Murder on the Aisle

3

6:58 P.M.

Peeps was the only movie-review TV show with a live audience. During the final segment of the show, the audience got to tell the two critics what they thought of their criticism. Sometimes the result resembled a brawl.

One unkind critic had called it “Bowling for Movies,” but he was probably just jealous because he didn’t get to sit in one of the two chairs arranged in a kind of confrontational position and argue not only with his partner but with an audience filled with film students from various schools in and around New York. If there is a group more insular and arrogant than film students, it is still in the experimental stage and has not been mass-released yet.

Tonight’s crowd seemed more aggressive than usual. Frank Emory felt it was a good idea to send one of the show’s stars out before the taping to establish an “emotional link,” as he liked to call it, with the audience.

Which is what Tobin was trying to do now.

“I’d like you to know that we’re going to start including more foreign films, the way you’ve asked,” he told the two hundred young people.

“Yeah, your idea of a foreign film is Rambo Goes to Japan.” Somebody laughed from the audience. Then the entire audience — no surprise here — laughed.

“No, I mean we’re going to cover Fellini’s new movie, and even do a tribute to Fritz Lang.”

“He’s dead!”

“So is Orson Welles,” Tobin said. “So what?”

“Why don’t you cover what’s really happening today?”

“What would that be?” Tobin asked.

“Music videos.”

“Right. There’s a big audience for criticism of music videos.” Here he put on a snide voice. “Which Nazi uniform do you like — the red one or the black one?”

“Fuck yourself! You’re an old man!”

With that, they began chanting, “You’re an old man!” and stamping their feet and doing catcalls with chilling perfection.

Tobin had to go right on pretending to be put out but he knew it was what gave the show its edge and, consequently, its audience. Peeps was kind of a pseudo-intellectual version of mud-wrestling, and for the past four years people had been eating it up.

Tobin raised his hands high and bowed, as if supplicating himself to the loonies in the audience, then ran offstage like a lounge singer after his last number.

Backstage he ran right into Richard Dunphy.

Several people around them stopped doing what they were doing and began watching intently.

It was the virtual equivalent of two top guns in the Old West facing off in the middle of Main Street.

Here stood five-five (he used to add “and a half,” but that got too embarrassing) Tobin and there stood six-foot-two Richard Dunphy.

Neither spoke a word.

They just looked at each other.

Dunphy said finally, “Hello, Tobin.”

“Hi.”

“I suppose you remember last night.” Dunphy’s face shook with what seemed equal parts of anger and fear. “You weren’t that drunk.” Dunphy was going slightly fleshy but he still had a face that appealed to women in a bookish way. The horn-rimmed glasses and the tweed jackets with the leather patches and the absent-minded air helped. Dunphy always gave the impression he was thinking of something that would have startled Plutarch. Even when he was reviewing a teenage slasher movie.

“No, I wasn’t that drunk.”

They fell into their silences again.

More people came. Stood close by. Watched.

Dunphy said, “You owe me an apology. I hope you know that.”

“You know what I say to that?”

“What?”

“Fuck yourself.”

And with that, Tobin stomped back to his dressing room.