The novella "Flirtation Hill" is now available as an ebook from Amazon.com.
FLIRTATION HILL
A treatment for a feature film
“It is the new man who sings the new song.” - St. Augustine
Albert and Ray are two advertising copywriters, rivals and moral opposites, protagonists of different styles. Albert is passive responsiveness, inspiration, soft sell. Ray is positive action, cold deduction, hit’em between the eyes. Together they are the strength of the prosperous agency Auchmutty & Costello.
Unfortunately Albert’s work has not been up to scratch lately. He has not been sleeping well. He feels that there is something missing in his life. The master of the soft-focus and the warm log fire is starting to believe his own advertising – a kind of madness.
Seeing his chance to topple a rival, Ray befriends Albert and steers him headlong into a world of sensual excess, the “neon river” of sleazy bars, a night-life of relentless temptation.
Into this scenario steps Harry Gellner, mining magnate turned property developer, an alcoholic visionary with a monumental plan for housing construction.
Blundering from bar-room brawl to crisis on the Stock Exchange and accidental celebrity, the questions abound. Can Ray come up with the winning promotion for Harry’s dream? Will Albert rise again to save the day? And who’ll get the girl?
And which girl? There is Jinks Auchmutty, the boss’s daughter, Ray’s lover; Denise, the call-girl who can’t be bought; Jenny, a punk barmaid with a heart of gold; Naomi, an earth-mother with a weakness for rich men; and Horrible Hilda and the Shark Ladies.
And where does Cain fit in – the accountant with criminal experience in explosives? And who exactly is Jimmy Yip – the alleged Singapore businessman who delivers the cheerful message “Have no fear, Yip is here!”
In a bar-room melee Ray is left scarred by a broken beer glass. This should teach him a lesson but he is fanatically determined to ruin Albert.
Inspired by a new best-selling book (“Do Unto Others” by Gunnar Sonnendorp, Professor of Positive Thinking, University of Wisconsin) Ray introduces Albert to a high class call girl named Denise. He expects the sensual overload will finish Albert off.
However, Albert emerges from the experience unshattered. He enjoys himself. He grows stronger. Denise, in reality a confidential agent for the mysterious Jimmy Yip, gives him some very practical advice and hints that if he needs her again she may r-appear as his “fairy godmother”.
Albert takes an indefinite leave of absence from the advertising agency and disappears. Ray thinks his plan has worked. He takes over the Gellner account.
Months pass. Ray has not come up with a satisfactory campaign idea. Albert is to be recalled – but nobody can find him.
Typically, he is not where they expect him to be. Albert is living with Jenny the punk barmaid in a squat. Until now he has shown no interest in Gellner’s project but one morning Jenny reads an item in the newspaper about a suburb whose population has grown so much that it is about to be declared “a new city”.
Albert is mesmerised by the phrase. He realises that this is the concept Gellner needs. He leaves Jenny abruptly.
Ray is trying to make the best of a bad situation by finding Albert himself. He breaks into Albert’s empty apartment and from various papers scattered on the desk deduces the kind of campaign he is planning. There is freshly-made coffee in the kitchen, but Albert has disappeared again.
Ray resorts to his favourite bar, La Chamade, to meditate on his failure. He meets Fred Loess, a financial journalist who is following a rumour he can’t print about Gellner being in financial difficulties. Ray invents the necessary confirmation. He will thwart Albert by destroying Gellner.
Later that night Gellner receives a visit from a stranger who says simply “I am Yip.”
Jinks discovers Ray’s betrayal. She leaves him in disgust. Albert turns up at her apartment later and the repressed attraction she has felt for him since the beginning comes to the fore. Ray phones to plead with Jinks. Albert answers the phone. Shock. Horror. Zut alors. Foiled again.
Dazed, Ray is monomaniacally convinced he must get to the valley below Flirtation Hill for Gellner’s press launch. He crashes his Ferrari on the way but keep going on foot across country. He is spotted by police helicopters and mistaken for an escaped prisoner. The description fits him, including the scar on his cheek. The escapee’s name is Malcolm Raymond Jennings.
Albert arrives in the valley with the New City promotional material. Yip comes through with a loan just in time to save Gellner from disaster on the Stock Exchange. The launch is a success. Ray is under arrest suffering concussion, adjusting to the idea of being Malcolm Raymond Jennings, now the hero of Willynudgit for bringing national television coverage to their forgotten township.
Albert wanders alone to the top of Flirtation Hill to consider his future.
Each character has pursued his and her idea of heaven on earth. The answers are still not quite what they appear to be.
(Some of the characters in this treatment also appear in the short story “Albert’s Getting Married”.)