Moving Pictures
Chapters - Terry Pratchett
Section: The Last Keeper Dies
On a remote stretch of coast thirty miles from Ankh-Morpork, Deccan Ribobe, the last keeper of Holy Wood, dies in his driftwood hut. His ghost meets Death on the shore, and Deccan frets that no successor learned the chants that kept something imprisoned under the nearby hill. His ceremonial fire goes out and something ancient, joyful and dangerous escapes from a hole in the sand, streaking towards the lights of Ankh-Morpork.
In the city, an explosion in the Street of Alchemists propels a stunned figure into the arms of sausage-seller Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler. The escaped idea from Holy Wood latches on to Dibbler's mercantile mind. Meanwhile, at Unseen University, Archchancellor Ridcully grumbles about the explosion while the harried Bursar fails yet again to get paperwork signed. Ridcully, a bluff country wizard newly installed and more interested in hunting than administration, is introduced to the University's Librarian - an orang-utan transformed by a magical accident who refuses to be changed back.
On page: Deccan Ribobe, Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, Mustrum Ridcully, The Bursar·Mentioned: The Librarian
Section: Alchemists Discover the Clicks
In the Alchemists' Guildhall, Thomas Silverfish and his colleagues celebrate their invention of moving pictures - images captured by demons and projected through salamander light on to a screen. They eat a strange new snack one of them has invented - banged grains - and plan to relocate their enterprise to a sunny, deserted coastal spot called Holy Wood, unaware that the idea to go there has been planted in their minds.
At the University, the Bursar shows Ridcully the examination results of Victor Tugelbend, a student who has been deliberately scoring exactly 84 per cent for years to stay a student and keep collecting his uncle's legacy. The wizards devise a special one-question exam paper to force him to either pass or fail. Meanwhile, Victor and fellow student Ponder Stibbons revise together, and Victor finds the words "Holy Wood" inexplicably surfacing in his mind.
On exam day, Victor doesn't show up - he has left for Holy Wood, drawn by the same compulsion pulling Dibbler, Detritus the troll, and a small stray dog called Gaspode. Ponder accidentally sits at Victor's desk and discovers the rigged exam paper contains only one question: "What is your name?"
On page: Thomas Silverfish, Victor Tugelbend, Ponder Stibbons, Mustrum Ridcully, The Bursar, Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, Detritus, Gaspode
Section: Victor Arrives at Holy Wood
Victor arrives in the ramshackle boom town of Holy Wood, where crude shacks sprout ornate painted facades. Hungry and broke, he collides with Ginger Withel, a sharp-tongued young woman already working in the clicks. She dismisses him, but Victor uses Silverfish's card to talk his way into a job as an actor, learning that moving pictures are made with caged demons who paint what they see and salamanders who project the images.
Dibbler arrives and, with Detritus as muscle, bullies his way into Silverfish's operation, quickly installing himself as a self-appointed manager. He invents advertising by proposing to hold up cards promoting businesses after screenings. Victor is cast alongside Ginger and two trolls, Rock and Morry, in a one-reeler about Cohen the Barbarian. During filming, something takes hold of Victor - a strange force makes him kiss Ginger in a scene no one planned. Dibbler, electrified, recognises the commercial potential and demands the footage be preserved.
POV: Victor Tugelbend·On page: Ginger Withel, Thomas Silverfish, Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, Detritus, Gaspode
Section: Sword of Passione Premieres
Dibbler rides to Ankh-Morpork overnight with the finished film of Sword of Passione, creates lurid posters featuring invented names - "Delores De Syn" and "Victor Maraschino" - and strong-arms pit owner Bezam Planter into showing it. The premiere draws enormous crowds. The Librarian watches the film four times from the front row.
Back in Holy Wood, Victor discovers the body of a dead old man in a driftwood hut on the beach - the former keeper Deccan Ribobe - clutching a book called The Boke of the Film, a chronicle of generations of keepers who maintained fires and chanted three times daily. Victor buries him and takes the book. At Borgle's commissary, he tries to show it to Ginger, now working as a waitress after being sacked, but she refuses to speak to him.
At Unseen University, the Archchancellor's pottery elephant vase - actually an ancient device called a resograph built by the late Numbers Riktor - begins spitting lead pellets with increasing frequency, indicating growing disturbances in reality.
On page: Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, Bezam Planter, Detritus, Victor Tugelbend, The Librarian, Mustrum Ridcully, The Bursar, The Librarian·Mentioned: Ginger Withel
Section: Gaspode the Wonder Dog
Victor finally meets Gaspode the Wonder Dog, who reveals he can talk - a new and unwelcome ability that arrived along with Holy Wood's influence. Gaspode leads Victor up Holy Wood Hill to meet other newly-sapient animals: a cat, a mouse, a rabbit and a duck, all drawn to Holy Wood by the same mysterious compulsion. They report strange disturbances on the hill - golden sparks, trembling ground and weird voices.
Ginger appears on the hill too, apparently drawn there without knowing why. Dibbler finds them both and rehires them at higher wages for a new film, Shadow of the Dessert, after Gaspode secretly negotiates their salary upward. During filming the next day, Victor and Ginger are again seized by the strange force - Victor performs expert swordsmanship he has never learned, speaks dialogue in an unknown language, and kisses Ginger, all while in a trance-like state. Both have glowing golden stars in their eyes, a mark Gaspode says is the sign of Holy Wood's possession. Dibbler's eyes have them too.
Far away in Klatch, elephant dealer Azhural N'choate receives an order for a thousand elephants and, with his shrewd young assistant M'Bu, begins assembling herds for the long trek to Ankh-Morpork.
POV: Victor Tugelbend·On page: Gaspode, Ginger Withel, Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, Detritus, Thomas Silverfish, The Librarian
Section: Percentage of the Gross
Gaspode coaches Victor in negotiation tactics, teaching him phrases like "percentage of the gross." Victor secures a paid day off from Dibbler by threatening to go to a rival studio. A handsome pedigree dog named Laddie arrives, purchased by Dibbler to be a "wonder dog" star, and Gaspode is disgusted but quickly establishes himself as Laddie's manager, negotiating a ten per cent cut of the big dog's steak dinners.
Victor and Gaspode study the ancient book from the beach. Gaspode spots a recurring pictogram that resembles a dead man on a tomb, always paired with a doorway symbol. Victor speculates it might mean "the man behind the gate" - a guard or prisoner. The Librarian, who has been obsessively watching the clicks at the Odium, rips a few frames from a film showing Holy Wood's ruins and takes them to the University Library's maximum-security vault, where he consults the dreaded Necrotelicomnicon.
The ancient text describes Holy Wood's history: a great city that used a "Door out of the World" to watch things from other dimensions, until Creatures from Beyond found the gate and destroyed the city. A Golden Warrior drove the fiends back and stationed himself at the gate forever, requiring only that the people remember Holy Wood three times daily. Detritus, meanwhile, courts the troll singer Ruby with hilariously misguided attempts at romance.
POV: Victor Tugelbend·On page: Gaspode, Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, Detritus, The Librarian, Ginger Withel, The Bursar, Mustrum Ridcully, The Librarian
Section: Ginger at the Door
Laddie finds Ginger unconscious on Holy Wood Hill, her fingernails broken from trying to dig open a massive ancient door that has been exposed by landslides. Victor carries her back to town, troubled by her mumbled words: "I want to be a lawn." That night he watches over her, and she confesses she has been sleepwalking to the hill every night, compelled by dreams of a woman with a torch urging her to wake something.
Victor begins to understand the danger: Holy Wood's moving pictures go straight from the eye to the brain, weakening the boundary between reality and the Dungeon Dimensions more effectively than any spell. The ancient city's people used the weakness for entertainment until the Things found them. Now it is happening again.
Ginger ties Victor to a chair in her sleep and goes to the hill. Gaspode frees him with Laddie's help, and they follow her into the tunnel behind the opened door. Inside they discover an enormous underground amphitheatre - an ancient picture pit with rows of dead spectators still seated before a living, shimmering screen that moves like mercury. Ginger stands before a golden-armoured figure on a slab, torch held high. Victor accidentally triggers a deafening ancient organ, causing a cave-in that blocks their escape. Gaspode and Laddie squeeze through a gap to fetch trolls, who dig Victor and Ginger out.
POV: Victor Tugelbend·On page: Ginger Withel, Gaspode, Detritus
Section: Filming Blown Away
Dibbler wakes in the night with a vision of his greatest film - Blown Away, an epic of the Ankh-Morpork Civil War. He scrawls the entire plot on his bedsheets. Production begins at a frantic pace: a full-scale replica of Ankh-Morpork is built from wood and canvas, then spectacularly burned for the climactic scene. Silverfish objects to the extravagance and is bodily ejected from his own studio by Detritus.
Ginger confides in Victor about her sleepwalking, and he explains his theory about a genius loci - the spirit of Holy Wood calling people and using them. He warns that something from the Dungeon Dimensions may be trying to break through. Ginger asks him to guard her at night. Meanwhile, Soll Dibbler discovers his uncle has been secretly inserting advertisements for Harga's House of Ribs into every piece of dialogue, and fireworks spelling "Hottest ribs in town" were nailed to the replica Tower of Art.
The Bursar at Unseen University reads Riktor's notes and realises the resograph measures disturbances in reality. It is now firing pellets every two minutes, all aimed in one direction - towards Holy Wood.
On page: Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, Victor Tugelbend, Ginger Withel, Thomas Silverfish, Detritus, The Bursar, Gaspode
Section: Inside the Ancient Amphitheatre
Gaspode wakes Victor from his failed guard duty - Ginger has tied him to the chair again and gone to the hill. The dogs lead him to the ancient door, which Ginger has entered. Inside the underground amphitheatre, the shimmering screen is bulging more fatally than before. Ginger is trying to dig sand away from the door.
Victor carries her out and they are rescued by trolls led by Rock. The tunnel collapses behind them, burying the passage under a million tons of rock. Victor believes the crisis is over.
The next morning, Holy Wood is blanketed in an eerie, flickering fog. Dibbler loads Victor, Ginger, Laddie and Gaspode into a coach for the journey to Ankh-Morpork, where Blown Away will premiere at Bezam Planter's rebuilt Odium. In the city, the senior wizards of Unseen University - the Chair of Indefinite Studies, the Dean, the Lecturer in Recent Runes and ancient Windle Poons in his monstrous iron wheelchair - sneak out over the University wall in false beards to attend the screening.
POV: Victor Tugelbend·On page: Ginger Withel, Gaspode, Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, Detritus, Windle Poons, Bezam Planter
Section: Premiere at the Odium
The premiere of Blown Away draws enormous crowds and civic dignitaries, including the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. Victor and Ginger arrive to hysterical public acclaim but are privately horrified - the Odium's lavish interior, with its red plush drapes and gold cherubs, looks exactly like the ancient underground amphitheatre.
The wizards struggle to buy tickets and eventually break in through the lavatory window. Windle Poons causes havoc by pinching the usherette. Soll discovers his uncle has secretly spliced five minutes of spare ribs footage into the middle of the film.
As the film rolls, its hypnotic power grips the entire audience. Gaspode's cold nose breaks the spell on Victor, who discovers the picture-throwing box is operating by itself, powered by something invisible. He snaps the film, but the screen continues to move - something from the Dungeon Dimensions is using Holy Wood's magic to break through. A giant, flickering version of Ginger climbs out of the screen and smashes through the wall. Victor piles all the film cans against the screen where a giant version of himself is also emerging, and Gaspode and Laddie carry a blazing torch back inside to ignite the pile.
POV: Victor Tugelbend·On page: Ginger Withel, Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, Gaspode, Bezam Planter, Windle Poons, The Bursar, Mustrum Ridcully
Section: The Ginger-Thing Rises
The Odium explodes in a fireball. Gaspode and Laddie are buried in the rubble. The giant Ginger-Thing, fifty feet tall and flickering between human shape and tentacled horror, lurches towards Unseen University's Library, drawn by its magic. The wizards cannot use their own magic against it - that would only make it stronger.
Victor reaches for a different power. In front of Gaffer's still-turning picture box, he invokes Holy Wood's magic directly - calling for lights, picture box and action. A spectral, flickering horse appears beneath him and a sword materialises in his hand. He gallops after the Thing, sustained by the belief of thousands of watching citizens who have seen him do this in dozens of clicks.
The Librarian attempts a daring rope-swing from the Tower of Art but misses the Thing and is caught in its grip. The Archchancellor and Bursar arrive on a broomstick, with Ridcully firing crossbow bolts. Ginger commandeers Windle Poons' wheelchair and races after Victor with the handleman still turning the handle, understanding that Victor's Holy Wood magic only works while being filmed.
POV: Victor Tugelbend·On page: Ginger Withel, Gaspode, The Librarian, Mustrum Ridcully, The Bursar, Windle Poons, Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, The Librarian
Section: Battle on the Tower
Victor climbs the Tower of Art's ancient spiral staircase in darkness, leaping across missing slabs - creating momentary Holy Wood replacements underfoot where steps are absent. At the top, the Thing has reverted to its true form: a mass of tentacles and mismatched eyes clutching the Librarian. Victor fights it with a pike while the Archchancellor strafes it with crossbow bolts from the broomstick. Victor conjures a lightning bolt that electrocutes the Thing, and it topples from the tower to its death.
But it is not over. The Librarian reads Victor's ancient book and reveals the truth: Victor had been reading the pictograms backwards. The figure on the slab is not a prisoner behind the gate - it is a guard in front of the gate. Ginger is descended from the original High Priestess, and her sleepwalking was not an attempt to free the Things but to wake the guardian.
Victor and Ginger race back to Holy Wood in a flickering spectral chariot, followed by the wizards in Poons' wheelchair. They find the town deserted - everyone has been drawn into the underground amphitheatre by the screen's hypnotic power. Detritus is holding up a collapsed ceiling. They find the entire population of Holy Wood seated before the pulsating screen, which is about to tear open completely.
POV: Victor Tugelbend·On page: Ginger Withel, The Librarian, Mustrum Ridcully, The Bursar, Detritus, Ponder Stibbons, The Librarian
Section: Striking the Silent Gong
Detritus, whose rocky skull is immune to the screen's hypnosis, inadvertently breaks the spell on the others by trampling them. Victor and Ginger cannot wake the golden guardian on the slab. Victor discovers an ancient gong behind the screen, but the striker is rusted solid. Detritus rips it free and strikes the gong with a blow that shatters silence itself - sound crashes back into the world.
The golden figure sits up, takes its enormous sword, and faces the screen. Victor and Ginger flee as the guardian fights whatever is trying to break through. They dive into flooded stairs connecting to the sea and swim out into Holy Wood Bay. Behind them, Holy Wood collapses: buildings fold, stores of film explode, and the golden figure rises briefly above the hill before vanishing.
In a series of fading clicks of Holy Wood magic, Detritus briefly dances and sings to Ruby before the spell fades and she hits him with a chair (the modern troll equivalent of romance). The talking animals lose their speech and revert to instinct. Gaspode and Laddie are found alive beneath the rubble by Rock - Death himself intervened, charmed by Gaspode's defiance, and reversed the hourglass with a golden sparkle of Holy Wood's last magic.
Gaspode loses his ability to talk and limps into the sunset. Victor and Ginger sit in a tavern in Ankh-Morpork, reflecting on what they had and lost. Dibbler, broke again, returns to selling sausages in the street - just as a thousand elephants arrive at the city gates, the order he placed months ago finally delivered.
POV: Victor Tugelbend·On page: Ginger Withel, Detritus, Gaspode, Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler·Mentioned: The Librarian