Midnight Movie: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

then? Because there was something outlaw about reading a stolen piece of merchandise. Knowing they were hot made those pulp mysteries and horror tales come across as creepier. And cooler.
    We dug reading. During the summer, the two of us would sit in one of our backyards, on the lawn, and spend the entire afternoon poring over whatever book we’d ripped off that day. I gravitated toward guys like Jim Thompson, and Spillane, and Chandler, whereas Gary was into nonfiction crap like … well, truth be told, I don’t remember exactly what kind of nonfiction crap. Once in a while, just for the fuck of it, one of us would bring along something heavy, like
Atlas Shrugged
, or
Critique of Pure Reason
, or maybe some Genet thing. Our other friends thought we were odd, and our enemies thought we were complete fucking morons. Me and Gary, we didn’t grow up in the most intellectual of areas, which is why we clung on to each other for dear life.
    Girl-wise, Gary was way ahead of the game, just like Scott Frost was. I mean, the dude was balling a twenty-four-year-old when he was fifteen. Seemed like everybody in town was getting older ladies into the sack but me. Gary told me all about it, but in a respectful way, like he wouldn’t say shit like, “I blew my load all over her huge tits.” That wasn’t the way he was wired. No, good ol’ Gary liked to talk about how sweet her hair smelled, and how smooth her skin was, and how her entire body tasted like caramel. Sometimes I wish I could’ve taken that kind of approach with the ladies—especially with a certain Oscar-nominated brunette who shall remain nameless. Anyhow.
    Gary was into everything: history, sports, music, philosophy, and, of course, movies. He wanted to be an actor practically from day one. He’d drag my ass to the Ernest Lord Theater at least twice a week, and we’d see a Hitchcock flick, or some John Ford, or some John Wayne, or something—cross your fingers, please, please, dear Lord—with Kim Novak. I initially watched all these flicks just to watch, to be entertained, but not Gary. He was all about camera angles, and the finer points of acting, and story development, and all the kind of shit that even today I need to brush up on. I suppose if you break it down, if there’s no Gary Church, there’s no Leatherface.
    After we finished up high school, he went out to California to make it as an actor. Now, he wasn’t particularly good-looking—we’re talking five foot eight and a buck forty soaking wet, with a too-early-in-life receding hairline—but he had a charisma that charmed casting directors and looked great on the big screen. Unfortunately, since he was so short and average looking, nobody gave him a shot at carrying a movie. They didn’t even give him a chance at
helping
carry a movie. He became, for my money, the greatest horror third banana in Hollywood. If you needed a sympathetic best friend to kill off in the second act, Gary was your man. And the dude knew how to die a good death.
    I moved out to Hell-Lay after
Chainsaw
hit, and for a while, it was like old times for me and Gary, except without the broken mailboxes and cherry bombs. When I was hard up for cash, he’d take me out for a meal, and when I was lonely, he’d set me up on a blind date, and when I wanted to show a studio exec a script, he’d do his damnedest to get me an appointment. Gary was a mensch, man, a true mensch.
    When I started getting busy directing, and he started getting busier acting, we lost touch, and I have to foot a larger part of the blame for that one. I’d get so wrapped up in a movie—“obsessed” is a better word, I suppose—that I wouldn’t meet him for lunch,or grab a drink, or even return a damn phone call. When we managed to connect, I told him he shouldn’t take any of it personally, because I didn’t return
anybody’s
phone calls or meet
anybody
for lunch. But after a while, how can you
not
take it personally? I couldn’t blame Gary when