I’m writing it live, posting a new chapter here every day. (Apologies in advance for any tyypos.)

It’s fast, it’s furious. I’m trying to make the novel read like a film. Trying to add the energy and rhythm of cinema to novels.

Let me know how I go. Get a new chapter a day via email.

 
 
PROLOGUE: COME ACROSS TO ME
CHAPTER 1: WHO AM I?
CHAPTER 2: FUCKING ICE FOG
CHAPTER 3: AS LONG AS YOU BELIEVE
CHAPTER 4: WHAT SORT OF LIFE IS THAT?
CHAPTER 5: DONALD, IT’S JUST A MOVIE
CHAPTER 6: IN THE DARK YOU THINK OF ALL SORTS OF SHIT
CHAPTER 7: IT’S A GODSEND
CHAPTER 8: WHERE DO I GET MY IDEAS FROM?
CHAPTER 9: IT’S MY INSURANCE POLICY
CHAPTER 10: MY COCK IN ONE HAND AND THE BIBLE IN THE OTHER
CHAPTER 11: THAT’S WHEN I DECIDED TO GET LAID
CHAPTER 12: YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST HOOKER
CHAPTER 13: IT REALLY DID STRAIGHTEN ME OUT

 
 
PROLOGUE: COME ACROSS TO ME

Fade up live version of JIMI HENDRIX’S psychedelic ‘Are You Experienced?’ under flashes of “Dangerous Minds” movie poster with MICHELLE PFEIFFER in a thin black leather jacket, staring down the lens.

If you can just get your mind together
Then come across to me
We’ll hold hands an’ then we’ll watch the sun rise
From the bottom of the sea
But first

Flashes of “Bad Boys” movie poster with WILL SMITH and MARTIN LAWRENCE walking away from a black Porsche 964, wearing police-issue bullet proof vests, guns in hand, standing down a suspect. Drums loop in reverse.

Are you experienced?
Ah! Have you ever been experienced
Well, I have

Flashes of “Top Gun” movie with TOM CRUISE wearing a leather jacket, KELLY MCGILLIS posed on his shoulder, stars and stripe behind them. Fighter jets tear the sky.

Ah, let me prove it to you

Flashes of “Beverly Hills Cop” movie poster with EDDIE MURPHY sitting wryly on the hood of a Mercedes red coupe, gun in hand, smirk on face. Hendrix sings on.

Trumpets and violins
I can hear in the distance
I think they’re calling our names
Maybe now you can’t hear them, but you will
If you just take hold of my hand

Flashes of “Flashdance” movie poster with an almost pubescent JENNIFER BEALS, wearing a torn sweat shIrt and red high heels, lost in the lens. Music comes crashing through.

Ah! But are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?

Music begins to shimmer and fade. Hendrix’s voice fades away.

Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful

Fade to black.

 
 
CHAPTER 1: WHO AM I?

This is how it ends?

DON SIMPSON is slumped on the upstairs toilet, his bloated body wedged hard against the black marbled wall. He’s in a black silk robe, head down into his chest with both eyes closed.

Smudged reading glasses perch on the end of his nose. Greasy hair pulled back in a limp ponytail. He looks like an older, taller, bearded and overweight Tom Cruise.

A new hardcover book rests in his dead right hand. It’s opened on page 267. Nothing moves, not even the air.

On a fucking freeze frame? Are you fucking kidding me?

First light of the day moves against his body. It’s a soft Los Angeles sunrise. It’s Friday, January 19, 1996. The notorious Hollywood producer turned fifty-two three months earlier. It was the worst birthday of his life.

The book slowly slides down out of his hand and falls onto the black tiled floor.

Thank Christ for that! You never open a movie on a freeze frame, right? Even on a shot of a dead man.

Reading glasses slide off his nose, tumble down his body and land on the book. It’s a copy of the new OLIVER STONE biography. The title reads: ‘Stone: The Controversies, Excesses, and Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker’. There’s a black and white photo of a worried Oliver Stone on the cover.

Corner of Stone’s lips animate into a sly smile.

Jesus, aren’t you supposed to see your life flash before your eyes when you die? Isn’t that the deal?

Glide out of the toilet towards the main bedroom.

Afraid of dying? Who? Me? Are you fucking kidding me? I was never afraid of dying, of getting old. I was afraid of getting fat.

Main bedroom of Simpson’s Bel-Air mansion is enormous.

Glide past a wall of floor-to-ceiling closets. Some are open. The first is closed, locked. This is the bedroom of a man with too much money. It’s dark. The heavy black king size bed is unmade, black silk sheets spill off. Lit by static hissing from a massive black Zenith television.

Oh fuck, can we defer the immediate cause of death? No? Really? A coroner?

Glide past the black night stand one one side of the bed. Piled high with discarded film scripts, empty Mills Pond peanut butter jar, empty Narcan ampules, empty bottle of 1991 Siduri Pinot Noir and a half-empty wine glass. All piled up like the Paramount logo. All that’s missing is the halo of stars. To one side is a black AT&T speakerphone with answering machine. The small green indicator light is not flashing. The drawer underneath is closed.

I’m not fucking stupid. I mean, I know what killed me.

Move towards the black night stand on the other side of the bed. Two foils of tablets lie unopened.

Librium and Diazepam. They’re detoxification drugs. They stabilize your heart, they keep your blood pressure down and they ease you through withdrawal. Without them you can suffer a fucking stroke or a fucking heart attack or fucking both.

In front of the tablets is a small mound of crushed cocaine and an open single-blade Swiss Army Knife. Tip of the blade is edged with fine white powder. Top drawer is open.

The drugs didn’t kill me. So we don’t need an autopsy, right? We don’t want to start cutting?

Peer into the top drawer to reveal a black leather bible embossed with gold lettering and gold cross, a shiny gold vibrator and a postcard of a wooden signpost with signs pointing to cities around the world. The postcard is stamped with the words ‘Welcome to Anchorage, Alaska’ in gold.

What are my chances of getting a woman coroner? On the youngish side? Good looking? Big tits? Smart? I got to have smart. Got to have somebody I can talk to.

A breath of air rustles the curtains. Crushed cocaine flits and flickers down into the drawer.

Who am I? Fuck, I’m Don Simpson. I’m an original. A true American original.

Close on postcard as cocaine flutters down like gentle snow.

That’s what Mankiewicz wanted to call “Citizen Kane” — “The American”. It’s a good title. Mankiewicz? Joseph Mankiewicz? Manks? He was the original writer. You know where he wrote the screenplay?

More cocaine flutters down the postcard.

Match dissolve.

 
 
CHAPTER 2: FUCKING ICE FOG

Snow blows over the real wooden signpost in the port town of Anchorage, over the signs pointing to cities all over the globe.

Wrote it up in three weeks while drying out in the Statewell sanatorium. Welles wanted to call the movie “John Q”. John Q? Are you fucking kidding me? It was RKO studio chief George Schaefer who forced the title onto him. So what the fuck does a director know, right?

Under the word ‘Anchorage’ it reads ‘Air Crossroads of the World’. It’s 1943 and it’s cold.

Schaefer came from Anchorage, Alaska. Captain James Cook discovered the place after he discovered Australia and before he was eaten alive by natives in Tonga or some fucking island in the middle of the Pacific.

Sounds of jet ripping through the sky.

About the only interesting thing that ever happened in Anchorage was Mount Spurr erupting for the first time in recorded history on the day I was born.

Anchorage. What a shithole. Cold, freezing fuck hole. Alaska was no better. Only fifty-five miles to Russia. Closer to Russia than the lower forty-eights.

In the middle of winter there’d be this fucking ice fog. You couldn’t even breathe. This dense winter fog of suspended ice particles would sort of sparkle all around you. So thick not even the sun could shine through.

Every winter everyone would go mad with cabin fever. That’s when Alaskans start bouncing off the walls. That’s when the Spenard Divorces would start. I now pronounce you Smith and Wesson.

Everyone had a gun. Only place in the world with more bears than people. Point three-five-sevens. Forty-four magnums. Twelve-gauge shotguns. Pump action. Think of it as insurance.

You don’t want to fuck with bears. Grizzly, Black, Polar. Grizzly weighs in at eight-hundred pounds, nine feet tall. Fast as all fuck too. Or a Brown Bear. Fucker is fourteen-hundred pounds, eleven feet tall. Tear your face off soon as look at you.

Sure I saw a lot of bears. Saw a white wolf once. I know how rare it is. No one else I knew had ever seen one. In the moonlight. By itself.

Sometimes you wouldn’t see the fucking sun for days. You’d see the sundog, the circle of light around it so you knew it must be there. But you couldn’t feel it.

Then the ice and snow would finally start to breakup and melt away. You’d hear it shifting and cracking. Slosh everywhere for weeks so you knew winter was over. You knew the tourist season was next.

Man, all I ever wanted to do was leave that fucking place.

 
 
CHAPTER 3: AS LONG AS YOU BELIEVE

It’s 1948 and the Lake Spenard Baptist Church car park is full. PASTOR CULLEY’S damning voice rises from the plain, wooden building and rolls over the perfectly parked cars.

The cowardly, the unbelievers, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars — their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur, in the everlasting flames of hell.

Light wind ripples the lake and takes Pastor Culley’s voice further.

You cannot save yourself. You are born in sin and you will die in sin and only Jesus Christ the Lord can save you. Pray this prayer, and mean it with all your heart.

717 jet shears a white vapor trail through the clear blue sky like a line of creamy, flaked cocaine.

Listen, the way you keep people in line is to scare the shit out of them and then tell them the only way they’re going to escape that fucking fear is to believe in whatever you’re preaching. I knew religion was full of shit. Even as a kid I knew.

We are all born evil, nasty, dirty people. Except if we hang on long enough in this life, God will give it all back to us in the next. What sort of deal is that? Who writes this shit?

The literal words of God? You’re kidding me, right? You can’t question the Bible, you can’t give notes? I don’t want to sound like a prick but have you read it? Not exactly a great page turner. And you can drive a freight train through the holes in the story, the contradictions, the factual errors.

If there is a God, why would he write a book? Why wouldn’t he make a movie? Seriously, you’re omnipotent and you write a fucking book. Who the fuck reads books? What are you? Retarded?

Look, I get it. The whole baptism and rebirth thing. Death, burial, resurrection. It’s a good story. I get it. I just didn’t need it shoved down my throat as a kid.

The whole give your life to Jesus? That was never going to fucking happen.

John, fourteen-two. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.

A lot of those folks believed Jesus was coming to back just for them. Believed with all their hearts that Jesus was coming back to this earth to literally take them back to heaven with him. Just them.

Guess that’s one way you don’t have to do much in this life. Because it’s all coming to you in the next as long as you believe. It fucks with your brain, that’s for sure.

It fucks with your sense of self. I went through so many changes as a kid, I didn’t know who I was. I remember being locked in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, and repeating my own name over and over until it became gibberish.

I remember telling myself to stop this shit, because I felt I had the power to destroy myself. Wipe myself out. Cease to exist.

In church I’d stare up at the steel cross and will myself to disappear.

 
 
CHAPTER 4: WHAT SORT OF LIFE IS THAT?

A steel cross looms high inside the Anchorage Lake Spenard Baptist Church.

Don Simpson is five years old, kneeling in a tight-fitting jacket with his hands squished together and eyes shut tight. He’s a pudgy child. He’s crying scared.

Pastor Culley is down on one knee, with his worn bible held high. He makes a prayer seem like eternal damnation.

Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and unless you save me I am lost forever. I come to you now, Lord, the best way I know, and ask you to save me. I receive you as my Savior. In Jesus Christ, Amen.

Asked to be saved? Fuck that, I’m not asking anyone for anything.

Repent? I was a kid, what was I supposed to repent for? What mortal sins had I committed?

You know why you were supposed to be saved? Because the end of the world was coming. It’s right there in the Bible, so it must be true.

The Second Coming will see God judge and divide between the saved and the lost. When the chosen fly to heaven and Jesus Christ is sent down to earth to rule for a thousand years or some shit.

Thessalonians four-fifteen. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

They call it the Rapture. I call it the great mind fuck.

Simpson is sobbing. His MOM kneels kneels next to him. His DAD kneels next to her and glares at him. He tightens his right hand into a fist. She whispers down to him.

Donald, you know Lord Jesus don’t like little boys crying.

I know, I get. They’re simple people. They’re scared. The more the world turns, the more they wan to it turn it back. Back to a simpler way, a simpler life. Where they don’t have to think. Believe that Baptist shit and you really don’t have to think again. All the thinking is done for you.

A vengeful, hateful, spiteful God. Every women a sinner, every child born in sin.

Nothing like pain and suffering to keep people down and under control, especially when you lie to them about how good it is for their souls.

But all that pain and suffering and trauma causes your soul to fragment and you fail to reach your full potential. Your beliefs hold you back.

My dad never had a cigarette or a drink his whole life. Had a huge temper, though. Kick the shit out of me whenever he got angry.

I never saw him happy. What sort of life is that? That’s no life. An unhappy life is not a life? It’s a waste of fucking air. His mom whispers again.

If you stop crying I’ll get you that new sweater you want.

My mom was the smart one.

Or how about I take you to see the circus?

Simpson looks up at the steel cross and swallows his tears.

Dissolve.

 
 
CHAPTER 5: DONALD, IT’S JUST A MOVIE

It’s 1952. Neon sizzles on a large vertical sign rising above the Anchorage Denali art deco movie theater marquee.

Don Simpson is nine years old, staring up at the sign and tipping a packet of crystalline Rock Candy into his mouth. His mom is clutching his hand, striding towards the open front glass doors. Simpson frantically looks around.

But this ain’t where the circus is?

His Mom yanks him inside. Past one sheet posters and insert cards for CECIL B. DEMILLE’S “The Greatest Show On Earth”. Past lobby cards, window cards and stills of the Technicolor spectacle of life behind the scenes of the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus. DeMille’s voice narrating the opening of the movie reaches out from inside the auditorium.

We bring you the circus, pied piper whose magic tunes greet children of all ages, from six to sixty, into a tinsel and spun-candy world of reckless beauty and mounting laughter and whirling thrills; of rhythm, excitement and grace; of blaring and daring and dance; of high-stepping horses and high-flying stars. But behind all this, the circus is a massive machine whose very life depends on discipline and motion and speed. A mechanized army on wheels, that rolls over any obstacle in its path, that meets calamity again and again, but always comes up smiling. A place where disaster and tragedy stalk the big top, haunt the backyard, and ride the circus train. Where death is constantly watching for one frayed rope, one weak link, or one trace of fear. A fierce, primitive fighting force that smashes relentlessly forward against impossible odds. That is the circus. And this is the story of the biggest of the big tops, and of the men and women who fight to make it “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

Simpson sits on the edge of his seat on the front row, gazing up at the giant screen with eyes and mouth wide open.

DeMille produced and directed and even did the narration. I always liked DeMille. A man’s man. Sam Goldwyn, Harry Cohn. Renegades, lone wolves. My kind of guys.

DeMille convinced Paramount to do some tests using VistaVision. It was a new process that ran 35mm film horizontally through the frame, exposing two standard frames to give you 70mm footage. Twice the resolution, twice the color. It was supposed to save the movie industry. Good in theory but it just gave him one technical headache after the other.

Tried it on some special effects but it was too much of a hassle. So he went back to standard 35mm film three-strip Technicolor, which had it’s own problems.

On the screen two shady men lurk in an open top coupe by the side of the rail tracks. It’s late at night and they’ve lit a fire in the centre of the tracks to force the approaching circus train to a stop.

One of the special effects shots produced a green halo around Gloria Grahame and Betty Hutton in the Grand Parade scene. To reset and reshoot would have cost a small fortune so DeMille cut in a shot of green floodlights turning on above them. Pretty smart. Pretty clean.

On the screen the two men cover their faces with bandanas and mount the red box office carriage and steal the takings at gunpoint. They flee in the car.

It did pretty well at the box office. Fuck, who doesn’t want to go to the circus. Picked up a best picture Oscar too. Everyone says it only won because so many members of the Academy were scared to vote for “High Noon”. Senator McCarthy, House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hollywood blacklist and all that shit.

On the screen the second half of the circus train powers through the night. One of the men turns the coupe around and races headlong towards the oncoming train, frantically waving and yelling to avoid disaster. But it’s too late and the train plows into the car and then into the stationery carriages, buckling one after the other after the other.

Oh yeah, Carl Foreman was robbed. Fred Zinnemann was robbed. Stanley Kramer was robbed. All robbed. Fuck them, they were probably all communists anyway.

On the screen is the aftermath of the greatest train wreck on earth, JAMES STEWART is out of his clown costume but still wearing his clown face. He nods down to CHARLTON HESTON – whose life he’s just saved – and moves to join the arriving crowd but is stopped by Henry Wilcoxon.

Simpson has never been more shocked in his short life.

On the screen Wilcoxon glumly shakes Stewart’s hand before slipping on the handcuffs and arresting him.

Simpson screams at the screen. His Mom shooshes him.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

I mean, shit, how could they arrest the clown? How could they arrest Jimmy Stewart for killing his wife?

Patrons inside the movie theater shift uncomfortably in their seats, annoyed at Simpson’s antics.

Mothers sniff, fathers light up cigarettes. Grandparents shake their heads. Children start grizzling.

Simpson becomes hysterical. Patrons begin to leave before the movie’s finished, peeved.

On the screen, BETTY HUTTON in trapeze costume sings out the theme song while swinging from a makeshift trapeze and leading thousands of townsfolk to an impromptu show. The sideshow barker’s voice rings out.

That’s all, ladies and gentlemen, that’s all. Come again to the greatest show on earth. Bring the children. Bring the old folks. You can shake the sawdust off your feet, but you can’t shake it outta your heart. Come again, folks. The Greatest Show on Earth. Come again.

As the theme song plays out, the star-studded Paramount Pictures logo fades up and away.

Heavy red velvet curtains close over the screen as house lights fade up to an empty movie theater save for the petulant Simpson and his Mom.

Stop right this instant, Donald Simpson.

His Mom stands to leave. Simpson crosses his arms together.

I ain’t going home till you change the ending.

Donald, it’s just a movie.

Not to me it ain’t.

Simpson kicks his heels against his seat and starts screaming.

I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. It was my little Rosebud moment. I discovered what I wanted to do with my life. If a movie could have this kind of effect on me, I wanted to do that. I wanted to be in the movies.

His mom drags him out of the seat.

“The Greatest Show on Earth” was the first movie Steven Spielberg ever saw. He was four years old. You know, his dad took him to the theater. Maybe if my dad had taken me it would have all worked out differently.

His mom drags the screaming boy out of the movie theater, out along the sidewalk.

 
 
CHAPTER 6: IN THE DARK YOU THINK OF ALL SORTS OF SHIT

His mom drags the screaming Simpson along the sidewalk outside their small two-bedroom timber home. She drags him up the path to the front door.

He tries to pull away as she drags him inside, down the hall towards an old timber closet. Simpson starts squirming. She tightens her grip and opens the closet door. He starts whimpering. It’s dark inside. Very dark.

I’m sorry, mommy. I’m sorry –

Simpson looks petrified as his mom pushes him into the darkness and slams the door shut.

Shit, I wasn’t sorry. I refused to go to school for two days.

Simpson is alone in the darkness.

My mom and dad never let me have a dog. So I had an imaginary one. I didn’t have imaginary friends. I had an imaginary husky. Vulu. Who would protect me. Keep me warm, watch over me.

We’d go into the wild. On arctic training missions. Vulu was my best friend.

Isaiah five-twenty. Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; they put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.

In the dark you think of all sorts of shit.

 
 
CHAPTER 7: IT’S A GODSEND

It’s 1996. Glide from the first locked black closet doors in Simpson’s Bel-Air bedroom towards the television screen hissing static.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew the drinking had been getting out of hand. But you can’t just stop. I mean, I could if I wanted to, but it’s medically dangerous. You’ve got to ease yourself off. Sure Librium and Diazepam help with the anxiety, but Narcan is amazing. It’s a Godsend.

It’s not approved by the FDA for treatment of alcohol addiction. But it should be. It kills the craving to get drunk. Take out the ampule, load up the syringe, pop it under your skin and the taste evaporates. Just like that. You don’t even feel like a drink.

It’s a lifesaver. Man’s best friend when it comes to opiates too.

 
 
CHAPTER 8: WHERE DO I GET MY IDEAS FROM?

It’s 1956. Black and white television set in the corner of Simpson’s boyhood living room is switched off. Glass screen reflects Simpson, thirteen, lying on the floor eating Peter Pan Peanut Butter straight from the glass jar.

He rolls on his back, surrounded by ‘Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos’ comics. Starts swooshing a model jet fighter through the air.

He mom’s voice calls out from the kitchen.

It’s snowing outside.

I don’t want to play outside. Sleds are for babies.

He is still plump. His hair is neatly combed.

Simpson rolls over and swooshes the model jet fighter over a garish comic cover with a snarling SGT. FURY on the cover, unleashing his machine gun at TWO HITLERS in an underground bunker.

Sgt. Fury’s iron-jawed face with a lick of hair over the forehead and a cigar clenched between his teeth morphs into Simpson’s young face.

Machine gun fires to life as the scene animates with COMMANDOS bursting through doors, SS TROOPERS firing back and both Hitlers scurrying away like rats.

Simpson grins from ear to ear. He looks up at the television and screams out to his mom.

Why can’t I watch the damn TV?

He hears his mom’s voice from the kitchen.

Donald, don’t you dare use that word in this house.

Simpson mouths his mom’s words.

You know Lord Jesus hears every word you say.

Why the hell not?

His mom steps into the living room, both hands on her hips. She shakes her head at Simpson. He speaks before she can say a word.

It’s not even a swear word.

His mom steps back into the hall. Simpson stands up, hands by his side.

His mom steps to the closet, opens the door and stands to one side.

Where do I get my ideas from? It’s pretty simple. I lived and breathed TV and comic books when I was growing up. Hey, fuck you. I know what you’re thinking — no wonder his movies are the way they are. But I wouldn’t have them any other way.

Simpson steps into the hall, head down. Forlorn.

He stops at the closet, looks into the darkness. He closes his eyes and steps in. Swallowed by the shadows. Sounds of closet door slamming shut.

Who is more foolish? The child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light?

I always wanted to have x-ray vision. You know, the power to see through things. The power to see what was behind a door. Friend or foe.

If you could have one super power, what would it be?

 
 
CHAPTER 9: IT’S MY INSURANCE POLICY

It’s 1996. Glide from the second open black closet doors in Simpson’s Bel-Air bedroom.

Two black Jenn-Air built-in bar refrigerators sit side by side. On top of one is a framed black and white 8×10 glossy of Simpson looking buff. It was taken when he was in his early 40s. It’s autographed.

Glide towards Simpson’s glossy. In the photograph he stands back lit, three quarter pose, all smiles.

Narcan also reverses the effects of opiates like heroin, oxycontin, methadone, dilaudid, morphine, vicodin, percoset. You hit them a little too hard and Narcan will save your ass. It’ll reverse the effects of any overdose.

God’s gift is what it is. Pull you back from the edge every time. Shit, it’s pulled me back even after I’ve slipped off. You end up a little dizzy and weak. But at least you don’t end up dead.

Comes in 10ml and 20ml ampules with little orange labels. Always good to keep a steady supply on hand.

I always have a syringe nearby already loaded and ready to go.

It’s my insurance policy.

 
 
CHAPTER 10: MY COCK IN ONE HAND AND THE BIBLE IN THE OTHER

It’s 1960. Black and white headshot of Simpson, seventeen, in the Anchorage South High School Year Book. Underneath his name it reads Best Dressed Prize.

Move back to reveal his mom proudly holding the year book open on the page. She’s chatting with MRS. PRESTON in the Lake Spenard Baptist Church parking lot.

Mrs. Preston looks like a demure JAYNE MASFIELD. Her lips are very red, very glossy.

Simpson stands next to them in a suit and tie. Hair neatly parted, holding a bible and trying not to look at her lips. He’s slimmed a little but still a little pudgy. His mom leans back to look at him.

Can you imagine? Voted best dressed? My Donald?

Mom, don’t call me Donald. I ain’t a duck.

Well, I do believe you still waddle like one.

Mrs. Preston leans over to straighten his tie with a smile. So close he can smell her Joy perfume.

Well, I do believe you are one very handsome young duck.

Simpson blushes as he looks away, biting his bottom lip. All proud and embarrassed at the same time.

Walking around with my cock in one hand and the Bible in the other. It was a lot of fun. Go to church five times a week, get on your knees on a concrete floor and thank God for the fact he didn’t kill you that day.

But hey, there was always tomorrow.

 
 
CHAPTER 11: THAT’S WHEN I DECIDED TO GET LAID

A teenage Simspon is kneeling down at the altar of the Lake Spenard Baptist Church, shadowed by the large steel cross.

Pastor Culley is standing on the altar frowning down at him. Simpson touches his tie.

I have these thoughts, these feelings about Mrs. Preston.

What thoughts?

Simpson blushes. Pastor Culley leans down on one knee, cocks an ear towards Simpson. His voice drops.

What feelings?

Pastor Culley bows his head. Simpson whispers in his ear.

Pastor Culley opens his eyes in horror. Simpson keeps whispering. Pastor Culley puts his hand up, motioning Simpson to stop. Simpson keeps whispering.

Our almighty God knows every one of your thoughts, Donald Simpson. Why would you provoke his everlasting wrath with such evil, wicked, sinful, lustful thoughts? With such unclean desires?

But I ain’t finished.

Renounce your lust — the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye. Do not give in to unbridled temptations, Donald Simpson.

Simpson straightens his tie. Pastor Culley tries to stare him down.

If you think about it beyond this moment, you will live in hell forever. And if you do anything about it, you will live in hell forever.

Simpson thinks twice.

Damned if I do. Damned if I don’t. That’s when I decided to get laid.

Pastor Culley drops to his other knee, clasps his hands together in rigid prayer. Simpson looks up at the steel cross.

Put yourself right before God.

Simpson gets up, pats the dust off his knees and turns away from Pastor Culley.

You cannot save yourself. You are born in sin and you will die in sin and only Jesus Christ the Lord can save you.

Simpson turns and walks away. Pastor Culley calls out to him.

Pray this prayer, Donald Simpson, and mean it with all your heart.

Pastor Culley’s voice fades away as Simpson walks out the door.

Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and unless you save me I am lost forever.

 
 
CHAPTER 12: YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST HOOKER

Fade up Jimi Hendrix’s slinking ‘Red House’ as a teenage Simpson anxiously prowls up and down the sidewalk in front of a well-loved timber house in Chester Flats.

Night is falling and there’s a small electric lamp on in the bedroom window. The front door is open. The neat timber porch has no furniture.

The timber steps step down to a concrete path. Mountain ash grows low where the path meets the sidewalk.

Faint sounds of two cats fighting.

Simpson keeps glancing up at the bedroom window, rubbing his palms on his trousers and breathing deep. Whoever is inside drapes a red silk scarf over the lamp. The cold light becomes warm, inviting.

He spins around in mid-step and hurries towards the path. Two cats leap out of the shrubs, hissing and spitting and rolling and fighting. One black, one white.

Simpson tries to step over the spatting cats but lands on one by accident and tumbles over. It flees, screeching into the night.

Damn cats!

Simpson picks himself up, brushes himself down and heads down the path.

I lost my virginity down at Chester Flats, at the black end of town. You never forget your first hooker.

Simpson doesn’t pause as he leaps the steps and bounds into the brothel.

Yeah, and I got to admit I ran a little wild after that, stealing cars and shit. Rebel without a cause? More like rebel without a fucking clue.

A lonely car drives past.

Never did figure out how to hot-wire a car. Could only ever steal cars with the keys still in the ignition.

 
 
CHAPTER 13: IT REALLY DID STRAIGHTEN ME OUT

Timber paneled station wagon is parked at the end of a dirt road in the Denali Wildlife Reserve. Lit by flashing red and blue lights of a parked Anchorage Police motorcycle.

In Anchorage, it meant stealing a lot of station wagons.

Next to the driver’s side door stands the teenage Simpson in white tee-shirt and freshly pressed jeans. His hair artfully tousled, arms behind his back.

Burly MOTORCYCLE COP in black leathers and peaked leather cap handcuffs Simpson. He ratchets them tight. Simpson winces. Motorcycle Cop leans into Simpson’s back, pressing him against the car. Slides out his black baton.

Looks into the front seat. Spots a copy of JD Salinger’s ‘Catcher In The Rye’.

Yeah, I stole the book too. Wasn’t proud of that.

Motorcycle Cop takes a step back. Slaps the baton into his palm.

Turn around, son.

Simpson slowly turns around. Motorcycle Cop looks him up and down. Simpson looks down at the ground. Motorcycle Cop spits where Simpson is looking.

Son, I’m going to make this real simple.

Motorcycle Cop pushes baton down on Simpson’s shoulders, forcing him to his knees.

You’re going to do a little something for me. And when you’re done, you’re gonna drive outta here and you’re gonna turn left or you’re gonna turn right.

Reflect Simpson being forced to his knees in the glossy black patent leather bill of the Motorcycle Cop’s leather cap.

You’re either going to be the most fucked guy in San Quentin or you’re going to have a life you like.

All things considered, it really did straighten me out.

Sounds of zipper opening.

I went straight to San Francisco.

I research and outline and cut and order and edit and reorder and trim and amalgamate (and manglemate) and push and shove snippets, thoughts, sounds, lines, insights and whatever falls out of my head into, over and through my original screenplay.  Sometimes I get out of the way and it writes itself.

Then I print it out and scrawl and rewrite all over it.  Chapter by chapter.  The idea is to have a final novel that reads like a film.  A two hour story experience from one media to another.

But it’s shaping up to be an epic.  Fuck!!  Most of the time I don’t even now where it’s going, where Don Simpson is heading.

I’m documenting the process below.  I’m just trying to keep up.

Let me know how I go. Get a new chapter a day via email.

How to express the idea that it’s better to live than to die, that your enemy is your brother.

What symbols stands for vanquishing conflict, where do the emotions have to shift.

How does blind hate become blind love.

From hate to love.

Make them double up as verbs, nouns. Not overt or over the top. Ring of stars. Halo of stars, that sort of thing.

(Don’t worry about doing it now. Just start writing and posting the chapters online. Save it for the polish.)

Of course, to get to the bedroom, would-be assailants would have had to make it past the bevy of long-range security cameras (which are still operational) and a labyrinth of pressure sensors concealed under the wall-to-wall carpeting; stepping on one would cause doors within the house to lock automatically.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t trying to kill you.

Even if it’s you.

“The failing of the present-day system is quite simply based on the fact that the studio executives are by and large ex-lawyers, agents, business-oriented people who are fantastic executives and managers who don’t have a fucking clue about telling stories.”

In most cases it is resolved at the end of the second act. In fact, the resolution of the main tension is what characterizes the end of the second act, and in the third act a new dramatic tension almost invariably asserts itself.

In Alfred Hitchcok’s “North by Northwest” (screenplay by Ernest Lehman), the tension surrounding Roger trying to clear his name is resolved 77% of the way into the movie. The third act revolves around the question of saving Eve.

In Steven Speilberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” (screenplay by Robert Rodat), Captain Miller decides to abandon his mission 70% of the way into the movie. The third act tension involves defending the bridge from the Germans.

In Federico Fellini’s “Nights of Cabiria” (screenplay by Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Pier Paolo Pasolini; novel by Maria Molinari), Cabiria gets her love and respectability when the man of her dreams proposes to her 82& of the way into the movie. The third act tension revolves around her impending marriage and its consequences.

Mr. Lanier, a musician and avant-garde computer scientist — he popularized the term “virtual reality” — wonders if the web’s structure and ideology are fostering nasty group dynamics and mediocre collaborations. His new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” is a manifesto against hive thinking and digital Maoism, by which he means the glorification of open-source software, free information and collective work at the expense of individual creativity.

Hmmm, individual creativity at the expense of open free for all.

Not to be all Ayn Rand about it, but the individual sure has taken a lot of hits of late. The idea of the collective, the social as more important than the personal is a great way to control everyone if you’re a politician. But not so hot if you’re an artist.

The idea of one over everyone just means dropping the standards to the absolute lowest (rather than rising to the highest).

The wisdom of crowds? How about the folly of fools?

You must have at least ten ways to reveal information about the “new” character if we don’t meet him or her till later. This can be achieved by introducing the character without the audience or the reader actually seeing him or her introduced.

Rethink how to weave your character into Act 1. Figure it out with clever and fresh exposition, such as a flyer blowing away that mentions a character we’ll meet later.

You gotta plant to pay off. It’s your job. The audience must feel satisfied and surprised, not cheated or tricked.