Free Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker Page A

Mister Pickett acts here: his trademark ‘young man with a chip on his shoulder and a thousand-watt smile,’ which was looking stale the second (all right, the third) time he did it, seems particularly out-of-place here. Though it seems incredible that time has passed so fast since America first swooned to the charms of Mister Pickett—he’s now simply too old to play the twenty-something Vincent. Only Wilhemina Bosch, as Vincent’s Prozac-chewing sister, comes out of this mess with any credibility. She has an elegant, beautifully-proportioned face, and she can turn a line with the snappy, East-coast smarts of a young Katharine Hepburn. She’s wasted here. Or, more correctly, our time would be wasted here were she not in the movie .”
    The premiere audience didn’t seem to mind it. On occasion there were audible gasps and loud laughter (perhaps in truth a little over -loud, a little fake) for the jokes, but there were several long stretches in the Second Act when the movie seemed to lose their interest. Even in the Third Act, when the action relocates to the orbiting space station, and the special effects budget soared, there was very little real enthusiasm. A few scattered whoops of nihilistic delight when the villain’s planet-destroying weapon actually went off, against expectation, and Washington, D.C., is CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 58
    58
    CLIVE BARKER
    fried to a crisp. But then, as the smoke cleared and Todd, as the new Gallows, proceeded to finish off the bad guys, the audience became restless again.
    About fifteen minutes before the end credits rolled, a member of the audience got up from his seat on the aisle and went to the bathroom. A few people caught a look at the man’s face as he looked back at the screen.
    It was Todd Pickett, lit by the light of his own face. Nobody got up to ask for his autograph.
    Pickett stared at the screen for a moment only, then he turned his back on it and trudged up and out of the cinema. He didn’t go to the restroom.
    Instead he asked one of the ushers if he could be allowed out through the back of the building. The usher explained that the area around the back had no security.
    “I just want a quiet smoke with nobody watching me,” Todd explained.
    The usher said, sure, why not, and led Todd down a passageway that ran behind the screen. Todd looked up at his reversed image. All he could remember about the scene that was playing was how damn uncomfortable his costume had been.
    “Here you go,” the usher said, unlocking the doors at the end of the corridor, and letting Todd out into an area lit only by the ambient light from the Boulevard.
    “Thanks,” Todd said, giving him a twenty-buck bill. “I’ll be back out front by the time the credits roll.”
    The usher thanked him for the twenty-note and left him to himself.
    Todd took out a cigarette, but it never got to his lips. A wave of nausea overtook him, so powerful and so sudden that it was all he could do not to puke down his own tuxedo. Up came the scotches he’d had in the limo as he drove on down to the premiere, and the pepperoni pizza, with three cheeses and extra anchovies, he’d had to add ballast. With the first heave over (something told him there were more to come) he had the presence of mind to look around, and confirm that this nasty little scene was not being spied on, or worse, photographed. Luckily, he was alone. All he had for company back here was the detritus of premieres past; piles of CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 59
    COLDHEART CANYON
    59
    standees and gaudy scenery pieces designed to advertise movies gone by: Mel Gibson against an eruption of lurid flame; Godzilla’s eye; the bottom half of a girl in a very short dress. He got to his feet and stumbled away from the stench of his vomit, making his way through this graveyard of old glories, heading for the darkest place he could find in which to hide his giddy head. Behind him, through the still-open door, he could hear the sound