Michael Zimecki, author of “A Gun And A Girl” has previously published short fiction in Close to the Bone, The Dark City Crime and Mystery Magazine, Hoosier Noir, and Guilty Crime Story Magazine, among other publications. He is the author of a novel, Death Sentences, published by Crime Wave Press.
*****
Everyone credits Jean-Luc Godard for saying it, but it was actually D. W. Griffith who said it first, and he said it like this: “I foresee no possibility of venturing into themes showing a closer view of reality for a long time to come. The public will not have it. What it wants is a gun and a girl.” Not as epigrammatic as Godard’s “all you need is a girl and a gun,” but more revealing: The public will not have it otherwise.
Well, as I told my producers, “the public be damned.”
“It’s out of control,” I continued. “Gun violence in films has tripled over the past several decades. And sex in films has become more and more explicit. Let’s dispense with the violence and porn and make something real instead. All’s you need,” I said, paraphrasing Godard, “is the truth.”
First they laughed at me. Then they pulled my funding.
I wasn’t just down on my luck. I was out of luck.
I stuck to my guns; I mean I held my ground.
They exiled me from Hollywood.
I couldn’t get a film made anywhere. Not in Poughkeepsie. Not in Pittsburgh. Not in any low-budget or no-budget location.
I wasn’t just down on my luck. I was out of luck. I turned to prescription drugs to console myself, and when my doctor stopped writing prescriptions for me, I started injecting heroin and dropping fentanyl. For me, it got about as real as it could get.
Then I saw Harvey Buffet on TV. Harvey was the bagman, the purse behind nearly every movie you see in theaters, on TV, on cable, on streaming Internet video everywhere.
I hated him. Harvey was almost single-handedly responsible for booting me out of the film industry. He also had seduced my girlfriend, the actress Lucille Wax, with visions of leading roles and movie stardom. None of that came to pass of course—Harvey was just using her—but Lucille left me for him and now we were history.
Harvey’s head bobbed like an apple in a tub of water on the TV screen.
He was talking about me.
“We need anti-heroes,” he said to the host. “That’s what I told Jack Dingus when he told me to lighten up on movie sex and violence. ‘We need anti-heroes,’ I said, “not an anti-Tarentino.’”
Harvey looked into the camera. “So where’s Jack now?” he asked. “Where this whistle-clean painfully honest cinema he talked about?” Then he broke up, jiggling like Jell-O as he laughed hysterically.
I needed to see him. I had to confront him one last time.
Somehow, I made my way into the studio and got to his office door before a security guard held me back. I thought I’d missed my opportunity, but, to my surprise, Harvey buzzed me in.
“Sorry about Lucille,” he said with a sneer. “Truth is she never loved you.”
“Forget the girl and never mind the truth,” I told him as I reached for my revolver and aimed it at his heart. “This is all I need.”
*****
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