CHAPTER ELEVEN
– AND SO IT CAME TO PASS –
And so it came to pass that “TheGoodReadWipe – The Story of LIT-TISSUE” did indeed end up on the big screen.
Not THE big screen.
Smallish screens.
Screens that were somewhat smaller than those in the major theatres, in other words in local cinemas in small towns in parts of the United States as well as in a fair number of local cinemas around the United Kingdom.
LIT-TISSUE did indeed go up in lights.
Even if the lights were rather low voltage.
Jackson Manquin Kennedy was a man of his word. JMK Studios did manage to make the film he promised. He made it in six months on a budget of less than ten million dollars with a cast of complete unknown actors with the single exception of the lead character who was a left over from a soap drama that had been dropped by a much bigger studio a decade earlier. The celluloid Fred Nurk was twelve centimetres taller, fifty pounds heavier, had blond hair and was said to be in his thirties when in fact all the makeup in the world could not conceal the fact that he was well into his fifties.
The storyline was, as so often pointed out at the start of such films, based on a true story. From that credit on fertile imaginative processes took over which resulted in “TheGoodReadWipe – The Story of LIT-TISSUE” having only the slightest resemblance to historical fact.
The ironic thing about the film was that it was a relative success. It had all the ingredients of certain failure, but instead it played in select cinemas for a respectable length of time.
“I don’t get it,” said Fred to his marketeer. “The film is a disaster. It’s rubbish. It’s a poor production, the actors can’t act, it was obviously shot on a shoe string, anyone who knows anything about LIT-TISSUE can see it for the fiction it is.”
“All of which is true,” his marketeer answered.
“So why do people go to see it? They must be crazy.”
“Far from it. They know exactly what they are seeing. As you say, it is clearly a junk movie.”
“So? Why?”
The marketeer smiled. “Have you ever watched a television advertisement, or more likely a foreign language programme, that is so bad you simply can’t stop watching?”
“Of course. In any number of hotels while on holiday where they don’t have English programmes.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Do you turn them off or do you keep watching?”
Fred did not answer straight away.
“I bet you keep watching,” said the marketeer. “Not just because there’s nothing better to watch, but in some cases because the programme is so bad you can’t help but keep watching. True?”
“True,” said Fred.
“It’s the same with TheGoodReadWipe. It’s a bad film. Just like the bad foreign language shows in the hotel. Only with the film you get to tell others about it. Your friends and your work colleagues. And before you know it they’re all going to see the film that is so bad you can’t not go to see it.”
“Bloody hell,” was all that Fed could say.
“Bloody hell you might say,” his
marketeer said. “But you should be grateful.”
“Grateful?” queried Fred. “Why on earth should I be grateful for a film that is
horrendous and bears no resemblance to the truth?”
Again the marketeer smiled, this time a wider smile.
“Because it is making you richer by the day,” he said.
“What do you mean? How?”
The marketeer explained that although Fred had refused to accept the offer from Jackson Manquin Kennedy he, his marketing expert, had not been so hasty in distancing them from the project. He had seen an opportunity and leapt at it. On legal advice he had told the film studio president that if he tried to use the brand LIT-TISSUE or even the advertising strap line TheGoodReadWipe he would be sued to the hilt. Unless, he added, they could come to an arrangement. That arrangement was that for the right to use LIT-TISSUE and TheGoodReadWipe Jackson Manquin Kennedy agreed to pay into Fred’s business account a large opening sum. Then there was a fee for every single time a cinema showed the film.
“You’ve already made lots of additional money,” he stated proudly. “And you will go on making money from the film as long as it shows.”
“Bloody hell,” Fred said.