Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

JAMIE LEE CURTIS MADE A SHITTY MOVIE

BILLY HAS NO IDEA how they got here. That part is blank, like a concussion knocked him clean out of time’s flow into the next half hour, for he finds himself deposited on the playing field. The Bravos, Norm & Co., they are milling around the flats near the end zone, deep in the stadium’s horseshoe curve where the wind tears around in stinging freshets and flukes, a regular toilet bowl of rotary action down here. The transect of sky through the open dome is the color and texture of rumbled pewter, an ominous boil of bruised sepias and ditchwater grays that foretells all kinds of weather-related misery. “Gonna snow,” says Mango, their winter-conditions expert, “I can smell it,” but nobody pays any attention to him. Their little huddle is a-swirl with movie talk. Something has happened, Billy infers, new developments have been breaking while he was otherwise engaged. Howard and Grazer are out, apparently. Hanks is definitely out, Stone was never in, and Clooney’s people keep assiduously not returning Albert’s calls, but suddenly looming in the breach is Norman Oglesby with the promise, or let’s say the potential, or at least the not-so-far-fetched possibility, of robust millions in production financing—

“He’s intrigued,” is how Albert puts it, intrigued implying a level of interest higher than running your yap but short of laying the actual lucre on the table. “He likes the idea, and he likes you guys. But it’s early days yet.”

Early days, but Bravo has only two left, a woefully short fuse in the labyrinthine world of the movie deal. First this has to happen and then that has to happen and then about thirty more things simultaneously or in sequence without any previous item crapping out on you, the process fed, as far as Billy can tell, by outrageous verbal plyings of fear and greed. You make it happen by convincing everyone it’s happening, belief in the first instance being a vaporous construct of duplicity, puff, evasion, cant, and bald-faced lies. A con, in other words. Not that Billy thinks less of Albert because of this. It seems the process has huge margins for treachery built in; everyone just assumes everyone else is lying until a critical mass erupts from the sheer tonnage of bullshit put forth, and then they aren’t. Lying, that is. A sort of truth has been made to happen. Whether this business model has anything to do with the quality of the product that Hollywood turns out, Billy hasn’t had time to consider.

Someone, somebody’s people—Hanks’s? Grazer’s? Swank’s? — said it didn’t matter shit, or actually what they said was nickels out of a monkey’s butt, that the Bravo story is true, that truth is a nonfactor in the pricing of the deal. Which offended the soldiers, but Albert told them to shake it off. “They’re assholes,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Except the assholes always seem to be the ones with the money. At the moment Albert is standing off to the side, briary hair clawing the wind as he takes a call. Equidistant on Bravo’s other side, Norm is having his own cell session.

“Maybe they’re talking to each other,” says A-bort.

Dime just shakes his head and hunkers down against the cold. He’s slumping. He’s bored. His energy is low. Major Mac has wandered over to the sideline, where he stands gazing up at the goalpost as if signs and wonders are being revealed.

“Tole my moms I’ma buy her a car,” Lodis says. “Hunred thousand, Momma, go on up to the lot and pick it out! She pick it out and now she sittin’ at home, wonderin’ where the money at.”

“Look,” Crack says to the squad, “Norm’s loaded, right? Pretty much a billionaire, right? So all he’s gotta do to get the movie going is basically write a check.”

“Write us a check,” says Day. “Our story, yo.”

“True that. And like as soon as fucking possible.”

“Don’ forget Wesley Snipes gonna play me!”

“Your momma gonna play you.”

“Fuck that, she’s not ugly enough. Urkel plays him.”

“Richard Simmons. Dark him up.”

“No, that black midget dude, the wrestler. Master Blaster.”

“So why won’t he write the check?” Crack whines, appealing to Dime. “Like, just write it, bitch, don’t you wanna support the troops? How do you get a guy like that to put it out there?”

Well, Billy thinks but doesn’t say, we could walk over there, pick him up, turn him upside down, and just shake him until all the money falls out. Dime is unresponsive through all of this. It’s a classic Dime funk, not unheard-of when he’s bored or his blood sugar dips, but he’s funking right at the moment Billy needs his counsel most, namely, what to do with the miracle that’s just blown up his life. Thoughts of Faison crank his brain the way he’s heard crack does, a power-ball straight to the neural pleasure zones, and while it’s not the full-system freak-out of the hard-core fiend he is definitely feeling things he cannot control. Dude, she was into you. Fuck that, she GOT OFF on you. It occurs to him to wonder was it even real. It’s too perfect, just exactly the sort of delusion a desperate soldier would dream up, your normal, frustrated ADD grunt whose inner life is mostly overcooked sex fantasies anyway. But then self-doubt has always been there for Billy, self-doubt and its cousin the berating voice, these faithful companions have always been on call to help him through the critical junctures of his life, and yet, and yet… his lower back hurts like hell. Her scent lingers on his hands and chest. Strands of reddish-gold hair glint on his sleeves like signals from a distant mountain range. So if he’s not delusional and not on crack, what is he supposed to do? To make it real, that is. To make it stick. He needs to consult with his sergeant as soon as possible, because time is of the essence.

“Boys, things are looking up,” says Sykes. Half a dozen cheerleaders, none of them Faison, are heading this way, plus Josh with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He walks up to Bravo, unslings the duffel, and dumps a bunch of footballs at their feet.

“What’s this?”

“These are your balls,” says Josh.

Our balls.

“Yeah, they want you guys holding footballs when we do the shoot.”

A couple of Bravos grunt, but nobody says anything. They eye the footballs, nudge them with their toes, gaze off into the distance as if none of this has anything to do with them. Billy waits for an opening to speak with Dime alone. The cheerleaders sheep together nearby, shoulders hunched, legs pressed together for warmth, pom-poms clutched to their chests like giant muffs. Bravo shoots longing looks that way, but no one quite musters the courage to walk over there.

“Yo, Josh, any word on halftime?”

“Not yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something.”

“You’re gonna look out for us, right, Josh? Don’t make us do anything lame.”

“Or hard.”

“Or hard, right. We don’t wanna look like a bunch of morons on TV.”

“No worries, guys,” Josh assures them. “I think it’s going to be just fine.”

An especially chill gust shuts everyone up for a moment. “Why we gotta wait out here in the cole?” Lodis wails.

“The network said their guys would be here,” says Josh.

“Well they ain’t!”

“Hang loose. I’m sure they’ll be here in a minute.”

“Put Norm on they ass.”

Everyone turns and looks at Norm.

“Who he talking to?” Day asks. Josh furrows his brow, as if the answer will come with sufficient concentration, or the pretense thereof.

“I’m not sure, actually.”

“Whyn’t you go find out, yo.”

Josh staggers a little. “I can’t do that!”

Day gives him a sour, pitying look. “Whatchoo sayin’, you can’t walk?”

“Well of course I can walk.”

“Then cruise on by, thas all I’m sayin’. He talkin’ about makin’ our movie or what, all we wanna know. Think you can handle that?”

“I’m not sure that’s exactly ethical.”

Day snorts. He’s not above using his cool as a bullying tool when it comes to finicky white-boy sensibilities.

“Look, you see the man standin’ right there. He in public, right? This confidential, he go inside, slip off someplace private.”

“Uh, maybe. But I’m not sure what it would accomplish anyway.”

“Come on, man, intel! Knowledge power, every motherfucker know that! Just walk on by like you got business over there, ain’t no thing. Your job be looking out for us, right? It’s cool, just walking by. He ain’t markin’ you nohow.”

The other Bravos join in, mainly for something to do; they cajole and browbeat so relentlessly that at last Josh consents. With actorly nonchalance he saunters past Norm, loops around the entourage, greets the cheerleaders, then swings back toward Norm, in whose vicinity he casually kneels to tie his shoe. The Bravos follow every move. A hundred thousand bucks. By the time he returns they’re climbing out of their skins.

“He’s getting the injury report.”

Awww fuck. They’re dying out here. Billy scoops up a football and flips it at Dime. “Hit me!” he barks, and without waiting to see if Dime actually catches the ball Billy sprints off with an agonal aaagggghhhh, legs churning through all the arterial muck of the day’s heavy intake of food and alcohol. Three, four steps and his legs start to get it, his arms gear into the rhythm of the stride. He jukes through random people standing along the sideline, breaks left across the end zone and looks back. The ball — shit! — is right on him, tightly spinning like a drill bit’s business end and in that split second he sees everything, speed-loft-trim computes to ETA while his eye travels the ball’s trajectory back to the source, the big bang of Dime’s arm and the suddenly animate genius of his snarling face, like a Viking leaping ashore with ax in hand.

He’s unloaded a real bullet, too. The ball sings like silk tearing along a seam and Billy knows there will be no mercy in it, but he does just like the pros, eyes it all the way in and folds his stomach around the blow, a smothering oooooph—

Touchdown. He throws the ball back to Dime and angles deeper into the end zone, legs stroking, lungs feeding on fresh cold air. It feels so good to run, to just: run. Dime leads him too far with the next pass and he has to stretch, full extension in midstride and—hands! A cheer rises from the end-zone stands as he pulls the ball in, and Billy breaks off a little touchdown dance, uh huh, uh huh, taking it to the house. On the next pass Dime waves him long, then launches a bomb that floats over Billy’s head and into his arms, like rocking a baby the way that ball cuddles up to him, and the end-zone crowd sends up another cheer.

Billy is on. He’s feeling it. There’s a tingling sentience in every inch of his body, his receptors keyed to near-orgasmic pitch with a corresponding sureness of motor control. Is this how professional athletes feel all the time? Such pleasure in the sheer physicality of every moment, the meaty spring of your feet off good firm turf, the razor-strop of cold air in and out your lungs. Even food must have a heightened savoriness for them, and sex, dawg, don’t even talk about it. Naturally he hopes Faison is watching, and there’s the half-conscious thought that she did this, their encounter somehow altered his brain chemistry with one result being this quantum boost to his athletic skills.

He pivots, plants his feet for the throw back to Dime, and finds one, two, three footballs sailing at him, air support for an all-out incursion onto the field. Mango launches a line-drive kick that screams past Billy’s head. Lodis rams into Sykes from behind, knocking him to the ground. Crack and A-bort go long for a pass from Day, elbowing and trash-talking stride for stride, stumbling, nearly falling they are laughing so hard. “Jerry Rice,” Dime says as he jogs past Billy, then he kicks into gear and goes streaking off, looking back for Billy’s pass. The end-zone crowd is really cheering now and why not, what fan hasn’t dreamed of doing this very thing, a hell-all dash around the Valhalla of pro football fields? Bravo falls into a loose game of razzle-dazzle, modified tackle-the-man-with-the-ball with fluid or basically nonexistent teams and no apparent goal, just a bunch of guys tearing around the end zone, slamming into each other and laughing their asses off. And if it was just this, Billy thinks, just the rude mindless headbanging game of it, then football would be an excellent sport and not the bloated, sanctified, self-important beast it became once the culture got its clammy hands on it. Rules. There are hundreds, and every year they make more, an insidious and particularly gross distortion of the concept of “play,” and then there are the meat-brain coaches with their sadistic drills and team prayers and dyslexia-inducing diagrams, the control-freak refs running around like little Hitlers, the time-outs, the deadening pauses for incompletes, the pontifical ceremony of instant-replay reviews, plus huddles, playbooks, pads, audibles, and all other manner of stupefactive device when the truth of the matter is that boys just want to run around and knock the shit out of each other. This was a mystery Billy’s mother was never able to fathom. After having two daughters she couldn’t accept why from the earliest age her son would purposely slam into walls, doors, shrubbery, wrestle the ottoman around the den, or spontaneously tumble to the ground for no apparent reason other than it is there. Football seemed a constructive outlet for this impulse, and at various times during his youth Billy played organized ball, “organized” being the code word for elaborate systems of command and control where every ounce of power resides at the top. It seemed that football must be made to be productive and useful, a net-plus benefit for all mankind, hence the endless motivational yawping about teamwork, sacrifice, discipline, and other modern virtues, the basic thrust of which boiled down to shut up and do as you’re told. So despite the terrific violence inherent in the game a weird passivity seeped into your mind. All those rules, all the maxims, all the three-hour practices where you mostly stood around waiting your turn to be screamed at by an assistant coach, they produced an almost pleasurable numbness, a general dulling of perception and responsiveness. In a way it was nice, constantly being told what to do, except after a while it got boring as hell, and at a certain age you started to realize that most of the coaches were actually dumb as rocks.

So fuck that, he was done with football after his sophomore year, except the Army is pretty much the same thing, though the violence is, well, what it is, obviously. By factors of thousands. But for the moment Bravo has found some measure of peace as they bounce off each other like lottery balls, great gouts of tension release with every hit and they are laughing like absolute maniacs. The end-zone crowd — the cheap seats, the rednecks, the blue-collar rowdies — they’re standing and cheering them on. Bravo is running wild over hallowed ground and—weird! — nobody is stopping them. Then three obese men in Cowboys parkas and caps roll up in a stretch golf cart, and the fattest of the three, a guy with steel-framed glasses and swollen ass cheeks for jowls, yells at Bravo to Get the hell off my field, NOW.

“Get the HELL off his field!” Crack screams, and Mango screams it back and in an instant all the Bravos are bellowing at each other, Get the HELL off his field! His field, dude, get the HELL off his field! He wants his field back NOW! Get the HELL OFF! They gather up the footballs with a geriatric shuffle-trot, pausing every couple of steps to scream HELL! and FIELD! and the three fat guys just sit there and scowl. A couple of cops saunter over but don’t say anything, and the Bravos keep yelling at the tops of their lungs because the bastard couldn’t even be nice about it, couldn’t append a civil please or gracious thank-you for these brave American soldiers, these youngsters, as General Colin Powell (ret.) calls them, these loyal, honorable youths who bared their breasts to the foe for the sake of your freedoms, you fat fuck, you disgrace to the notion of man-in-God’s-image, you whale-ass keeper of other people’s grasses. Dude, maybe they don’t hate our freedoms, maybe they hate our fat!

The end-zone rowdies send up a boo when they see what’s happening, a blowsy, cynical sort of Screwed again! howl. Norm & Co. greet the Bravos as they trot off the field. Norm is laughing. “Sorry, fellas,” he says with that mouthful-of-salad chewiness, “I should’ve warned you. Bruce is pretty touchy about his field.”

But isn’t Norm the boss? So it seems like he could… Whatever.

“It’s a really nice field,” A-bort says.

“Dude, best field you’ll ever see,” says Crack. “I bet Mango’d love to have a run at that turf. Crank up the John Deere and go at it, I mean, you know, just being a Mex and all.”

“It’s Astroturf, moron,” Mango points out.

“I’m just saying—”

“Ethnic clichés demean us all,” Mango says.

“All I’m saying is any beaner would love—”

“—to do your mother like I did?”

Norm is laughing. What cards these Bravos are, what a grab-ass band of brothers. Okay, so maybe they aren’t the greatest generation by anyone’s standard, but they are surely the best of the bottom third percentile of their own somewhat muddled and suspect generation. Over in the flats a network camera crew is setting up while two media-type women discuss “the shoot.” The six cheerleaders are there, waiting. Josh is there, hovering, and Albert, texting. With a certain habituated weariness Billy notes that Major Mac is nowhere to be seen.

“Right here, guys,” calls the younger of the two women, who turns out to be the network producer for their shoot. “Line up right along here.”

“Well, facing more this way,” says her middle-aged colleague, a high-ranking Cowboys PR executive who has the swat to call Norm “Norm.” Intense women, these two, competitive, willful, dressed all in black, their faces set with the pinched look of angry vegans. Billy is angling to speak with Dime about the Faison situation, but Norm has glommed onto the sergeant and keeps him all to himself.

“I’ve got serious problems with Hollywood anyway,” says the Cowboys owner as everyone footsies around their marks. “I think they’re way out of step with the rest of the country, the concerns and value systems of mainstream Americans. Someone needs to get out there and start making films that reflect what America’s really all about.”

“I think we need that,” Dime replies. “I think the time is now.”

“Just the way they’ve been giving you the runaround, you start to wonder where their loyalties lie. Whether they really want America to win this war.”

“You start to think they might be a little gutless,” Dime observes.

“Listen, Ron Howard’s made some great films, Splash is one of my all-time favorites. But for him and Glazer—”

“Grazer,” Dime corrects.

“—Grazer to say you have to set your story in World War Two, that’s just outrageous.”

“They’re playing hardball, sir, that’s a fact.”

“World War Two gets its due, there’ve been plenty of great movies about World War Two. The Longest Day, The Big Red One, those are great, great movies. But Bravo’s story is all about the here and now, and I think that context should be honored.”

“I think all of us would agree with you there, sir.”

“Listen, I sure don’t see any signs of Iraq fatigue out there. The vast majority of Americans support this war, and they sure as heck support the troops fighting the war. If anybody has any doubts about that, they should just look at the reception you’ve gotten here today.”

The women herd Bravo into a quarter-circle line with garlands of cheerleaders on each flank. Norm and Dime stand front and center in the starring roles. There is a script, which everyone has memorized. “Hold your footballs up, like this,” the PR woman instructs, clutching an imaginary football to her breast. Though it’s dorkish and lame, the Bravos do it.

“No, lower,” says the producer.

“For Christ’s sake,” moans the PR lady, rolling her eyes.

“Well it just looks unnatural up there. It doesn’t look right.”

“We’re at a football game, hel-lo? It looks completely natural.”

Presently everything is ready for the first take. Norm’s personal videographer stands off to the side, filming Norm being filmed. “Bravo squad would like to wish you and your family a Very HAPPY THANKSGIVING,” Dime booms, then veers off-script: “And to our brother and sister soldiers out in the field, we say PEACE THROUGH SUPERIOR FIREPOWER!” Thus everyone is laughing when Norm, the cheerleaders, and all the Bravos shout, “Go Cowboys!” but the media people are pissed. Excuse me, is that in the script? That is not in the script so don’t say that, you can’t say that, don’t you know you can’t say that? Dime apologizes. He mumbles something about getting carried away. Everyone settles in for take two.

“Bravo Squad would like to wish you and your family a Very HAPPY THANKSGIVING!” Dime starts, and then, oh God, he’s doing it again, “and to our brother and sister soldiers out in the field, we say, shoot first! SHOOT STRAIGHT! PUNISH THE DESERVING!”

“Yaaah, go Cowboys!”

Now the medias are really pissed. “People, we’ve got four minutes to get this done,” the producer lectures them. “I suggest you get serious real quick or we can forget it.” Norm is laughing as hard as the Bravos, but he urges them to settle down and play it straight. “A lot of people out there want to hear from you,” he assures them. On take three Dime obligingly follows the script, but so primed are they for mischief that Lodis and Sykes bust up laughing. Take four goes smoothly until the end, when a fan leans over the front-row railing and screams, “Chicago Bears suck horse cock!”

At this point a short break seems in order. Extra cops are summoned to secure the taping area. Billy keeps trying to speak with Dime, but Norm and the sergeant are talking again. Billy almost butts in — he’s that desperate — but instead forces himself to fall back three paces as an exercise in impulse control. And runs straight into a huddle of cheerleaders.

“Whoa. Sorry!”

The cheerleaders smile and nod. There are three of them, two white and one black.

“Are you guys sisters?”

They hoot.

“Ooooh, how can you tell?”

“We thought it was our little secret!”

“Hey, it’s obvious. You could even be triplets.”

More hoots. As with all the cheerleaders they are stunning specimens of buff femininity, soft where they are soft and firm where firm all in accordance with the Photoshopped ideal of fashion magazines, except these women are real. Jesus. Bullshit spews from his mouth, he has no idea what he’s saying but they’re laughing, so he must be doing all right. The cheerleaders stamp their feet and shirr wintry breaths through their teeth to dramatize how cold they are. “Seniority,” they tell him when he asks why Faison wasn’t included in the Thanksgiving shoot.

“She’s brand-new, and everything goes by seniority. We get first dibs on TV spots based on years of service.”

“So the TV spots are a big deal?”

The girls shrug, make blasé.

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“Hurt what?”

“Well, you know. Your career.”

“Ah. I didn’t know cheerleaders have careers.”

“What’s that?” one of the cheerleaders asks, pointing to, almost touching, Billy’s shiniest medal.

“That’s a Silver Star.”

“What’s it for?”

Billy flails. He has no bullshit for this, nor anything else that will serve for polite conversation. “For gallantry, I guess,” he says, then resorts to the language of the actual citation. “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against an enemy of the United States.”

The cheerleader gives him a blank look. “Cool,” she says, and all three women abruptly turn away. Somehow Billy has killed the conversation. Did they think he was bragging? The medias order everyone back for take five. They find their marks and wait. And wait. And wait some more. Then groan when told there’s a technical problem. They’re instructed to stay put while the glitch is fixed.

“There’s your man,” Norm murmurs, nodding at Albert pacing the sideline with the cell to his face. “Looks like he’s working it.”

“He’s a machine,” Dime says. Standing just to the side and slightly behind them, Billy has no choice but to eavesdrop.

“How long have you been associated with him?”

“Well, officially about two weeks, I guess. That’s when we met him face-to-face. Though we were doing e-mails and phone calls before that, while we were still in Iraq.”

“You’ve got a contract, I’m assuming.”

“We signed some papers, yes, sir.”

“And I assume it’s been a positive experience so far?”

“Yes sir, we like Albert a lot. He really believes in our story. And he’s doing everything he can to get us the best deal possible.”

Norm clears his throat and says nothing for several moments. Billy leans forward a couple of millimeters, anxious for someone to speak.

“Hilary Swank,” Norm says at last.

“Sir?” Dime inquires.

“Hilary Swank,” Norm repeats. “Albert says she’s one of the stars interested in your project.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He said she wants to play you.”

“Apparently so.”

“That strikes me as sort of nutty. What do you think?”

“I’ll be honest, sir, I’m having a hard time getting my head around it.”

“They should stay true to the story, not go twisting it around just to suit some star’s whim. I’ll tell you frankly, the narcissism of Hollywood people never ceases to amaze me.”

“I only know what I read in the tabloids.”

“I don’t think a whole lot of her as an actress anyway.”

“Ah.”

“I saw her in that movie with Schwarzenegger, the one where she plays his wife and he’s in the CIA, but supposedly she doesn’t know it? Kind of a silly movie. I didn’t think much of that movie at all.”

“I think that was Jamie Lee Curtis, sir,” Dime says.

“Pardon?”

“I think that was Jamie Lee Curtis who played the wife, not Swank.”

“Really? Well. It was still a shitty movie.”

Billy happens to look at Albert just as he pockets the phone, his shoulders rising and falling in a tectonic heave. Such a gesture would seem to suggest defeat, but Billy thinks he looks more thoughtful than worried, like a consummate old pro plotting his next move. So do something, Billy silently urges, and he finds himself wishing the producer had more skin in the game. The deal craters, Albert goes back to L.A., back to his Brentwood home and his hot young wife and his office with the three Oscars sitting on the shelf. Meanwhile it’s back to the war for Bravo, deal or no deal. Iraq has never been less than a life-or-death proposition for them, but the deal hanging in the balance seems to make it more so.

They nail the next take and everyone cheers, even the camera crew adds its own jaded bray. Norm doles out old-school high-fives. “Hang on to those footballs,” he tells Bravo, “they’re yours to keep. But they’ll look better with some ink on them, don’t you think?” He grins. “Follow me, men.”