Pull Focus by Helen Walsh

Author:Helen Walsh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2021-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Larry Roth stood stock-still in the middle of Franklin Square, as if he owned it. Next to him, a fraction of his height and weight, was Yaya, the Chinese cultural officer, and Jacob.

“We cannot allow this journalistic distortion of Chinese society to go forward,” Yaya said, speaking directly to Jacob. “Western forces are always trying to portray our society in a negative light, when really it is the Chinese solution that offers hope for the world.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” All two-fifty of Larry vibrated as he yelled down toward Yaya’s face. He moved closer. Unphased, she didn’t budge an inch. “Lee’s one of yours. What is this ‘Western forces’ crap?”

There was no way that Larry, as State’s distributor, was going to let an audience miss his film. The more buzz the film generated at the festival, the better the box office gross would be when it opened in theaters. That Larry had scooped up State but passed rather vocally on Shifting Dragon was proving a bitter pill for Yaya to swallow.

“I ask you not to use profanity with me,” Yaya said. “I know you desire to destroy Chinese moral models and replace them with American sanctimony and intolerance. But I cannot allow that.”

Jacob dominated my immediate line of vision, a jack-in-the-box whose freakish smiling head delighted in my downfall. “This debacle should never have happened,” he said, enjoying my discomfort.

“Debacle? Thousands of people at a screening is a fucking wet dream. What’s wrong with you?” Larry yelled. “You’re going to tell them the Communists wanna take away their movie?”

Every inch of the square pulsed with people. The barriers strained at the effort to separate those on the inside from those wanting to be. The Chinese machine had ramped up its anti-State campaign all day. Freelance propagandists charged with guiding public opinion had used a mass of fake Twitter and Facebook accounts to attack the filmmaker, the film, and the festival for programming it. Reviews of the film sprouted up, giving it one star or less. On a parallel track, posters of every film in the official Chinese showcase were blanketed on every street surface, and online outlets ran stories with pictures of happy Chinese people, smiling officials, and cityscapes full of construction cranes showing modern progress.

“Freedom of expression is by definition PEN’s issue,” yelled Beth Hollett, the executive director of the non-profit organization devoted to protecting writers from persecution, from my other side. She awkwardly clutched the front-page newspaper article about the screening as well as a four-foot picture of a Saudi Arabian journalist currently jailed for pissing off an authoritarian regime with his writings. “I’m only asking you to hold for a half hour while we locate a chair. The festival can’t just waltz in and become the spokesperson for freedom of expression. We own it in this city.”

“You want me to start my screening a half hour late, and you want carte blanche at the microphone. Am I getting that all straight?” I asked Beth.

“You said no film,” Yaya said, staring at Jacob.

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