Author: Ryan M. Moore

Writer and filmmaker.
Posted on

Entourage:2039 Chapter 21: Vincent and Ari in the Spirit World (part two)

Between the sky and the deep black water, Vincent Chase has a dream.

Which is confusing, because he was already dreaming, somewhere east of the city, tucked into bed in some never-lived-in ghost of a suburb that is slowly but surely being retaken by the desert. But still, Vince has a dream as he falls, and this is what happens:

In his dream, Vince is in his thirties, not in his prime anymore- his looks are starting to go a little bit, especially on mornings after he drinks. But still, he feels good. When the dream starts, Vince is walking through a forest. The first thing he notices are the gnomes- little men in green pointy hats, surrounding him, walking with him through the forest. It’s a little alarming, but Vince keeps his cool. There are beams of sunlight slicing down through the huge trees, warm on his face, but not too warm- and the whole thing is actually kind of nice.

Now another party of gnomes approaches and they’re bringing some kind of big animal- a horse, Vince sees as they come closer, huge and as white as something in a dream, which this is. Which it has to be, because now Vince is almost blinded by a flare of the sun off the huge beast’s horn- it’s not a horse, it’s a Unicorn! and the gnome leading it bows and curtsys before Vince.

“Your steed, your majesty,” he says, and Vince knows the great Unicorn is his and he can ride it. And the gnomes boost him up onto the back of the beast and Vince feels the power beneath him and he feels he should say something, that everyone is waiting for some kind of speech, but it doesn’t matter he just wants to ride he’s never felt so free in his life and then the director calls “Cut!”

Of course it’s a movie. Of course they were waiting for him to say his line while he just sat there on the horse with the prop horn glued to its forehead. It all comes back now- the fragile levee of Vincent Chase’s mind is instantly overwhelmed by memories, and guilt, and shame, and the voices in his head are joined now by those of three assistant directors yelling at him, shaming him, psyching him up, all in a proxy for the director who is too remote and fearsome to be spoken to directly, like the father Vince never really knew.

“I have to go to my trailer,” Vince manages to stammer out, even though he has no idea where his trailer is- he only knows he’s going to go insane if he stays on this set one more second with the six hundred eyes probing him, judging him. Because he is completely sure, as sure as he has even been of anything in his life, that everyone on the set, down to the lowest P.A., can see directly into his soul. And he knows what they’ll find there: What he himself knew was there all along, in a hundred stoned-sleepless 3ams in Hollywood mansions and foreign hotel suites, which is nothing at all.

Posted on

Entourage:2039 Chapter 20: Vincent and Ari in the Spirit World (part one)

The party is a quiet one. It should have been a great night- Ari’s army had made their way from Chavez Ravine to the coast with no casualties at all, unless you counted a little indigestion and light vomiting. They’d plundered and looted a swath as wide as a football field across the remains of the city, and now here they were at the end of a hard day’s work, in Santa Monica, ensconced in the safehouse of the late beachfront luxury hotel, Shutters.

The boss had made a perfunctory toast – thanking everyone for their hard work – but no one was really buying it. He wasn’t smiling, and everyone knew what it meant when the boss didn’t smile at all, which was the same thing it meant when the boss smiled too much- which was that heads were going to roll, and soon.

Mr. Gold disappeared immediately afterward, bound for a sound- and light-proof suite on a floor so secure that 99 percent of the guests at the party would be shot dead before they were allowed to set foot on it. So the party isn’t very good, because everyone is just standing around looking at everyone else, trying to figure out who’s going to be dead before seven tomorrow morning. Some people are trying- there was a run down to the beach, and a few people even went in the water, laughing off the risk of certain, fast, extremely painful death that comes when you feel a forty-foot tentacle tightening around your ankle.

No one sees one of Things in the water on this night; no one sees anything much unusual- least of all the spirit, or avatar, or whatever of Vincent Chase floating in the dark outside the big hotel windows and looking in at Ari Gold holding a glass of fine red wine. Not only do they not see Vince, they don’t see Ari either because Ari has retired a good three hours earlier. Ari is 16 floors up, mired in combination of a meditative state, sleep, and a stupor induced by three of the industrial-grade Sequonel tranquilizers he carries at all times, in a little zippered compartment on the inside of his left boot.

The party actually looks pretty good to Vince, floating outside the window. No one seems to be having much fun, sure, and it’s a total sausage fest. But Vince’s standards are not what they once were. He sees these professional mercenaries- sipping wine and cocktails, and talking quietly in pairs and small groups about who pillaged what and the things and people they shot- and he experiences an overpowering urge to be with them, just for ten minutes, cracking jokes and holding court again, having three or four drinks and then, when his new friends have been brought effortlessly into his orbit, heading out to look for some weed, or some girls – anything – just keep the night going and see what happens.

The urge is so strong, there are so many memories coming back now all at once that Vince wants to cry, or scream that it’s all a mistake, it has to be a mistake it wasn’t supposed to turn out like this- but there’s no time because he’s flying now, away from the hotel and the lights of the restaurant perched on the end of this ruined city: The last light in the world- and it shrinks smaller and smaller behind him until it’s a tiny yellow-white dot swallowed by the endless night, and Vince feels himself being torn away from everything that he ever loved, or wanted in his life, and now there is no light at all and nothing below him but the bottomless black ocean, and now he is falling.

Posted on

Entourage:2039, Chapter 19: Night Flight

Vince and Mary stand in the living of the abandoned, unfinished house. Vince is dazed and confused, dead on his feet.

“We need to get you into bed,” Mary tells him, and no argument is forthcoming from Vince. She takes him up the stairs into the master bedroom- somehow there is furniture here after all- and she puts him into the big canopy bed. Vince experiences neither shame or arousal as Mary strips off his clothes- only a distant, fuzzy gratitude and a longing for sleep.

“I’ll be back,” she whispers, and then she kisses him on the forehead and turns out the light.

Down in the kitchen, Mary fires up the portable gasoline generator she’s brought in, and she has the water boiling in five minutes flat. She uses two teabags, a little sugar, and a few special ingredients all her own.

Mary’s voice calls Vince back out of a deep sleep. She sits on the bedside and she gives him the tea. “Careful, it’s hot.” Vince sits up, leaning back on a big pillow, and he takes the first experimental sip. It’s good.

Before Vince has even finished the tea, he starts to feel himself floating upward, like the ghost of a dead husband he played once in a television movie. He sees the stars through the open roof and they seem to be falling on him, but no- Vince is rising, flying and he’s not afraid now- it’s amazing actually:

He flies out of the house and looks down on the entire abandoned subdivision, the roads and cul-de-sacs from above like runes carved onto the desert by a people now as ancient and inscrutable as any in the Social Studies classes Vince missed anyway because he was making out in the janitor’s closet. Vince flies higher now, far above the desert and west, back towards the ruined city. Through the permanent layer of pollution and soot Vince can somehow see it all: the studio lots, the hills where he once lived, the streets and clubs of Hollywood where he had been a Boy-King- there are almost tears in his eyes now but there’s no time because he keeps flying west, over the luxury fortresses of his former agents and lawyers.

The coast is coming up fast now, Malibu off to the north-west and directly below, the Palisades and Santa Monica, lit by the last red ray of the huge sun as it sinks into the western ocean. Vince circles lower now- he’s not really in control of his flight, but he has no fear either- wherever he’s being taken, he’s pretty sure it will be OK and if it’s not, well… Vince is willing to take his chances at this point.

He makes slow circles over the Santa Monica pier, skirting the blackened hulk of the Ferris wheel, and then lower, below the roofline of the luxury hotels he flies south towards Pico, over the Beachfront Walk where the deathracers speed by, day and night, and then Vince is over Shutters and floodlights beam into the sky around him because, unbelievably, there is a party going on at One Pico.

Somehow Vince knows to fly lower now, and he descends with perfect control until his feet are only eight inches off the path- behind him a three-wheeled death race bike rams its two-foot-long spiked blades through the inadequate armor plating of a hapless opponent and metal screams and blood flies through the air but Vince takes no notice at all – because he is looking the other way, into the big floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the restaurant, and not six feet away, staring out at the waves and holding a glass of red wine, is his former agent and friend, the Warlord Ari Gold.

Posted on

Entourage:2039, Chapter 18: Untitled

For a few hundred feet the car bounces over rough ground, and Vincent Chase is rudely shaken into complete consciousness. There’s one last bounce, a big one, and then: suddenly smooth sailing. Somehow they’re on a completely smooth blacktop.

They’re rolling slow, about ten miles per hour. On each side of the big convertible, Vince can see shapes, big shapes in neat rows, rising darker out of the dark. It’s like they’ve landed on another planet, and yet somehow so familiar.

Mary guides the car off the road to the right, slows down, stops. She turns to Vince:

“Get up. We’re here.”

Unquestioning, Vince gets out of the car. If anyone was flying above their heads (and maybe they are, on silent bat wings- there are a lot of strange things in this desert) – but anyway, if they were up there, this is what they would see:

Mary has driven them off of the main highway, across a wide grass embankment, down a street and into a far-suburban cul-de-sac – 16 houses spaced even around the perimeter of the circle. 16 identical houses, and as we pull back, twenty, thirty, forty cul-de-sacs just like this one, drawn onto the nothing of the desert like ancient runes remaining far past their time, now spelling out nothing for an audience of no one.

But that’s from up top. Vincent Chase is not privileged with such a God-like view of the events he is participating in- not yet, anyway. For now, he can barely even think, can barely even gets his legs moving enough to follow the girl into the house:
Up the front path- the lawn on either side still has grass somehow, but in this light it looks black to Vince, and then he looks up at the shadow of the house towering over him, blocking out the stars- he feels sick in a way he can’t describe, stumbles, falls to his knees.

“It’s OK.” Mary is whispering in Vince’s ear.

“What happened?”

“You fell. It’s OK. We’re almost home. Just a few more steps. I’ll make you a nice hot cup of tea. Come on.” She helps him to his feet and they make up the path. Mary pushes the door open.

Inside: This must have been someone’s dream house once. Three bedrooms, four baths, a deck out back, a kitchen with one of those islands in the middle with the pots and pans hanging down. All that and a spectacular view of the stars- right through the exposed rafters where the roof would have been, if anyone had ever lived here.

Posted on

Entourage:2039, Chapter 17: What a long, strange trip it’s been

It was very dark, and Vincent Chase didn’t know whether he was awake or asleep. He was in a car, and it was moving fast, but that was all he could say for sure. In his dream (or what he thought must have been in his dream), he had been in the passenger seat of another car, somehow on I-95, his mother taking them to Florida, brother Johnny out cold in the back seat. They’d never had the money to take vacations, really, but that one time, somehow, his mom had pulled off. They drove through the night and once Vince had woken up and they were in another state one- he had never heard of before- and it felt like another world.

Time had always seemed like a flexible concept to Vincent Chase. His first year of stardom had seemed like a decade, with the parties and clubs every night, after the party a girl, maybe two, and the guys there in the morning when he woke up to start it all over again, The days just… flowed. And then, later, after the bad movies, and the bad women, and the bad business deals, when he had retreated into himself, and into his penthouse- he could have sworn ten years had passed the second the big heavy door clicked shut behind him. But now, with Mary, time seemed to have suddenly speeded up again, with her he was a frightened old man, and he was a child again, speeding southbound for the promised land. It was all very confusing.

“You awake, baby?” asked his mother, and Vince sped upward through the well of time, into the light, into consciousness, and he knew again that his mother was twenty years dead, and Johnny now too, and the person talking to him was the girl, Mary, in the driver’s seat. Whatever road they were on, there were no lights. Just the faint orange glow of the city, over the horizon in the rearview. Above the convertible, the dome of the stars offered their ancient benediction down to Vince, and the girl, and whatever else was still alive out here.

For a second Vincent Chase loses everything- he has no idea at all where he is, or even who he is: He is blessedly, blissfully, blank. And then it’s all back. The engine purrs as Mary downshifts and eases the big muscle car off the main road.

“Where are we?” asks Vince, and Mary, her voice as soothing and smooth as the one in Vince’s dream, replies, “Almost home.”

Posted on

Entourage:2039 Chapter 16: Sunset at One Pico

Inevitably, there’s a lot of symbolism involved in leading an army into battle on the back of a magnificent white charger. Even more so, some might say, when you’re using a genuine old Germanic two-handed broadsword to decapitate a cyborg replica of the man who was once not only your personal friend but the most prized client of your industry-bestriding talent agency.

Ari Gold would understand this symbolism, of course. He’s been many things in his life, but he’s never been a stupid man. What he would not do, however, is care. Caring is for people who aren’t leading the most deadly army known to 21st century Los Angeles on the back of a beautifully groomed white horse straight out of a magazine ad for a Boys’ School in Connecticut.

Ari has the horse and the sword, sure, out front, but behind him it’s all business:

Fifteen hundred men in full body armor, carrying a melange of state-of-the-art assault rifles, grenade launchers, shoulder-mount missiles, and all manner of description of sticks with pointy things on the end.

Thirty armored vehicles- everything from genuine former-Army troop carriers, to 1980s-vintage unkillable pickup trucks, to a late-model BMW 7-Series sedan with armor plating and black-tinted, bulletproof windows.

Air support: Six black helicopters, flying in perfect formation. So many guns, missiles, and rockets lining their wings that Ari can’t help but smile every time he looks at them, like a proud father.

They’re all after one thing: The Murphy Group. Except Ari doesn’t know where The Murphy Group is. He and Eric haven’t exactly traded cards over sushi lately. Ari doesn’t know where the underground hideout is- but someone around here must. Which brings us back to where we started: Ari, on the back of his magnificent white steed, with the decapitated head of a Vince-bot in his hand, riding west down Santa Monica Boulevard. Ari has a map in his head and it looks something like this:

West down Santa Monica, through West Hollywood and Century City, burning and pillaging as they go- destroying anything and anyone that gets in their way- but especially Vince-bots. These people, or things- they hardly even seem like people anymore- but these troglodytes still skulking through this blasted ruin of a city- they seem to think of Murphy as some sort of folk hero. They don’t even know if he’s still alive, or if he ever existed. Ari doesn’t know if he’s alive either, but he sure hopes so- where’s the fun in taking a dead man’s head. But anyway, Ari is going to show them exactly what their hero has done for them.

Loudspeakers on the troop carriers broadcast the message over and over, asking for information. They’re even offering a reward- a case of gold bars from Ari’s personal stash, and a lifetime lease on a condo inside the Green Zone. (The announcement, a careful listener might note, contains no small print about exactly how long that lifetime might be, once Ari has what he wants.)

But anyway, none of the pathetic little fuckers has anything to say. Ari draws his pistol, the big one with the sniper scope, and looks over at what’s left of the country club fairway on his right. His stomach turned- they’ve actually set up one of their disgusting hovels on the 16th fairway. Ari wants to exterminate them, to purify the sacred turf of so many fond memories, but there’s no time. He drops one with a single shot from three hundred yards, and then he rides on.

Ari has a busy day planned. He’s going to slash and burn a path to the ocean. And when he gets there, he’s going to have drinks and a light dinner on the deck at Shutters. He directs his men to start a few extra fires, and watches the ash rise with the greatest satisfaction, watches at it hangs there, diffusing and softening the light in a way the old directors would have paid tens of millions for. Ari smiles: It’s going to be a beautiful sunset.

Posted on

Entourage:2039 Chapter 15: Roadtrip!

In the trunk of the girl Mary’s car was: two large bricks of marijuana, an ornately embroidered leather satchel full of dried peyote, six jugs of some kind of clear homemade liquor, and a metal roadie case full of pills: Speed, downers, sleep aids, all the big brand-name anti-depressants, and a few for male sexual dysfunction. Also, there was a disassembled and deactivated cyborg replica of the actor Vincent Chase, aged approximately 26.

The girl Mary, in the driver’s seat of the big red convertible, says: “We should be somewhere near Barstow when the drugs start to take hold.” The real Vince just stares at her, his face a complete blank.

“What?”

Mary takes a deep breath: it’s going to be a long trip. “Nevermind.” She floors it. The huge V8 roars to life with 390 horses, and the GTO leaves a trail of burnt rubber out of the underground carpark. Vince doesn’t even have time to shit himself and anyway, it’s been done. The wall comes up fast but then they’re through, into the tunnel, so fast that now that the blue lights into the ceiling blur into each other, and now there’s no sense of time, or danger, or anything- it’s like a video game.

But the light is coming up fast now, and then they’re out into the daylight, Vince cowering back from it like a newborn, and they’re ejected onto the broken concrete of what used to be Soto Street, and the sky is full of things that look like huge bats, except they’re metal, and they’re launching rockets at targets on the ground, or maybe just at nothing. But the first explosion is too close, and Vince’s lungs fill with black smoke and Mary yells something at him but he can’t hear it because his hearing is gone and then there’s a woman in the road in a black robe firing a machine gun in the air, and Mary jerks the wheel to the right – hard – and Vince passes out cold.

When he comes around they’re speeding north through the concrete bed of the L.A. River, spraying the half an inch of water out behind them. Over their heads, the sky is on fire, but down here it’s quiet, relatively speaking. Mary drives on, with the lights off, one hand on the wheel as she lights herself a cigarette. And the sun sinks in west, dying the ravaged city a deeper shade of red.

Posted on

Enoturage:2039 Chapter 14: Billy.

Billy Walsh has always been independent. He made his first movie for twenty thousand dollars- money he made selling lottery tickets and porno mags on the night shift at a liquor store. And when that wasn’t enough, he sponged off his friends, and when that still wasn’t enough, he started stealing out of the till.

Six months later he had four shoeboxes full of cash stashed under his bed, and 20 months after that he had won Sundance for the first time. He wrote, directed, edited, produced, and executive produced. No investors, no film school, no connections: fuck that rich kid shit. He never could relate to the ones who got everything on a silver platter- the ones who got profiled in the glossy magazines with their goddamn pull quotes about “hustling up” four hundred grand. Billy knew right where they hustled it from: rich daddy and his rich friends.

None of that for Billy. He was real indie then, and he was real indie now, here in the Griffith Park Badlands, hunkered down three miles or so outside the big north wall of Ari Gold’s domains. They had a lot of guns, but they knew better than to come in the woods. In their hearts they were all still rich kids, pussies. Even when it had been surrounded by a functioning metropolis, there had been a lot of places in the park to lose a body. Now it didn’t take more then twelve hours for one of Ari’s guys, or anyone who wandered in uninvited, to rejoin the food chain at the lower end.

But the land is beautiful in a lot of ways. Little brooks gurgle in the background, just off the path. Outside there’s a war going on, but it’s green and peaceful in here, and the sunlight cuts through the overhead branches just right, landing on your shoulders in soft diffused rays, and sometimes you even see deer. Things grow here. But this ain’t no Disney flick, Billy’s seen to that.

He sits on his throne of wood, carved into the side of an enormous old growth oak. The tree is still alive, somehow, and Billy is inside it. He has his women, clad all in brown and green like the land, and he has his drugs to keep away the loneliness and the fears that sometimes come in the night.

Billy takes a long drink from a bottle of hooch they make right here in the woods, and runs his hand down the long black hair of the girl on his left, until his fingers find the back of her lithe and chestnut-tan neck. Someone is telling him something about what’s going on outside- something about drones in the air and an army led by a man on a white horse, for real, even though it sounds like something out of a bullshit movie, but Billy isn’t really listening. He knows all about the war already. After all, it’s his.

Posted on

A slight delay (again.)

This week’s Entourage:2039 will again be appearing on Wednesday morning. Sorry; trying to settle into a new day job and stuff. Next week will be back to Monday.