Second Interview: Laurance Lo

For a second time soft jazz sifted through the speakers, and once again the lights came up to disclose Joe taking his ease with a celebrity guest.

“It exceeded all my expectations to learn our very first festival of its kind had attracted the attention of not one, but two of the galaxy’s foremost film and television talents,” Joe began.

“Bit different to the sort of thing that usually attracts me!” observed the other, in a jolly and somewhat humming voice.

This visiting dignitary, unlike his predecessor, had made a real effort for his human host. Clad in double-breasted three-piece suit of conspicuously terrestrial cut he would have been the picture of suavity and sophistication on Planet Earth, were it not for the difficult-to-ignore detail that he was an enormous fly. From his trim tailored cuffs jutted wrists and ankles thick with black matted hair, each ending in a leathery suction-cupped appendage. Parts of his head were as hirsute, though the sum of his face was two vast round milli-faceted eyes and a long tubular feeding-proboscis.

“Laurance Lo, welcome,” said Joe. “And on behalf of all Nottingham may I extend our heartfelt gratitude for the interest you have taken in our affair. I see already your reputation for generosity to new starters in the field is richly deserved.”

“Well, if anyone’s all about humble beginnings, I am,” replied Laurance Lo. “You can probably imagine what I was born into, and there’s not really any way to go but up from there, I’m sure you’ll agree! So I think that’s why I’ve always liked to support those whose careers are at a comparable stage – you know, the ones still waiting to fully emerge, and get off the ground as I did.”

Joe, duly flattered, thanked the fly and continued: “Now, Laurance Lo, earlier today we saw a persuasive demonstration of a point I had previously made to Bolotran Eyes, that there are surely esoteric accomplishments of yesterday which retain a steady hold on the Mini-Flash imagination. So, to repeat a request I put to him, are there any similar instances you can recall from your own early days in the industry?”

“I don’t know if I’m qualified to comment on that, since the topics that fascinated me in my maggothood wouldn’t have exactly cast their spell over the typical Mini-Flash,” chuckled Laurance Lo. “Which is a compliment to Mini-Flashes, when you think about it! Although that said, formative experience and the persistence of memory were the guiding motifs behind my coming-of-age cycle Rotting Carcass, which of course at the time I predicted would be my breakthrough.”

“Yes, but that came later, did it not?” said Joe. “During your military service I believe, when as a correspondent in the Solidity War you made your name through,” and hastily backtracking and rephrasing Joe went on: “that is to say, those, er, documentaries where the director, erm, gives the impression of being an unnoticed and uninvolved observer?”

“Ah, yes, I’ve been told ever since that I seem to have an almost innate aptitude for those,” declared Laurance Lo, pleased. “I must say you’ve done your homework. And what’s more, I was frankly enchanted by that world of yours.”

Laurance Lo spent the next two minutes rubbing his hands together, then did the same for his feet, and after that was ready to continue.

“In fact,” said he, “my tour of duty proved to be a creative turning-point.”

“You wear the fashions well,” Joe assured him. “And I understand it has been your project in peacetime to crack the human market as you have so successfully this sector’s?”

“That’s right,” his interviewee confirmed. “Under the Earth-pseudonym Lawrence Lowe I’ve been pitching a number of my films to terran studios via long-range intergalactic link-up. No contracts just as yet, but I’m remaining optimistic. The one difficulty I foresee is that those profoundly personal preoccupations and themes to which I’ve always returned as a filmmaker may not be quite suitable for Earthling tastes – though granted I’d be lying if I said the same problem hadn’t occasionally come up even here in my home galaxy.”

“I wish you the best of luck in this endeavour,” Joe concluded. “Laurance Lo, thank you.”

“No, thank you,” corrected the magnanimous insectoid. “It’s said the work you and your movement are doing is big news for the higher destiny of our quadrant, which is why I’ve no doubt that now Nottingham’s taken its first step into the aesthetic arena, you’re going to set that establishment abuzz likewise. And let’s face it, I know a thing or two about buzzing!”