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I shot the man in the diner because nobody is
surprised anymore. I saw this guy once, roller-skating naked through a crosswalk on Santa
Monica, and no one batted an eye. In a city plagued with earthquakes, riots, alien abductions,
and Ben Affleck, it takes that extra step; starving artists starve with only their art. Did Shakespeare hesitate, when the chance came to cash in on Edward de Vere's genius and carve his own name in history? I think not.
On my way home from the Wash-O-Mart, I passed this diner situated conveniently next to a pawn shop with a sign that read "Buy now, shoot tonight!" (which was ironic, I thought, with a Bail Bondsman office right next door to that) and decided I needed several hundred dollars and a sandwich. But of course they were sold out of black ski masks, and I looked ridiculous in light pink. But did Kevin Costner feel self-conscious when he threw that guy off the roof in The Untouchables? Hell no. Well, I actually have no idea; it might have taken him thirty-nine takes.
"This is a stickup!" I yelled as I burst into the diner. I could see myself in my mind's eye, the camera zooming back from its establishing shot and then panning around me as I went into slow-motion. I imagined my theme music rising; it sounded strangely like Patsy Cline. I almost shot the jukebox.
I couldn't remember what they said in the movies, so I improv'ed. "Anybody moves, and you won't get hurt!"
Some wannabe Julia Roberts from Mystic Pizza waitress smacked her gum and rolled her eyes at me. "It's 'nobody moves,'" she said. "Otherwise everybody runs around so they don't get shot."
Everybody's a critic. I suspected that under her apron, her t-shirt said What I really want to do is direct. "Well," I said, pausing for dramatic effect and picturing it as the poster's tagline. "To make an omelette, you gotta shoot a few people."
It sounded clever in my head, but I was already losing my audience. Some old lady was arguing with her server about whether there was any broccoli cheese soup (because this was Tuesday after all, and Tuesday was broccoli cheese day, and was he completely retarded?) and two guys in a corner booth were practically running lines while watching me. Couldn't they see this was my scene?
"Everybody put their money in the bag!" I yelled, shaking my bag in the air (good action, 'business,' we call it - it's a sure sign of a novice if you don't know what to do with your hands) and making a pink sock fall out. I knew I should have separated reds and whites.
The manager was looking bored. Someone coughed impatiently, someone else laughed at something I couldn't hear. Where was my spotlight?
"Come on, this isn't a joke!" Everybody was ignoring their scripts, and I was being forced to ad-lib, and who likes that?
The manager looked equally frustrated, doubtless from embarrassment on behalf of his patrons, who didn't have the sense to scream and cower and offer up their wallets. Freaking Hollywood desensitization.
"You're doing this all wrong," the manager said. I glanced around and felt the venom of the entire diner - after all, this was L.A., and if there was one thing they hated - well, it was the Canadian film industry. But, if there was another, it was being upstaged. It was my own fault for being too convincing.
"Give me the gun," said one of the two guys arguing over the plot.
I looked over at them and saw one of them standing up, threateningly, clearly identifying himself as the antagonist. I fired at the floor near him, but missed, and I think the bullet skimmed his sneaker and maybe his toe. He howled in pain as if I'd emptied six barrels into his groin.
There was no point to this. One would have thought this city'd be the best place to find a qualified cast, but they'd seen too many episodes, too many opening nights. Nothing's new to them anymore, it's all a cliche. It's all been done. I exited, stage left.
Not even the media blinked an eye on the evening news - no longer interested in truth, or even fact, but only freshness, and the greatest crime is no longer violence but unoriginality. The city cannot forgive that. But did Orson Welles let it get to him when they said his work sucked?
Well, best not answer that. I put away my laundry, decided I needed an agent, and heated up my four-cheese deluxe microwavable pizza.
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