Free The Man In The Seventh Row by Brian Pendreigh

Village at Leicester or the Point at Milton Keynes. In all the hundreds of times he had been out to the multiplex at Newcraighall, near the old coal workings on the edge of Edinburgh, never once had he seen a film in which the star was seen getting off the 14 bus on the main road, walking past the pet superstore and Toys R Us, and crossing the car park towards the multiplex.
    Roy went back to see Girl 6 again. He did not care too much for the film, but he loved that ending, and felt he was a part of it. And he loved the Chinese Theatre. He saw Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo there, in which Mia Farrow escapes the drudgery and pain of real life through regular visits to the cinema. And as she watches a favourite movie the main character steps out of the screen and they run off together.
    He had not seen The Purple Rose of Cairo before. He had seen The Graduate before, so he knew what to expect from it, just classic, uncomplicated, pre-post-modernist comedy. He knew the stars would not come walking down the street towards the cinema and the characters would stay firmly rooted in their own world, up there on the screen. That was yesterday and a lot had changed since then.
    At last the lights dim and the film plays. Three men ride into town, they gag the barber and his son, they wait for Henry Fonda and in the blink of an eye he shoots them. The barber's son asks if nobody is faster. And the barber says that nobody is faster. But Roy thinks he hears him add the word 'except ...' under his breath. Roy shudders as he sees the title 'My Name is Roy Batty' appear on screen.

10

    A voice catches Roy unawares.
    'You've been a long way away.'
    He focuses for a moment on the Snow White pictures, turns and sees the young woman from the Roosevelt Hotel and smiles. 'My Name is Nobody?' he asks.
    She nods. 'My name is Anna Fisher,' she says.
    'Batty ... Roy Batty.'

    ***

    'What's the difference,' says Roy as they step into the Hollywood sunshine, 'between Bing Crosby and Walt Disney?'
    They sit at the same table in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, with its potted palms, whitewashed walls and ornate, painted ceiling. The Spanish revivalist building hosted the first Academy Awards in 1929 when Wings became the only silent movie to win best picture. The hotel's owners included Louis B. Mayer, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and for a long time it was a regular meeting place for producers, stars and directors, including Uncle Walt himself. He made it his command headquarters in 1941 when his animators began a long and bitter strike over low pay and long hours. More recently the producers, stars and directors had retreated to their strongholds in Beverly Hills and Burbank, Bel Air and Malibu and left Hollywood to the pushers, the whores and the Japanese video-makers. But for Roy this is still the heart of the film business, a bruised and broken heart perhaps, but still pumping the stuff of dreams. Roy sits not just with Anna Fisher, but with Gable and Lombard, Errol Flynn and debonair David Niven, surrounded by imaginary happy crowds, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining . He sips not just a Budweiser but Hollywood itself.
    Roy explains 'disnae' is Scottish vernacular for 'does not'.
    'Oh, I get it,' says Anna. 'Bing sings and Walt dizznay. Neat.'
    A smile curls around her lips. She looks down momentarily, a thought flits through her mind, and the smile is still there when she looks up again. 'Have you ever met Sean Connery?' she asks.
    'No,' he says. 'We lived at the other end of the street, Fountainbridge. Our paths crossed, but at different times.'
    'Fountainbridge? That was the name of the street? Was there a fountain? Or a bridge? A bridge over a fountain?'
    Roy laughed. 'There was no fountain when I lived there. Just a brewery. It's a big long street, stretching out from the edge of the city centre – that's where we lived – past the brewery, which is where Connery stayed. Not in the brewery exactly, but in a tiny old tenement