Popcorn (novel)

Popcorn

Author	Ben Elton.
Language	English
Genre	Satire, Novel
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Publication date	5 August 1996
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	298 p. (hardback edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-684-81612-1 (hardback edition)

Popcorn is a 1996 novel and play by the British writer Ben Elton.

It can be seen as inspired by a number of movies from the mid-1990s, most notably Natural Born Killers by Oliver Stone and Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs by Quentin Tarantino.

Plot introduction

The book takes place in different parts of Los Angeles, US. The date is never actually specified, but various clues suggest it is set in the near future. Mostly the story takes place in the center of Hollywood. By showing different environments the reader can see the big differences between different social groups in America. From the rich people with guards, Bruce Delamitri for instance, to the less rich people like Wayne and Scout. But apart from that it doesn’t matter where it takes place, it could be in almost any other country with the same differences between classes. But since one of the most important things with this book is that the country has a huge movie industry where much circles around violence the country where the plot eventually could take place has to be a country like that.

Plot summary

The protagonist, Bruce Delamitiri, is an artist who works in the motion picture industry. Many people in the US think that, by making these movies, Bruce makes killing cool. They think that he encourages everyone who’s watching these movies to kill for fun. Bruce, on the other hand, defends himself by telling everyone that he doesn’t think that he encourages anyone to do anything. He says that there has always been violence but humans are not like robots, seeing something on the screen does not necessarily make us want to do it ourselves( p.13 “people get up from the movie theatre or the TV and do what they just saw”). He also claims that he is just showing existing violence. Unfortunately for Bruce there are two people, Wayne and Scout, who kill for fun. They are known as the Mall Murderers because they famously go on mass killing sprees in shopping malls, and are on the top 10 most wanted list for it.

The novel begins with Scout and Bruce in their respective interrogation rooms, being questioned on the night before, the night Bruce won an Oscar. After the ceremony and after-party Bruce and a nude model (who asks that she be called an actress) named Brooke Daniels leave to Bruce's Hollywood mansion. She tricks and threatens him into promising her a place in his next movie. They then begin foreplay but the climax of the novel starts when Wayne and Scout visit Bruce’s house. They want him to tell the whole US that he is responsible for what they have done. In other words he has to tell everyone that he lied before, when he said that he wasn’t responsible for the violence in the US. In the end many people die, Wayne and Scout don't get what they wanted, Bruce loses many people he knew, for example his ex-wife and his daughter and no one wants to take the responsibility for these peoples' death.

Characters in "Popcorn"

• Bruce Delamitri – main protagonist, an artist
• Wayne – A killer
• Scout – A killer
• Brooke Daniels – A Model / Actress
• Velvet Delamitri – Daughter of Bruce
• Farrah Delamitri – Soon to be divorced wife of Bruce
• Karl Brezner – Bruce's producer

Bruce Delamitri is certainly not a hero, he is just an ordinary American except that he has got an Oscar for Best Director. He is about 30 years old and he has an ex-wife and a daughter. He is quite conceited, he wants everyone to love him and adore him. But on the other hand

"Bruce does not consider himself conceited about his work. He was the first to admit it was popcorn, but only if the other popular and corny works like Romeo and Juliet and Beethoven’s Fifth were popcorn too." (p.)

Literary significance & criticism

Mood of the novel

It can be perceived that the author, Ben Elton, wanted to create a world full of irony (which is one of the foundations of movies, of which this novel is highly influenced, including dramatic and important sequences in screenplay format at times). The story is a satire of the society. We live in a society where no one wants to take the responsibility. A human can make mistakes, but he can always claim that it is because of something else, perhaps he or she had a very miserable childhood. It is always someone else’s fault. All this creates a witty and neutral mood. The story is full of witticism and when someone gets killed you feel nothing.

Structure of the narrative

The narrator, Ben Elton, was born in 1959 in London. He could have been inspired to write this book with all the movies during the 1990s (the book is written in 1996), like for example Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction contains a lot of violence, which the protagonists', in Popcorn, movies do too.

The book is told from an omniscient point of view. This makes it possible for the reader to catch many situations and the main characters' emotions. The story is created in retro perspective. It starts to show Bruce the day after it all happened. After that there are glimpses from everywhere in like 24 hours until the day after. The sentences are structurally straightforward but the vocabulary quite extensive. It is written in a mix of irony and wit. But it is probable the narrator wanted his work to be ironic.

Major themes

Popcorn deals with the theme of taking responsibility for one’s own actions, and how this has been lost in a modern society in which everyone sues everyone else.

The word "responsibility" is used frequently throughout the novel, in both narrative text and in dialogue.

Awards and nominations

It won the 1996 Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger Award.

Winner of the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy

It also won the Barclays Theatre Award for Best New Play