The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life Read online

  But first, a bathroom stop. I let myself out of my room, and into the potato-smelling staircase. A couple of flights down there’s a new family. For some reason their doormat is always thickly strewn with potato peels and children’s shoes. It looks like something you’d see at the ICA.

  And this morning it’s even more surreal than usual because someone is waiting for me on the landing. Someone in red leather, top to toe, a bright red helmet on his head. He looks like one of Satan’s little helpers. Under his arm is a package. How I wish I was a motorcycle courier. Someone who actually does something. “Can you help me, mate? I’m looking for a Mr.”—he squints at the package—“a Mr. or Ms. Case-Carlisle.”

  “That’s me. I’m Frederick Case.”

  He looks at me, then back at Mrs. Traversham’s door. The two or so square inches of face visible behind the helmet appear to be suspicious.

  “I’m the boarder. That’s my address too. This is my room. I live on the landing but that’s my address.” I get out my key to demonstrate, eyeing the package. It’s about the size of a duty-free pack of cigarettes. It’s wrapped in brown paper. “Also, for your information, it’s my birthday.”

  “Sign here.”

  I sign with unseemly haste.

  “Happy birthday.” The courier clumps away down the stairs. I take the package back into my room. I shut the door and rip off the wrapping. It’s a wooden box, the proportions of a tiny coffin. It’s wrapped in about a mile of shiny red ribbon. There’s an envelope taped to the outside. I open the envelope. Inside is a card, and a tiny pair of golden scissors. Inside the card is a message: Cut the red tape. I take the scissors and cut the tape. I open the box, which has hinges. Inside the box, in a nest of tissue paper and straw, is an old Coke bottle. Looks to have spent some time in the sea—it’s clouded and abraded. It’s very heavy, thick glass.

  There’s a message in the bottle, rolled up. I pull it out. It’s a piece of paper, burnt around the edges in traditional ye-olde-pirate style. It’s been photocopied, with our names written in by hand:

  EXPERIENCE THE LAND OF FIRE AND MAGIC!

  Dear Frederick and Sophie,

  Charles C. Menard would like to take this opportunity to heartily solicit your participation in celebrating the occasion of his fortieth year here on planet Earth.

  I note the split infinitive, but read on anyway.

  The festivities will take place on the Pacific island paradise of Makulalanana. Makulalanana is a sacred volcano. Smoke rises mysteriously from the summit. Witness for yourself the glowing lava-filled crater.

  Nestled like a jewel inside its protective coral reef, this tiny completely uninhabited island forms part of the Guelep archipelago, a little known group of islands approximately two hundred and fifty nautical miles north of Vanuatu and accessible only by seaplane or boat.

  Charles will be celebrating throughout the week of November 14, 2002, and you are welcome to join him for part or all of this time in the luxury tent-town of Makulalanana, erected especially for the occasion.

  Please come prepared for a fancy dress gala event dinner on the Sunday night.

  All amenities will be provided. (And we do mean all, darlings . . .)

  RSVP to Karl Bell of Bell and Beauchamp Ecstatic Experiences, Ltd.

  PS: It is Charles’s great pleasure to offer you this entire island experience as his guest.

  I blink. This is ironic. Charles C. Menard is offering to fly me all the way around the world and back, to celebrate his birthday. Not my birthday. His birthday. Plus, it’s all a mistake anyway. He’s really inviting Sophie. Must be a glitch in the system somewhere. He has yet to update his database. I suppose I should let Sophie know, but I’m fucked if I’m ringing her on my birthday. She’ll probably find out anyway. She’ll probably go in fact, which means I’d better not. I can think of better ways to spend a week than hanging around sad and single in a sandy confined space with my estranged wife and her film-star boyfriend.

  I run my hands through my hair. I feel primal. I feel dizzy. I sling the box under the bed and climb the half-flight to Mrs. Traversham’s flat, knock lightly and let myself in. Mrs. Traversham has returned from her morning constitutional. I know this because of the yapping.

  “Ah, Mr. Case, is that you?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Traversham, it is indeed I.”

  “I wonder could I possibly prevail on you to render me a moment’s assistance?”

  She’s in the kitchen with a jar of Branston Pickle that won’t open. Freddy, her King Charles, is jumping around her feet. He adores Branston Pickle. Can’t get enough of it.

  “I’m most terribly sorry but I simply can’t seem to induce this lid to budge.”

  “Allow me.”

  Mrs. Traversham is ninety-six. She’s thin as a bird, covered in large brown liver spots, hunched over, small, white-haired, and dresses exclusively in tweed with enormous wrinkles in her support stockings. She has the plummiest accent I’ve ever heard in my life. She’s worse than the Queen. She can see about twenty-five feet, which is just enough to get you across the road if you trust the signals. As far as I know, Mrs. Traversham has no relatives, no friends and no acquaintances. She has lived alone in this small flat off the Edgware Road for the last sixty-odd years with a succession of King Charles spaniels ever since Mr. T was crushed, along with their two small children, by a collapsing building in 1941, which is ironic because he was a bomber pilot at home on leave. She still has his uniform hanging up in the hall closet in a dry-cleaner’s bag with a handful of mothballs. Every single one of her King Charles spaniels, except for one who was mauled to death by a cat, has died of heart disease. She says it’s congenital. I say it’s Branston Pickle.

  I’ve been here for about four months. I came here almost straight from the split-up with Sophie, after a short stint at Tamintha’s. I was a mess when I got here. I was manic. I kept going on and on about nothing at all. Then I’d suddenly become silent and black. Mrs. Traversham wasn’t too sure at all at the interview, but when she discovered I have the same first name as her dog she cheered up enormously. Then she found out I was a New Zealander and that clinched it. “Oh, that explains it,” she said, greatly relieved. I think she meant the ponytail; I’m not sure.

  I open the jar and hand it back with a flourish. Freddy is by now going berserk. He slips on the linoleum and almost brains himself on my kneecap.

  “Mr. Case, you are a constant source of delight and amazement.”

  “Mrs. Traversham, it is, as always, an inexpressible pleasure.” It is too. It’s the most useful thing I’ve done all day. All week. All . . . no, stop. That way lies madness. “Oh . . .” I reach into my back pocket and pull out a hundred and fifty quid. “I owe you for this month.”

  “Very kind of you, Mr. Case, thank you so much. I’ll make out your receipt directly.”

  After relieving myself in Mrs. Traversham’s 1942-era bathroom, I make the classic mistake. I stop to look in the mirror. For some little time now I have been aware of pressure building in my upper lip. I was right. It’s an enormous blind pimple the size of Hawaii, pushing out from the corner of my mouth. It changes the shape of my entire face. I look like a spawning salmon, one of those doomed hook-jawed monsters fighting their hopeless upstream battle. Forty-two years old and erupting all over the place like a teenager. Happy birthday.

  I went to a Chinese herbalist once for my skin. He was all the rage. He had this tiny little practice in Soho. He was wearing Hush Puppies. I remember that bothered me. I believe that clothes maketh the man. He looked at my eyes, at my fingernails, my neck, my earlobes. He told me no bread, meat, whiskey, beer, wine, orange juice, eggs, potatoes, corn, breakfast cereals or flour. Which left rice, raw vegetables and lentils. For alcohol I was allowed vodka. I ignored most of his advice but I did go straight out and buy a bottle of Stolichnaya. I’ve drunk nothing else since. Everyone tells me it’s stress. It’s just stress. “You’re under a lot of stress.” Well, it’s not stress. It’s acne. />
  Back in my room there’s a message on my cellphone. My pulse instantly goes to two hundred because I get this insane idea that it’s Sophie calling for my birthday. It isn’t. It’s a call from Mee, the mad Singaporean-New Zealander. He wants to know if I’ve read the manuscript he sent me and when he can expect a contract. And he wants to remind me that the contents are copyright. That’s classic, a sure sign. The less valuable the idea, the more obsessed the author is with protecting it. When you’re a producer, you get a lot of phone calls. Calls from mad, bad people who have written mad, bad scripts, people full of fear and anger, people obsessed with betrayal and copyright and fees and stars and let me tell you I might bitch about these three scripts I’m reading today but they’re Shakespeare compared to what I’ve seen. I’m reading these scripts professionally, for Biscrobus Film, an established production house that actually, incredibly, gloriously, makes films. Yes, these scripts already have a producer. Sure, Biscrobus doesn’t want to make them, but there are actually people who want to. They’re Nobel quality compared to what’s out there. The stuff I get, at my bottom-hugging, below-radar, hedgehopping level, is beyond belief. All you have to do is say the word “producer” and it comes at you from all over, like flies to a corpse. Dross, crap. Sub-dross. Just say the word “producer.” You’ll see. Film is a world of big fish and little fish, sure, but it’s a world where the little fish chase the big fish.

  BEEP BEEP BEEP.

  I sit still, rest my arm on the bedside table.

  POCKETA POCKETA POCKETA.

  I try to relax and think neutral and low-pressure thoughts. On the bedside table at my elbow is the birthday card from my parents—Birthday Thoughts and Love to a Special Boy. Sheesh. Next to that is a photo of me and Sophie on our wedding day. I keep it by the bed. Just my little joke. I have a very postmodern sense of humor. Sophie is gorgeous in black leather, black lipstick, fuck-me-now stilettos. However, I—frankly—in my Workshop suit, barefoot, with long blond hair drawn back in a flowing ponytail, and delicate, chiseled features, am equally gorgeous. Damnit, I am more gorgeous. Even my feet were attractive then. I was a demigod. Tall, graceful, athletic. Not, in fact, an athlete, I couldn’t run to catch a bus, but I looked athletic. That’s what counts. I sit and stare at this photo and I just can’t understand where it all went. I just don’t get it. Of that wonderful creature in the photograph all that now remains is the ponytail. And that’s thinning.

  Still, that really was some wedding, best damn wedding I ever had.

  BEEP BEEP.

  A hundred and sixty-five over a hundred and eight. Must calm down.

  Okay. Time to get out of here. Time to go down those stairs and get out there and hustle. I put on my Bundeswehr boots. They make me feel brave. Big black shiny fuckers, sixteen holes. Bought them in a place near Seven Dials. Nonslip rubber soles. Treads the size of truck tires. I put on a long-sleeve thermal vest and an orange T-shirt over that. On the T-shirt is a message. The message is: BEWARE. Next, a pair of Desert Storm pants, and over the lot my sheepskin-lined Swedish border-guard’s greatcoat, which reaches all the way to the top of my boots, stands up by itself and would stop a tank round. If I had a steel helmet I’d wear that too. I stick the scripts in my briefcase, stick the briefcase under my arm, and I’m ready.

  “Mrs. Traversham?”

  “Yes, Mr. Case?”

  “I’m just going out, now. I may be some time.”

  “Carry on, Mr. Case, and God’s blessings go with you.”

  Bayswater Road and it’s cold and the traffic is blasting past and the air smells like popcorn and there she is, plastered across the newsagents on the corner. Shag City, it says, in furry pink lettering. She has one finger on her lips. Shhhh. She’s in a flak jacket and a helmet. The polish on her fingernail is pink, bright pink. That’s the only splash of color—the fingernails and the lips. Shag City, starring Sophie Carlisle and Matt Chalmers, is the first mainstream film ever to depict an erect penis being sucked. It has won, already, a Critics award in Canberra, the Golden Stag at Monte Carlo and an adult film industry nomination for best blowjob. It’s been reviewed, well, all over the world, it’s sold in sixty-five countries, it opens in the States today; and it is plastered all over London six inches thick. You can’t move. She’s on the backs of buses, on billboards, newsagents, the underground. You can’t get away from her. As I ride the down escalator I pass another two Sophies on the way.

  The fact is that Sophie is way too famous for comfort. Before, even six weeks ago, she was a bit famous. That was okay. Now she’s a lot famous and I’m seeing her all the time and it’s a pain in the arse. Being haunted by the past is one thing, but when the past is on billboards, all over town, that’s something else, believe me.

  And frankly, I have to confess I don’t even get it. I mean, I’ve seen all her stuff—except for Shag City, which I’m saving up for a quietly suicidal winter’s afternoon—and I have to say I just don’t get it. All I ever seem to see somehow is Sophie. I sit there in the dark with everyone else, looking up at the silver screen, and there’s Sophie, clumping around, saying her lines, snogging strange guys, laughing, shouting, roaring, weeping, being chased by deranged killers, chasing deranged killers, buying, selling, falling in and out of love, whatever, it’s just Sophie. Oh, it’s probably just me. It’s definitely just me. But there is one thing I’d like to know: in the planning stages of this supersaturation publicity campaign, did anyone stop just for one moment to think how all this was going to make me feel? Of course not.

  I get off at Piccadilly Circus and start down Haymarket. My phone goes. Without thinking, I answer it.

  “It’s Mee.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Mee. It’s Mee.”

  “Oh, Mee, of course, hi, I’m glad you called as a matter of fact . . .”

  “I was wondering if you’d had a chance to read the manuscript yet.” His voice is cold.

  “I’ll probably get to it this afternoon. It’s in my briefcase now, as a matter of fact.”

  “Let’s meet this evening. After you’ve read it. I’ll come round at six.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t tonight. I have a meeting.”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll be in Brussels.” This is a barefaced lie.

  “When do you get back?”

  “Thursday week.”

  “All right. It’ll have to be tonight. After your meeting. At your place.”

  “But I . . .”

  It’s a vicious circle. You’re at a party in a warehouse near Kings Cross. You don’t know anybody. You get talking to a pale-faced guy in a black coat and clumpy shoes. He has this script. But doesn’t know how to get started, he doesn’t have any contacts. He doesn’t want to send it to a film company. What if it got stolen? How do you protect your ideas? People in this industry are such arseholes. They never answer your letters; they never return phone calls. You get excited; you know just exactly what he means. You know how it feels, you’ve been there too. You’re still there, in fact. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can be the human face of the industry. I’m a producer, you say, I’ve got contacts, I know them all, the Irish Brothers, everyone. I’ll read it. I’ll give you some tips. I’ll get you started. I’ll protect your ideas. I’ll return your phone calls. You exchange phone numbers. You’re feeling terribly excited. This guy actually thinks you’re important and useful and you can help him. And besides, you tell yourself, this really could be it. Sure he appears to be ill-educated, frowsy and dull, but who knows? This could be that once-in-a-lifetime brilliant script. This could be the next Muriel’s Wedding or Reservoir Dogs. This is what producing is all about. Energy, taking a punt, following up on opportunities, networking. You’re over the moon. You stagger home.

  At eight o’clock the next morning, you’re in the middle of a very beautiful dream in which, inexplicably, preposterously, everything has just turned out all right after all when the phone rings. It’s him. He’s coming around. You tr
y to tell him tomorrow would be more convenient because you’re terribly hungover and you need another twelve hours sleep and a transfusion but he won’t listen. He has to see you. It’s urgent. All right, you say, come at twelve. He comes at eight-thirty. He sits on the bed in your tiny evil-smelling room while you stumble about feeling nauseous and making coffee and he goes on and on and on about how this is only a first draft and it needs work and he’s not sure about the third act and what about copyright, and what an arsehole everyone is and Syd Field and Linda Seger and how he’s thinking about doing a course but everyone says he should do a short film first but he can’t be fucked and Hollywood movies suck and they’re all so formulaic and he wants to do something different but at the same time mainstream because all those art films suck too and he’s amazed at the crappy scripts that actually get made into films and Steven Spielberg is an arsehole and Peter Jackson is just mainstream and if people are willing to make crap like that then any idiot can and he’s working in a government agency that has some arcane ancillary function in relation to the Westminster Council Drainage Planning Unit.