When pitching a story to Hollywood executives, you might be met with dazzling enthusiasm. “You leave the meeting walking on air. It’s in the bag. Then you never hear another word. It’s called the American No.” This showbiz in-joke is the framing device of Rupert Everett’s collection of short stories, born out of 20 years’ worth of movie ideas nobody wanted to put on. Hardly the most attractive premise for a reader, but Everett pulls it off thanks to a natural abundance of charm.
Everett understands the poetry of the glitterball as few people ever have. He describes it repeatedly, with great care: its slow spin, the way it scatters light across a room. He gets its dual nature: seedy and glamorous, brilliant but also brittle. In an elegiac short story about a larger-than-life character from the Parisian nightlife of the late ‘80s, the glitterball becomes metaphysical. “Maybe he is dancing for eternity. Round and round. Bathed in shards of angelic light.”
The stories in this collection attest to a remarkably coherent aesthetic vision. Oscar Wilde’s last days in Paris, told through one fatal night out. The erotic encounter of an ageing countess and an aspiring gigolo in an English tea shop. Dream sequences from the unravelling psyche of Marcel Proust: opera houses, nocturnal ballrooms. A washed-up movie star and a glamorous ex-addict’s conspiracy to make their millions in LA. Andy Warhol appears at one point. Everyone is jaded and witty. In between the stories, Everett scatters his own anecdotes about hanging around Soho on rainy nights, lamenting the sorry state of his career.
I can imagine finding this insufferable, but I happen to have an affinity for Everett’s brand of velvety camp. For me, the main problem with this short story collection is its form. Much of the dialogue might work on screen but is lifeless on the page. Take this confusing exchange, from an audition scene: “’Honey?” he said. ‘(Now you give me the flowers.) “Hi, are these for me?” (Then we kiss.)’ ‘Uh huh.’ ‘Kiss. Kiss. Barf.’” By the end, Everett has given up trying to adapt his cinematic ideas to meet the demands of the short story, leaving us with a 100-page screenplay.
