Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels by Michael Libling

Author:Michael Libling [Michael Libling]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504063388
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2020-07-14T04:00:00+00:00

“I wrote it myself for The Black Ace. Nary an iota of lurid violence, yet you should have heard the audiences scream.” He shut his eyes, basked in the memory. “Wholly terrorized, chilled to the marrow, they were. It was marvellous. My magnum opus. Yet it was the infinitely inferior The Lodger that won the accolades. How unjust is that! And only recently, Hitchcock, you know, the man is shameless—the shower sequence in Psycho, stolen frame for frame from Black Ace. The scoundrel thought no one would know, thought sufficient time had elapsed. But I know. We know.”

“And this down here?” Jack said, indicating the logo.

“Blackhurst Pictures International, of course. My production company. Alas, as ill-fated and lamented as the others—Canadian National Features, Adanac, Pan American Films . . .”

“So it’s true, then—they did make movies in Trenton,” Jack said, and my excitement was every bit as palpable as his.

“Hollywood North, right, Mr. Blackhurst?” I said, eager now to be a featured player. “I found them. It was me who found the intertitles. I’ve got a bunch of them, you won’t believe.”

“Thing is,” Jack said, “Mr. McGrath, over at the Record, he told us we needed to burn them. Why would he—”

“I beg your pardon? McGrath? Bryan McGrath?”

“Yeah. Like he was scared of them.”

“It was really, really weird,” I said, thriving on the upswing.

“McGrath, the great saviour. Why in Heaven’s almighty name would you share a discovery of this magnitude with a knave? A more egregious overreactor I have never known. Burn them? Quintessential McGrath. A nervous Nellie of the first order. A mediocre and malodorous screen scribe transmogrified to mephitic muckraker. My dear lads, your intertitles are but memories of a bygone era. The man’s worries are woefully misplaced.”

“So there is something to fear, then, sir?” Jack said.

“Isn’t there always, my boy?”

“You’re telling me,” I said with a laugh. By now, I was fully on board with the new, enthusiastic version of me.

“Can we see the movies?” Jack asked. “Do you have them?”

“Norman.” We turned to the rear of the shop and the voice of a woman.

Mr. Blackhurst hastily drew us back. “She will tell me I have said too much. Alas, to you, I will have said too little. No matter what you may hear, it was not the talkies that killed Hollywood North, it was indeed, as you have surmised, the fear.”

“That’s enough, Norman. Enough.”

“Perhaps a close-up now, gentlemen, a wistful glance to the right, focus soft, and cut to the intertitle. ‘He had dreams, you know. Hail the Revered Masters! F.W. Murnau. D.W. Griffith. C.B. DeMille. And if not for ignorance, delusion, and myth, the redoubtable N.K. Blackhurst.’” He winked at me. At Jack. And aged ten years in ten seconds. The cards sailed to the floor and some of his brain, too. His expression went from blank to black, Dr. Jekyll awakening to find Mr. Hyde’s bloody cane in his hands.

“Sir?” Jack said, but the man had hopped the fast freight to Voodoo Island. In dull retreat he dragged his feet and exited behind a curtain of cleaning.

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