It had only been a little surprising when Lydia the journalist had explained to Jamie how movies worked. She'd pointed to the bulky black device in front of them, hoisted on the shoulder of a bored-looking man, and said that that was the equipment they'd used to film Bicentennial Man. Well, not that one specifically, she'd clarified making Jamie feel sheepish, but another one like it.
As she told him more about the filmmaking process, she used terms that were familiar to Jamie, terms like "Actors" and "Directors," but connected them in ways he'd never considered. He'd seen the labels at the head of each column of names and knew them all very well. Yet, no one had ever explained to him how they all came together. Now Jamie felt that he could get a lot more out of the Credits.
People who never met Jamie knew that he'd seen Bicentennial Man over a hundred times. The main questions many people had for him seemed to circle around whether or not he thought what he was seeing in Bicentennial Man was real. At first, he'd been confused by the questions. It hadn't really occurred to him that anything transmitted from that black rectangular box was actually happening somewhere, as if he was looking into a window to the world outside the safety of his bunker, and that perhaps the technologically advanced Earth depicted in the movie, with it's flying cars and androids, was the same one that had driven him into the ground. No, that made no sense. After all, Jamie had no music that played throughout his life, though he did hum to himself some of the themes from the film sometimes and liked to let the music in the Credits play on as he went about his day.
After a while, the question started to feel condescending. Did they think he was stupid? Of course he didn't believe it was real.
The journalist had gone on telling him little connecting pieces of information about the production of movies right up until she received some signal that it was time to begin the interview.
"We're ready? Okay." Lydia cleared her throat. "Good morning! We're here with Jamie—just Jamie—who's been living alone in a bunker for almost twenty years and was only recovered a few days ago. How are you doing today, Jamie? This must all be a pretty big shock!" She moved what she'd told him was a microphone to his lips and stared brightly at him. She hadn't been looking at him that way earlier and he wondered why her voice too had suddenly changed.
"I'm very happy," he said and tried hard to avoid staring directly into the gleaming lens of the camera for too long as Lydia had warned him against before the interview started. But he couldn't stop thinking about how that camera was like the one they'd used to film Bicentennial Man. He wondered if this interview would end up on a VHS tape too and, if so, whether they would let him keep a copy of it.
Lydia continued asking him questions about his experiences inside the bunker, what he might do now that he was out in the world, and what he thought of certain things, all with that same strange tone and sharp smile, not looking at the camera at all, only at him. He supposed that the actors in Bicentennial Man never looked directly at the camera either. That was it, then. She was acting.
"Jamie was just telling me before the interview that he only had one movie down in the bunker—1999's Bicentennial Man. You have quite a long list to catch up on, Jamie! Alright, thanks, Jan." Lydia smiled broadly at the camera for a few moments until someone called over. The film team began shuffling back toward their vehicle as Lydia thanked Jamie for the interview and assured him that he'd done well.
"Here, take my card. Let me know if you ever get bored with Bicentennial Man. I'll give you some recommendations."
Jamie examined the rectangular paper a while before slipping it into the wallet the police officers had given him. They said it had been reported lost months ago and no one was coming for it.
The people at the police department had been very generous to Jamie. They gave him a jacket, and even new shoes. They only had a pair that was one size too small for him, but they were in good condition.
People were often giving Jamie things. The Mayor had given him a pin, which Jamie had immediately stuck on the jacket he'd gotten from the police and wore around constantly. After that interview, word got around that Bicentennial Man was Jamie's favorite movie, and so people started giving him copies of it.
One woman had sent Jamie a copy in strange casing that he didn't recognize. When he'd taken the movie out and tried to put it in his VHS player, it wouldn't fit. He put it back in its thin, sleek box and set it with the rest of the copies of Bicentennial Man that he'd accumulated over the past few weeks. Carefully, he retrieved the original VHS copy and pressed the bulky thing back into the slot. He never had a case for the movie and always felt uncomfortable leaving it out of the player for too long. He felt a sense of satisfaction when the edge of the VHS was caught by some internal mechanism then fed smoothly into the slot where it settled solidly in its place. With a soft click, the slot door swung closed behind it.
When he later told Lydia about all the gifts people had been sending him, having borrowed the front desk phone from the building manager, the journalist had laughed about it.
"Wow. You've been trapped in a bunker watching the same movie for twenty years, and when you finally get out and they think you want another copy? People are stupid."
Lydia had a way of putting things into perspective for Jamie, which he came to value greatly. Sometimes he wasn't sure how to react to certain things, then he would tell Lydia about it and her reactions were more informative than any textbook or internet search, which usually only left Jamie feeling more confused and frustrated.
Lydia would laugh or sigh or sometimes go very quiet.
Jamie had told her once about the man behind the market who, recognizing Jamie, had called out to him— "Hey, Bicentennial Man!" When Jamie walked over to greet the smiling stranger, the man had tried to sell him a "DVD Player" with five movies included, and all for "only two hundred dollars!" He'd said it was a "special deal" and that Jamie wouldn't find another like it. Jamie declined, explaining that he already had a VHS player and that, aside from the 'Rewind' button which stuck sometimes, it was working well for him.
As he'd turned to continue back to his apartment, the man called after him, "That's great! This DVD player has a VHS slot too!"
Lydia's reaction when Jamie told her that he'd spent two hundred dollars on a DVD player and five movies was silence.
"Jamie," she said finally. "That man took advantage of you. He knew you didn't know about money or how much things are worth. You shouldn't have paid half that."
Jamie was more careful about people trying to sell him things after that.
Jamie did eventually watch other movies and found that he enjoyed most of them. It turned out that they weren't all about the future and the advancement of artificial intelligence, and he hardly ever recognized the same actors in each one. He was pleased to find that most all of them had music though.
Some of the movies were very serious, and some made him feel very sad. Some were funny and made Jamie laugh so hard that his neighbors came knocking on his door to ask him to keep it down. He would apologize and invite them in to watch with him but most declined.
The building janitor, Mrs. Crawford, came in once. She'd said she couldn't stay long; she was paid hourly to keep the building clean. Jamie had told her how he was paid to sort mail at the front desk and even did some filing at the government building downtown twice a week.
Mrs. Crawford nodded with interest. "That's very nice, Jamie," she'd said. "I'm happy for you."
Jamie liked that response. When he later told Lydia about his jobs, she didn't seem as happy for him.
"Do you like it?"
"Do I like it?"
"Yeah, like, do you get enjoyment from doing it?"
Jamie didn't know why he had to think about it. It was a strange question, he decided.
They were at an intermission in an Ironic Michael Bay Movie Marathon; Samson, whom Jamie had accidentally called Samsung upon their first meeting, had earlier explained to Jamie, "when you reach a certain level of film-snobbery, you can watch films you don't enjoy for enjoyment."
Most of the people had gone to refill their drinks and use the bathroom, leaving a few others sprawled out on couches and cushions around the TV.
"Everyone's very nice," Jamie answered Lydia. "I like the work. And they seem to appreciate it."
She made a sound. "So you wouldn't want to work anywhere else?" Her eyebrows drew together the way they did when she was doing a serious interview with someone. Jamie watched her on the TV in his apartment sometimes and had come to know the look well now. He noted how easily she could switch and how soft and friendly her face was when she wasn't trying to make people say things.
"Am I being interviewed?" He asked.
Next to them, Samson burst into laughter and Jamie was pleased that his attempt at humor had been successful. He didn't know many jokes and often missed them but this was a sign he was improving at least.
"No fooling Jamie," Samson said, nudging Jamie's arm. Jamie liked Samson, and not just because his name reminded him of the one brandished in silver letters on the front of his VHS player. He was friendly and laughed a lot, and treated Jamie's circumstances as more of a unique quirk than a defect.
The pressing look faded from Lydia's face and was replaced by the soft one Jamie liked best. She wasn't acting now.
"Nice. Look, I don't mean to interview you, Jamie. I'm really just curious. The reason I'm a journalist is because I like it. I'm fulfilled by it. I always wanted to be a reporter ever since I was very young. I wouldn't be happy, say, working at a restaurant or...being a janitor."
"Why wouldn't you want to be a janitor?" Jamie asked.
"You know what I could see Jamie doing?" Damian asked, taking a seat on the adjacent couch with his fresh drink. "Working at an old movie rental store."
A few voices in the group rose appreciatively at the idea as the room was filling in again.
"Yeah, but he'd always recommend the same movie," a young woman named Dana pointed out.
"Oh, you've already seen Bicentennial Man? Well, then you should rent Bicentennial Man," Samson said, his voice softening and taking on a steady, rhythmic cadence that clued Jamie in that he was being impersonated.
"And when you're done," Dana chimed in, her voice too taking on a buoyant, sing-song quality. "You can come back and rent it again. It really gets going after that twelfth watch."
Jamie had learned to distinguish that the laughter that followed wasn't at him.
"I bet Chris Columbus doesn't know as much about Bicentennial Man."
"I bet he's happy someone remembers it."
"Poor guy. Someone finally gives his movie a rave review and it's the dude who's been trapped underground in a sealed bunker for twenty years with literally nothing else to do but watch Bicentennial Man."
"That's not true. I had magazines and books," Jamie said, taking issue with the hyperbole of his circumstances. "And I had notebooks to write in before my pens and pencils ran out."
"Ah, no coloring books, Jamie?" Damian asked. Jamie didn't like Damian. He was polite without being nice and sometimes spoke of Jamie when he was a few feet away as if he wasn't in the room.
"Come on, guys. It was his first movie," Samson defended. "You remember how you felt about your first movie."
"I don't," Lydia said and took a sip of her drink. A few others murmured similar sentiments until the overwhelming consensus was that no one remembered their first movie.
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