The Fictional Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

particular, the scenes with Anouska Hempel in a tight-fitting black latex cat suit.While embarrassment had prevented his adult self from actually owning a copy, the teenaged boy inside him still nursed a phantom erection over the movie, and would always be listening for the creak of parental feet on the stairs.
     
     
    N ILES SWALLOWED, NOT wanting to give his excitement away. “I... I think I might have seen it. Once.”
    Dean nodded. “Fantastic! Okay, let’s go in close. Now, what we do not want – absolutely, positively do not want – is a remake, okay?”
    Niles nodded.
    “Hollywood is lousy right now with that – remakes, reboots, whatever, it’s just like... like digging up graves and stealing corpses, you know? It’s all these bland, imagination-free assholes admitting that there aren’t any original ideas left in the world, that all there is is this endless going back to the past... I mean, everyone hates remakes. Remakes are over. When a studio says they’re doing a remake it makes me want to be sick, actually physically sick.” He stared balefully at Niles for a moment. “So what we’re doing here – and I want to make sure you understand this – is not remaking a movie. What we’re doing here is taking a movie from the past and making it again now. ” He leaned forward, looking Niles right in the eye. “Only better. ”
    “Um,” Niles coughed. Maurice shot him a warning look.
    “We’re looking,” Dean said, warming to his theme, “for a complete re-imagination of the core concept here, okay? Like, all that camp stuff, the ’sixties stuff – get rid of it. Junk it. Everything that’s not relevant to here and now, to 2013? Toss it out. It’s crap.” Dean scowled, as if the idea of camp was a rotting carcass someone had left on the table.
    “Bang up to date. Right.” Niles nodded, wondering when exactly he’d accepted the job of writing a new Mr Doll film, and whether he should clarify things like his contract or the rate of pay. “So just to be clear, you want me to –”
    “But that doesn’t mean we don’t want retro,” Dean said, leaning forward. “I mean, retro is very big right now. It’s huge. Like, the whole ’sixties stuff – the cool ’sixties – that, you keep. You know, with the Dolly Birds, that revolving bed, the suits, the army of chicks, all that stuff. Keep it in. It’s what people come to see. You could kind of do it ironically, maybe...”
    Niles nodded. “Right. So, a spoof? Austin Powers type stuff?”
    “No,” Dean shook his head impatiently, “no spoofing anything. This is going to be a dark take, a serious reflection of the times we live in now, okay? Like, the chick army – what are they called?”
    “F.L.O.O.Z.Y.,” Niles said automatically, without thinking. “It stands for Feminist Liberation Of –”
    Dean cut him off, wincing. “Christ, lose that.”
    “I suppose it does sound a little –”
    “You put feminism in there and you lose the guys. Now they’re, like, Occupy, like they want to kill all the rich people and blow America up. But they still wear bondage gear. Dudes love that.”
    Niles would have wondered if someone had slipped something into his water, if it had ever arrived. “I’m sorry?”
    “Bondage gear, leather, latex, all that stuff. Everyone loves it. It’s edgy, you know? And maybe our guy, Doll – is there a way we can make that less gay? – maybe our guy has, uh, some drones he can use? Predator drones. That way we can get into that whole debate about whether we should use drones to take out terrorists safely and cleanly or allow them to invade America and murder our kids.” Dean looked painfully earnest as he dangled another fry, swaying it to and fro for emphasis. “Like, maybe there’s this lady lawyer who Mr Doll’s banging who says the drones are killing too many terrorists or something, some bullshit, but it turns out she’s one of the lesbian Occupy chicks so he kills her. With one of his