The Dilettantes (18 page)

Duncan Holtz bounded out from behind the curtain, genially waving at the crowd. Tyson and Keith jumped to their feet and hollered with both hands cupped around their Milk Dud–stained mouths. Other whoops echoed around all corners of the lecture hall. This was the true power of celebrity, Alex thought. To incite applause, no matter the occasion. Even the cinephiles and other political candidates were politely clapping. Standing to one side of the stage, Professor Monahan looked serene and lake-surface calm, as if she were in the throes of her favourite recurring daydream.

Holtz let the applause wash over him for a few seconds. He looked almost regal against the polished oak of the podium. Alex checked the tape recorder hidden in his binder. He nudged Tracy and whispered, “You ready?”

“I think so,” she whispered back. “Hopefully he goes for it—but it’s illegal to actually campaign here. He can’t be that dumb.”

“You really haven’t seen his movies, huh?”

“Thank you all so much for coming,” Holtz said. “Okay, okay, settle down, thanks, let’s begin—is that all the applause you’ve got? I’m just messing with you. But really, is that it? I guess the rumours were true:
UBC
are the real clappers in this city.” The man was no amateur. In just a few sentences the crowd had surrendered themselves
to his will, cheering themselves into a frenzy. Even some of the lukewarm film students were getting into the act.

Holtz’s manager scurried around in the background, doing last-minute checks on the complicated knot of cables running out of a laptop he’d placed on a table. He tucked a remote control in his client’s shirt pocket.

“It’s so great to be with you today,” Holtz continued. “Now, your lovely prof, she brought me in here to talk about some of the movies I’ve made at
SFU
. Did you guys know I started out going to school here, way back in, what was it,
2000?”
He drummed his fingers on the lectern, squinting at the old memories. “It was great. Really great. But then I got caught up in that big Hollywood machine, and, well, you know how it goes from there. Who has time for midterms when you can hang out with someone as beautiful as Keri Russell all day? This was before she chopped her hair off, mind you. Back when she was still a stone fox. Bookish, like some of the girls here, actually, and with this insane
bone structure
. Cheekbones are real important down in Hollyweird. Speaking of weird? I actually flew down there for the first time on September
10.
Just before the attacks. Now doesn’t that just put it all in perspective …”

Alex glanced at Tyson and Keith, who were both utterly enthralled. Chip kept looking to Keith, a little confused, then back to the podium. Tracy was scribbling furiously in her notebook.

“Don’t tell me you’re using any of this garbage,” Alex hissed.

“Context,” she said.

Holtz was spinning every moment of his time in Los Angeles into the stuff of beer commercials and tabloid escapism: Hollywood as one long, impossibly sunny boulevard, where famous people stood shoulder to shoulder with one another, and where even the guy running the taco truck used to be in the Shins.

Then he sighed wistfully (a little
too
wistfully, Alex thought—

this whole thing reeked of schtick) and pulled a small deck of flash cards out of his pocket, bound with a rubber band.

“Now, seriously, folks, let’s get down to business.” Holtz slid the band off and kept the cards in his line of sight. “The first time I ever came to
SFU
was for
Fang City
, back in the summer of
‘98.
I was heading into grade twelve, and I didn’t get to see much of the sights around here, what with being a werewolf and all.” Everyone chuckled obediently. “Night shoots, am I right? I spent five hours in that makeup chair every day. But the funny thing is that even then I could tell this school was something special. It had that
pop
, you know? It was different. Unique. I remember thinking, ‘How is it that this place isn’t world-famous? It’s got so much character.’ And I still think that. What
SFU
needs—what it
deserves—
is a motivated group of people who are willing to make that leap. To bridge that gap. It deserves a government that cares. A government that recognizes and embraces our uniqueness. Right now I simply don’t think we have that.”

Tracy stopped writing notes and looked up. The cluster of people at the back, the people Alex had pegged as other
SFSS
hopefuls, started muttering amongst themselves and glaring daggers at Holtz. It looked as if they knew this was coming.

“Anyway,
1998,
we shoot the pilot for
Fang City,”
Holtz continued, returning with a wink to the cue cards. “My character, Vince Mountains, was stuck in the evil doctor’s medical lab, along with all the other hybrid prototypes. So I didn’t have much in the way of actual lines. I was hardly onscreen at all, actually, but they still needed me around to do some vocal stuff. Meanwhile I’d fallen in love—or what I
thought
was love, at the time—with the lady who did my make-up. So let’s just say I was keeping myself busy.”

The class chuckled again, faux-knowingly. But Tyson started looking bored and restless. The politicians at the back kept grumbling. It was a strange moment. Who’d have thought that this was
the place where the Venn diagrams of
student politics
and
Tyson
overlapped?

Holtz shuffled to the next index card. “Over the next two years we did some more shooting on campus, and every time we did I thought, ‘You know what? I
like
it here.’ Sounds corny, I know. But it’s true. The air was so clean, and the buildings were so … different, y’know? It felt like I was entering someplace special.

“Then, as you know, we got cancelled” Holtz paused for boos; the crowd was happy to oblige. Keith wound up and, in solidarity, hurled the rest of his Milk Duds toward the podium, where they scattered in a shower at Holtz’s feet. The manager shot him a withering look. “And yeah, it wasn’t fun. It was my first real gig, and I was sorry to see that whole universe get packed away. And the crew, you guys. What great people. Seriously, the little people never get their due.

“But it wasn’t all bad—I mean, we were one of the first shows to get out there on
DVD
. I think it was
Babylon 5
, then us. So we were second. Or maybe …
X-Files
was in there somewhere, too.” He flipped through the cards in search of this phantom piece of data. “And sales were, just,
real
strong. I got to go to a few conventions and meet a bunch of fans.” Pause. “Just a second. I’m wondering what our exact sales were on that first season. Mitch?” He looked to his manager, who doled out his second severe look in as many minutes. Holtz got the message. “Anyway. It was something just
crazy
.

“Then I was off in Hollywood for the next couple of years, just trying to make a living, you know what I mean? It’s a real grind out there. I got my first real break with
Maximum Death
. Yes. Yes. Thank you, sir. You’re too kind. Alright, really. That’s enough. No: please stop.”

Tyson grinned and put the air horn back in his pocket.

“I’m guessing most of you have seen this little flick,” he continued, and the room roared. The cinephiles, meanwhile, visibly
cringed at the word
flick—
and said in the hallowed halls of their film department, no less! Professor Monahan nodded along with Holtz so intently that when she went to rest an elbow on the overhead projector, she missed completely and nearly swatted her head against it.

“Grossed six hundred million dollars worldwide—but who’s counting.” It didn’t come out like a question. Holtz winked again. “For the three of you out there who haven’t seen it yet, I’ll give you a quick recap. I play Blair Williams, badass without a cause.”

“‘Without a cause’?” Alex whispered. “He was a government agent. He had a
million
causes.”

“Shh,” said Tracy.

“And so I’m up against, just, the most diabolical group of terrorists you’ve ever seen. A nasty syndicate that calls itself the Blue Cutlass. Their headquarters are in this Aztec-y fortress, on top of some remote mountaintop. Those are the parts we shot at
SFU.
Come to think of it …” He trailed off, apparently lost in thought. “You know, I was just thinking, it’s not unlike the political situation here today. You’ve got a group of fat cats who’ll do anything to hold onto power, and an edgy outsider willing to call it how he sees it.” He nodded to the politicians at the back. “That’s so funny,” he called to them. “I can’t believe I never saw the parallel until now—hey, guys?”

The politicians paced back and forth in a pack, furiously whispering to one another.

Alex felt the nausea of impending conflict. He fumbled with his recorder, double-checking he had enough tape, then looked at Tracy. “Is this—”

“Shh,”
she said, pulling the top of her own recorder out of the binder. “Backup,” she added.

One of the politicians, his face brick red, burst from the group
and shouted, “You’re going to get run up the flagpole for this, you bastard. Just wait ‘til the
IEC
gets wind—”

“Excuse me,”
interrupted Professor Monahan, her loose, swaying posture now turning rigid. “This is a classroom, young man. I will not tolerate these kinds of disruptions.”

“Are you kidding me?” he shouted back. “Are you
fucking—”
A female politician grabbed the guy by the shoulders and yanked him back to the relative anonymity of the alcove.

“That’s Samantha Gilmartin,” Tracy whispered to Alex. “I’m sure of it.”

“I am so sorry about that,” the professor said, re-surrendering the podium to Holtz. “Please. Go ahead.”

If Holtz was thrown, he didn’t show it. “Oh, it’s fine,” he said casually. “This just goes to show the kind of entitlement this administration has. They think the laws don’t apply to them. And yes, I know, I know, they don’t want me talking about that kind of thing here—but then they
wouldn’t
, would they? They’re the ones who made the rules in the first place. Luckily, a stacked deck doesn’t mean anything to a guy with an ace up his sleeve.”

While Alex groaned at the gridlock of clichés, the rest of the crowd broke out in applause. But could he blame his fellow students for being so easily courted? Odds were they couldn’t pick the current
SFSS
board out of a lineup, but pop culture had expertly trained them to recognize a few key storylines: (a) The Establishment Is Corrupt; (b) The Hero, Humbled and Returning from Exile, Makes a Comeback; (c) Famous People Know Things the Rest of Us Don’t; (d) Rules Are Dumb, Made to Be Broken. With this speech, Holtz had tapped into all four at once.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this kind of steamrolling charisma was going to be dangerous for campus politics.

But what did it mean for
The Peak?

“Listen. You don’t have to just take my word for it,” Holtz continued. “I decided to bring in a friend of mine—a guy I go way back with, all the way to that first day on the
Maximum Death
set. You’ve probably already seen his wardrobe and make-up people running around campus.” A burst of electricity shot through the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, straight from his lunch break on
Y02: The Awakening
, your friend and mine—”

The mystery actor poked his head out from behind the side curtain, and if the crowd had been enthusiastic about seeing Holtz in the flesh, this time they acted as if the rapture itself was upon them and they’d all made the shortlist. The raw noise from the yahoos, plus screeches from Tyson’s air horn, drowned out the end of Holtz’s introduction. This was the kind of Hollywood encounter every single person in attendance could go home and tell mom about. The man was a household name, and a committed Method actor, too, though this fact was hotly disputed on his Wikipedia page.

As the mystery actor made his way to the podium, someone yelled, “His outfit!” The crowd gasped: he was wearing a T-shirt that read, across the chest in huge purple block letters, “PRESIDENT HOLTZ.” In one hand, he carried a kind of plastic-tubed cannon, which connected to an oversized backpack. In the other, a mesh bag full of strange little fabric bundles.

They were T-shirts.

He was holding a T-shirt gun.

Alex froze in his seat. He could feel confrontation bearing down on the room. This was no longer potential; it was going to happen. The only thing he couldn’t figure out was whether this, too, was part of Holtz’s plan. A splashy, ethically dubious endorsement was one thing, but a soccer riot in a film class?

Holtz’s friend patted him warmly on the back, gave the manager a quick finger-gun salute, and took his place at the podium—but as
he opened his mouth to speak, the politician with the brick-red face sprinted down the auditorium steps, his fists swinging like a third-string gladiator. The rest weren’t far behind, and included in their ranks a positively homicidal-looking Samantha Gilmartin. Stumbling backward, the household name accidentally set off his T-shirt gun. A purple bundle clocked the red-faced politician right in the nose; he lost his footing and tumbled down the stairs. The rest of the politicians threw themselves toward the podium. Holtz’s manager yelped and tried to pull his client out the side door to safety, but when Holtz brushed him off, instead taking cover with his friend behind an overturned table, the manager didn’t hesitate in fleeing the scene on his own. The crowd jumped to its feet. Some looked about ready to enter the fray, but decided to hang back, standing on tiptoe to get the best view of the action. Dozens of camera phones made their little synthetic clicks.

Tracy grabbed Alex by the sleeve and pulled him to the ground, where they both took refuge behind the seats in front of them. He, in turn, reached for Tyson, but too late: the air horn’s honks preceded him in his mad, whooping rush toward the front of the room, pulling some of the crowd along with him. Where were Keith and Chip? Alex couldn’t see them anywhere.