Midnight Movie: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

Blast from the past
DATE: March 15, 2009
Greetings, O Brother of Mine—
You’re not going to believe this one. Guess what arrived in the mail today … and not an e-mail, mind you, but an honest-to-goodness letter. A note from our ol’ pal Tobe Hooper. Long time no hear from that sumbitch, right? Doesn’t he still owe you a few bucks? But seriously, folks …
So yeah, he sent me a handwritten note! No e-mail for the Hooperman. No shocker there, though. I bet he’s a total technophobe. I wouldn’t be surprised if he still edits his movies by hand. Anyhow, the note was short and sweet. He invited me to some music convention in Austin that’s showing that movie of his I was in when I was, what, 16? 17? 14? Who can remember? Clearly not me, because I didn’t even remember its existence until that very moment. And he must’ve wanted me there badly, because included in the envelope was a first-class ticket to Dallas and a voucher for a limo to Austin.
Good timing. I just wrapped that Shawn Levy thing—my first foray into comedy, after decades of horror, so you can finally get off my ass about spreading my acting wings—and I have a spare couple of weeks.
No clue how he got my address. But I don’t really care. It’ll be great to see the guy. He is, as they say, a good egg. I’ll send you a report.
Love,
Gary
    AUTHOR’S NOTE:
As far as I know, no other member of the
Destiny Express
team was summoned to the screening. Hooper professes no knowledge of who sent Church his invitation. One can assume it was McGee, but that can be neither confirmed nor denied
.
     
     

TOBE HOOPER:
    And then, right as I was falling half in love with the girl who was named Janine Daltrey, a limo rolled up, and I started laughing. How could I not? I mean, a limousine pulling into the parking lot of the Cove is like a giant ruby levitating out of a huge pile of human excrement. The limo door opened, and out came a blast from the past: Gary Church. Gary goddamn Church. Man, I almost shit a ruby on the spot.
    Like I said, I don’t remember much about my early childhood, but my teen years are a little clearer, and I sure as hell remember Gary. Because in my neck of the woods, which was populated mostly with hammerheads and dullards, Gary stood out.
    The best thing about Gary was, he was a stand-up dude. Like if you made plans to meet at a restaurant at 6:00, he’d be there at 5:58. Unfortunately, I’d usually show up at 6:58, but he was such a good guy that he’d hang out until I got there and only complain a tiny bit. If
I
was waiting for
me
at a restaurant, and
I
showed up an hour late, I’d have complained my ass off, then I probably would’ve kneed myself in the balls for good measure.
    Gary brought a helluva lot to the table. In high school, he was a brainiac who always got straight A’s, but unlike the other brainiacs in our school—all four of them—he wasn’t the least bit uncool. He managed to balance work with play better than anybody I’ve ever met, before or since. It helped that he had an innate intelligence that allowed him to finish a two-thousand-word paper on Chaucer, or Homer, or astro-fucking-physics in two hours. That all left him with plenty of time to wreak havoc. With me. Which we did. All the damn time.
    I remember once we got ahold of a full bottle of blackberry brandy, which, at the time, I thought was the elixir of the gods, but I now realize is the foulest shit you can drink. We slammed that thing down in a couple of hours, then, for the hour before we puked up our collective guts and passed out, we took a baseballbat to every mailbox in a five-block radius. Juvenile shit, man, but it was fun.
    Our hijinks weren’t always of the innocent variety. We stole probably a hundred books and magazines from good ol’ Mr. Ralph’s newsstand, which we didn’t need to do, because our respective parents gave us plenty of spending money, plus the local library had everything we could ever want. Why did we do it,