Rated F: A Novel

By Todd C. Noker

"Noker's fictional satire not only pokes fun at censored videos, but also lampoons current issues and turns political pundits into punch lines."

-Kelsey Blackwell, Salt Lake Magazine

When the entrepreneurial owner of a struggling video rental store in Provo, Utah, offers R- and PG-rated movies with the sex, violence, and profanity edited out-earning a new rating of F (for Family)-his profits skyrocket.

Things take a dangerous turn when a customer known as Twitchy Guy brings in a box of old family movies, demanding that his estranged wife be edited out. The proposal seems extremely odd, but the offered payment is too generous to refuse. After much of the editing is done, Twitchy Guy decides to "delete" his wife from his life-literally.

Managing a video store swiftly leads to violence, murder, and too many people posing for too many cameras.

Rated F is an entertaining satire about political correctness gone too far.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 8, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595814718

Todd C. Noker

Todd C. Noker is the author of Path of Totality and is program director of KXRK in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he lives with his wife.

Book preview

Copyright © 2004, 2006 by Todd C. Noker

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN-13: 978-1-58348-020-5 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-81471-8 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 1-58348-020-X (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-81471-9 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

For Shawn Noker

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

Reading Guide

Discussion questions

About the Author

PROLOGUE

The guy in the ski mask leans over the counter and shoves the barrel of the gun under my chin. What you’re gonna do, he says, is put my clothes on. He jabs the pistol into my neck for emphasis. Understand?

I can’t really nod thanks to the gun in my neck, so I say, Y-yeah. All I can think is, how did running a video store in Provo, Utah, end up so dangerous?

And then the guy pulls out another gun—like the one shoved against my neck isn’t enough—and slams it on the counter. I stare at it for a couple seconds then slowly raise my eyes to look at the gunman. He peers at me from the eyeholes cut in his ski mask. If he had a cape and tights, you’d think he was a superhero.

It’s sort of like I’m being robbed by Batman. But the one played by Michael Keaton in the first two movies; after that you lose the hint of obsession and insanity that is crucial to the character. Nothing against the other Batmen, but Keaton is always the one I picture coming to the rescue when someone projects a huge bat signal onto the cloud canopy.

I kind of wish that was happening right now.

Here’s another scenario that might save me: Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry just happened to be in the store browsing around the new releases when this nut with the guns came in. No, Dirty Harry would probably like a good western. He’d be in the westerns section. The problem with this fantasy is that Dirty Harry—if he were a real person—would probably enjoy a western starring Clint Eastwood, and that little impossibility blows the illusion.

You can bet, though, that Dirty Harry wouldn’t stand by and watch this…robbery or whatever it is…play on without pulling out his piece and taking care of this punk.

Fortunately, this isn’t over a late fee. Talk about society crumbling to the ground if this is how people are getting out of paying late charges nowadays. But I know this guy, so the ski mask isn’t really for my benefit. Besides, he knows that I waive late fees all the time, and that’s without having a gun buried in my neck.

But I digress. The stupidest thoughts wander into your mind when some lunatic in a ski mask puts a gun on you.

I slide my eyes back down to the weapon lying on the counter.

Don’t w-worry, the guy says, grabbing the gun with his free hand. He puts the barrel of gun number two against his forehead.

Oh, I think. I get what this is. Murder-suicide. Only this guy wants it simultaneous.

This one, um, ain’t loaded, he says, pulling the trigger.

I wince when it clicks, because what if, you know, on the way over here he got his guns mixed up? I’m hoping that something cool like that happens, because this could end up on one of those Dumbest Criminals Caught on Tape shows. Welcome to my reality television special.

Maybe I can say something clever and witty and get a laugh. I don’t want to be too much of a smart aleck, though, because it might piss the guy off, and they’d have to stop the tape before the part where he blows my head off, or at least blur out my exploding head.

I keep my cool. I’d hate to come across like a bumbling, whimpering loser; I mean, millions of viewers might get to see this someday.

"You get the unloaded one, says the guy who might kill me, placing the empty weapon on the counter in front of me. I’m not as dumb as you think."

I don’t think you’re dumb at all, I say, projecting my voice the way I learned in high school drama so the microphone can pick it up. I can fix the audio later with an overdub, but you always want to have as much authenticity as possible in the first take.

And maybe in postproduction—if this goes anywhere interesting—I can add in some witty line after the fact. Just a slight alteration on reality so I can look good compared to the guy in the ski mask.

In the editing room, almost anything is possible.

You’re right, the guy says. I’m not d-dumb. I’ve planned this out.

I hate to admit it, but I’m trembling just a little. Having a gun in your throat isn’t exactly relaxing.

The gunman is a little rattled as well, twitching, looking around, watching the door like he’s afraid someone might come in. I want to tell him that on a week-night the whole world is glued to the tube. We won’t be disturbed. Not when someone’s about to get voted off the island. Not when someone might win a million dollars if his final answer is correct.

I’m wearing a plain dress shirt, and I wish I had something with a logo—the Nike Swoosh, a Dodge Ram baseball cap, a Coke or Pepsi T-shirt, something more than this generic Wal-Mart button up. When you’re on television or in a movie, it’s all about product placement. You know how in Terminator II: Judgment Day you see quite a few people drinking Pepsi and eating Subway sandwiches? That’s no coincidence. And those sunglasses Tom Cruise wears when he dances around in his underwear in Risky Business? The studio got a check.

In There’s Something About Mary, Mary’s nice Dodge Durango arrived on the movie set carrying a big fat check from DaimlerChrysler.

People working graveyard shifts at convenience stores with video surveillance systems should sign endorsement deals with clothing manufacturers, so that if they end up in a Caught On Tape special, they can get a check from Levi’s.

Or Adidas.

Or Wrangler.

Or Reebok.

I wish I hadn’t left my Mountain Dew sitting in the video-editing room. If it were up here on the counter with the label showing, that would be money in the bank.

In Cops when the police and camera crew arrive at a domestic dispute where the drunken husband has bloodied up his wife, and you see the brand of beer he’s drinking because there are cans everywhere, do the breweries kick in some dollars for the exposure? They must, because the network doesn’t blur out the label on the beer can. This act of domestic violence is proudly brought to you by (insert beer brand here).

But back to my current dilemma, didn’t the guy in the ski mask say something about me putting on his clothes? Like I could ever work an endorsement with the stuff he’s wearing.

The gunman looks above my head and to the side, right at the security camera, and I think he smiles. Good, I think, at least he knows. Now maybe he’ll watch his blocking so I don’t get covered up.

Still smiling, he turns to me and says, Now, um, do what I say and I won’t kill you.

Trying to quote Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction, I say, Sure. I’ll be just like Fonzie.

I’m hoping my masked gunman will ask something like, What does Fonzie have to do with this? And then I can say, He’s cool, and that’s just what I’m going to be. Cool.

Only my gunman simply tilts his head like a confused puppy and says, "Shut the bleep up."

I guess he hasn’t seen the movie.

CHAPTER 1

This guy with the gun in my throat is here because of Kate Winslet’s breasts.

And the holocaust.

And God.

And the guy’s ex-wife. I’m fairly certain that she’s his ex because of something other than divorce, but maybe that’s just because he’s sticking a gun in my neck.

But let’s back up just a little. Grab the remote and press Rewind.

Back in the ‘90s, the corporate world declared war on the little guy. The first casualty around here was my favorite taco restaurant, a place down on Center Street not that far from Brigham Young University. A guy like me, well, I enjoyed a good taco or three, maybe a beef burrito and some nachos. At this little taco place, they cooked everything fresh. You had to wait a while longer to get your order, but what was time? Ten minutes at their drive-through window was a small price to pay for fresh Mexican cuisine. And me, I had plenty of time.

Turns out I was the only one.

Next door to the taco place was an old movie theater that had stood on Center Street since time began. It was one of those classic old buildings with actual curtains that covered the screen and then opened when the film started. It even had a balcony, and loveseats in the rows in the back. I liked the loveseats, but not because I always sported a date. For a fat guy like me, the loveseats were an easier fit. (All those tacos and burritos, well, they added up.)

The big corporations invaded, and eventually the classic old theater—which did moderate business as a second-run movie house—ended up chewed apart by a backhoe and hauled away in trucks.

And next to my favorite taco place in the world, where they cooked actual meat fresh for every order, corporate America built a Taco Bell. It wasn’t so much constructed as it was delivered. The building appeared almost overnight.

The Bell people could whip out a bag of tacos in less than a minute. Freshness? That didn’t seem to matter, since we were all in such a hurry—well, everybody but me. The college kids took their business to the Bell, and pretty soon I was the one-man lunch rush at the little independent taco restaurant. I’d be waiting in my convertible at the pickup window all by myself while a line of cars wrapped around the Taco Bell and customers crowded into its dining area.

Within months, my favorite taco establishment was razed and replaced with a Burger King. Which wasn’t so bad because I used to have to drive damn near to the neighboring town of Orem if I wanted a Whopper. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Taco Bell. It was just a shame they smothered the little taco restaurant, where the cook actually grilled the chicken right then and there when you ordered a chicken burrito.

It was only a matter of time until the corporate monsters descended on me.

With the whole Taco Bell thing, I should have seen it coming. Some company had a few good weeks on Wall Street, and the next thing you knew they were building new stores in every city in the country. Shareholders wanted profit, profit, profit. American Psycho and Wall Street tried to portray the ‘80s as the greedy decade, but the ‘90s took the cake.

Since my video rental store operated out of what used to be a 7-Eleven—and you can totally tell—I suppose I reaped the benefit of a corporate failure. Not that the little guy put them out or anything like that. The 7-Eleven ended up suddenly surrounded by Chevron, Phillips 66, and Texaco convenience stores. You’d see people drinking out of cups with the Chevron logo on the side, and you had to wonder if they were sucking on a big 32-ounce cup of premium unleaded.

The former 7-Eleven building stood vacant forever, so the real estate agent eventually put it on the market as a distress sale. It wasn’t in horrible condition, really. At some point, a small fire had scorched one of the walls in the back, but the damaged area had been rebuilt. If the agent hadn’t pointed out a section of slightly blackened ceiling tiles, I’d have never known about the fire.

My video rental business actually started in a small house with shelves and aisles crammed inside. There was even an old screen door you had to pull back when coming into the store. The cash register sat on the kitchen counter, and I kept the video games behind me in the cabinets. Action/adventure was down the hall in the master bedroom, drama was in the smaller bedroom, and new releases and westerns were in the living room.

What I wanted to do was have a section called crap and put it in the bathroom. And I would have, but that was the only functioning bathroom in the building.

I could tell where customers were in my store by the way the floor creaked. Different tones in the ancient floorboards came from different rooms. Just by listening, I knew if people were looking at action/adventure or drama. The obvious name for my business? Home Video, of course.

Parking sucked at my old store. The driveway could only handle one car, and curbside parking deterred customers, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. I knew I needed a better location if I wanted to really succeed.

The old 7-Eleven caught my eye, and I made a ridiculous offer. When the sellers accepted, my customers helped me move.

I offered unlimited three-day rentals on anything in the store. They simply had to return the merchandise to my new location.

I gave my neighbor a bunch of free rental coupons, and he brought over his old Ford pickup truck to haul the racks to the new store. I drive a 1964 Dodge Polara 500 convertible. It’s massive, and I filled it with nearly as much stuff as the truck could carry. The thing about my car was it had no seat belts, airbags, or crumple zones. Its only safety feature was its size—it would run over anything that got in its way. The airbag in your flimsy Japanese tin can wouldn’t help much when my big old tank rolled right over you.

I couldn’t help but grin as I pulled the big Dodge into the new Home Video parking lot. In my new building, I had tons of space, including room for an office in the back. And there wasn’t another video store for miles around. I even had to hire a few employees to help out with the rush.

But it didn’t take long for the corporate big boys to put the squeeze on me.

First came Blockbuster. And then Hollywood. They had their racks of new releases and their guarantees that movies would be in stock or else free the next time. I’d have five copies of Tuesday’s new releases, and they’d have fifty. The corporate giants ran radio and television commercials incessantly and placed flyers and ads in the newspaper. What they spent in one month on advertising was more than I made all year.

I began to feel the pressure. I had to cut costs.

So I decided to turn my five copies of whatever new release into ten or twenty. All I needed were two VCRs, the right cables, and a little disregard for copyright laws. You could say I was cutting my overhead. Freeing up some money so I could make some money. It wasn’t like I would put 20th Century Fox or Universal or DreamWorks out of business by renting duplicated