Last Days (2 page)

ing much about her life; it had been Andy Warholed on to T-shirts in Camden Market, alongside images of Jim Jones and Charles Manson, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. A plump, heavily made-up face, its expression beatific, haloed by a purple nun’s habit as her eyes searched the heavens.

Mother Mary meets Revlon. An evil female cult leader re -

duced to sick joke gimmickry, lurid nostalgia, and bespoke infamy for disaffected youth. A woman who was killed by

. . . or did she commit suicide with her followers in America?

He couldn’t remember, but he knew the Temple had murdered people. Or was it each other? A film star? No, that was Manson’s family. Same era because the Temple was a hippy death cult in the sixties. Or was it the seventies?

‘The cult,’ he said and tried not to look clueless. Too late, his eyes had gone vague and he’d frowned with confusion throughout his hazy recall.

Max seemed pleased with his ignorance. It would enable him to expound. ‘An organization that began right here in London, in 1967.’

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‘London?’

‘Yes. In this city. Few are aware of that. But Sister Katherine was British. Her real name was Hermione Tirrill.

She was born in Kent. Came from the remnants of a wealthy family. Her mother even had a title. She was a Baroness, and made sure little Katherine knew she was better than everyone.

As did the boarding schools where she was educated until she was fourteen, when her father left his bankrupt family. And little Kathy and her mother were forced into the ignominy of poverty. She came down hard from a pile in the country to a council flat in Margate. Had to slum it in a second-hand school uniform. Down there with the rest of them. Must have been devastating for her, this plump little overachiever with funny teeth, while she watched her former peers become debutantes.’

Kyle shrugged. ‘I don’t know much—’

‘She was a runaway at fifteen and never spoke to her mother again. There was some time in borstal for theft and assault, then prison in her twenties. She was arrested for solic-itation, and then again for running a brothel. Embezzlement, forgery too. A petty criminal. We can read what we choose into this. But what we do know from the few that have ever gone on record about her formative years, is that Katherine never liked a level playing field. That’s for sure. But she liked power. And status. Wanted back what had been taken from her.’

Kyle intuited a taint of bitterness in Max, but something else too: a grudging respect.

‘But the Temple’s origins are fascinating. It grew out of a cocktail of Scientology and apocalyptic millennial ideas, a mimicry of Christian sainthood, occult magic, Buddhism, a 11

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belief in reincarnation . . . and various other things.’ Max seemed to detach himself from Kyle then, and from the conversation and even the room, like an old man reminiscing fondly. ‘It could have been so beautiful. Simple psych-therapy techniques, blended with medieval ideas of asceticism and piety. A life free of ego. These were the original values. All cloaked in mysticism for an aesthetic appeal.’

Breaking his reverie and now self-conscious about his digression, Max killed the half-smile. ‘A well-intentioned concept quickly usurped by a female sociopath and criminal elements. In London it was known as The Last Gathering.

It became The Temple of the Last Days in France, during a schism in 1969. At a farm in Normandy where they nearly starved to death. The remnants migrated to America, under the same management. Where
they
self-destructed in Arizona.

1975. That you will surely be familiar with?’

Kyle swallowed. ‘I’m not that
familiar
with it.’ He cleared his throat too aggressively. ‘With them.’

‘So I see.’ Max said with a condescending inflection on the last two words.

Momentarily, Kyle felt dizzy with embarrassment, as if he were being asked a question at school that he had no answer for. An illogical reaction, because why would he know anything about them? Had he pretended to? They were hardly important. And Max Solomon had invited him by email to the production offices in Bloomsbury, for a meeting about a

‘prospective collaboration’ without stating anything specific about the proposal. He felt his face go hot. ‘No disrespect intended, but why would I be?’

‘From what I have enjoyed about your work, Kyle, I’d say you might want to be.’ Max smiled. And commenced issuing 12

LAST DAYS

the impression that he would ever be the unruffled and idly comfortable man, his success innate, entitled to prosperity and that all should know it. Signs recognizable to Kyle. And he instinctively disliked those who exhibited them. A class unto themselves; the money man, the film executive from the upper corporate tier, the self-important producer. Loved being close to the creative flame, stressed their own ‘creativity’ at every opportunity, and by doing so devalued the very word to house dust. But their aspiration to take ownership of another’s work, he’d learned the hard way, was always re -

inforced by an underhand cleverness that you underestimated at your peril in this racket.
They
were the reason he had reduced himself to self-financed film-making, and a personal debt so colossal just thinking about it made it hard to breathe.

Earlier, he’d been collected from an impressive reception so brightly lit he’d spent the entire wait squinting. When shown into the CEO’s office and Max had risen to greet him, his movements so light and graceful, the tiny man had re -

minded Kyle, uncomfortably and unkindly, of a small clever monkey with quick glittering eyes. A primate rising to its hind legs, dressed in Paul Smith.

The man was also tanned the colour of a sweet potato and his entire scalp was covered in a semi-transparent pelt of hair implants. He never understood why balding men paid so dearly for a procedure that only gave them thinning hair. The one time he’d been to Cannes, and the two visits he’d made to LA to talk to film agents, he’d found alien worlds full of men just like Max Solomon.

When the email arrived the night before to request the meeting, Kyle had broken an anxious evening of reading job 13

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ads online and immediately checked out the Revelation Productions website. Instantly, his heart and its vain hope that the meeting might lead to an opportunity to work again, and that he would earn enough money to stave off his impending insolvency, cooled with dismay. His disappointment grew incrementally the more he saw of the website, until it was total.

Revelation had published a book called
The Message
, which had sold ‘Fifty Million Copies!’ A strapline that filled most of the company’s homepage. He’d seen the book around.

It had changed the life of many female celebrities as well as being one of those books that every other woman had been reading on the London Underground for one summer. How long ago that summer was escaped him, but he’d never seen the book being read in public since.

As well as
The Message
, the company produced a massive backlist of books, DVDs, CDs and merchandise that had a contemporary, life-affirming, self-help USP attached. The company claimed their products were ‘groundbreaking’ and

‘definitive’ and ‘revelatory’. But the brand struck Kyle as being very Californian, a bit vulgar, and dated lo-tech, magic-bullet-chicanery, while also fortifying his aversion to bad science blended with spiritual horseshit. But it had come to this; with the exception of porn, he’d dropped to the bottom of the film industry.

His documentary about the American Metal Core scene,
Shredding
, had been shown dozens of times on cable tele -

vision, been a hit at festivals in 2006, and was still referred to as a cult classic in the music press; his film about witch-craft at a Scottish University,
Coven
, had got him into trouble for defamation, but it was also a film once shown on BBC2

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to considerable acclaim; thirty thousand people had bought the DVD of his film about the European Black Metal scene,
Reigning in Hell
; and two hundred thousand people had downloaded his documentary,
Blood Frenzy
, about three missing British hikers who vanished in the Arctic Circle: all of this success was real. Not bullshit. He’d walked the walk.

He had a real and enviable filmography. But the distributors for the first three films claimed he owed them money: fifteen grand. And he still carried another ten grand’s worth of production debt from
Coven
like an anvil upon his increasingly rounded shoulders. In total, his last self-financed film and unpaid rent had left him thirty thousand pounds in debt on a variety of credit cards and loans. A day of fiscal reckoning was nigh. Its anticipation made him incapable of a single undisturbed moment of happiness. It had also stolen his ability to relax, which seemed more hideous than losing the ephemera of joy. Something, he noted, guaranteed by the likes of Revelation Productions. Happiness: they promised that in spades. So maybe he should hold out for a DVD on tantric sex.

‘What makes you think I’d be interested in a cult?’

‘I’ve seen your work. It has a refreshing openness. When dealing with the niche, the derided, the forgotten. And the unexplained. You’re not an exploiter, Kyle. I like that. Or a sensationalist. You have an open mind, my friend. So I began to wonder if we could work together. I have become very curious about your approach. Your vision.’

Kyle resisted any show of being flattered, though he was.

‘I make films with one agenda. To capture a subculture and to understand it. Or to tell a story honestly. As those who speak to me perceived the experience. I’ve only made films 15

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about things that interest me. Stories that fascinate me, that either no one has told or told well enough. Stuff the mainstream media avoids or just misunderstands. And I won’t compromise what I think is the right approach to achieving this. If I can bypass the current Hollywood and film industry business model in the process, it’s a massive bonus. Artistic compromise, idea theft, getting turned over by suits. Enough already. I’m done with all that.’ He said this as a veiled warning. He’d been told it was unwise to show his bitterness in meetings with producers, that it was unprofessional. These days, he chose to ignore advice like that.

Max raised his trimmed eyebrows as high as he could, but the lower half of his face didn’t budge. He’d had a facelift as well. The half-smile was starting to convince him it was, in fact, mocking.

Kyle tried to smother his rising irritation. But it was like trying to get the wrong size lid on a tin of red paint. His voice came out all tight. ‘And my time is coming. For film-makers like me.’ He felt silly for saying it, but was also revelling in how the film industry quaked at what digital technology was doing to their age-old monopoly. The least he could do was remind its representatives of this fact. ‘Eventually I intend to be the media provider of my own work. For a specific audience. And it will never be any dumbed-down, censored crap put out by executive know-nothings, with their profit and loss sheets, their bottom lines, and their careers. I already finance, shoot and edit the films myself. Owning distribution is the next battle. That’s where I stand.’

‘I see.’ Max looked at his tiny feminine fingers, spread them on his desk, studied his nails for a few seconds, while 16

LAST DAYS

either frowning or fighting the half-smile; it was hard to tell with someone whose chin was probably once part of their forehead. ‘Your film
Blood Frenzy
struck me as unequivocal in its acceptance of, shall we say, a paranormal aspect to that tragic story. What I took from the film was a strong suggestion that something very old, something that defied natural law, had been responsible for the disappearance of a significant number of people . . . in a distant part of the world.

Did you come to believe that?’

Here we go
. ‘We all want the truth, Max. I just tried to understand what happened. There’s no way I will ever know what really happened up there. I don’t think anyone ever will.

But I got an authentic sense of the place the story came out of. People suggested things, without much prompting. I never tried to steer the interviews, or to emboss a theory on anything. My mind and my lens were wide open. The viewer is the interpreter. These days everyone wants a say. The world is a hanging jury. I give the audience the known facts and the fallible testimony of the interviewees. And to be honest, I had no idea what that film was going to suggest to me as I made it.’

‘I see. Interesting.’

But did he see?
While Kyle spoke, Max had been frowning as if he was not listening, but thinking instead of what he was going to say next. It annoyed him even more, if that were possible.

‘I don’t like polemic, Mr Solomon. Most audiences don’t either. My trick is to choose a story that is so interesting, the audience has to get involved on some level. It’s the most I can do as a director. I don’t use stars or shoot well-known events, which is why I’ve given up on the
system
.’ That word 17

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almost came out of his mouth on fire. He took a deep breath.

‘So I find stories for the neglected mass of non-mainstream viewers. And there’s an awful lot of us. I’m totally pull-based from word of mouth online. That’s my constituency.’

‘You make a living from this couture approach?’

Kyle paused for longer than he wished. ‘Not yet. I was ripped off on the music films and
Coven
. So I made
Blood
Frenzy
a non-product. I gave it away free from my website.

Some indie record labels embedded ads on the page which covered some of my costs. I’m in arrears on the rest. But it’s never been about money.’

He wondered whether he should just get up and leave. He couldn’t even pretend he liked the man. And he’d be one of a dozen directors Max was currently feeling out for something tabloid. At least it wasn’t over a lunch he was paying for; this was an actual production office. But he could already intuit he and Max were terminally different; if he couldn’t trust his instincts after all he’d been through, then what else did he have to go on?
Time to split.