Snuff Movie
(A One-Act Play)
By Len Schweitzer
Copyright 2012 Len Schweitzer
Published by Black Bay Books at Smashwords
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Foreword
Snuff
Movie
About
the Author
Snuff Movie
began as a short story sent to The Paris Review. On the
rejection slip was a personal message from one reader, saying it
reminded him of "got a cobra snake for a necktie,"
referring to the song "Who Do You Love." Since the
narrative was in the first person, it became an early mad monologue
by one of the main characters, Czarda. His name, I believe, is
Hungarian for "dance." In Miami I remember a Hungarian
restaurant called "Czarda's."
At the time I was living in the upper rooms of a windy old house in Quincy, Florida. Tall windows allowed me grand vistas for the good of my soul and imagination. One evening while writing I was interrupted by two beautiful women with golden hair. They were Mormon missionaries. I invited them in, being lonesome. They noticed the pyramid of empty beer cans and smiled. Their story was incredible. The anthropologist in me led me to learn more, much more, and so my character Sister Snow germinated.
In Tallahassee, Florida, there was a group called Playwrights Theatre. It staged either a full-length play or two one-acts each weekend in a beerhall called Tommy's Deep South. One play would be cutting edge Off-Broadway. The one-acts were locally written. I sat through House of Blue Leaves and then sauntered up to the bar where the dramaturge was holding court. I handed him my script and left with a friend.
Within a week I was assigned a director. Bob Van Dusen. We auditioned, went into rehearsal, and saw Snuff Movie staged not long after. The place was packed, being a beerhall. The audience applauded and cheered and the little moment of glory was reviewed favorably by Steve Dollar, then drama-music critic for the Florida Flambeau at FSU. Overture music was Laurie Anderson's "Oh Superman!"
This was all circa 1983. The script has lain in yellowing files since then. I cannot explain the dementia that prevented me from advancing it. Here it is now, edited for the better I hope, in the age of Facebook and Kindle!
CAST
KLEIN
SNOW
CRABBE
CZARDA
Two
DEPUTIES
PLACE
A small town in the South in the early 1980s.
An upstairs apartment with two doors leading onto an L-shaped porch deck. During the play KLEIN uses the deck as he films actions inside the apartment. Books are stacked everywhere. The sleeping area is a futon with India bedspreads. The reception area is the walkspace around a sofa and a walnut table littered with items needed by a writer. An Olivetti portable typewriter is centerpiece. A glass chimney lantern burns at low ebb.
Night.
KLEIN is inside the apartment the apartment, standing at the window. He exhales smoke and clicks on a portable tape recorder with a long microphone cord. The book he picks up is clearly something by Ezra Pound.
KLEIN is an athletic man, thirty-ish, wearing a black tee-shirt and blue denim jeans. His hairdo is shaggy and cut flat on top, tagged by hipsters as a "mullet." He is a nervous chain-smoker.
KLEIN: (recording) A swollen Li Po moon rises over this Florida town of white pine houses and dappled lanes of kudzu, azalea, oak, and pecan. (sits and tosses the book aside) This is Paul Czarda's apartment. He's a romantic kind of fool who would embrace the moon reflected in a river and drown. Heh. A drunk, that's what he is. I've been following him for years, on and off. Since Vietnam. Oh, there have been other adventures and interludes, taking me to far-flung hotspots around the world. Assignments to Kabul and Beirut, Jonestown and Belfast. I'm Mark Klein. Newsman, film-maker. (picks up a 16mm movie camera) I don't know if you remember Mondo Cane. A documentary. Came out, mmm, twenty years ago. It was great, absolutely great. My folks were grossed-out. To be sure. They said it was pointless. Made merely to shock people. It was. But it got me started. (loads camera) I was fifteen. Yeah, we were in the car, coming home from the theatre and eating ice-cream cones, when I blurted out, Hey, Mom, hey, Dad, I want a movie camera for Christmas, huh, maybe later, for my birthday, what do you say? Well, shit. that shocked them more than the movie did! (lights a cigarette) By the time I was eighteen I was hanging out in New York. Learning the trade. Cinematography. I knew who to meet. Artists like Emile de Antonio and Paul Morrissey. I was at the Warhol party where Jim Morrison paid tribute to Jimi Hendrix by sucking his cock. Hey! Rock and roll! I heard people talking about me. I knew how to manipulate light and sound. But I had no balls. Baby, it takes balls to make a documentary. Because you are governed by causality. The only way to re-direct your scenario is to step onto the stage. It is like being God. You can say, "que sera, sera." OR you can be a great director. Seriously. In Mondo Cane a large turtle emerges from the sea., clambers ashore, deposits her eggs, and covers them with sand. Then it is time for her to return to the sea. But she mistakenly clambers upward toward dry land. Toward certain death. And you begin to worry. Will the film crew save her? Or will the bastards let her die?
Sound of an approaching car. Engine revved and cut. Two doors slam. KLEIN takes his gear and finds a spot for suitable filming.
Ferocious knocking at the door.
KLEIN (aiming camera): Balls, baby. balls!
CRABBE: Hey, in there! Open up. I'll kick this goddamn door apart!
SNOW (offstage): Don't.
CRABBE (offstage): What do you mean, don't? Look. The light is on inside. He's home.
SNOW (offstage): Don't make such a racket. I know where he keeps a key hidden here.
CRABBE (offstage): Might have known.
They enter the apartment.
CRABBE is a huge, ruddy man, fifty-ish, wearing cowboy duds and mirror-shades, pistol and a belt with a badge fastened to it.
SNOW is a beautiful woman, thirty-ish. The eternal preppie, she has an astonishing neatness. Trim blouse and skirt. Blond, blue-eyed, golden girl.
Lighting shows CZARDA collapsed upon the sofa, arms covering his eyes. A bottle of whiskey on the floor nearby.
They approach CZARDA.
CRABBE: Look at the son of a bitch. Some Mormon.
SNOW grasps CZARDA'S shoulder and gently shakes him.
SNOW: Paul. Paul. Wake up.
CRABBE: Wake up!
CZARDA raises his head. Clears the cobwebs.
CZARDA is a gaunt young-old man with strong Eastern European facial lines (strong cheekbones) framed by thick black hair, gray at the temples. Magyar and Turk bloodlines. A terrycloth sweatband around his head gives him the menacing mystique of a Hollywood Apache. Blue chambray shirt and desert corduroy trousers. Barefoot.
CZARDA: Well, hello, Sheriff. (shocked to see SNOW) Sister Snow. Glad you both came by. Here. (to CRABBE) Have a seat and park your gun. Sit down. Sit down.
CRABBE: I don't want to sit down.
SNOW: Oh, Paul. Be serious.
CZARDA: OK then.
CRABBE: Do you know a Lisa Bradbury? Daughter of Amos Bradbury?
CZARDA: Sure.
CRABBE: In what way? (impatiently) Yes. Yes. You have the right to remain silent.
CZARDA: She delivers my newspaper.
CRABBE: Lisa has been missing for three days. Talk is you have something to do with it.
CZARDA: Talk, talk. Well, go ahead. Look around. Tell me if you find her. (goes to the window) Whew! Hot night. Colors seem to mushroom.
CRABBE: The girl said you were a poet.
CZARDA: Everbody thinks I'm a poet.
SNOW: Or just well-read.
CZARDA: Closer to the truth. (facing SNOW) Maybe she ran off with some—oh, I don't know—some drug-dealer in a van. (facing CRABBE) Go on, search. You won't find her here.
CRABBE: Drug-dealer in a van, eh? She was pretty impressionable, you agree.
CZARDA: One time I told her that people in old Pompeii had gardens in their houses and that they watched the plants like we watch TV. The next day she was watering the fern on my porch and calling it "The Hill Street Blues." Yeah, I'd say she was impressionable.
CRABBE (to SNOW): You getting all this?
CZARDA: Yes, Sister Snow. What brings you here at this hour of the evening? Is this a social call?
CRABBE: She was working late. I'm taking her home.
CZARDA: But you decided to stop here first.
CRABBE: Evidently.
CZARDA: Well. (looks at SNOW) I can offer the both of you some top-drawer entertainment.
SNOW: Paul, be serious.
CZARDA: You're always saying that.
CRABBE: I believe she wishes to help you.
CZARDA: Help me? How is that, Sister Snow?
SNOW: I—oh, what's the use?
CZARDA (at the window): Have you ever noticed the way a hot night carries the light in such a wild primitive way? Fluid and sinewy. Like the logo for Coca-Cola.
SNOW: Stop this silly prattle. You're only making things worse.
CRABBE: I'll take it from here.
CZARDA: It goes—with—leather fetishes. And rebel yells among tombstones. Out there a bowman stalks the sky.
CRABBE: What the hell?
SNOW: (joining CZARDA at the window, grasps his arm.) Paul, she was only thirteen. The whole county is in an uproar.
CZARDA: From here during the day I can't see that red stop-light down by the school. But I can see it now. Clearly, through the magnolias. Blink. Blink. It mesmerizes me. And those magnolias! Why—their buds look like—little monkey skulls. Made of wax!
CRABBE: Lisa's school. Jesus Christ in a sidecar!
CZARDA (triumphant): Ho! You think I'm crazy. Nah-nah-no.
CRABBE: Zarduh. That's a funny name. Where're you from? Originally.
CZARDA: Possibly California.
CRABBE: You're not crazy. You're a fucking airhead.
CZARDA: Out here. On the periphery. We are stoned. Immaculate.
CRABBE: Cut the Morrison act.
CZARDA (begining to pace): I—haven't seen Lisa Bradbury since she—joined the lettuce boycott. Did you know that lettuce is an herb? An herb! Naturally it has herbal essence. (CRABBE stares blankly at CZARDA as if he were a bug.) Uh—small joke.
SNOW (clears her throat.): Paul. I must speak to you alone.
CZARDA: Well, then. You should have come here alone.
SNOW: Lisa Bradbury said around town—she had sex with you.
CZARDA: Well, let me tell you. She pulled down her britches every time she came up the stairs outside. Wind blowing through her pussy! All the way naked by the time she came through the door. Can you picture that?
CRABBE: Wha-at did you say?
CZARDA: Truth is, I haven't seen her in a week. You need to check with Amos Bradbury.
CRABBE: I have! Grilled him for over an hour.
CZARDA: Do you know he beat her black and blue every time he got drunk? And called her the town cunt? That he raved how God punished sluts?
CRABBE: This I do not know!
CZARDA: Did ol' godfearing Amos send you after me?
CRABBE: Matter of fact, no. A guy named Klein did. Some kind of New York reporter. Been hounding me all day. He even took my secretary here out to lunch. Until then you were pretty low on my list.
CZARDA: (facing SNOW) Helen?
CRABBE: I figured you for a guy with smarts.
CZARDA: Klein? Mark Klein? What did he tell you?
CRABBE: He knew you in Vietnam. He said you had this pathology for knives. Thinks you're another Ted Bundy.
CZARDA: A Ted Bundy? Oh, that's rich! Now I have a pathology for biting dead girls.
SNOW (nervously, for CRABBE's benefit): You were in jail for stabbing someone.
CZARDA: Fucking LBJ.
CRABBE: President Johnson?
CZARDA: No, man. LBJ was what we called the Long Binh Jail. That was where I met Klein. He was doing a documentary and he decided I was the most—erudite prisoner in the joint. We did this Jean-Luc Goddard kind of thing, with me talking about free-will and responsibility, shit like that. He went ape when I said I wanted to stroll into a ritzy Saigon bar and shoot any dude with a Nikon. Especially if he looked like Alain Delon. Fucking Frog journalists. Then I got into a rap about French Colonialism and how Uncle Ho fought the Japs and then begged America to help him fight the old system—
CRABBE: You've lost me.
CZARDA: Well, Klein seemed to think I was ate up with Kulchur. In a single breath I could pontificate on abstract art and philosophy and their application during war. Ach! We were Nietzschean demigods with a license to do anything! Anything! Understand? You don't understand.
CRABBE: I think I do.
CZARDA: We swaggered through the feces of two civilizations. Scared out of our wits. Yet still conscious of our freedom. Our profound existential freedom.
CRABBE: You would kill somebody for the hell of it.
CZARDA: Me? Me, personally?
CRABBE: You. You would shoot someone for having a fancy camera. You said so.
CZARDA: Don't take me for Leopold and Loeb.
CRABBE: There you go again. Being what? Erudite.
CZARDA: Leopold and Loeb were notorious thrill-killers. Juiced on Nietzsche. They played at being God.
CRABBE: I think you're just like them. You'd kill somebody for the hell of it.
CZARDA: You're brighter than you look.
CRABBE: Doctor Spock's TV Generation babies, all grown up, with a war for a sandbox.
CZARDA: Oh fuck you!
CRABBE: Well, tell me about this Klein.
CZARDA: Oh we had great talks. Klein and me. (pauses) He admired Norman Mailer enormously. And Mailer had made this dinky-dau film called Maidstone. Real cinema-verite. A home-movie really. Bunch of friends got together with a script. Hah! That went to hell. The idea was to just let it happen. Let it all hang out. Rip Torn attacks Mailer and they go to brawling. Crazy shit but you can't stop watching.
CRABBE (objectively): Fascinating.
CZARDA: Klein thought so. He thought it was great. Then he asked me about snuff movies.
CRABBE: Huh?
CZARDA: Snuff movies. They actually show somebody getting killed. Snuffed. I doubt they exist. But you never know. Anything's possible. Klein was really interested in them.
CRABBE: Weird.
CZARDA: I thought so too. Here was this god-awful war going on and this New York kinko was gabbing about staging a snuff scene in some fucking studio! I told him that if he wanted to film somebody getting snuffed, wasted, dusted, greased, or whatever, then he should boogie out on the next search and destroy mission. Wouldn't have to stage a thing.
CRABBE: He wanted to make one of those movies?
CZARDA: YES! I'm telling you. He probably still does.
CRABBE: Miz Snow, what did Mister Klein discuss with you?
SNOW: Oh. Things.
CRABBE: He pumped you.
SNOW (blushing): No, not at all. We just. We just talked. About places we had been to.
CZARDA (to CRABBE): Shit. Do you hear that?
CRABBE: Yeah. Something is going on. (looks at SNOW and then addresses CZARDA) Say, feller, how about a slam of that booze?
CZARDA: Sure thing.
CRABBE twists off the cap and begins to drink.
SNOW: I wish you wouldn't.
CRABBE: Now, Mizz Snow. This is a social call. Isn't it?
CZARDA: Sheriff, aren't you the least bit puzzled about Klein's interest in Helen here?
CRABBE: No. Should I be? (admires the bottle) You know, Zar-duh, for a Mormon you have a hell of a lot of vices.
CZARDA: Ask her about it.
SNOW is annoyed. She turns on the radio. Then she picks up a magazine here, a book there. Meanwhile, KLEIN positions himself to film her as she goes.
CZARDA: Ah, Mahler!
CRABBE: Whatever.
CZARDA: Ever see Death In Venice? The soundtrack was a Mahler mosaic. Dirk Bogard plays a man dying from TB and is seated by the seashore and he is admiring the sexuality of a lovely teenage boy in a white linen suit. He coughs blood and dies and the music swells and swells. Tears flow into the sea. Salt unto salt.
CRABBE: Missed it.
CZARDA: But as we moviegoers know. Romance is but dirty sand on a miserable public beach littered with Hershey wrappers and Pabst cans.
CRABBE: How come you don't like Miz Snow?
CZARDA: She is one of those good Mormons.
CRABBE: Klein said you picked up a nickname in Vietnam. Shiv. You were pretty mean, eh?
CZARDA: Verily! Yay, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil, for I am the meanest mother in the valley!
CRABBE: Amen. (snorts) You get pissed off with someone and then try to slash him or stick him in the eyeball.
CZARDA: Klein is completely gonzo! Understand? (pauses) He probably told you I've got the Bradbury girl stuffed up my chimney.