Study Guide to Popcorn
By Ben Elton (Simon and Schuster 1996)
Key Concepts
Ethics, moral responsibility, society; film violence
Summary
Bruce Delamitri is a film director who makes very violent but
stylish movies. ‘Bruce's movies are hip. Post-modern cinematic
milestones, dripping with ironic juxtaposition. His killers are style
icons. They walk cool, they talk cool. Getting shot by one of them
would be a fashion statement’ (from the book cover).
Wayne and Scout are psychopaths who are killing people without
apparent reason. Many people consider Bruce’s films to be the
cause of the violence. As a way of avoiding the death penalty they
decide that Bruce must take responsibility. They break into his house
on Oscars Night and a terrible siege begins.
After the final bloodbath the arguments continue over who is
responsible for a violent society—and this violence in
particular.
WARNING: Contains strong language; violence; sex
Cultural significance
Popcorn stayed at the top of the hardback best-seller lists
for quite some time before being released in paperback and has been
translated and published widely around the world. It is also a
successful West End play now at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury
Avenue, London W1 (directed by Laurence Boswell). Popcorn is
also available as an audiobook read by John Sessions.
Mary Whitehouse praised Popcorn for its attack on sex and
violence in the movies but Ben Elton has said "I don't think balanced
people can be driven to be any different from what they are ... The
suggestion is that those who are open to anti-social behaviour may be
seduced into believing it is the norm ... I feel slightly exposed
here because I am putting a point I don't entirely believe." (The
Daily Telegraph, July 29th 1996).
Joel Schumacher (Flatliners, Falling Down, Batman Forever)
has announced plans to direct the film version, and will apparently
star Jeff Goldblum, Nathan Lane and Ellen Barkin.
Biographical background
Ben Elton was born in South London and studied Drama at Manchester
University. His numerous television writing credits include The
Thin Blue Line, Blackadder, The Young Ones and The Man from
Auntie. He has written two hit West End plays and three previous
internationally bestselling novels. His plays and novels have been
widely translated. He tours occasionally as a stand-up comedian.
Popcorn is his fourth novel. He is going grey, is married to
Sophie Gare and lives in Notting Hill.
Other books by Ben Elton
Ben Elton, Batchelor Boys - The Young Ones Book
spin off of the TV series which Elton co-wrote with Rik Mayall and
Lise Meyer
Ben Elton Stark (1989)
His first novel which sold massively in Britain and Australia. It was
reprinted 23 times in its first year of publication, and sold over a
million worldwide.
Ben Elton, Gasping (1990)
Based on his successful West End play starring Hugh Laurie
Ben Elton, Gridlock (Warner Books 1991)
Ben Elton, Silly Cow (1993)
Ben Elton, This Other Eden (Simon and Schuster 1993)
Other resources on these ideas
Ben
Elton FAQs
The End of Violence dir. Wim Venders
Overview
The book opens with the narrative switching between Bruce
Delamitri being interviewed by the police and him being interviewed
by Oliver and Dale on Coffee Time USA the morning before. Most of the
book is the events that took place in the intervening 24 hours.
On Coffee Time USA he is quizzed over a series of killings that
had taken place, apparently copying killings depicted in his latest
film Ordinary Americans. He is expected to receive the Oscar for Best
Director that night but a controversy is raging over whether or not
his films have given rise to this violence or whether they merely
show life as it is. Bruce maintains that it is the latter.
The narrative then moves to switching between Bruce’s
appearance on Coffee Time USA and the movements of Wayne and his
pretty waif-like girlfriend Scout. They are known as the Mall
Murderers and have been killing people across America in exactly the
same way as the couple in Ordinary Americans.
Bruce protests in strong terms that the association between his
films and these killings is an invention of news editors; he
maintains that people aren’t influenced in such a direct way by
what they see. He insists that ‘artists don’t create
society, they reflect it. And if you don’t like that, don’t
change us, change society’ (p. 14). Wayne and Scout are watching
this in their motel room hatching a plan.
Bruce spends the afternoon before the Oscars addressing the film
studies course at the University of Southern California where he
himself studied. He impresses the students but not the dusty old
Prof. Chambers who asks some very penetrating, critical questions and
gets the better of a very angry Bruce.
Bruce arrives at the Oscars in a limo which crawls through the
heavy traffic. He watches the crowds staring and straining to see
who’s inside. ‘They couldn’t see anything: all the
limos had mirrored windows, so all they could see was
themselves… That was it! The whole truth in one startling image.
Why were Bruce’s movies so successful? Because people saw
themselves reflected in them. Maybe better-looking and a little
cooler but none the less themselves, with their fears, their lusts,
their most secret desires and fantasies… He was a mirror. He did
not create a world for people to watch; they created a world for him
to film’ (p. 54).
His acceptance speech at the Oscars is embarrassing waffle. At the
same time, Wayne and Scout are moving on having murdered two people
at the motel.
At the post-Oscars party Bruce drinking hard. He is rude to
everybody—especially to a young woman named Dove who he accuses
of making up ‘the terrible emotional abuse’ she’d
suffered. Bruce claims to have an addictive personality and therefore
was not responsible for his drinking. He rants about the victim
culture and the lack of responsibility. Then he sees a Playboy
model/aspiring actress who he takes home intending to sleep with her.
What they do not realise until they start to undress is that Wayne
and Scout are in the house. Some hours later Bruce’s almost
ex-wife, Farrah and their daughter Velvet arrive. Wayne phones the TV
networks and soon a convoy of media vehicles and police arrive at the
house and a siege commences. The Police Chief and the NBC chief vie
with each other as to who is in overall charge of the situation.
Waynes’ plan is for Bruce to go live on every TV network to
say that he is responsible for the Mall Murderers’ killing spree
because his films had such a profound impact on them. That way Wayne
and Scout, though guilty, are not ultimately responsible and will
avoid the electric chair. If he won’t do it then he will kill
Farrah and Velvet Delamitri and Bruce himself. Eventually Bruce and
Wayne agree to debate it together on TV. Wayne has asked for a
two-person news crew to come to the house—without
clothes—in order to film this as well as a ratings computer so
that he can see how many people are watching.
As the debate goes on, the ratings gradually drop until Wayne
announces that he will kill Farrah in one and a half minutes. At the
end of the time he does shoot her and the Police SWAT team start to
enter the house. As soon as Wayne learns of this he says that he and
Scout will give themselves up with no further bloodshed on the
condition that everyone watching turns off their TVs. If they keep
watching he will kill everyone in the room.
The SWAT team move in and there is a bloodbath. Bruce survived but
his career didn’t; Scout also survived. Brooke, Velvet and the
news crew as well as Wayne were killed. The epilogue of the book is a
catalogue of litigation: everyone is blaming everyone else and suing
them for damages over what happened. The book concludes, ‘So far
no one has claimed responsibility.’ (p. 298).
Ideas for discussion
1) With which of the characters in the book does Ben Elton seem to
have the most sympathy?
2) What do the various characters believe about human moral
responsibility? What basis do they have (or are likely to have) for
these beliefs?
3) What elements of truth and error are there in Bruce
Delamitri’s argument that he is only holding a mirror up to
society, not creating it?
4) What purpose do you think the confrontation between Prof
Chambers and Bruce Delamitri serves in the narrative?
5) Which side of the debate over violence in the movies do you
think Ben Elton is on at the end of the day?
6) To what extent has Elton glorified violence in his book in
exactly the way the book seems to condemn in films? Is his use of
violence legitimate because of the point that is being made?
7) Why do people want to see violent films? Does the public get
what it deserves?
8) The controversy about film violence resurfaces fairly often.
How could you bring a Christian angle to a conversation with a
non-Christian friend when it is next in the news?
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