Brian Wright
©2006
Stanley Elkins was bald and fat and fifty-eight years old when he finally got to star in Casablanca.
Almost to that point, his life had seemed like an abject run of failure: all the way from bullied schoolboy to frustrated middle-aged man. Only the cinema had offered some comfort, providing many of the infrequent milestones of his existence.
His first sexual thrill at a Saturday morning matinee, seeing Mighty Mouse swoop down and pick up a simpering girl rodent in his powerful arms. Bunking off school with his best friend to see Ben Hur one rainy afternoon. The thrill of watching West Side Story in the West End during a stay with relatives in London. His first awkward kiss in the back row of the local fleapit. He soon forgot the girl’s name, but always remembered the film, Lawrence of Arabia.
His taste in movies might have improved over time, but there was little or no advance in other areas of his life. His first kiss with what’s-her-name was also the last. She had few successors. At school, the phrase "Could do better" might almost have been invented for him and he left without accolade at the age of fifteen.
A series of dead-end jobs followed: labouring, factory work, driving for a taxi firm that had a sideline of conveying corpses to the local hospital.
Still at home with his parents in his late thirties, he was growing tired of his father’s sarcasm about his marital status, or lack of it, when he met Sue who worked on the same assembly line. She was several years younger than him and not very pretty, but then he had already lost most of his hair and was growing fat. People said they made a nice couple.
They were soon married and got on well at first. After they moved into their own house and had a son they named Wayne, he believed things were going his way for the first time in many years. But Sue went off him not long after the birth.
By the time Wayne reached sixteen, having already left school, father and son barely spoke to each other, even though Sue was always accusing them of having the same outlook on life and the same bad habits.
Wayne hadn’t gone into a dead-end job, preferring to hang around the local shopping precinct with a group of like-minded friends. Father and son had just the one thing in common; Wayne occasionally liked to watch what his father called "real films". It was about the only time they sat in the same room together.
Though Stanley hadn’t lost his appetite for movies, he no longer went to the cinema. Averse to extreme bad language and gory special effects, a sensitive soul, he had no stomach for the majority of modern films. He much preferred to watch the gentler fare of the 60s and 50s, and on back through the golden age of Hollywood.
And where else to catch the classics but on TV?
Which was why Stanley scoured the schedules to plan his viewing a week or more ahead - Shane on Tuesday, Rear Window on Sunday. But there were never enough good films and they were always shown at outlandish hours, peeping out shyly from behind their younger, brasher, more popular siblings.
But then he learned that satellite television had several channels dedicated to old films and took out a subscription with what remained of his latest redundancy pay-off. Not long after, Sue went to stay with her sister and said she was never coming back.
Wayne elected to stay with his father, more out of inertia than anything else. Stanley didn’t mind the new arrangement; he enjoyed the quiet, being able to watch anything he fancied.
And not long afterwards he discovered his gift.
The miracle first happened one midweek afternoon, after Stanley got back from another fruitless job hunt. Double Indemnity was showing on satellite. It was one of his favourites and he settled down in anticipation in front of the box, though he had seen the film a dozen times before. The room was dark, curtains drawn, the way he liked to watch television.
It was towards the end of the movie, without any warning, that his whole life changed.
One moment he was watching the film, the next he found himself in the middle of the action. The smell of warm plastic in his nostrils, he was speaking into a primitive recording device in a shadowy insurance office. He was Walter Neff. He was explaining how and why he had murdered his lover’s husband. Bile rising in his throat, cigarette smoke violating his lungs, the throbbing ache of a bullet wound.
Just when he thought he couldn’t stand it any longer there was a flash of light and he returned to himself. Stunned and confused, but back in familiar surroundings. The experience must have lasted only a few minutes.
As he shivered in shock and fright, one thing struck Stanley as especially weird. He knew he hadn’t been playing a part; the words had emerged in flat but genuine tones of relief and regret. He had felt all the mental and physical torment of the wounded man. He had been the doomed Neff.
And yet, throughout the ordeal, he had been conscious that a part of his screen persona remained the same old Stanley Elkins. Some spot in the suffering mind had been fully aware of his dilemma. That he, Stanley, was trapped in an alternative reality. Aware, too, that it was really an illusion. It’s Fred MacMurray, he had caught himself thinking.
Being a simple man, Stanley made no attempt to rationalise the episode, told himself it was a one-off, too much beer the night before perhaps. He tried to forget it had ever happened. He certainly wasn’t going to confide in anyone, and especially not Wayne.
The act of forgetting, however, was made more difficult by another aspect of the whole bizarre affair. In spite of being completely unmarked, he continued to feel the pain of the wound for several days afterwards. He was so unwell at one stage that even his son became worried. As he began to improve, Stanley consoled himself with the thought that things could have been worse. After all, Walter Neff must have ended up on Death Row.
Though he cut back on his viewing after the incident, the lure of satellite TV soon proved too strong for Stanley. He watched cautiously at first, but as the days went by without any further strangeness, his apprehensions reduced and finally disappeared.
And then it happened again. A tingling in his fingertips one evening and he found himself in the middle of another movie.
It was The Ten Commandments this time, the scene where Moses appears at the court of the Pharaoh and proves he can perform miracles by turning his staff into a serpent.
One of the richly-gowned onlookers, Stanley was genuinely afraid when he stepped back from the writhing snake. And yet, as before, modern sensibilities were operating somewhere in his sophisticated but pre-Christian brain. He even remembered thinking: this can’t be true, I’m at home watching television!
One part of him was still marvelling at the magnificence all around - surely that must be real marble? - when there was a lightning strike and he found himself back in his front room. Feeling as if he had been hit by a sledgehammer, but with a sense of total wonderment. He had been at the Egyptian court! He had seen an actual miracle! The feeling of euphoria was in complete contrast to the miseries of his previous experience.
Later on, as the elation wore off, he wondered why he had been given a minor part this time. The answer came in the days and weeks that followed.
He realised before long that the tickling sensation in his fingertips was a signal, warning of transportation into a movie. He seemed to have no control over the timing, but could prevent it from happening simply by rubbing his palms together. He discovered that by accident, a nervous hand clasp being his immediate reaction to the onset of the tingle during the shootout in Gunfight at the OK Corral. He was relieved but puzzled when the picture continued without him.
When the same thing happened twice more, Stanley grew convinced that he could watch even Westerns and gangster films without any fear.
There was only one bad experience after that, when he was a fraction slow to react to the signal during a John Ford picture and ended up in a vicious bar room brawl. Feeling sorry for himself, he nursed a phantom bruised jaw for the next two days.
As the signals began to increase in frequency, he was soon receiving one in almost every other film he watched. He was spending more and more time in front of the box. It helped that Wayne had finally got a job and a girlfriend, which meant he was rarely at home, working all day and then out most evenings. Stanley, too, was gaining experience in the romance department, appearing opposite Doris Day, Jane Crawford and Mitzi Gaynor in quick succession.
By now, he had learned the rules that came with his gift. The transformation could begin and end at any time, even in the middle of a scene. It never lasted more than a few minutes and he might be given any part in the film. It could be a speaking or non-speaking role. Sometimes he was the lead, other times an extra. He could even be either male or female. He had no choice in the matter.
On one notable occasion he was the pony in Gone With the Wind, carrying Rhett Butler’s daughter over one tiny fence after another, the smell of freshly-cut grass in his nostrils, all manner of strange horsey notions stampeding through his brain. It was absurd yet wonderful.
An abiding rule was that the gift only worked with satellite transmissions. After particularly envigorating changes, Stanley would sometimes go outside and stare thoughtfully up at the sky, wondering about the source of his power. He sometimes had the feeling middle-aged men all over the country were doing the same. Most of the time, however, he just accepted it as a wonderful present. Now every day was Christmas.
Gaining in confidence as the days and weeks passed, he even become selective about his appearances. Almost like a true Hollywood star.
But the main reason for his choosiness was the realism of his experiences, their vivid intensity. Every sense conveyed to him the exactness of period and setting. The pungent smells of a North African bazaar. The texture of rough stone walls in a mediaeval castle. The sight of the sun rising high above the pyramids. These weren’t events taking place on sets of plywood and painted hardboard.
The authenticity, however, extended beyond his surroundings. No acting was involved at any time. Every emotion he experienced felt legitimate, and he was often surprised and sometimes frightened by the depth of his feelings.
There came an occasion - a mistake to be in Lust for Life simply because he wanted to look like Kirk Douglas - when it seemed that even the Stanley element in his personality was being overwhelmed by events, rapidly descending into insanity.
He came back to himself in his little front room, drenched in sweat, afraid for some moments that he had really lost his mind. He remained in a deep depression for the rest of the evening.
But the pull was still too strong, and the next day found him starring in Casablanca. It should have been the most satisfying transformation yet, the peak of his strange new career. But his delight at assuming Bogart’s voice and mannerisms soon passed. For the first time, he was aware of Stanley’s thoughts intruding on the action. "Play it once, Sam." It felt as if he was simply mouthing the words, fretting instead about the return journey.
As Stanley told himself afterwards, he had to be careful. High emotions were all very well, but he had to come back to an ageing mind and unathletic body. Thinking of his father who had died of a heart attack in his early sixties, he resolved to cut back on the more dramatic roles.
His preference after that was for romantic comedies, choosing whenever possible double-handed scenes in which he could guarantee to be one of the stars. He had discovered by then that he could often trigger the signal by concentrating hard at a particular moment in a film. He began to wonder if there was an end to his abilities.
The sex of the protagonist made no difference; he was able to assume female characteristics as easily as male ones. It never struck him as odd, even after he returned to his own defiantly masculine self.
On the contrary, he felt privileged to be allowed inside those flawless bodies. Sue would have been shocked and disbelieving beyond words, but he thought of her almost fondly these days. Her absence, after all, allowed him to indulge in what had virtually become his whole existence.
It was the anniversary of her departure, three months to the day, when he noted Some Like it Hot was being screened that evening. He would celebrate with a can or two of lager - his everyday tastes unchanged by stardom - and trust to luck that he could trigger the signal at the right moment. Wayne, as usual, would be out with his girlfriend.
The tingle was spot on, the scene where Jack Lemmon, dressed as a woman, and Marilyn Monroe share a narrow bunk in the sleeper carriage of a train. He was overjoyed to be Lemmon.
When the usual dazzle broke through in mid-dialogue, he took a last regretful look at the exquisite face of his co-star, but was immediately disconcerted to find himself in another scene instead of his body. In a daze, he realised he had become a woman, tidying up what appeared to be a dingy motel room. She/he started to undress.
The two of them went next door into a bathroom where she switched on the shower. It was then that the awful truth struck home, his own horror cutting like a laser through a brain already overloaded with guilt and worry. The woman finished undressing. Once again she had minutes to live.
Because he was starring in Psycho.
Stanley pictured the knife slicing down through naked flesh, and thought about the days and weeks of pain that lay ahead. Doubtful if his sanity could survive the experience, wondering if his heart could take it, he cursed his gift. Marion Crane meantime continued to soap her slender body.
When the bathroom door opened and a figure stood beyond the shower curtain, Stanley struggled desperately to find a way to warn her of the danger she - they - were in.
But how could he get through to someone who wasn’t even aware he existed, who was herself only a fantasy? And how could he anyway influence actions that were predestined, had already taken place a million times?
Instead, knowing it would do no good, he braced himself for the shock, tried to think himself smaller. The curtain was pulled back and the knife started to descend - and then came a flash of brilliant white light, familiar and unbelievably welcome, and he was restored to his overweight and under-exercised form. It had never felt so good.
Stanley shut his eyes when he heard the music coming from the television. That was one piece of film he never wanted to see again.
Then he saw he wasn’t alone in the darkened room.
His heart pounding unevenly, he strained to make out the shape in the battered chair opposite. Was it an escalation of his gift, could he now bring his fellow characters to life? If so, wasn’t it the worst possible luck to start off with a homicidal maniac!
When the shape stirred, Stanley froze. Visions from a hundred horror films came crashing in on him. Blood pounded through his head.
The figure rose menacingly and seemed to glance towards him. Something in its hand, something silver, kicked back the light from the television. As the thing stepped forward, Stanley cringed away in fright. An iron band had clamped itself around his chest, getting tighter and tighter, cutting off the scream in his throat.
The figure loomed out of the dark. It spoke. "You alright? Thought you was asleep, so I switched over."
Too late. Stanley Elkins died for real at the very moment he glimpsed the anxious look on his son’s face. And the glint of the remote control in his hand.
BACKGROUND
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brian@wright99.plus.com
I'm an old geezer who's still in computers for his sins. I live and work in Wales which is a little to the left of England.
