"Coldheart Canyon (preview edition)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive - Coldheart Canyon)

and told to go and stand beside the gallows, two on either side, holding on to them
as casually as possible. Security is told that the publicity people only need five
more minutes. As soon as Suzie Henslett can be persuaded to move on up the carpet
and into the building (which at present she is showing no desire to do), the
director's, Rob Neiderman's, limo can be brought to the carpet, followed by the last
and most important of the bunch, Todd Pickett.
The wind is getting worse; the gallows sway giddily. An executive decision
is made to bring Neiderman's limo in, and if Suzie's screaming fans are visible
waving like lunatics behind Neiderman in his press pictures, so be it. This isn't a
perfect world. It's already 8:13pm. At this rate the picture won't be able to begin
until half past the hour, which wouldn't be a problem if the damn thing weren't so
long, but Neiderman's cut came in at two hours and forty-three minutes, and though
the studio appealed to Pickett to get him to shave the thing down to a tight two
hours, Todd came back saying he liked the picture pretty much as it was, so only
four minutes were going out of it. That means it'll be past eleven before the
picture's finished, and almost midnight by the time everybody's assembled at the
party venue. It's going to be a long night.
Neiderman has persuaded the easily-distracted Miss Henslett away from her
fans and down the carpet to the door. The big moment is at hand. The ushers cling to
the gallows, their jobs depending on the perpendicularity of their charges. The
largest of the limos comes up to the curb. Even before the door has opened, the
fansуespecially the womenуare in a state of ecstasy, shrieking at the top of their
voices.
"Todd! Todd! Oh God! Todd!"
The cameras start to flash, as though the incomprehensible semaphore of
their flashes is going to summon the man in the limo.
And out comes Todd Pickett, the star of Gallows, the reason why ninety-five
percent of its audience will be there when it opens next Friday (it is now Monday);
Todd Pickett, one of the three biggest male action-movie-stars in the history of
cinema. Todd Pickett, the boy from Cincinnati who failed in all his grades but ended
up the King of Hollywood.
He raises his hands like a presidential candidate, to acknowledge the shouts
of the crowd. Then he reaches back into the limo to catch hold of the hand of his
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Barker, Clive - Coldheart Canyon
date for the night, Wilhemina Bosch, a
waitress-turned-model-turned-actress-turned-model again, with whom he has been seen
at parties and premieres for the past four months, though neither will say anything
about the relationship than that they're good friends.
He gathers Wilhemina to him, so that the photographers can get pictures of
them together. Then arm in arm, through the blizzard of rights and the barrage of We
love you, Todd coming at them from every side, the pair make their way to the cinema
doors, whichуhaving gathered their most important guests into the fold, then close
rather defiantly, as if to divide the important from the unimportant, the stable and
the solid from those who are simply objects of the night's wind.
Gallows is an irredeemable piece of shit, of course, and everyone involved
with it, from the executives who green-lit it (at a cost of some ninety-million
dollars, before prints and advertising costs add another thirty-seven to the bill)
to the humblest publicist, knows.
It is, in the words of Corliss's review in Time, 'an old fashioned,