We had the ingredients for a great night down the old Hackney Picturehouse. Aromas of cheese and popcorn mingled, excitement thrusting trouserless in the air at the prospect of Gaspar Noe’s unsimulated sexual adventure LOVE 3D soon to be playing on the screen – a screen in front of which Ben Mendelsohn had been pacing for fifty minutes, screaming alone.

Thrilled as I was by the latest release from the gifted but French auteur, I looked down at my popcorn for a second and when I looked up, it was to find Ben Mendelsohn no longer before the screen. This worried me, until I realised he was sitting in the chair directly in front of mine. He faced me with his muscular nose resting over the top of the chair, like a reminder of a nose; his eyes, bleeding only a little, were curious on me.

Then he stretched an arm over the chair, hand bisecting sight like a rising sun before entering into the cool, sugared surface of my film snack. It twisted left, then right, after which Ben Mendelsohn penetrated my treat, meaning that now most of his trademark hand was submerged in the greasy sediment below. From that vantage point only, he began on me, his hand insisting on that twisting show, so every subsequent detail I’ve had to try quite hard to recall lest it become lost in that upsetting image.

“Alright?” he wondered Australianly.

“Hugh Laurie?” I said.

“Ben Mendelsohn,” he said, like he’d imagine a Cockney would.

“Oh,” I disappointed in his direction. “Ben Mendelsohn from Animal Kingdom?”

“Yes,” he screamed. “And on top of that, I’ll let you call me B.M, like a mate.”

B.M. then smiled his trademark smile, his eyes hurting my face as he continued to twist his hand through my popcorn.

“Um, so,” I said. “I was just about to relax in front of the critically-acclaimed French English-language film Love 3D. My phone is on silent and I am wearing the glasses, so you see, I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Oh, sure,” he mouthed. This below the volume of a human hand merrying around in wet popcorn. “We all love films. Why d’you think I became one?”

I looked at him questioningly.

“Oh sure, SURE,” he murmured. “The thing is, not everyone here’s on board, if you catch my meaning.”

“I’m,” I said.

“Well,” he said. “Put it this way…”

This B.M. took his hand out of my popcorn and held it up in front of my face, as if to say, “See?” turning it in the soft theatre light like a cooked pig, admiring the bits and pieces that clung to his skin and hadn’t peeled away. He began jabbing me in the chest with one of these fingers, making a sort of ‘crushuhuhuchu’ sound upon impact. More than once per syllable, which means at least three times every sentence his finger needled between my ribs like a needle, and made the sound of a thousand snakes sliding down an oily lift tower.

I looked up from the point of impact and into those trademark staring eyes of Ben Mendelsohn. Sensing my unease, B.M. slipped the same finger into his mouth, sucked the popcorn from its length and then, whipping it out with a pop, slid it between my lips and resumed the twisting motion he’d demonstrated previously, only now it was with a finger scraping my tonsils.

“Better?” said Ben Mendelsohn, grinning like a house.

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me,” I said badly, because of his finger.

“It’s simple,” said B.M., now knuckle-teasing my jeans and humming like a bird. “Why, this guy over here knows the deal.”

Ben Mendelsohn extended his free arm and the finger on the end of that. I looked up and along at the man it was pointing to. He was a Cockney. He had no throat.

Suddenly it made sense. As the neckless man twisted, collapsing forward like a den on fire, Ben Mendelsohn’s fake Cockney throat peeled away. Before it had slapped the floor, he had spread his wings and was rising into the air with a cheeky grin on his face; they were good wings, with a foreboding leathery tan the span of a family jet.

“Impressed?” he said, and I nodded so that he wouldn’t murder me.

“And… might I say what… a glorious… mane…” I struggled. Ben Mendelsohn was morphing into a chimera and his shrieking was upsetting me.

Ben Mendelsohn wasn’t listening, busy as he was swooping over perverts masquerading as arthouse cinema enthusiasts, sometimes clutching them in his mighty paws and crushing their watermelon guts out; his snake tail was pocking the screen, so I couldn’t even see the two actors banging each other.

I turned back in my seat. A mouthful of popcorn confirmed that it had indeed been ruined by human Ben Mendelsohn. Every bite tasted of Ben Mendelsohn. The kernels stuck in my teeth would forever remind me of Ben Mendelsohn, and I would never get used to that.

He never did explain himself. It was all I could do to turn back to the huge three-dimensional cock and balls and dynamic ejaculate coming at us in our 3D glasses and hope that the staff of the Hackney Picturehouse would arrive with their nets and poles.

Ultimately, Gaspar Noe’s Love 3D was ruined by a one-note joke that didn’t work the first time. It was gratuitous, crass and it ruined the memory of Mark Thomas. Is that the fault of one man, namely Ben Mendelsohn, just for being a mythical beast under human skin? Fortunately, as an artist, no one expects me to answer these questions. I merely ask them.

Illustration by Nathan at Channel Guernica.

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nb. I really like Ben Mendelsohn.