STRANGER THAN PARADISE: CHOKING THE ALLIGATOR

 

Garbine Muguruza is standing outside her hotel in New York City after her U.S. Open match. she spots a handsome stranger next to her on the curb.

Garbine Muguruza: i'm noticing you. are you hailing a cab? i don't know how to hail a cab, i'm from Spain where there are only Catalan cabs that are forbidden except in Andorra.

Rick Moranis: oh yeah i know that man, the Star Wars guy.

Garbine: you like tennis?

Rick: is that a computer game? 

Garbine: do you want a selfie with me?

Rick: no, i don't understand computers. i'm so glad you arrived here and stood over me to protect me from getting mugged. you're quite the tall young lady. have you ever blocked the sun?

Garbine: that's a tennis concept, right? with a yellow tennis ball. or white tennis ball. or aqua-blue tennis ball. you're different, most men who are random fans on the street ask me how much money i make. Steffi Graf was my Bosom Buddies roommate in this building above my head for three years. you look familiar, were you in Star Wars?

Rick: Spaceballs, close enough.

Garbine: wanna get married? i'm at the perfect age to get married, 30.

Rick: um.........maybe. pronouncing your last name forms a cobweb in my mouth. what's your favorite movie?

Garbine: Jerry Maguire. do you like Jerry Maguire? 

Rick: the sequel was better than the original.

the three travelers walk onto a curvy path. suddenly Luke Russert stops in his tracks, puts down his backpack, and breaks down and cries ugly man-tears at the sight of all the HIGH sagebrush that has popped up along the trail over the summer.

me: are you okay, buddy? Luke, are you allergic?

Lindy Lenz: no, i think i know what's going on here. the sage obviously reminds him of his late father somehow. give him some time, we'll let him get all the water out of his eyes.

Luke Russert: it could take weeks.

Lindy: let's rest here, Indian-squat here and let's shoot the breeze.

me: in 2023? 

Lindy: sorry, i was thinking back to when i was a kid.

me: nostalgia is very attractive to me, my precious creature.

Lindy: say what?

me: i'm tinkering, trying different stuff out. you like it?

Lindy: huh.........i like it i like it. it takes some time to get used to but i'm warming to it.

Luke: so how do you do the groceries without a car?

me: dunno but i'm sure it involves your backpack.

Lindy: bingo. Luke's backpack is one of the 8 grocery bags you take back home with you on your bike... 

Luke arrives back at the Disneyland Candy Shop. his server today is Ingrid.

Ingrid: don't let the two BROAD blonde ponytails and the tiny Viking helmet and the big tits in the steel brassiere fool you, i'm actually 70 years old. i have 7 children.

Luke: you clean up good, lady. must be my Lucky California day. you remind me of my mother. 

Ingrid: you see? you missed it again, it's the 100 Years Of WONDER Cereal.

Luke: i know and i am sad. what does it taste like? who's on the cover of the box? 

Ingrid: the white chick from Frozen. white-haired chick. that annoying slim wood Tom Hanks cowboy. and the blue gremlin from Hawaii. i know these things, i have 7 kids.

Mickey Mouse: don't worry, my apostle, you won't have to eat diamonds this time. when you put it in milk the diamonds turn to MAGIC.

Luke: omg this cereal actually tastes GOOD this time. it tastes SWEET, not like that cake-pop cereal which was soft and mushy and malky and disgusting, tasted like papier-mache. i'm gonna drink all the milk in my bowl this time. oh those pretty colors!!! red, blue, purple Mickey-ears bites.

Gladyce grocerying: yeah it's that thing, you know? when you have to get EVERY FLAVOR of an item. i walked to this place 4 TIMES IN ONE DAY because i had to sniff all four varieties of trash bag. lemon, fresh, lavender, and Odor Control the only one with the handles instead of the drawstring. it's the little things in life that make you complete like a multivitamin, that keep you whole like whole milk.

 

Mickey Mouse: i'm wearing the Silver Glove. i'm wearing the red glittery rhinestone diamond jacket. the only thing i'm missing is the hair.

Michael Jackson: easy, you rat wannabe. put some of this Sheryl Crow hairspray in your ears, they'll fall down and collapse into my frizzy hair. 

Mickey Mouse: like when you fell off that stage when your hair caught on fire because God, a known Coke lover, thunderbolted your ass.

Suzy Lu and Kakashi are on food holiday researching their youtube-wedding feast.

Kakashi: what are we doing here, pet? i want to go to the beach to catch some rays.

Suzy Lu: your beach bod has more muscles than Mr. Clean. 

Kakashi: my body is LITERALLY my temple. but i still wear my mask on the sand. because of the Sand Ninja.

Suzy Lu: i hear this place has great adobo kraken. remember what to do when you enter the restaurant?

Kakashi: yeah but it's weird. i'm to kick this guy with glasses in the teeth. 

they enter the 5-star restaurant. which is actually the PBS studios of America's Test Kitchen in San Francisco.

the chef comes out through the swinging doors and lasers in on Suzy's tits with his hands in the air.

chef: hungry, bitch?

Suzy Lu: NOW, KAKASHI, NOW!!!

Darya Folsom: fulsome indeed...

serenity deck: you must listen to the Calm App on one of these or it doesn't work...

Yu-Gi-Oh: ...

Frank Costanza: what's a yugioh?

Doryce: allergic itch? that's me on Thursdays when i don't find a second chance at love at my age hanging out with the Pope on Panther Beach. blacksmith more rings!!!

Doryce: Cadgwith? a green lush hobbit towne to place your Cadgwith vadge into and mess about in the warm sensation of ivy in your cooter.

Ghost Adventures: Lake of Death: this is how the band Live gets back together.........and Linkin Park...

flapdragon: how Shakespeare got drunk.

Tenino: the only high school where the track stars get faster times after downing 10 beer cans.

Boc in Lacoste short shorts with the trim: ...

Joe Downing: 11 cans of beer for me. don't make fun of me or i'll pound you to a pulp. Katie Newcom would have been mine if i hadn't eaten eggplant the night of the big game.

Kate Newcom: yeah i'm just not into dirty blond curly hair on men.

Jeff Spicoli: i'm glad Al Bundy didn't catch that football. i'm glad he threw it into the stands. i don't want Al Bundy being my father. if you dissect Fast Times at Ridgemont High, you'll see that it's only one scene...

Hiawatha: why are you palefaces so fucking foolish? what is WRONG with you people?

Melissa Bell: the whale spy story on CNN. it was so shocking my hair turned white the color of the beluga whale in solidarity, it's a sympathetic-injury sort of thing.

Eye Luggage: Stranger Than Paradise and go.

Eye Luggage: Stranger Than Paradise, it's just.........a very AWKWARD concept. you know? it gets stranger and more surreal the more you think about this concept.........what does stranger than paradise mean?...

Jean-Paul Sartre: my mind is BLOWN into a thousand rainbows. i NEVER became a Christian at the last moment on my deathbed, that was all for show, to heighten the dramatic tension...

Eye: this film title is very GOTH, i love it.

Jim Jarmusch: *palm up* i'm not gonna talk much, i'm gonna let the film do my talking. please, no more inane questions from the paparazzi, my twin-spirit and fellow black-and-whiter indie Indian friend Spike Lee is staying with me at my loft this weekend, i'm comforting him, he lost his stalwart of a father, the jazz musician who was a better artist than Spike. 

Spike Lee: my dad was my teacher.

Jim: give us some room, you camera maggots.

Jim: Stranger Than Paradise HAD to be in black-and-white. it had to be SEEN IN BLACK AND WHITE. it simply COULDN'T BE SEEN IN COLOR. 

Jim Jarmusch: everyone thinks i did 200 Cigarettes.........but i didn't.

Laertus's dad: i firmly believed i had seen my first Jarmusch film at Berkeley. which was 200 Cigarettes.

Christina Ricci: did everyone like my accent in that movie?

Natasha Lyonne: i did. only i did. suck on 400 more nicotine sticks, Tina Ricci you Long Island wench.

Jim Jarmusch: i am the vanguard of the New Age of American independent cinema. stark. dark. stripped-down. bare. vital. me and Spike. Spike and i obviously were classmates at NYU and all of these early films of ours are actually our Final Grade Theses to pass our graduate classes. 

Spike Lee: all art comes from teachers.

Jim: now THAT homework was FUN to do...

Jim: 1984 was a VERY GOOD YEAR...

John Lurie: if you do anything pay attention to my jazz stuff, not my painting. my wailing saxophone. my sax isn't sexy it's gritty. a life of Lyme. are you my stalker?

Richard Edson: no.

John: see this is a confusing movie because the two male leads LOOK EXACTLY ALIKE. i literally have a doppelganger stalker.

Richard: how's Jill Goodwin?

John: HOW DO YOU KNOW JILL?!!! sorry i'm either paranoid or it's the effects of the chronic Lyme disease. she's fine. she's still around. but she's leaving on a safari with her aunt Jane Goodall to study the chimpanzees now that it's the 1980s. this safari will take a lifetime...

Eszter Balint: i'm a hot babe.........but it's more that i was YOUNG at the time, you know? i am not a computer game, i am quite REAL. i can assure you i'm real. let's face it, i was only hired for this because i'm Hungarian.

Richard: Balint, that would make a cool band name.

Eszter: yeah, like Lindt chocolate balls. not cake balls. the kids at school made fun of me, called me Blintz Blimp even though i was skinny. yeah, an orchestra, a one-woman orchestra, just me on my violin!!!

John: see? all of us musicians were ACTORS IN DISGUISE for this project!!! that's why the acting came out so natural. we had no idea what we were doing, what we were talking about at any given time, it was all ad-libbed improv in real time on the spot.

Jim: script? what script? i only worked on this script during my 20 college years...

Jim: speaking of, do you like the music in this film? it's not a documentary, it's a real film. a real art film. a long indie short perfect for PBS. do you like the haunting background music? the spooky sounds, the spooky soundtrack. it's bleak and mechanical, pre-industrial to match all the factory smokestacks. i combined Spike Lee's father's jazz trumpet and haunting horn with Eraserhead music...

Jim Jarmusch: i kind of look like Eraserhead in real life...

Bill Lee: my son said it was okay to lounge on the brownstone stoop of the Sesame Street House...

Jim: how's the chronic Lyme disease now?

John: chronic.

Jim: have you tried alternative medicines?

John: that New Age shit?

Jim: i'm Mr. New Age, baby!!!

John: so how was it being the drummer for Sonic Youth?

Richard: i don't remember any of that time period. but i loved them, they were cool people to be with, they all wore the same one pair of grey skateboard sneakers. the only thing i remember was Kim Gordon saying she wanted to be Courtney Love With Depth...

Jim: no coverage, that's awesome for me. SO MUCH LESS WORK. every film-school director should do this, it saves on time. every single-person auteur with an iphone for their camera just needs to film the ONE SCENE WITH THE TWO PEOPLE TALKING, no time for backgrounds...

Eszter: or 360 around-the-world swirls...

Jim: we do the around-the-worlds at the after-party.........in the edit bay...

Willie: you never see the dograces.

Greykid: and thank god for that, no animals were harmed in the making of this picture.

Willie: i had a porkpie hat on because i should have been private-investigating my black soul.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins; "I Put a Spell on You", that set you back.

Jim: yep, the ENTIRE budget down the drain for your copyrights. and you're not even on the soundtrack!!! 

Screamin' Jay: everyone thinks i'm shouting but this is my normal speaking voice. nobody ever listened to me before. in real life i'm a werewolf fit up in Michael Jackson's finest opera finery. not a clothed jaybird at the Oprah Winfrey Show. 

Wille: speak ENGLISH. not Hungarian.

Eva: why? this is America.

Eva: what cartoon is this?

Willie: the Bugs Bunny one with the talking dog. what if dogs can talk? i'm rethinking my dogracing "career."

Eva: do they sell Chesterfields in Cleveland?

LeBron: does the pope smoke in the woods?

 

Willie: in America we call passing the vacuum choking the alligator.

Eva: yeah right, thanks. i'm not stupid, you know. and it should be choking the crocodile for alligator alliteration. hey at least you're not saying all women in America do the vacuuming bottomless or topless but not both like in Working Girl. in Hungary my chocolate violin stands for my pussy, you American moron.

Billie Joe Armstrong: American idiots like me perform cameos at shows where Green Day cover bands are unsuspecting. but only in Europe because we gotta get our image up there.

Willie: what what? what's all the fuss? the vacuum looks like an alligator is all.

Eva: when you said you were "playing solitaire" i honestly thought you were going to masturbate in front of me. but here you are actually with Solitaire playing cards.

Eddie: i have a crush on your cousin.

Willie: good. she's my cousin, not my sister. the plan the whole time was to make you my best man and my in-law.

Eddie: my nickname in college was Fast Money because i always got the line right.

Willie: you did NOT go to college. you did not go to high school. my middle name is Loman, i'm gonna have a depressing life from the start.

Eva: i don't get this American football, your game, why doesn't the offense AND defense go on the field at the same time and vie for the ball?

Willie: you're onto something, that WOULD make for a better sport, make it Powerball from American Gladiators. you like late-night sci-fi movies?

Eva: yeah, Eraserhead and Teen Wolf. the ones where a girl can ride a raygun transporter out of the dingy apartment she's trapped in and go to Cleveland.

Eva: what are TV dinners?

Willie: the food appears AFTER you've watched the 30-minute sitcom TV show.

Willie: put on this dress i bought for you, wear it ONCE, then throw it away in the garbage can outside by the bricks below the fire escape.

Eva: why?

Willie: i'm recreating the scene from West Side Story.

at the poker game.

Eddie: i'm scared, Willie.

Willie: stay cool, man, that's the thing with cheating, cheating is IMPOSSIBLE to prove, cheating is such a nebulous concept. don't worry about the hothead with the glasses, he's a New York City performance street artist. 

Pauline Kael: we only see the dingy side of New York. all the dingy streets and the dingy buildings. imagine if there was a scene with Eva on top of the dingy Empire State Building looking out through a dingy telescope, that would have been so cliche...

 

the small-time hustlers arrive in Cleveland.

Eddie: that's the thing, Willie, no matter where you go in this world, IT ALL LOOKS THE SAME.

Jim: this is the profoundest line in the piece. think about it, it's so true.........take a minute to really think about it. there's no escape, there's no traveling to the NEW THING. New Delhi looks exactly like Watts. Paris is the same as Pleasanton...

Laertus's dad: you know this is a fantasy of mine, going to your favorite local greasy spoon in the snow and the babe of the waitress there is someone you know. that's comforting on so many levels. reminds me of the gyro front on Gilmore Street. except my waitress was a fat sweaty Greek guy with a greasy apron.

 

Willie: wait, you already have a boyfriend after ONE DAY in Cleveland? how?

Eva: look at me.

Willie: want us to dump him in the Cleveland River for you?

Eva: that is such a touristy thing to do.

Cecillia Stark: I AM THE STAR OF THIS MOVIE. know why? none of the stuff i say is IN THE SCRIPT. all of my clever sayings i say off the top of my head. why am i not on Game of Thrones with my name and thick Hungarian accent? WHY ARE YOU KIDNAPPING HER?!!!

Eva: it's not kidnapping if you KNOW the person, Aunt Lotte...

Lotte: and how do i know he's really related to you? just cos he drinks milk like us? he's a stranger who knocked on my porch door asking for TheraFlu...

Willie: we're all gonna die. we're all gonna be buried in this frozen lake here. what's the point of life?

Eva: for all three of us to put our feet into ONE PAIR of Air Jordans.

Mr. Kotter: Gabe Kotter here, i mean Gabe Kaplan, whatever, doesn't matter. LOOK AT THAT SLIDE-OUT BED IN THE MOTEL!!! the bed literally slides out of the nightstand. that is the grooviest coolest raddest bed EVER. Julie and i slept on a bed like that when we lived together. the sex was thin.

Julie Kotter: i am so skinny i can slide back into the nightstand while still on the bed mattress.

Eva: me, too. we should have done that instead of me putting my head down in the car so you didn't have to pay for three. 

Rammellzee: i just invented Vaporwave in the '80s.........i don't need the dust game anymore. want some dust? want the rest of my dust?

Eva: no i'll just take the cash.

Jim: did you see the other woman with the hat who was switcheroo'd? that's my future wife Sara Driver. it's nice when your partner helps you to do what you do, huh.

Dana Scully at your graduation: remember, follow YOUR dreams, not your boyfriend's dreams...

Mardith: but that fancy wide-brimmed straw HAT!!! where on earth did you get that hat?!!! that hat is the most important piece in all this!!!

Eva: from Stevie Luffy Audrey Hepburn Nicks. not from the Disneyland Candy Store.

Laertus: okay i wasn't expecting laughs from this but this scene is HILARIOUS!!! the Eva-Sara Driver double-take, i'm peeing my laughter.

Willie: i told you, Eddie, HORSES, not dogs. 

Eddie: i know, i told you. bet on Mage i said.........does anyone remember Mage? Mage has already been completely forgotten. 

 

Willie: so i talked with the airline agent.

Eddie: was he cool?

Willie: yeah, he's the guitarist from Rage Against the Machine...

Willie: this bitch really messed up my whole life.

Eddie: Willie, i think you're in love with your own cousin.

Willie: why does this airport only sell one-way tickets?...

Willie: why, Eva, why?

Eva: what can i tell ya, a woman can take you to another universe. and sometimes she just leaves you there.

Willie: and apparently my universe is Budapest. i'm an American, i don't wanna go to Europe...

Jim Jarmusch: what does it all mean?

Eszter Balint: it all goes back to the hat, the hat is the SYMBOL here. see how she's rubbing the brim of the sunhat? that's where she keeps the money. she's gonna be a drug dealer from now on for petty cash. this was all an elaborate scheme to get rid of Willie so Eva and Eddie could be together.

Eddie: good cos i thought i had just lost my two best friends. i thought i had lost the only family tethering me to this world. i won't be alone forever.

Eva: and we get Willie's apartment to start a family!!! g'night folks.