148 lines
7.8 KiB
Plaintext
148 lines
7.8 KiB
Plaintext
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_______________________________________________________________________________
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_ _ _ _
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((___)) ((___))
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[ x x ] cDc communications [ x x ]
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\ / presents... \ /
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(' ') (' ')
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(U) (U)
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On The Porch Swing
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a screenplay
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from Forced Exposure 'zine #13
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by Suzy Rust
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>>> A CULT Distribution.....1988 <<<
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-cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
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_______________________________________________________________________________
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A taupe-shingled duplex surrounded by olive trees, grape vines, and other
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fruits of Italian-American truck-farming know-how houses the Boston head-
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quarters of Baggage Productions, a home movie company where I work as a screen-
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writer. I arrived there one recent Friday evening to study the reels of Lower
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East Side Super 8 artists on the VCR with my accomplices.
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Once Richard Kern had finished ejaculating, I went out to get a pizza.
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Inside the pizzeria, a dough-thrower in floured clothes made a big fish gesture
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to his co-worker and raved about marlins in Portuguese. I ordered a large
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deluxe, extra anchovies.
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Waiting in a red booth, I gazed at the Holiday Inn parking lot across the
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street. In its flat stardust, I recalled the works I'd just seen - young
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sluts, naked but for their wigs, lolling around on crabby mattresses; pretty
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Nick Zedd, moping on porcelain in his party dress; some dejected girl with a
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rhinestone through her nose, saying sad and angry things.
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I thought about how we could emulate the degenerate glamour of those
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downtown movies. We could put a bunch of people in long leather coats and give
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them toys to play with: eyeliner, pocket snakes, switchblades, flaking green
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Coupe de Villes with cat bones hanging from the rear-view mirrors, heroin
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habbits. We could call it DIRTY NEEDLE SPREE.
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But why bother, when the thrill of urban blight is already being dealt
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with so successfully. We should stick to family entertainment, I decided as I
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carried the pizza up the hill to headquarters.
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_______________________________________________________________________________
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Scene 1: ROCK WORSHIP
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A girl named Matilda and her great aunt Gertrude sit on a porch swing.
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Gertrude is an old hag with a polio-withered arm who smokes a lot of Kools.
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The porch where they sit and swing is surrounded by mallow bushes whose wilting
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puce blooms are the same color and texture as Gertrude's lingerie. Gertrude
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pops a lemon drop, licks her chin, and begins to talk.
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"My grandparents came over on a boat from Bohemia. Once here, they set up
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a dressmaking shop. They did well. But the more money they made, the more
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they hated each other.
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"One day my grandfather withdrew all their savings, got drunk, and lost
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everything at the races. Hungover and broke, he tied a rock to his neck and
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drowned himself in six inches of pond water. My grandmother brought the rock
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home from the police station and put it on the mantlepiece in her front parlor,
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so she could thank it every morning."
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Cutaway to a single shot of a bustled woman sitting beside a hearth fire.
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She strokes the rock she holds in her lap, and hums.
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Scene 2: MOM ENTERS THE NEW AGE
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"Why does your mother spend so much time in the bathroom these days?"
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Gertrude asks Matilda as they watch the sunset from the porch.
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"She's trying to rejuvenate herself. The bathroom is her spa."
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Gertrude lights up a Kool, the sack of flesh on her good arm swaying.
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"I'd rather play pinochle," she says.
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"Yeah," says Matilda.
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Cutaway to several shots of a postmenopausal matron taking enemas by
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candlelight. She looks into the toilet to catch another glimpse of the past
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she just expelled - as if the swirl of flushing could foretell the reversal of
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her future. In the background, surrounded by crystals, a peach-colored
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cassette deck intones, "You alone have the power to create your own reality."
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Scene 3: NEXT DOOR WITH THE BRAUERS
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It has grown late. By yellow porch light, Matilda is reading aloud from
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INTERVIEW. Gertrude, smoking, looks out into the green dark.
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"Bill Brauer!" says Matilda, turning a page. "Wow. He used to live next
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door. I thought he was only good at lawn jobs. But he's a hot new painter."
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Matilda picks open a bug bite on her shank as she begins to read about
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Bill.
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Cutaway to years ago, next door.
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Bill is a wiry fifteen-year-old youth with stringy hair, bagged eyes, and
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knee-high suede moccasins into which he tucks his jeans. After positioning
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half of his sister Nancy's thirty plastic horse models in the stud-fuck stance
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atop the rumps of the other half, Bill opens all of the windows of the second
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floor sun porch, then sprinkles birdseed on its floors. When a good crop of
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pigeons has flown in to peck, Bill slides outside and closes the windows with a
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laundry hook. Then he run upstairs and shoots all the pigeons with a pellet
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gun. Meanwhile his twelve-year-old sister Nancy, clad in a leopard print
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bikini, hangs by her knees from a sycamore branch in the back yard and shrieks,
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"I'm adopted! I'm adopted! I know I'm adopted!" Oblivious, their mother,
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Cookie, sits at a vanity table in the grey light of her bedroom, slowly
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smearing on more coral lipstick.
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Scene 4: LILLY IN THE CITY
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"I got a postcard from Lilly today," says Matilda, putting down her
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magazine. "It was a picture of the Manhattan skyline. She wrote, 'I've
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started wearing white press-on fingernails and big gaudy rings.' I wonder what
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else she's doing up there. Here she was always on the verge of going to a
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Polynesian restaurant."
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Gertrude sips her Fresca and says, "She was named after my step-sister
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Lilly, a gun moll for Jelly Roll Eagan. Cats used to follow that woman
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everywhere. She died blind at ninety in stiletto heels and falsies, her
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bathroom wastebasket full of dye gloves. She hardly had any hair left, but
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what was left was red."
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Cutaway to a woman out on a fire escape, muttering curses to a sunken
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moon. Her red hair is a mess. She wears silk charmeuse, and an eyepatch. The
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camera tracks to the window, then focuses on the room inside, where a man in a
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muscle shirt erases each eye in every photo of that evening's newspaper.
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Scene 5: KOOLS
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Gertrude is snoring, so Matilda reaches over and filches a Kool from her
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gold lame' cigarette wallet. She snaps the smell of butane shut and draws hard
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on the butt. Closing her eyes, she remembers her days of smoking menthols.
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Cutaway to Matilda as an early teen, sauntering up the street to the
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pinball parlor - her hip hugger bell bottoms swishing the thick dusk, her
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halter top Egyptian, her belly button on qualudes... the coal of a Kool
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burnishing her copper eyeshadow. The soundtrack to her saunter is the wail of
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far off trains.
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Scene 6: THE END
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Matilda flicks the cigarette in a high arc out to the gutter. Gertrude
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still snores. Matilda sprays her with OFF and goes inside.
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_______________________________________________________________________________
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Behavior Modification.....806/793-9462 The Dead Zone.............214/522-5321
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Demon Roach Underground...806/794-4362 Dragonfire Private........609/424-2606
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Question Authority........715/341-6516 Pure Nihilism.............517/337-7319
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Tequila Willy's...........209/526-3194 The Metal AE..............201/879-6668
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===============================================================================
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1988 cDc communications by Suzy Rust 12/31/88-98
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All Rights Worth Shit
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