Bryn Magnus remembers the time he tried to sneak from movie to movie at a multiplex. The ushers caught him red-handed, but he bravely refused to concede anything. Even though he could hardly believe it himself, he insisted that he’d thought admittance to one show entitled him to see them all.
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Now Magnus has created the perfect world he couldn’t find at the multiplex. In a new work called Dictator Light the writer, director, and actor reconstitutes his ugly experience into a narcissistic fantasy–one that not only turns out better, but exposes the connection between his performance for the ushers and the ones taking place on all those multiplex screens.
Even Magnus himself has been perfected in the piece. His character, Chad Chadness, feels none of the ethical conflicts that compromised Magnus’s defense. Just the opposite: Chad possesses what Magnus considers true star quality–an amorality that allows him to “throw over his own personality and stick to a lie to the very end.” Chad is mesmerized by the white light of the projector, so in love with it he can’t really remember who he is. He has only to flash his movie-lit, believing eyes at the ushers to win them over. Rather than throw him out, they start plotting his rise to Hollywood stardom.
