The Good Inn Read online

  LÉAR: But, my dear frazzled friend, I am in ALL my own movies!

  The Old Projectionist flees. Léar now stands alone in the burning theater. He takes a seat in the back row.

  LÉAR: Ah, yes! Now, now we have our ending!

  CUT TO:

  EXTERIOR/IÉNA/DAWN (in color)

  Over black is heard the sound of sirens, muted screams, and intermittent explosions. Soldier Boy’s eyes open to a smoke-filled sky at dawn. The sun has not broken through the horizon.

  Music swells and every character from our story sings.

  ALL SINGING:

  A bird she sang, a little song, I sang along, it’s from a film about an inn, that she was in, and as with life there was a plot, but not a lot.

  Get to the chorus, she’s waiting there for us, we’re just the choral ode.

  He was alone without his babe, an honest Abe, not a lot of hope a lot of liquor a lot of flicker.

  He flopped and flipped, just like a fish, I went off script.

  Get to the chorus, she’s waiting there for us, just a heavy load, just the choral ode.

  Soldier Boy tries to sit up but he can’t move. He is lying on the pier. Behind him is the ocean and in front of him is his ship, a giant hole in its hull smoking and breaking apart.

  Looking down at his body, he sees blood soaking through his uniform. In front of him his precious gift from Roussou, the zoetrope, spins in the wind, first slow and then picking up speed in the breeze. As the little image speeds up to real time he sees that it is a repeating image of a bird in flight.

  SOLDIER BOY: Cette roue de la vie!

  [Subtitle: This wheel of life!]

  Looking back up to the sky, he sees the same visual, a real bird in flight, and then a face comes into his view. A hand cradles the back of his head and pulls it up.

  ALL SINGING:

  She never felt very important,

  but she is saying something important . . .

  Que les anges soient faits de lumière

  Et que cette lumière projette ta vie

  Scintillante sur un écran perlé

  Scintillante devant tes yeux éblouis

  Ainsi, vous pouvez dire au revoir

  Avant de se joindre à eux dans la lumière.

  Que tu puisses ainsi revoir ce que tu as vu

  Retourner là où tu as été

  Afin de pouvoir dire adieu

  Avant de marcher vers le blanc.

  SUBTITLE:

  That the angels are made of light

  And that this light projects your life

  Shimmering onto a silver screen

  Shimmering in front of your dazzled eyes

  So you can say good-bye

  Before you join them in the light.

  So you can see again what you’ve seen

  Go back to where you’ve been

  So you can say good-bye

  Before you march into the white.

  She’s waiting there for us,

  such a heavy load, just the choral ode.

  Nicole lifts his damaged body up gently and holds him in her arms. Looking up at her, he gets lost in her gentle, sad smile.

  SOLDIER BOY: It’s you.

  NICOLE: It’s me.

  SOLDIER BOY: What? Who are you?

  NICOLE: Do you know what angels are made of, Soldier Boy?

  Before he can answer, the SUN breaks through the smoky horizon. It burns through the thick fog of smoke and fire. All is blue from sea to sky. The sun shines down on Soldier Boy and they are set aglow, sparkling like the sea in front of them.

  SOLDIER BOY: Yes. They are made of light!

  NICOLE: Yes. They are.

  SOLDIER BOY: I never saw you in black and white . . .

  NICOLE: That is how you know that I am real.

  Soldier Boy’s eyes slowly flicker and close.

  CUT TO:

  INTERIOR/MOVIE THEATER SCREEN/SAME

  The sound of a film projector humming to life.

  On the screen . . .

  The naked soldier thrusts himself hard against the Innkeeper’s daughter as they slide down the wall next to the hole, where light flickers onto them from the other side.

  The movie theater image now fills the entire screen.

  The Innkeeper’s daughter turns him over with force and looks down on him in the final moments leading up to . . .

  CUT TO:

  EXTERIOR/PARIS/NIGHT

  An EXPLOSION.

  FIREWORK ROCKETS SHOOT up into the sky from HEAT and PRESSURE.

  They explode out of the rooftop of the cramped and damp room that separates the thin walls of the red house of sin from the cinema. Above the old theater, now ablaze, the sky is blanketed with every color imaginable. As fireworks shoot up into the night sky over Eiffel’s tower, it almost looks like the tower itself is blasting off, above the bright lights of Paris and up into the stars.

  INTERIOR/MOVIE THEATER SCREEN/SAME

  On the burning screen, the soldier’s eyes shoot wide open and dilate as his body relaxes. Nicole falls onto his chest with a scream from finishing and . . .

  A voice yells out . . . “Cut.”

  Epilogue*

  Louise (Nickie) Willy . . .

  died in 1929 shortly after the events of this tale from exposure and drink.

  George . . .

  died in the fire in the theater on boulevard des Capucines. His remains were expected to be found upon excavation of the theater. They never were. Like many early silent film stars and Paris stage actors, George was forgotten quickly, as soon as the talkies took over in the early thirties.

  Léar . . .

  is never mentioned again in the history books after 1901, but it is believed he either was put away in an asylum where he eventually died or he moved to Egypt and started a production company called Léar and Co.

  Félix Fénéon . . .

  died on February 29, 1944, becoming a small footnote in few history books. During his last year, he burned all the documents and papers he had in his possession.

  Bernard Natan . . .

  went on to champion Pathé and subsequently be at its helm for its decline. While he was awaiting trial in prison for accusations of fraud, World War II broke out, and the Nazis conquered France. After Natan’s release from prison, the French government handed him over to the occupying German authorities. Natan was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp on September 25, 1942, where he died several weeks later.

  Pierre Batcheff . . .

  and his costar in Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s film Un chien Andalou, Simone Mareuil, both separately committed suicide, Mareuil by setting herself on fire in 1954, Batcheff reportedly by overdosing on Veronal on April 12, 1932.

  Nitrocellulose . . .

  began to be replaced during the First World War with safer alternative film stocks and many of the original films made with it were recycled to be used in building bombs against the enemies of France.

  The Good Inn . . .

  was one such film whose chemical makeup was considered at the time to be worth more as weaponry than its price of admission.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank You

  Charles and I couldn’t have navigated through this creative process without the guidance and advisement of some very important people. We would especially like to thank Richard Hermitage, Richard Jones, and Charles’s supportive family, with Violet Clark at the helm. And of course David Lovering and Joey Santiago, who helped Charles set his initial ideas for The Good Inn to music; those early demo recordings helped inspire and sculpt this narrative.

  My friend and book agent Michael Harriot and Folio Publishing, and our awesome editor at HarperCollins who championed The Good Inn, Denise Oswald, and her amazing team at It Books.

  I must thank my father, Steve Frank, whose love and support kept me topside through many storms and explosions on the bow of the boat. My one and only, Jessica, who inspires me every day and fills my life with joy, warmth, light, and peace, an
d who has proven to me that I can still write really strange stories while football is playing on the TV in an adjoining room. My mother, Marcia; Rich; sister Rachel and brother Scott. My second parents, Carol and Stan Shapiro, who round out my wonderful family support team.

  My personal creative team and dear friends, including my longtime personal editor, Rebecca Ramirez. Jaclynn Pardue for early editorial assistance. Didier Gertsch for translation, historical research, and moral support. I must also thank Todd Komarnicki and Jonathan Coleman for my two-year crash course in screenplay rewrites; without them I could never have written this with such confidence and conviction.

  And of course this book would not have been possible without my collaborators, whom I can’t thank enough for giving me the opportunity to create something so special and unique with two of my favorite artists and friends in the world, Steve Appleby and Charles Thompson.

  —Josh Frank

  2014

  About the Authors

  BLACK FRANCIS (born Charles Thompson and a.k.a. Frank Black) is the founder, singer, guitarist, and primary creative force behind the acclaimed indie rock band the Pixies. Following the band’s breakup in 1993, he embarked on a solo career under the name Frank Black. He re-formed the Pixies in 2004 and continues to release solo records and tour as a solo artist, having readopted the Black Francis stage name in 2007.

  JOSH FRANK is a writer, producer, director, and composer. He is the author of Fool the World: The Oral History of the Band Called Pixies and In Heaven Everything Is Fine: The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre. Frank has worked with some of the most innovative musicians, filmmakers, producers, and artists in the entertainment industry, including Black Francis, David Lynch, Mark Vonnegut, and Harold Ramis. He has interviewed more than four hundred of America’s most notable names in show business for his books and screenplays. In his spare time he runs his mini urban drive-in movie theaters in Austin, Texas, and Miami, Florida.

  STEVEN APPLEBY is an absurdist. He is the creator of comic strips for newspapers, a radio series for the BBC, a musical theatre show, and the animated television series Captain Star. He has published over twenty-five books, and his paintings and drawings have appeared in numerous gallery exhibitions and, notably, on the Pixies’ album Trompe Le Monde. He lives, works, and daydreams among his unusual family in London.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Credits

  Cover design and drawings by Steven Appleby

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used ficititiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  THE GOOD INN. Copyright © 2014 by Charles Thompson and Josh Frank. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Illustrations © 2014 by Steven Appleby, Charles Thompson, and Josh Frank

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Black, Frank, 1965–

  The Good Inn : an Illustrated Screen Story of Historical Fiction / by Black Francis and Josh Frank ; with illustrations by Steven Appleby.—First edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-06-222079-0 (hardback)

  1. Graphic novels. I. Frank, Josh. II. Appleby, Steven, illustrator. III. Title.

  PN6727.B584 2014

  741.5'973—dc23

  2013043036

  EPub Edition July 2014 ISBN 9780062360083

  14 15 16 17 18 OV / RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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  * La Tramontane, n: A strong, dry, cold wind from the north. The continuous howling noise of the Tramontane is said to have a disturbing effect upon the psyche.

  * Although this tale was a mix of true history and fiction, the epilogue is culled from historically accurate facts.