it's the first day of school. but not for these four. not really. the 4 members of the St. Cyril of Jerusalem Church & School Choir in Encino, California for 1985 through 2022 and beyond are: choir director Gerry, Laney, Harrison, and Ryan Kramer Stiles. Gerry wears an industrial long-sleeve blue shirt that matches his jeans and sports a scruffy beard and Deadhead hair. Laney is a BEAUTIFUL woman who wears the first-ever pantsuit-miniskirt in herstory and high heels to match to church. Harrison is insecure and sweating. and Ryan Stiles is Ryan Stiles from Whose Line Is It Anyway.
Laney: oh my GOD it is so GREAT that we can come back to St. Cyril's on Sept. 6 and not have to go to school. no more of those cramped desks with bubblegum underneath that got stuck sticky in my panties.
Harrison: i remember all that shit. the First Day of School gave me ABJECT FEAR, and hives. i was terrified of all the kids coming back bigger stronger and taller and making fun of me cos i hadn't experienced one growth spurt my whole life, i was still runty, small, tiny, fat, and bald in the 5th Grade.
Ryan Stiles: i liked school. i liked the black-tar asphalt jungle of the playground. i was tall even back then so i was the pole all the kids played volleyball around, i had to watch out for that string coiling around my neck.
Gerry: yeah well from now on we practice HERE, in this cute little alcove that looks like a Prince music video. it has stage lights at the glass bottom, blue-grey diamond tile all around for good acoustics, four ferns at the corners, and a waterfall in the back.
Laney clutching her forehead: PHEW!!! PERFECT for our 100-degree San Fernando Valley heat!!!
Father Navin meets with Shia LaBeouf in his study.
Shia: is this an exit interview? i'm used to those.
Navin: how you like my office? spiffy, aye?
Shia: it's bigger than my New York apartment. why is it that only YOU have the PlayStation 7 hooked up to your grand-screen TV?
Navin, as always, charms everyone in his parish with a few magic tricks.
Navin: i will make my finger separate from my hand.........SEE?
Shia: fuck that's awesome, only YOU do that buzzing whistling ZIP ZIZURP!!! noise when you do it that no other human can do.
Navin: my life goal is to become Monsignor Navin. so Shia, what brings you in here to see me today?
Shia: i'm a FUCKING MESS. my lifepath is going down a cliff.
Navin: we Californians know landslides well.
Shia: i've hurt so many people. even my mom who i think is the current sexiest woman in the world. i've hurt every single human being who has ever lived on this Earth and moon colony.
Navin: okay but why Catholicism? it's very weird for people to choose to become a CATHOLIC to change their life, to see the light, to finally get the answer. i mean this is L.A. in the entertainment quadrant, i see atheists all the time trying to convert back to their parents' Judaism to see if it clicks.
Shia: it's the Latin Mass, that got me, i'm all into that pageantry, it goes with my eccentric eclectic art lifestyle. the truth is.........i'm trying to find my brother.
at Midnight Msss Navin is at the altar with bubblegum under the slab.
Navin: is this considered very late or very early? at any rate there's only one person in the pews. whatever, i'll hold up this GIANT WAFER HOST which is a cream cracker that contains no cream. thank you for waiting for my arms to lower. and now let's flip to a random page in the Bible, wait while i lick my finger with my tongue. so, who wrote The Bible?
William Shakespeare stands up from his pew.
Shakespeare: i did.
James Webb Space Telescope at the Griffith Observatory: providing the pictures for future V A P O R W A V E albums for the next 100 years...
homebodies: the introverts of the 1980s
Martina Navratilova at the U.S Open: hi.
Mike Tyson wearing Nike: hi.
Martina: i'll keep the Cocker-Spaniel-dachshund dog, you keep the pigeon.
Laura Ranch-Hands horsebox parked in the church parking lot: not a Safeway sandwich. we're the film-noir horse therapy...
Frances Tiafoe: i love Serena Williams.........in fact i'm currently dating Skinny Serena Williams...
Pacific Grove Adult Education: school in a lighthouse
Monterey Herald at the Don's Plum kiosk: Democracy Dies in Darkness...
Sirjan at the travel bureau: why must a city always have "Things To Do"? why can't a city just BE?...
Susan Dey downtown: i look like Meg Ryan's mom...
Rob Schneider: I'M THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE WORLD.........that my last name was RIGHT AFTER Adam Sandler's last name...
Lorne Michaels on the Andrew Lloyd Webber stage: have you ever noticed that a lot of starlets, young Hollywood women, host SNL ONE MONTH AFTER they get married to their first husband in a marriage which will last only a year...
Michelle Ruff in a Confessional sound booth in Culver City: i mean i do like it rough but it's not cos i voice Fujiko...
grandparents on Grandparents' Day: we still remember Patriot Day...
there will be many funerals at St. Cyril's tonight. first up is Sulu the cat.
Navin: i don't know about you but i LOVE night funerals!!! the ATMOSPHERE of it all, right? i'm wearing my special green-purple robes for this one. well what can i say about Sulu? she was a fixture in this community, she attended Mass at a better rate than any of the losers i see in the rows now, you guys only come to church when there's a funeral!!!
Sulu pops open the lid of her small square coffin, jumps out, and exits the church into the sunlight. she returns a minute later as a white chicken meowing instead of clucking.
Navin: see? i always knew reincarnation was real.
Sulu: not with my head cut off this time!!! phew!!! i got a new head. a head that can hear. OH MY!!!
Gladyce and Doryce in the rectory under the heat-tent serve out donuts and coffee for the many parishioners.
Gladyce: why do we eat two cookies in the morning, dear? that was a very bad weird tradition to start.
Doryce: well don't we look smart in our Sunday best, dear!!! we're both wearing business suits and veils but i'm still barefoot not to be traditional, to be sexy. now that i think about it.........yeah you're right, we just started eating two cookies in the morning for breakfast.
Gladyce: but why two? one cookie each morning would suffice...
sucker branch in the church courtyard: the repo bank
Dr. Steven Gundry giving a lecture with a vibrato microphone on the church glass floor: this vibrator is shit. my WIFE Penny lives in Palm Springs, not me...
Dr. Gundry: GO NUTS EATING NUTS!!! no legumes tho. nothing non-Southern European...
Caroline Wozniacki: oh yeah i remember that, i ended Melanie Oudin's fairytale run at the U.S. Open...
Melanie Oudin: no YOU ENDED MY TENNIS CAREER!!!
Nick Annacone: i'm not Nick Cannon, stop sending me condom vending-machines...
Roman woman: it rhymes!!!
Roman woman squatting on the same patch of land as St. Cyril's Church but in Medieval times eating Roman Meal bread: ...
Roman woman with leaves in her hair: pre-flowers...
the Crossroads Carmel flags: we're at half-mast. not the American flag, just the Crossroads Carmel flags.........because we're still mourning the loss of McDonald's here in 1999...
Stephen King: yeah yeah, everybody has their first novel coming out soon on Kindle...
on Navin's TV in his smoke den: William & Harry live within spitting distance of each other at Frogmore.........as in there's just enough distance for the two grown men to spit in each other's faces...
Mer de Glace for the film festival: you can only see the inside of a glacier by skiing through it...
Liz Truss from the lectern: you can trust me. get on the bus. i can back that thang up...
Laertus: the stores at the Crossroads Carmel, those storefronts smell like Macy's but they're not Macy's so you don't have to max out your credit card.
Eye Luggage: but Crossroads has that outdoor fountain. the ONLY good thing about Macy's is the indoor fountain...
xeriscaping the church orange groves on the sides: the first lawn on Mars...
PBS Headquarters in Los Angeles: our ENTIRE MISSION STATEMENT is preventing another Holocaust from ever happening again.
fuel poverty with the church mice: Navin has done well here. there are windmills at St. Cyril's, solar panels on the roof. the first metropolitan house of worship in the world to employ solar in the '80s.
Father Navin's sermon: it was only logical. we've made St. Cyril's the Garden of Eden all over again, the Bible tells us to use what's all around us.........before roads, before buildings, before people fucked everything up.
Peridot from Steven Universe on the spiked church roof: periodt...
Don Miguel Ruiz in the Toltec church library: the 4th one, Do Your Best, very Japanese anime...
Orvis fishing pants for when it rains fish one time a year in L.A.: the Midas touch
honeybite: too much Honey Nut Cheerios around the neck at Dartmouth Ash Wednesday...
radical odyssey: when Coolio first discovered hip-hop...
Vincent van Gogh doing the Stations of the Cross: i don't need a girlfriend, i need a fuelfriend. oil paintings were simply the photographs of the 19th century.
Vincent van Gogh: btw, even in my wild imaginings as i ate a can of microwave Curry Heinz-Beanz beans in the purple can while inside a microwave, did i ever imagine i would have become THIS BIG...
the crew is holed up in the abandoned what used to be the K-8 grade school of St. Cyril's.
Eye Luggage: assemble!!! the school closed down because of budget cuts. shame. i remember this place. getting straight As was hard but grade school was fun, high school was a nightmare for me.
Dirg: i remember eating glue. but then i started eating rubber cement...
Eye: i remember the cubbyholes for shoes. that's where i stored my first pair of Doc Martens.
Mardith: i remember making a paper wreath of holes, that opened my eyes...
Laertus: i remember the silver pencil sharpener. if i hadn't chewed all those pencils with my teeth back then as a kid i wouldn't have had to endure 3 root canals as an adult, adulting gone wrong.
Mardith bends over to lick the water in the holy water font with her tongue like a cat.
Mardith: stoup soup. sip sip sip. hey is it just me or is this holy water Ranch Water?...
Destinos: ...
Eye Luggage: Author! Author! and go.
Andre Gregory: okay look i'm sick of this fucking thing, all this fucking shit, I am the ONLY GOOD PART of this entire STINKER of a film!!! i am THE FACE!!! this movie was BAD. you're lucky i did My Dinner with Andre RIGHT BEFORE this to give you guys a head start, some sort of fighting chance, some good pub before the box office. am i testy? am i irritable? do i always wear the same scratchy sweater? you're damn RIGHT i do. my haircut is impeccable. i exit the room stage left, leaving through the center aisle. i'm always exasperated because i'm a REAL THEATRE DIRECTOR, honey, not an Al Pacino!!!
Al Pacino: i hate you.
Arthur Hiller: i hate you. too.
Al Pacino: what happened between us?
Arthur Hiller: i don't get it. i directed Love Story, i was on a roll. i really thought this was gonna be a hit. i saw the first stills of you in a woman's T-shirt serving breakfast in bed and i said to myself WINNER. GOLDMINE.
Pacino: that was a woman's T-shirt?
Eye: this movie is completely ANTI-WOMAN.
Tuesday Weld: tell me about it. i have the greatest name ever. i was conceived on a Tuesday and i'm the daughter of a welder. i was born to play the lead in Flashdance...
Dyan Cannon: thanks for taking the wife role. women are either bitches or sluts in Hollywood. i was so tired of playing the bitch, i wanted to have fun for a change, i wanted to go on a cruise. in a cruise-liner boat, Norwegian Cruises, i wanted to learn other cultures, other languages, not to be a better whore, to be a better woman!!! not as a paramour, as a person. the New York City art scene, the only time Marilyn Monroe was accepted into that circle was when she was with that writer...
Laertus: can i just say before we get started, the script for this is SO STRAINED, SO STILTED, the dialogue is so painfully WOODEN. they try for all the jokes but none of them land. i don't know what happened.
Al Pacino: me mumbling my lines didn't help either. i was NOT into this from the start, you can tell.
Pacino: i mean i get that this your life. but were you ever in an orphanage? raising 8 kids from 8 different mothers?
Israel Horovitz: no. but this had to be a comedy, if this were a drama it would have been way too dark, TOO DANK.
Laertus: i'm getting major Kramer vs. Kramer vibes here...
Alan King: i look like someone who's about to sell you a tuna sandwich...
Richard Belzer: this was the start of my New York Life...
Yudie Bank: i play a complete stranger in Author! Author! - no, really, the name of my part is literally "Complete Stranger".
Pacino: i need to write a better second act? yeah i have notes. i have notes for the WHOLE PLAY. how is a man on a playwright's salary supposed to feed eight mouths in New York City? it's LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.
kids: fancy restaurants, McDonald's, it's all the same food to us.
Takahashi: see this just goes to show, you cannot make art ALONE. you cannot make art IN A VACUUM. art must be funded by THOUSANDS of people, the most important of which are the money people...
Pat Cash and Art Modell, the play's financiers, the investors, the backers: art cannot exist unless it's cashed by corporations...
Eric Bogosian: not cool, dude...
Pacino: what? i'm Travalian. i travel well. Armenians are cool. Armenians like Avo Babian show light and kindness to a tortured artist. i'm trying to be the opposite of a gangster here. i have no idea how to be a New York intellectual. why did we watch a Romanian movie instead of an Armenian movie?
Romanians: we have the better black comedies...
Bogosian: Angels in America, that's the play path you should have been on...
Igor: my name is Igor? i'm gonna get roughed up, these are public NYC schools we're talking about.
Max Kellerman: ...
Max: teased like tissue paper. but you have the nose of an Igor, you look like a cool troll, you look like Al Pacino...
Geraldo: poor kid, i was obviously named Geraldo cos the writer is a fan of talk shows at the time.
Pacino: see how i do that weird fake smile of mine? it's like it's halfhearted or something. will you do the play?
Dyan Cannon: yes. just let me drink two champagnes with my four Vanquish pills first.
Pacino: your name is Alice?
Dyan: yes, from Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice...
Pacino: what's the matter with you? why are you so irritable in the hallways this morning? i thought you made the cast of Saturday Night Live?
Denny Dillon: oh stuff it!!! yeah i made the cast but it's SNL Season 6!!!
Dyan: why are we dancing in the same ballroom as Last Tango in Paris?
Pacino: my boy Bob knows this kid named Marlon. so how was the sex? did i do a good job performing?
Dyan: i was dying, just kidding. you were pretty good. the sex with Cary Grant was.........complicated.
Pacino: kids, you got a new mom. help her move in.
kids: we had no idea wine came in boxes...
Pacino: did i forget to kill my kids? just kidding, mobster joke.
Dyan: oh just know that i can't eat birthday cake, okay? and i'm gonna forget where i live for the first month or so.........as a game.
orphans: we reserve the right to run away FROM EVERYWHERE AND ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME!!! being an orphan SUCKS!!! what's the point of divorce anyway? no one ever REALLY leaves...
B.J. Barie: i'm Spike. i've gotten knocked around 19 different families, no one wanted me, especially not my mom, but strangely Wade Boggs wanted me. i'm that kid with the shaggy hair and punk bluejeans vest you saw on Family Ties, remember? i was Mallory's motorcycle boyfriend as a boy. yeah i was probably on the Special Episode of Punky Brewster, too...
B.J. Barie: i collect only Fernando Valenzuela baseball cards...
Laertus: strong Mary Poppins vibes now...
play-director's girl assistant: you remember my face, don't you? i was on Facts of Life, probably. one of the girls at that all-girls school. Blair's roommate for that one episode, the Special Episode. i was a guest at Jo's wedding...
Dyan: you think he's gay? or bi?
Pacino: who, Richard Belzer? of Fame fame?
Richard Belzer: stagehands are sexy. stagehands like me are sexy. i'm not gay, i'm in love with Mariska Hargitay which is the same thing...
wife: how DARE you drag me over your back and carry me to the car like you're some Neanderthal or something!!!
Pacino: wifey please, don't make this harder than it has to be. this is the pinon of the movie, the standoff. don't you know i'm a secret Masshole? i got glaucoma in my eyes from being in Gloucester, that's how i act with my eyes. it's 100-below over here, there's ice everywhere, i'm shingling, and i forgot my snow boots.
wife: you need dock boots, you dick.
Pacino: Greyhound charges extra if it has to drive in water. how DARE you cheat on me with a seacliff painter. i'm a playwright and he's an outdoor painter, unforgivable.
wife: don't you know people can't change? you proved that during our marriage. i learned selfishness from YOU!!! all artists are self-absorbed. you interrupted my language class, i was trying to be the female professor from French In Action...
William Hurt and Marlee Matlin: ...
cops: we're detectives. we're in our pre-Law & Order police suits. we only eat church donuts in the '80s. hey what's that room down there in your basement?
Pacino: that room? that's where i keep my typewriter. and my landline phone for all the late-night booty calls i receive.
father with bullhorn: come off the roof and return my kids to me. they're saying it's a sexual-fetish thing with you.
Pacino: please, dad, don't make this any harder than it needs to be, this movie is bad enough already.
Pacino: all my stepchildren make me whole which is ironic if you think about it. okay let's see how my play did. let's get the fresh copy of the New York Times in the dead of night. thank you, i love when newspapers came in bundles, cut the string with the scissors in my backpocket...you should always carry around scissors when you walk the streets of New York City and...here we go, the paper says, i turn the crease of the page, i flip it forward and, it smells like ink and success...
New York Times review: the play "English with Tears" made us cry. in the bad way. Pacino should have written about his experience raising an orphanage, not whatever THIS was. a play about catching a taxi in London before a wordsmith gets it? we don't know. although this play IS better than the movie Author! Author!...
Laertus: Lou Grant vibes...
at John Cazale's funeral held at St. Cyril's, John Cazale gets out of his coffin...
John Cazale: i mean why the FUCK didn't i play Travolta's part in Pulp Fiction?...
Pacino: i don't get it, your eulogy for John Cazale here was the most beautiful thing you've ever written. it was heartfelt, sincere, meaningful, and summoning. why didn't you bring any of that energy to Author! Author!?
Israel Horovitz: i can do others' lives, not my life. g'night folks.
Sister Boniface hanging around the St. Cyril's lobby twirling Confessional-booth keys around her finger: this is where we make our stand, girls. come on, nuns!!! we're gonna SOLVE MYSTERIES HERE!!!
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