Popcorn

Ben Elton writes a funny as hell, over the top, “what if” that follows a would be Oliver Stone during the 48 hours before and after Oscar night where he is nominated as best director while his “Ordinary Americans” – a flick that is the long lost twin of Natural Born Killers – is in the running for best movie. It’s a commentary on American “culture”, the media’s power and Hollywood but, first and foremost, it’s a very entertaining read that had me laughing out loud. Some choice quotes:

The Governor’s Ball. The post-Oscars party. The glitter, the glamour, the bosoms!. There were bosoms as far as the eye could see, a great soft undulating shelf of bosoms that stretched from one side of the vast ballroom to the other… From his vantage-point he could admire the thousand or so best cleavages in Hollywood, which of course, meant the best in the world. What an admirable thought! Laid out before him were the planet’s two thousand top tits, creamy white, coffee-brown, sunkissed olive, all rising and falling to the rhythm of the night. The best that Mother Nature could build, the best that money could buy.

Other people’s problems were other people’s problems. She had been born with a thick skin, and it had been pulled so taut by cosmetic surgeons that these days bad vibes tended just to bounce off it like dried peas off a drum.

There are a lot of funny bits about the media and people’s responsibility for their action but they’re more related to the story so I’ll let you read them in context.