Casablanca was made, almost like Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series, to explain the war to Americans. It’s an allegory. Rick is isolationist America—“I stick my neck out for nobody”—until he does. In all things, even in love, he’s a businessman (“A frank for your thoughts.” “In America they’d bring only a penny.”), but when he sells his bar and Signor Ferrari wants Sam thrown in he says, “I don’t buy or sell human beings”—the very issue that was, to use Griffith’s phrase, the birth of the nation.
And each of the other men has an allegorical (which is to say one-to-one) meaning: the Gestapo major, the Czech underground leader, the Russian bartender—and Vichy France as a discarded bottle of water. The women on the other hand (are you listening girls?) are symbols, self-contradictory, bearing richer ranges of meaning. Yvonne may love Rick and flirt with the Russian and sleep with the German, but she’ll lead the Marseillaise passionately enough to get the bar closed.
Imagine the cheers from 1942 audiences: Major Strasser: Can you imagine us in London? Rick: When you get there, ask me. Major Strasser: How about New York? Rick: Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.
First key scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vThuwa5RZU.
And by the way, here’s my favorite version of the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FogmcygI3A&feature=related.
CHOCOLATE AND CHAMPAGNE, A Comedy with a Dark Center
Reg’d © Library of Congress
A Beverly Hills woman wakes up middle-aged and finds her life with a younger man undignified.
They're right for each other, and she regrets it immediately, but she can't take him back: her daughter Jackie, who idolizes and competes with her, tells her Jim has seduced her, and Diana believes it.
So she makes do with the respectable but empty new life she'd thought she needed—with older lawyer Griff.
Jim gives a driving lesson to frantic neurotic Betsy, who almost shoots them off a cliff. He calms her down and she takes him home. But he can't forget Diana.
Proposed cast: Jessica Lange (Diana)
Proposed cast: Matt Dillon (Jim)
This morning, though, even while he’s making love to her, she’s spooked. She tells him he has to go. She wants something more presentable, more—respectable—before it’s too late.
Which shocks him. He takes life as it comes, but this is a bit violent.
Proposed cast: Mira Sorvino (Betsy)
Proposed cast: Don Johnson (Griff)
Proposed cast: Blake Lively (Jackie)
Proposed cast: Alfie Allen (Dylan)
Proposed cast: Janet McTeer (Maria)
Proposed cast: Lena Olin (Gwen)
And the final character is Beverly Hills—
Reg’d © Library of Congress
T. S. Eliot:
"The soul is so far from being a monad that we have not only to interpret other souls to ourself but to interpret ourself to ourself."
Francois de La Rochefoucauld:
"All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones."
T. S. Eliot:
Gusto is no equivalent for taste; it depends too much upon the appetite and the digestion of the feeder.
I Like the Way You’re Thinking
My teacher caught me dreaming out the window.
She said, “Five birds are sitting on a fence
And you kill one with your slingshot—how many
Are left?” So “None,” I said. She shook her head:
“Four.” I shook mine: “The others fly away.”
“All right,” she said, “I like the way you’re thinking.”
“Three women eating ice cream cones,” I said.
“One licks, one sucks, one bites. Which one is married?”
She gave the other kids a patient look
And for the hundredth time I wondered who,
When she was not being devoured by
Our little eyes, had the having of her.
Was he, this prince of fortune, as aware
How apt her breasts were with the slightest movement
To manifest impatience with her bra?
“The one who sucks?” she said. “The one,” I said,
“With the ring. But I like the way you’re thinking.”
She said, “Five birds are sitting on a fence
And you kill one with your slingshot—how many
Are left?” So “None,” I said. She shook her head:
“Four.” I shook mine: “The others fly away.”
“All right,” she said, “I like the way you’re thinking.”
“Three women eating ice cream cones,” I said.
“One licks, one sucks, one bites. Which one is married?”
She gave the other kids a patient look
And for the hundredth time I wondered who,
When she was not being devoured by
Our little eyes, had the having of her.
Was he, this prince of fortune, as aware
How apt her breasts were with the slightest movement
To manifest impatience with her bra?
“The one who sucks?” she said. “The one,” I said,
“With the ring. But I like the way you’re thinking.”
T. S. Eliot:
There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been.
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been.
CHOCOLATE AND CHAMPAGNE, A Comedy with a Dark Center
A Beverly Hills woman wakes up middle-aged and finds her life with a younger man undignified.
The stage version was performed in New York at the Creative Place Theatre. Think of...
...only this is her movie, and she gets the younger guy.
Diana, a woman of a certain age, deals with a birthday by throwing out her younger live-in Jim.
They're right for each other, and she regrets it immediately, but she can't take him back: her daughter Jackie, who idolizes and competes with her, tells her Jim has seduced her, and Diana believes it.
So she makes do with the respectable but empty new life she'd thought she needed—with older lawyer Griff.
Jim gives a driving lesson to
frantic neurotic Betsy, who almost shoots them off a cliff. He
calms her down and she takes him home. But he can't forget Diana.
Proposed cast: Isabella Rossellini (Diana)
DIANA,
the Hamlet at the heart of this comedy, is a clothes designer with
a boutique on Rodeo Drive, a house in Beverly Hills, and a younger
lover, Jim, her kept man for two years now. There’s nothing she
can’t handle—except getting older.
Proposed cast: Ethan Hawke (Jim)
JIM
is happy with a champagne-and-sports-car life, but he’s also a
talented script-writer who’s postponing seriousness into a future that
never comes. Together they’re fast company. They must have been
brilliant at her birthday party last night.
This morning, though, even while he’s making love to her, she’s spooked. She tells him he has to go. She wants something more presentable, more—respectable—before it’s too late.
Which shocks him. He takes life as it comes, but this is a bit violent.
Proposed cast: Kathy Bates (Betsy)
BETSY,
the suicidal widow of a husband she drove to suicide, is too
scattered to pass a driving test, takes a lesson with Jim, spins the
car onto a Mulholland Drive cliff and is ready to gun it and
take him with her.
Proposed cast: John Goodman (Griff)
Diana's
lawyer GRIFF, more her age and on her success level, has been in
love with her for years. Now’s his chance. When Jackie tells Diana
the lie that Jim has seduced her Diana gives up on Jim and tries
to make a go of it with Griff.
Proposed cast: Adelaide Clemens (Jackie)
JACKIE,
Diana’s daughter, idolizes her and so misses no chance to pick at
and defy her. Inwardly shaky, she is outwardly impish and sexy.
She thinks she’s in love with Jim; in fact what she needs is a
father.
Proposed cast: Jacob Reynolds (Dylan)
Betsy's
son DYLAN—eccentric hair, psychotic eyes, twitches constantly and
rhythmically as if keeping time to music he doesn’t much enjoy—is
in the same class at UCLA with Jackie, over whom he moans
uncontrollably. He disgusts her.
Proposed cast: Rosie Perez (Maria)
MARIA,
Diana's housekeeper, is the deadpan foil to Diana's Hamlet, secret
ally to Jim, and the one person Diana doesn't dare defy.
Proposed cast: Pamela Shaw (Gwen)
And the final character is Beverly Hills—
—the tone, the climate, the village size and ambiance that make it inevitable for these people to collide.
The stage version of Chocolate and Champagne was produced by Love Creek at the Creative Place Theatre in New York.
Pretentious Pictures presents a comedy with a dark center.
They're right for each other, and she regrets it immediately, but she can't take him back: her daughter Jackie, who idolizes and competes with her, tells her Jim has seduced her, and Diana believes it.
Proposed cast: Isabella Rossellini (Diana)
Proposed cast: Ethan Hawke (Jim)
This morning, though, even while he’s making love to her, she’s spooked. She tells him he has to go. She wants something more presentable, more—respectable—before it’s too late.
Which shocks him. He takes life as it comes, but this is a bit violent.
Proposed cast: Kathy Bates (Betsy)
Proposed cast: John Goodman (Griff)
Proposed cast: Adelaide Clemens (Jackie)
Proposed cast: Jacob Reynolds (Dylan)
Proposed cast: Rosie Perez (Maria)
Proposed cast: Pamela Shaw (Gwen)
GWEN is Diana's mischievous best friend and alter-ego. She'll
take Jim if Diana doesn't want him! Just kidding. In an attempt to
bring them back together she throws a party and invites both of them,
but it turns into a confrontation....
And the final character is Beverly Hills—
Will You Please Fuck Off?—the movie
The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.—Salvador Dalí
Toby travels with a woman who pays. He's got it made, except that her nine-year-old daughter is smarter than he is. Based on the novella:
Toby travels with a woman who pays. He's got it made, except that her nine-year-old daughter is smarter than he is. Based on the novella:
Lazy,
good-for-nothing, pleasure-loving Toby, in flight from his creditors, has tried it as an English-teacher in Paris ("know-your-words
sort of thing") and as a tour guide in Italy and Greece ("I've always regarded Europe as more or less of a restaurant.")—
Proposed cast: Colin Firth (Toby)
Proposed cast: Colin Firth (Toby)
—and has now relaxed into the good life, traveling with rich American bubblehead Marcie,
to
Bali, Hydra, Puerto Vallerta, wherever he can avoid cold weather and
alarm clocks. Marcie is the widow of a scientific genius, now dead in
some wacko experiment, and her nine-year-old daughter by him, Andrea,
thinks in megabytes.
And
there's the rub: "Marcie is no smarter than anybody else; the child is
smarter than anybody else"—including Toby, who she treats as her
yo-yo. She'd have got rid of
him long ago but her mommy loves him, so she keeps him around to, what, play with.
Proposed cast: John Goodman (Haze)
Proposed cast: John Goodman (Haze)
Now
Haze has summoned Marcie and Andrea to London, so they can pose as a
family while he pretends to buy and old house, but in fact wants to
marry Marcie to Lord Michael, and pass the title on to Andrea.
Proposed cast: Scott Hinds (Lord Michael)
They distract Toby with Dr Lu, a hooker posing as a psychiatrist,
who lures him into compromising situations; one of which involves dropping his dry goods in front of the Queen.
Proposed cast: Mary Reynolds (HRH)
And as if he didn't have enough trouble, the house is haunted by a gay ghost who's in love with Toby.
Proposed cast: Mat Baynton (Oliphant)
Proposed cast: Mary Reynolds (HRH)
Proposed cast: Mat Baynton (Oliphant)
Will You Please Fuck Off? is part of the Toby series:
Pretentious Pictures presents a London comedy.
"La Cucaracha," Pancho Villa's marching song:
The little cockroach, the little cockroach,
She can no longer walk
Because she don't have, because she misses
Marijuana for to smoke.
La cucaracha, la cucaracha,
Ya no puede caminar
Porque no tiene, porque le falta
Marijuana pa' fumar.
She can no longer walk
Because she don't have, because she misses
Marijuana for to smoke.
La cucaracha, la cucaracha,
Ya no puede caminar
Porque no tiene, porque le falta
Marijuana pa' fumar.
T. S. Eliot:
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?
T. S. Eliot:
"Swinburne mastered his technique, which is a great deal, but he did not master it to the extent of being able to take liberties with it, which is everything."
Foreign Matter
Toby travels with a woman who pays. He's got it made, except that her nine-year-old daughter is smarter than he is. Based on the novel:
“A very, very funny book"—The West Coast Review of Books
“Enormously enjoyable”—Kirkus Reviews
“Fresh and spirited”—Publishers Weekly
Think of:
Proposed cast: Will Ferrell
Toby Tucker gets along as a tour guide,
though all he knows how to do is keep the clients amused. In Venice he
falls for rich bubble-head Marcie but can't afford her style. "To-bee! Let's just live on my money!" Well—it’s awkward but what can one say? He reclines into the good life.
Proposed cast: Leslie Mann
Marcie Harding, sweet, fresh, blonder
than blonde and all heart, is a lonely widow who takes a tour in
Venice. Toby abandons the tour to take her to Rome, and when he
runs out of cash is about to abandon her. He loves her more than he knows.
Proposed cast: Amber Liddicoat
But for Andrea, things would be
perfect. "The child." Toby and Marcie are no smarter than anybody
else; the child is smarter than anybody else. She'd have got rid of
him long ago but her mommy loves him, so she keeps him around to, how
shall I say, play with. When you’re not looking she rotates her head like Linda Blair.
Proposed cast: John Goodman
Marcie’s father-in-law, billionaire
Hazelton Turnbull “Hard Turd” Harding IV, loathes Toby, and loathes
giving Marcie her allowance to feed him. But he loves his little
granddaughter, and there lies the control.
When Haze spends Marcie’s money on a painting for the Harding Memorial Museum it looks like Toby's meal ticket is gone.
Proposed cast Pamela Shaw:
Proposed cast Pamela Shaw:
Johna Nerg is the butch-nightmare artist
whose painting Toby accidentally steps in, sits in and sets on fire.
He really doesn't mean it but she thinks, as who does not, that he's
trying to destroy it—and gets real mean with him.
He has no choice, finally, but to try to steal it. But until the child takes a hand, nothing works.
Light, charming, sophisticated, and the first of a series, each set in a new pleasure zone. Total Moisture, one of the sequels, is set in the south of France:
Foreign Matter is set in Venice and on a Greek island, and is available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Smashwords, and the usual places: Apple, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel—the whole street.
Pretentious Pictures presents a summer comedy.
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