen, no one would have guessed that he’d go on to be a famous actor one day. It wasn’t until his senior year, after all, that his father overheard him belting out Pearl Jam’s “Black” in the shower one evening8 and encouraged him to try out for the spring musical, which was Jesus Christ Superstar that year. Dylan would have been content to be in the chorus, so he was rather terror-stricken when he checked the board the morning after callbacks to find he’d gotten the lead.

  8_____________

  He especially liked to let loose toward the end:

  I know someday you’ll

  have a beautiful life,

  I know you’ll be a star,

  in somebody else’s sky,

  But why, why, why can’t

  it be, can’t it be mine?

  Despite feeling in the secret mind at the back of his ordinary mind that he was meant to play this part, he was so off-the-charts nervous during the next couple months of rehearsal that he felt as if he was always on the verge of puking. Mr. Armstrong, the casting director/geometry teacher, was tough on him, always making sure he hit precisely the right pitch and stood in just the right place on stage when he hit it. Dylan’s worst fear was that he would blank during a live performance and forget the words, so in the interest of being over-prepared, he spent so much time and energy at home listening to cast recordings of Superstar, and recording himself singing it, that his eyes went all raccoonish and his grades tanked in every subject except English, which had always been easy for him.

  But then, come opening night, his efforts paid such high dividends that he didn’t merely sing the songs so much as he became them. And just as in his audition, he didn’t quite realize what he’d done until it was over and he was taking his curtain call. But whereas a couple of dozen kids had clapped for him after his audition, several hundred adults were now giving him a standing ovation. Dylan Greenyears had found his calling, and everyone in the school knew it.

  Overnight, Dylan became as popular as it was possible to be at Cardinal O’Hara High School, and not just among his peers but teachers, parents, custodial staff, alumni, and everyone else who’d come to see the show or read the stellar reviews in the News of Delaware County or The Springfield Press as well. To be sure, there are few ways to inflate a teenager’s ego more than to assign him the role of God in the school musical. One way, though, is to award him “Most Likely to Be Famous” in his senior yearbook, and Dylan had that honor too. It didn’t hurt things either that he had lately begun dating Erin Wheatley, the dance captain, who’d been cast as his temptress in more ways than one. The future had never looked so gorgeous.

  Then, a few weeks after graduation, Dylan had his first brush with bona fide celebrity. Chad Powell, who’d played Judas opposite Dylan’s Jesus and was soon to be his roommate at Temple University, found them a gig as extras in 12 Monkeys, a time travel film about a boy who witnesses his own death as an older man. The Convention Center had been made up to look like an airport, and over the course of two days Dylan and Chad played a couple of luggage-toting travelers. The opportunity to work with (i.e. in the same film as) Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt would have been compensation enough; that they were granted access to the same catered spread as the stars was just a bonus. Indeed, for Dylan it would turn out to be something of a bonanza.

  He was in the donut line on their second morning on the set when a voice from behind him intoned, “I’ve had my eye on you since yesterday.”

  Dylan peered over his shoulder. The dude was big, had long hair and was wearing some sort of cowboy hat. Chad was over in the coffee line, so Dylan was on his own here. “Um…why?”

  “You’ve got the sort of look I’m after.”

  “I have a girlfriend,” Dylan replied. He knew acting had a reputation for drawing gay dudes, and he had nothing against them; he just didn’t happen to be one himself.

  The guy chuckled. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

  Dylan looked again. “Should I?”

  “Not necessarily. I do happen to be directing this film you’re in, though. Pleased to meet you. Name of Terry.”

  The two plain donuts on Dylan’s styrofoam plate leapt off and began rolling in opposite directions. Dylan wasn’t as up on his directors as he’d have liked, but murmurs from other extras had made it clear that Terry Gilliam was a pretty big deal. “I’m so sorry,” Dylan said. “I feel like an idiot.”

  “No worries,” Gilliam said, taking two more donuts from the tray and setting them on Dylan’s plate. Once they were stea
dy, he fished around in his wallet, took out a business card and placed that on the plate as well. “I’m quite busy today, for obvious reasons, but I want you to call me this evening. Say around nine or ten? Can you do that?”

  “Okay,” Dylan said, oblivious as to what was going on.

  “Are you free for lunch tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” Dylan said.

  “And what, may I ask, is your name?”

  “Dylan…uh…Dylan Greenyears.”

  “Perfect,” Gilliam said, putting one hand on Dylan’s shoulder and grabbing himself a croissant with the other. “Now back to the wars.” He winked at Dylan and went off to direct Bruce Willis.

  Dylan had no idea what he’d just agreed to—why in God’s name did this world-famous director want to have lunch with him? And was his lack of understanding somehow his own fault? Had he missed some subtle cue or signal? Failed to interpret Hollywood-ese?

  For some reason, either because he didn’t want to presume or didn’t want to gloat—he himself wasn’t sure—Dylan went the whole day without mentioning to Chad what had happened. Filming ended around seven, and Chad suggested they go get some grub, but Dylan told him he was feeling sick to his stomach, which was true in a way. He dropped off Chad at eight-fifteen, got home at eight twenty-eight, and called Mr. Terry Gilliam one fashionable minute after nine o’clock.

  He answered on the first ring. “Hi there, Dylan. I’m glad you called. Look, I know I suggested lunch tomorrow, but it turns out I’ve got a prior engagement.”

  “That’s okay,” Dylan said, crestfallen.

  “However,” Gilliam went on, “could you meet me for some s’mores at around half three? There’s a café at 4th and Chestnut. It’s spelled ‘X-a-n-d-o,’ though I don’t know whether to call it Zando or X and O.”

  “‘Half three’?”

  “Right. Sorry. That’s three thirty on this side of the pond.”

  “Okay,” Dylan said.

  “Till tomorrow then.”

  “Yes. See you tomorrow.” Dylan had sworn to himself that he’d find out more about Gilliam’s intentions before agreeing to meet him, but his star-struckedness had gotten the better of him.

  So the next day Dylan took a trolley at noon to 69th Street and then the el downtown. He was a couple of hours early, so he wandered the city, wondering at omnipresent graffiti warning him that “Andre the Giant Has a Posse,” and ogling all the exotic city girls. Suburban girls so often put a premium on comfort, but these city girls dressed up. Even Erin was wearing sweats around him lately, and while he loved her, he was at the height of his virility and beginning to feel the tug of wanderlust.

  Come half three, he made sure he was at Xando, however it was pronounced. Gilliam showed a couple of minutes later and gave Dylan a firm handshake. “Shall we dine al fresco?”

  “Okay,” Dylan said. Now what did ‘al fresco’ mean again?

  “So, Dylan, you’ve grown up in this fair city?”

  “Near it,” Dylan said.

  An androgynous, bald barista came to take their order.

  “What’ll you drink, Dylan?” Mr. Gilliam asked. “It’s on me, of course. A cappuccino?”

  “Can you do an espresso con panna?” Dylan asked the barista. This was just a fancy way of saying “espresso with whipped cream,” but having spent the past couple of summers working in the café at Borders,9 he had become a bit of a coffee snob.

  9_____________

  One of the mega-bookstores once ubiquitous throughout the United States. These temples would stand as the high-water mark of American literary culture in Dylan’s mind. No one knew back then how fragile the business model was, how Omni was about to usher in a whole new paradigm. For a heady moment there it was like the Library of Alexandria was up and running again, and everyone had a card.

  “Sure,” the barista said.

  Mr. Gilliam looked impressed. “I’ll take the same. And some s’mores, too, would be lovely.”

  “Will that be all?”

  “For now anyway.”

  The barista went away.

  “All right, Dylan, you’ve been a good sport, but you must be wondering why I brought you out here.”

  “I was sort of wondering that, now that you mention it.”

  “So let me just cut to the chase. I’d like you to audition for my next project.”

  This was precisely what Dylan had hoped Gilliam would say, but it was no less stupefying for his having anticipated it. “Wow,” he managed at length.

  “If it came down to appearance alone,” Gilliam went on, “I could tell you already that the part’s yours if you want it. You’ve got just the face I’ve seen in my dreams, handsome and angular, but tender and childlike at the same time. Looks aren’t everything, of course. Not by a long shot. I need to verify that you can act. Mind you, I’ve never done this before, scouted prospective talent like this, but since I spotted you on the set yesterday, my gut’s been telling me not to let you get away.”

  Holy crap! Was life really going to be this easy? Was high school really such a reliable predictor of future success? Was he really handsome and angular and tender and childlike?

  “I don’t know what to say,” Dylan said. “May I ask what the project is?”

  “You’ve seen E.T.?”

  “About a million times. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid.”

  “Good. Well this is the sequel. E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears. The idea has been kicking around Hollywood for years. There’ve been countless scripts. Spielberg himself wrote the first treatment and then abandoned it, said a sequel would rob the original of its virginity, which immediately struck me as a worthwhile undertaking. When I asked if he’d mind my adopting the project, he said, ‘Be my guest, just make sure my name’s nowhere on it.’ Naturally I went right to Henry Thomas, who played Elliott in the first film, but he read the script and declined, said pretty much what Spielberg had been saying, that it did violence to the spirit of the original, which is of course the point.”

  “May I ask how this one’s so different?”

  “I dare say you just did. Nocturnal Fears strikes a very different tone from the first E.T. Much darker. It begins the same way, with a spaceship landing in the forest and a silhouetted alien waddling down a ramp, but this alien, it turns out, is no angelic vegetarian like ET. No, this one is Korel, the leader of a race of red-eyed, albino carnivores from the same planet as ET. They intercepted ET’s distress signals when he was phoning home from his umbrella communicator in the first film, and they have come to capture and possibly eat him. ET’s name, by the way, turns out to be Zrek.”

  “Who knew?” Dylan said.

  “Right. So these evil guys end up trapping Elliott, who’s an adolescent now, in a cage aboard their mothership, and they interrogate him about Zrek’s whereabouts. They don’t speak English, so a good deal of the second act is told through the impromptu drawings they pass back and forth. It makes for some pretty bold cinema, if I may say so myself. Ultimately the albinos resort to out-and-out torture and things get quite brutish before Korel’s wife, Korelu, shows mercy on Elliott. She doesn’t have the wherewithal to set him free, but she mocks Korel through her drawings and she and Elliott laugh together. Before you know it they can be seen, in silhouette, making love through the beams of his light cage.”

  “Elliott loses his virginity to an alien?”

  “Quite right. But wouldn’t you know that in the very height of their passion, who walks in but Korel himself! His eyes glow blood-red and his wife shouts all kinds of protests in their strange, chordal language. Korel, meanwhile, rips some razor-sharp teeth out of the mouth of this winged shark thing in one of the other cages—a specimen from another planet, presumably—then he unlocks Elliott’s light cage with his mind and, using an excretion from the base of his spine, proceeds to glue the teeth to Elliott’s penis
. Mind you, none of this is shown directly so much as it is implied—we want the R rating after all. Korel then instructs Elliott, via a drawing, to pick up where he left off with Korelu. Elliott refuses. Korel rips out another tooth, holds it to his wife’s neck, points to the drawing again, and utters his first phrase of English: ‘Fuck you.’ Elliott begins to cry.”

  The barista put down their drinks and s’mores. They thanked the barista.

  “Well?” Dylan said.

  “Well what?”

  “What happens next?”

  “Excellent. Act three: Zrek, of course, re-arrives from space to kick albino ass and save the day. Zrek turns out to be highly skilled in the celestial martial arts. Certain critics are going to say that I cheated by taking the climax out of the protagonist’s hands and handing it over to Zrek, making him in effect a deus ex machina, so in order to at least acknowledge that I’ve done so consciously, I have Zrek land in a different part of the country, the planet’s having rotated and whatnot, and commandeer a Ferrari Testarosa. Machina, you know, is the Italian word for car, so what you get in effect is a clever pun for the intellectual set. Meanwhile, it also makes for some comic relief and thrilling action sequences.”

  “How does it end?”

  “Okay, so just as we recapitulated the beginning of the first film, we do so again with the ending. Korelu gives birth to a boy. Looks-wise he’s exactly intermediary between her and Elliott. Elliott’s mother has a talk with Elliott about how her little boy has really grown up and how he needs to step up and assume responsibility. This is clearly a very personal issue for her, her own husband having run off to Mexico before the first film. Elliott hugs her and promises to be a good father. Cut to a wedding ceremony in a church, with Zrek as best man. Everyone throws confetti as Elliot and Korelu walk out of the church, hand in hand, and get in Zrek’s Ferrari. The baby is snug in his car seat in the back. Zrek chauffeurs the newlyweds and their newborn up the gangplank into the spaceship and we see that the car is towing a bunch of cans and the license plate reads ‘JUST MARRIED.’ Elliott breaks the fourth wall, looks directly at the camera and says ‘I’ll be back’ in his best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice. They go up into the belly of the ship, the doors close, and they embark on their honeymoon to the Outer Rim. Roll credits.”