The Fictional Man (12 page)

Best lines/Random thoughts:

- “There’s a war on. We have to fight. Hell, do you want them to win?” “Depends who they are.”

- “Now, don’t be a silly, Billy. You can’t hurt anyone with that. It’s just a stick, that’s all, just a silly little stick.”

- “I didn’t know what happy was until I came here. Happy is not being afraid.”

- “You can marry me every day, if you want.”

- “Whoever you are - I’m unarmed! It’s just a stick!
Just a stick
!”

- The meltdown Shatner has midway through the plot would fit in perfectly with this YouTube of classic Captain Kirk neurosis. “I’ve lost control!”

- Fans of trash culture might see some similarities between the plot of this episode and cult “classic”
The Delicious Mister Doll.
Hutton Hopper – best known for his ultra-gory schlock horrors
The Girl Flensers
and
Cannibals Of 44
^th
Street –
attempted early in his screenwriting career to turn “The Doll House” into a James Bond/Derek Flint style ‘spoof spy’ film. The result was basically what would have happened if all originality and nuance had been surgically drained from the episode and then Horace Keefe commissioned to play all the parts. (Even the women.) Director Jean-Paul Vitti added some additional camp and psychedelia, including a fantastic sequence set in a spinning op-art ‘gravity room,’ but the dialogue remained mostly unchanged and – by all accounts – pretty diabolical. (Vitti did add a heaping helping of his own well-catalogued perversities, as personified by Anouska Hempel in a performance somewhere between the evil queen in
Barbarella
and her own role in
Blacksnake.
) Someone braver than me has attempted to review this atrocity here, but frankly it’s something that needs to be seen to be believed, assuming you have three bucks to spend on eBay. Just don’t believe the people telling you it’s somehow ‘ironic.’

Next week:
Burgess Meredith plays one of the creepiest Santas on record as we review the Christmas episode, “A Lump Of Coal.”

T
HE SMILE ON
Niles’ face was so wide it almost hurt. This was
perfect.
Absolutely perfect. He did a quick search for the episode itself – maybe he could download it, or even torrent it - but evidently it wasn’t available on anything later than VHS, and any pirates interested in the show had been taken down by Talisman’s lawyers long before. Still, he had everything he needed in that review.

‘The Doll House’ was the starting point he’d been looking for. Rather than adapt Hutton Hopper’s material – and it was nice to put a name to the shame – he could simply follow Hopper’s example and layer an exciting spy thriller on top of an already-existing story concept that the studio happened to own. Except unlike Hopper, Niles Golan was not about to
completely
miss the point of ‘The Doll House’ and reverse its entire message.

Briefly, he wondered if there was more to that on Hopper’s part than just cluelessness. It’d be great to talk to him – actually, no, it probably wouldn’t be. It’d be nice to talk to Fred Matson, though, get his side.

The old screenwriter puffed on his pipe, eyeing the author carefully as they relaxed with a tumbler of whiskey on the older man’s sumptuous veranda. “You know,” he said, after a moment, “all I’ve ever really wanted in this life is for someone to do ‘The Doll House’ right – to do it as an action-packed secret agent thriller with a dark, serious edge and some powerful eroticism.” Matson leaned forward, giving the author an affectionate squeeze on the shoulder with his strong, fatherly hand. “You’re a good Joe, Niles. You’re a gosh-darned good Joe.”

Niles smiled. He knew exactly where he’d gone wrong earlier – because Hopper had made Dalton Doll the authority on what the definition of a ‘real man’ was, a mouthpiece for Hopper’s Neanderthal viewpoint, Niles had assumed that that was all the character could be, that Doll’s misogynist machismo was an essential part of him, without which he just couldn’t function. But of course, that was nonsense.

Why not have Doll searching for the definitions of masculinity himself, the way Shatner’s character had been? (That was, he was certain from reading the review, what ‘The Doll House’ had been about.) Put him on a mission to find his own identity, both as a man and as a secret agent with a revolving leopard-skin bed and an automatic drinks machine. He’d be trying to be a new kind of man, a sort of ‘new man’ – Niles had to admit, it sounded like a wonderfully original take on the male protagonist in general, and he was pretty sure nobody had tried to do it with a stereotypical sexist spy character before. He could even throw a little comedy in.

Of course, as in Matson’s original work, the moral would be that sometimes being a man meant having to shoot some people. You could sort of have a cry about it and still be a man, but sometimes you just had to get things done.

He tried calling Maurice, but the phone went straight to voicemail. Presumably he was still having his ‘massage.’ Well, all right, he could go right to the studio with it – pitch something to Dean right now. He’d had five pints, admittedly, but he’d watched a whole film since then, and besides, it’d probably help the pitch. And if Dean didn’t want to take the pitch over the phone, that was fine too – he was probably okay to drive over there.

He really wasn’t that drunk at all.

The phone was ringing. He psyched himself up, quickly, staring at his reflection in the glass of the coffee table. He was going to
destroy
this pitch. Fucking
destroy
it. He was a
tiger.

Rarr.

The noise of a handset leaving a cradle. “Shoot.”

“Dean? It’s Niles. Listen, I’ve got something –”

“I’m going to have to stop you there.” The voice on the other end was young, female. Had he been given the wrong number? “Dean’s not available at the moment –”

“Ah!” Niles smiled. “You must be his secretary. Listen, I’ve got a wonderful pitch for him. Sort of a statement against misogyny, everyday sexism, that kind of thing –”

“Sounds awesome,” the voice said dryly. “Like I was
saying,
Dean’s calls are being routed through to me for now. He won’t be available for some time.“

Niles nodded, eager to get to the pitch. “That’s fine, but maybe I could leave a voicemail for –”

“He’s been arrested for having sex with livestock.”

“
What?
” Niles stared at the phone, as if expecting it to bite him. He slumped back down onto the couch, the air draining out of him like a balloon. “So... so what does that mean for the pitch?”

“Well, obviously, the studio had to fire him, so... it’s probably dead. I mean, I’ve taken over most of his projects, but I’ve got to admit, what I’ve been hearing... it’s not
best-of-breed,
you know?” She enunciated the words
best of breed
as if she was trying them on for size, like a hat. “I really can’t afford to give the green light to things that aren’t
best-of-breed,
and... well, a guy who sleeps with poultry is not a good judge of what’s
best-of-breed,
and what’s just... whatever a guy who fucks hens wants to hear. Anyway, he’s out and probably so are you. Sorry if that’s blunt, I prefer to just rip the Band-Aid off, no false hope, you get me?”

Niles nodded, glumly. “No, I appreciate that. It’s very kind, really.” He sighed. “So
Mr Doll
is dead. Well, thank you, um...”

“Jane Elson.” The voice responded. “Hey, did you say
Mr Doll?
Are you the guy Dean wanted to pitch on that? Because, listen, I’m not going to be able to get onto that tomorrow, but if you can pitch for that in a couple of days...”

Niles sat up. “I thought you said –”

“No, that’s one of his I liked. I’m pretty sure with the right script we could make some big numbers on that. It’s the whole retro thing – that’s what I think people are really going to go for, except if you could make it kind of an early ’noughties retro instead of a ’sixties retro? You know,
Arrested Development
, Brangelina, the Patriot Act, iPods, that whole vibe – that’s going to be the next big thing after ’nineties retro burns out and I feel like if we catch that wave we could really make something that’s, uh...”

“Best of breed,” Niles murmured.

“Right, right.
Best-of-breed.
Listen, you’ve got my number, I’ve got your number, give me a call in a few days when you’ve got something and we’ll get the wheels in motion, okay? Ciao for now.”

The phone went dead.

Niles put it down on the coffee table, staring at it for a moment. For some reason, now that the pitch was no longer urgently required – or
as
urgently required, anyway – all his ideas had deserted him. He knew he had to start from ‘The Doll House’ and build on it, and he had a vague mental picture of Mr Doll crying a lot underneath a running shower, but beyond that...

He slumped back on the couch, a wave of weariness washing through him, washing him out. He fumbled for the television remote to put
Mr Doll
on again – maybe now that he knew a little more about where it had come from, the film would open itself up to him, reveal some hidden depths...

But he was already asleep before the opening titles finished.

CHAPTER SEVEN

W
HEN HE WOKE
up again, it was dark, and the phone told him it was past one in the morning.

Niles lifted himself off the couch and headed to the bathroom. He knew he should call Maurice about the pitch and the new circumstances, but there was no point calling him this late – besides, he had a feeling Maurice would be a little pissed off that he’d called Dean, or rather Jane, without consulting him first. Still, he had an extra few days now to work things out, so it was all to the good.

As the toothbrush buzzed away at his gum lining, Niles found himself fascinated by the thought of one story becoming another – a piece of twist-ending science fiction based on children’s toys, aimed at a discerning audience, becoming an oversexed secret agent fantasy aimed at the lowest common denominator. How had that come about? Had Hopper and Matson collaborated at all? Was Matson railing against his baby being fed to the butchers, or was it just one of many work-for-hire jobs? He rinsed his mouth out, returned to the laptop and started googling the two men, hoping for evidence of a connection, but very little came up. Sites that talked at length about
Mr Doll
would mention
Door To Nowhere
in passing, and vice versa, but nobody seemed interested in comparing the two. Niles frowned, mindful of the time. He knew how easy it was to fall down the rabbit hole of the internet, searching for that one particular piece of information you knew had to exist somewhere, while the clock ticked on and night became early morning.

Wikipedia provided some more clues. Hopper was dead – he’d been struck and killed by a snowmobile in 1992 – and his entry was too barren to be of much use, but Matson was still very much alive, at the ripe old age of seventy-four. A little more googling revealed that he had no immediate family – his wife had died some years before, and they’d had no children – and was currently living in a nursing home somewhere near Glendale. It sounded like a fairly tragic end for the man, but then from what Niles had been able to gather Fred Matson was a mostly mediocre writer. He’d had some critical successes with
Door To Nowhere
and his sketch work for
Laugh-In
was generally highly praised, but most of what he’d written during his life was plodding, low-grade hackwork. Fred Matson’s star, it seemed, had only briefly burned bright before flickering down to an ember.

Still, as he went to put his pyjamas on, Niles was struck again by the urge to go and see Matson, to talk to him. It might help with the pitch – if nothing else, it would answer some of his questions. And the old man would probably be glad to see a friendly face.

“You’re a good Joe,” Matson said, smiling weakly from his bath chair. “A good Joe.” The author felt a mixture of pity and pride, and found himself wiping away a tear.

T
HAT NIGHT,
N
ILES
had a dream in which he was running through the corridors of the Talisman Pictures building, searching for Jane Elson’s office, but he could only find Dean’s, and besides Iyla wanted to stop at the Best Buy and buy a copy of
Terrordance.
“It’ll be too late tomorrow,” she said, trying to keep the hen in her grip from getting away.

It’s not going anywhere, Niles tried to tell her, but she shook her head. She was crying again. It’s only
Terrordance,
he said. You don’t even like Prince.

And then when he looked again, it was Danica Moss. “We’re having
fun,
” she said, softly, and he woke up with a start.

He didn’t sleep again that night.

“N
O, WE DON’T
have anyone of that name here. Why were you calling again?”

The voice on the phone was guarded, suspicious. Niles held back a sigh and reached for his coffee. He’d spent more than a day listening to one disembodied voice after another coming out of that phone, most of them hostile, and he was on the verge of throwing it into the toilet. That or going out and buying a blender just to have the visceral satisfaction of seeing the damned thing dissolve into a blizzard of plastic dust... at least that way he’d get some sun.

“It really doesn’t matter. Thank you so much. Good-bye!” he trilled, as irritatingly as possible – if he could drive one of these human-farming hags into some kind of apoplexy-related stroke, it’d be a morning well spent – then killed the call and checked the laptop screen for the next number. Why on Earth were there so many nursing homes in Glendale?

He winced. Pleasant Palms – God, they all had such insipid names. He’d have to look into some kind of suicide plan in case he ever ended up somewhere like that.

“Oh, Fred
Matson
! Oh, it’d be so
nice
for him to have a visitor!” Niles let his head flop back and gave a silent
thank you
to the ceiling, letting the woman on the other end prattle on for a second. “That’d be wonderful! Of course, we’d have to run it past him – are you a family member or a friend?”