by Kim Newman
CHISELHURST: So, I take it, you’re giving us a go. Derek?
WILDING: Cloud 9 will take Madhouse! to series. Make us television history, Tiny.
* * *
THE FINAL SELECTION
Harry Bennett
Joshua Brew
Andrea D’Arbanvilliers-Holmes
Petra Kidner
Martin Leigh
Shona Murtaugh
Donovan Wyke
NOTES, by MYRA LARK
The optimum number of participants was set at seven early in the planning stages. An odd number ensures that, in the event of factionalisation, there will be an uneven split, with shifting loyalties or connections making for an unstable, potentially eventful series of relationship storms. In the event of heterosexual liaisons forming, one of the men will be left out. The most obvious candidate would be Mr Brew, because of his religious persuasions. More interesting from our purposes would be Mr Bennett, whose self-image is constructed entirely around his ability to coerce sex from females. It has been a subject for concern that Mr Leigh is too obviously dominant among the group, being habitually used to attaining his personal objectives through violence, but Dr Wendel and I have conferred and we see avenues around this ‘problem’. If a blunt solution is required, Mr Leigh could be handicapped in some manner and forced to a great extent to rely on the goodwill of the others for his continued comfort. A subtler way out would be to arrange matters so that, from the outset, Mr Wyke is in a more commanding position. His record suggests that he can for a short while at least project the image of a confident, born leader.
After running simulations and role-play scenarios with fully-briefed substitutes, these eventualities occur in every single variation of the basic situation.
a) After three days, multiple sexual exchanges will have taken place. There will also have been betrayals, extensive verbal and minor physical abuse and the development of very deep, though shifting, attachments and dislikes within the group.
b) At the six-day stage, a danger point is reached as the group turn against the experiment. We believe they will make an effort to destroy all recording devices in sight, and repeat our suggestion that these be dummies. Some of the ‘hidden’ cameras should be easily discoverable and disablable too. It is vital that we keep the subjects’ attentions on each other and not foster a group paranoia directed at external bodies (eg: the production company), so we must insert into the scenario the idea that one or more of the subjects are in fact ‘plants’ working for us. You will recall that an early stage of development, we rejected the idea of actually having a ‘mole’ in the group as unnecessary and unsatisfying. We believe these subjects are capable of creating and starring in their own paranoia/entertainment scenario with very little help from us.
c) Once the imaginary ‘plants’ have been dealt with, the programme will continue as before. Food, sexual favours, soft drugs and basic services will become currency. It is to be stressed that we should not go out of our way to make things difficult for the subjects -by withdrawing or tampering with the food supply, for instance - since the purpose of the show is to let them be themselves. Their own personality types are what is at issue here, are the factors that will make them stars. We have every confidence in them.
d) Most of the variables become extreme on the eighth day, when the subjects realise the experiment is not limited to the week they thought they had committed themselves to. Then, the communications from Mr Gatlin should become more cryptic or mocking, playing on the knowledge of the survivor personalities we have gained in the course of the first week. It is possible that the group will forge together to attempt escape, but the inherent instabilities of the personality mix make this a highly unlikely and unworkable venture.
NB: Our amended psych profiles and the medical details of the subjects are attached. Note especially Mr Bennett’s asthma, Miss Kidner’s understandable high degree of tolerance for searing pain and Mr Wyke’s clinical sociopathy.
* * *
MEMO
From: Tiny Chiselhurst, producer/creator
To: April Treece, co-associate producer
Re: It’s a Madhouse!
We have our madhouse! It’s three miles or so from St. Helena, and we’ve bought it outright so it’s our own country (what should we call it?) and we can write the law-book. It was a refuge for the idle rich in the 1920s, and comes complete with a villa Drache is having restored to its original condition at great expense to Cloud 9. From the snaps I’ve seen, it’s very Agatha Christie. The hidden cams are being installed as I write. We’re taking advantage of the restoration to build a lot of versatility into the cams. There will be no blind spots on this island, though the stars will be told that there is one room set aside for privacy. Naturally, that’s where we expect a great deal of the action to take place, so it’s bugged from here to there and gone.
Just in case our stars take too long to find out about each other, we’re planting scrapbooks about each of them in the villa library. For the first week, Barry will transmit instructions nightly via a two-way TV hook-up to set out games and contests we’ve designed to be uneven and unfair, to sow discontent among the stars, and string them along the game aspect. Dr Wendel and Miss Lark disagree about when or if they will tumble to the ‘real’ nature of the show, but both are sure it won’t come until well after we have got the good stuff going. I sense Satellite Awards in the making.
* * *
MEMO
From: April Treece, associate producer
To: Tiny Chiselhurst, producer/creator
Re: It’s a Madhouse!
Mr Q reports Shona Murtaugh is really Judy Burke, a freelance journalist for Scam magazine. The bitch is undercover doing an exposé on rigged docusoaps. She must be imagining headlines along the lines of TV TEAM FORCED ME TO HAVE SEX WITH PLONKER.
* * *
MEMO
From: Tiny Chiselhurst, producer/creator
To: April Treece, co-executive producer
Re: It’s a Madhouse!
Shona or Judy? It doesn’t matter. What I want to know is whether the meltdown giggle is real or fake?
* * *
MEMO
From: April Treece, executive producer
To: Tiny Chiselhurst, producer/creator
Re: It’s a Madhouse!
The shriek is real. I’ve got that from three sources. Probably why she got the assignment. No one can stand to have her in the office.
* * *
MEMO
From: Tiny Chiselhurst, producer/creator
To: April Treece, co-producer
Re: It’s a Madhouse!
If the giggle’s real, the girl’s in. Have Mr Q disable any mobile phone or computer up-link she might contrive to get to our island (that goes for the others too, BTW). Miss Lark considers someone genuinely hiding her name will be a shoo-in to get tagged as the ‘plant’. If the scenario runs as expected, I doubt Judy the Journo will ever file copy.
* * *
REQUEST FORM No. 69
Re: It’s a Madhouse!
From: Constant Drache, Production Designer
To: April Treece, producer
It is vital that my team be supplied with the following as soon as possible.
1: A set of Sabatier kitchen knives. The sharpest in the world, and the most stylish. The full set runs to eighty-five pieces, and includes special blades for paring apricots, shelling crabs, etc.
2: Traditional tools for the shed. Nothing electric or rubber-gripped, just plain old wooden-handled hammers, screwdrivers, saws, awls and axes. I want that rough, honest-work, Waltons feel for this location.
3: Matches (books, boxes, art deco containers), cigarette lighters, flints, candles, magnifying glasses, tapers. Every room, almost every surface, will be fully equipped with little temptations. Also: fire-lighters, paraffin, brandy.
4: Paintings. We’re concealing the video com-link behind a print of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. It’s a cliché touch, perhaps, but eff
ective. Miss Lark and Dr Wendel have come up with a list of artworks appropriate for every participant, and we can make sure their rooms are designed to reflect, intensify or provoke their particular quirks. Bennett’s room, for instance, will be furnished with erotic prints of male nudes.
5: Ill-hanging doors. The villa is being refitted from the ground up. It is appropriate, given the title and the intent of the show, that none of the doors or windows be fitted properly. Every angle will be a few degrees out of right, every oblong almost imperceptibly a parallelogram. The house is almost an eighth player in our game, and it gets billing on the title so I’m sure even the tightwads at the top of the Pyramid will be pleased to allow the expenditure.
* * *
MEMO
From: April Treece, meister producer
To: Claire Bates, senior researcher
Re: It’s a Madhouse!
Much as I like the idea of Donger Bennett being woken up at three in the morning every night by an hour of Barry White played full blast through the speakers in his room, I think you’re missing the point. Madhouse! is not about what we do to them, but what they do to each other. Ideally, we should be able to sit back and let them get on with it. That was what all the psycho-babble was about, to harp on Dr Wendel’s favourite tune, ‘to get the right mix of personalities’. However, thanks very much for the contribution: Tiny does see potential in the music. What we’ve decided to do is, in effect, put JOSHUA BREW in charge of the entertainment. The CD library will be equipped with every recording Cliff ever made and the player will be set up so that it can only sound out full blast and in every room in the house plus outside speakers that cover the whole island. If JOSHUA wants to listen to his favourite God Bothering chart-topper, then the rest of them have to as well. That should be an interesting frill, and comes out of the personality mix rather than being imposed on it.
* * *
PRODUCTION SUB-MEETING, No. 109
PRESENT, for MYTHWRHN PRODUCTIONS: April Treece (Next to God), Claire Bates (Senior Researcher), Davinda Paquignet (Researcher).
PAQUIGNET: So, Ape, who’s your fave?
TREECE: Fabu fave or urgh fave?
PAQUIGNET: Fabu, first.
TREECE: Weirdly, it’s Petra the Pyro.
BATES: Me too.
PAQUIGNET: Why?
BATES: She’s the human one. If it weren’t for her kink, she’d be just like us. I hope she comes out of it.
TREECE: So do I. She should be the one who surprises the others. I’m betting on her as the star-in-the-making. She could have a scourge-of-God thing going for her.
PAQUIGNET: And as for the urgh fave? Donger Bennett?
TREECE: At first, but after a while he just gets to seem sad. Probably something about his childhood.
BATES: That’s just a strategy, Ape. Donger Bennett is filth in a human skin, a dinosaur penis dragging a walnut brain around.
TREECE: Claire, you didn’t...
BATES: Give me a break, Ape. I’m not that desperate to rise in the industry.
PAQUIGNET: Easy for you to say. You’re out of minion class now, darling.
TREECE: I’m with Claire now. It’s Andrea I hate most. I remember girls like her from school. Always taking things away from you. BATES: I’ve switched too. The real monster is Wyke. The more they dig into his past, the worse he gets. Lark says he’s the true sociopath in the pack. Do you know he ran a bogus charity marathon for Eritrea? Organised it, rather. Couldn’t run for a bus, if you ask me. And he’s the one who picked up the initial flyer in the VD clinic.
TREECE: No, that was Leigh. Wyke came from the Young Conservatives. He’s never voted in his life, because he doesn’t like to give a fixed address. He was buttering up some Andrea clone, trying to get her to invest in a bogus Internet service for dimbo debs. Bastard.
PAQUIGNET: Petra the Pyro is coming for them all, retribution with a flick-lighter.
BATES: Ape, would you watch this show?
TREECE: I don’t want to think about that. In the end, I don’t think I could resist it. You’re still an anti, though?
BATES: No. I cracked when you sent me after Donger. I hate myself for this, but I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
PAQUIGNET: It’s going to be very popular. I think we’re all going to do very well out of it.
TREECE: So, Claire, do you want to change your mind about the credit? After the Donger Affair, Tiny said you could go from Senior Researcher to Junior Producer if you want. It’s a Hell of a way to get it, but...
BATES: Ape, I’ll take it. Where do I sign, and in what?
* * *
CONTINUITY ANNOUNCER SCRIPT, CLOUD 9 TELEVISION.
Seven very special people. One very unusual house. An island paradise.
What happens?
You can find out tonight, exclusively on Cloud 9 TV, the Derek Leech Channel. To subscribe to this pay-per-view premiere, call our numbers now!
The show everyone will be talking about tomorrow!
It’s people. It’s real. It’s raw. It’s struggle. It’s surprise. It’s life. It’s Something Else.
It’s a Madhouse!
Coming up next...
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