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Paris
Before The Crash
By
Paul Ledoux
&
John Roby
Michael Petrasek Kensington Literary Representation
54 Wolseley Street, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5T 1A5
416.979.0187
Characters:
Kay Boyle (26) A desperate, whippet-thin beauty in the process of meltdown. Fiercely ambitious, insecure, volatile, flirtatious and self-destructive. Still recovering from the loss of her lover, the editor and poet Ernest Walsh, who left Kay nothing but a baby daughter. Suffering from an unrequited love for Robert McAlmon, she is in despair.
Sharron (Bobby) Walsh Kay’s young daughter, a precocious girl who’s grown up on the streets of Paris. Playful, funny and overly protective of her mother.
Robert McAlmon (31) A destructive force devoted to doing good. Slight, angular with icy blue eyes and complete disdain for all of humanity. A renowned avant-garde publisher. Homosexual, alcoholic, exploding with restless energy, at the center of everything. Quick-witted, cynical, hates himself, is ruthlessly honest. Loves Kay but can’t return her affection.
Buffy Glassco (20) Wayward son of a wealthy Montreal family. Bisexual, narcissistic, witty. Barely surviving as a male prostitute and pornographer. A fearless desire to experience all that life has to offer. Buffy has had an unrequited crush on Kay ever since they met. McAlmon has been his great supporter – a father figure and mentor on one level and an ardent suitor on another.
Bricktop (mid-30’s) Bricktop is the narrator. She’s a wise, humorous, cigar-smoking, blues singer who acts as a den mother to our characters. The best known of the black club owners in Paris during the Twenties. Gregarious, charming and, when called for, tough as nails, Bricktop holds a special place in her heart for McAlmon. And Fitzgerald.
Morley Callaghan (26) An up-and-coming novelist from Toronto. Short, pudgy and sporting a pencil thin moustache that does little to hide his boyish appearance. Terribly serious about life and art. Terribly thin-skinned. Very concerned about what it means to be a man. Hero worships his mentor Hemingway. He’s also a skillful, college-level amateur boxer.
The Dayang Muda (Princess) of Sarawack (late 40’s) The ex-wife of the improbable white Raja of Sarawack (in New Guinea) she is obsessed with fame. With Kay and Buffy’s help, she creates a fictitious version of her life that earns her a syndicated gossip column. She is by turns snobbish and silly but when the chips are down, she’s a fiercely loyal friend.
Raymond Duncan (late 50’s) A charismatic eccentric who has exploited the fame of his sister Isadora to create the cult-like ‘Duncan Colony.” Thin, his long silver hair tied in a braided crown. wears a toga and espouses Spartan Greek values. Drinks only milk. Runs a shop in Paris that sells bogus ‘classic’ Greek garments to gullible American fans of his sister.
Scott Fitzgerald (33) A talented writer. Handsome, generous and charming, he was pegged as ‘the voice of his generation’ and it ruined him. He’s cracking up. Alcoholism is catching up with him. Subject to rapid mood swings and self-destructive actions. Terribly insecure. His relationship with Hemingway is on the rocks and his wife has begun a tragic descent into madness.
Zelda Fitzgerald (29) A beautiful, headstrong Southern belle caught up in a struggle to escape from the shadow of her famous husband. A decent writer and painter, she has recently decided to become a ballerina. Passionate, wild, intense and driven, Zelda is extremely flirtatious. She has become convinced she is a lesbian and Scott is gay.
Paris Before The Crash by Paul Ledoux and John Roby - 1
Scene One. Le Bar Select. Spring 1929
Tight spot on Bricktop, a glamorous Afro-American singer.
BRICKTOP: (Spoken) In another country.
In another time.
One last good year.
Paris Before The Crash
Footnotes - shadows - ghosts.
Bricktop sings Lost in The Shadows.
There, lost in the shadows
You know they are les gens perdu
There, always in shadows
The crazy years les années fou
A restless man
An angry girl
A handsome boy
They dance and whirl
Did they once laugh
Do you recall
Could be that they were never
Here at all.
The music goes uptempo. Lights up. A group of girls enter followed by a band of strolling musicians playing The Montparnasse Strut.
BRICKTOP & Co: The year is 1929
You know the party is going fine
The war is over
Nobody’s sober
And drinking cheap bubbly wine
In Gay Paree
In France a dollar it goes so far
No Prohibition and lots of bars
And all the artists
Declare; My heart is
In Paris – that’s where the work is
Avant-garde
TRIO: So new
GUY & GAL: Jazz Age - Flappers
TRIO: So bright
GUY & GAL: Poets - scrappers
TRIO: In Paree
GUY & GAL: Life is free and so easy
ALL: Yeah
GUY & GAL: So easy
TRIO: So new
GUY & GAL: It’s so crazy
TRIO: So bright
GUY & GAL: Kinda hazy
TRIO: In Paree
GUY & GAL: Life is always hoppin’
To a hot quintet
A group of earnest young men enter, among them MORLEY CALLAGHAN (26) a young, slightly overweight novelist.
MEN: In the Quarter find a place to stay
Fresh from Kansas learnin’ “qu’est-que c’est”
Maybe my room’s got no plumbing
I’m still writing that’s not slumming
‘Specially when there’ll come a day
When the whole wide world will say
“His book is so sublime
It’s altered fiction for all time.”
Morley sits and hauls out a phrase book as KAY BOYLE (26) enters with daughter BOBBY (8) in tow. Kay wears a flamboyant blue cape. Bobby is dressed in a shabby dress. They carry a stack of handbills. Kay posts one on a kiosk.
BRICKTOP: That’s Kay Boyle, nobody outside the Quarter has heard of her yet, but they will. Just ask her.
KAY: Bobby, ask Madame Select if we can post these in the pissoires.
BOBBY: Oui ,mama. (exits into bar)
BRICKTOP Enter Bob McAlmon, avant-garde publisher and his friend, Buffy.
MCALMON is a razor sharp, slight man in an impeccable gray suit with a fedora pulled down, shielding his eyes. BUFFY is a beautiful young man in baggy pants and a polo shirt.
MCALMON: Same old stinkin’ scene.
KAY: Bob, where have you been?
MCALMON: Luxembourg.
KAY: The Gardens?
BUFFY: The country.
KAY: How horrifying.
MCALMON: Not at all; fine beer, Platish verse.
BUFFY: Everyone running around dressed like they’ve just escaped from the cast of a light opera.
MCALMON: A perfect antidote to this mortuary moderne.
KAY: Robert! We’re building a brave new world.
MCALMON: From what?
KAY: The songs of our souls.
MCALMON: Rats!!!
TRIO: So new
GUY & GAL: Big time talkers
TRIO: So bright
GUY & GAL: Café gawkers
TRIO: In Paree
GUY & GAL: Life is free and so easy
ALL: Yeah
GUY & GAL: So easy
TRIO: So new
MCALMON: Poseurs – fakers
TRIO: So bright
KAY &BUFFY: Epoch makers
TRIO: In Paree
GUY & GAL: The joint keeps on jumpin’
‘Til the sun comes up
WOMEN: Oh what sweet music
Oh what sweet romance
Oh what sweet lovin’
We’ll go all night
Makin’ love and sweet delight
Until daylight
Along the streets of Montparnasse
BUFFY: (pointing at the handbill) What’s that about?
KAY: Who are you by the way?
MCALMON: Buffy, this is Kay. Buffy’s a writer of juvenile memoirs. Published by This Quarter no less. And Kay will be a great writer of fiction after the dust settles.
KAY: This Quarter. I’m soliciting submissions for a new literary anthology. Living Poetry.
MCALMON: Can’t ever seem to escape ‘the new”, can we?
KAY: Will you fund it?
MCALMON: Not unless the work is of a truly superior quality.
KAY: It will be.
MCALMON: Really, many submissions?
BUFFY: (flirtatious) I’m a firm believer in submission.
KAY: (ignoring him) Just one so far.
She hauls a crumpled piece of foolscap out of a cape pocket and hands it to McAlmon. He reads it.
BUFFY: Who wrote that?
MCALMON: Kay Boyle
KAY: It’s brilliant.
MCALMON: What are you drinking, Buffy?
BUFFY: Whatever you’re buying.
MCALMON: (signals the waiter) Still no money from home?
BUFFY: Nothing but a letter from Father full of the most loathsome bourgeois filth. He insists I return to Montreal and take up a position with the firm.
MCALMON: (to the waiter) Pernod.
KAY: Your publication in This Quarter did not impress?
BUFFY: No, like most Canadians, insurance policies are the only writing he respects.
MCALMON: Buffy hates his native land. I love that in a boy.
BUFFY: Canada is far too insipid to hate. To despise is sufficient.
MORLEY: Hey, Canada isn’t so bad.
BUFFY: Bob – there’s an insane person talking to us.
MORLEY: Sorry to butt in like that, but – (Morley crosses to them) You’re Bob McAlmon, aren’t you?
MCALMON: Maybe.
MORLEY: (offers hand) Callaghan, Morley Callaghan.
MCALMON: Callaghan? Of course. Buffy – a fellow Canadian. In New York they’re calling him the next Hemingway.
KAY: As if one wasn’t enough.
BUFFY: I’m not sure the Quarter can stand another literary genius.
KAY: I could.
BUFFY: One day the whole neighborhood will capsize like a dory overloaded with literary squid.
MCALMON: Manners. Kay, Buffy. Morley Calamari. Sit. Sit.
The people in the bar hover over the table.
Paris Before The Crash by Paul Ledoux and John Roby - 1
COMPANY: A new face
On the Rue St. Jacques
His first time at the Bar Select
Hey what ya thinkin’
Hey what ya drinkin’
MORLEY: I’m thinkin’- let’s have a round of cheap Pernod
COMPANY He’s the talk of Harry’s Bar
He’s a hero, a brand new star
He’ll win the Nobel
He’s writing so well
MCALMON: Oh hell – Let’s have un autra, s’il vous plaît
BRICKTOP There, lost in the shadows
You know we are les gens perdu
There, always in shadows
The crazy years les année fou
Paris Before The Crash by Paul Ledoux and John Roby - 1
GUY & GAL: Big time spenders
GUY & GAL: All night benders
GUY & GAL: Our sweet land of plenty
The last roar of the roaring Twenties
TRIO: So new
GUY & GAL: Big time talkers
TRIO: So bright
GUY & GAL: Café gawkers
TRIO: In Paree
GUY & GAL: Love is free
And so easy
GUY & GAL: Easy come and go
BRICKTOP: A restless man
An angry girl
A handsome boy
They dance and whirl
Did they once laugh
Do you recall
Could be that they were never
Here at all…
Paris Before The Crash by Paul Ledoux and John Roby - 07/11/2007 – 97
MEN: TRIO:
Hello summer nineteen twenty nine Oh what sweet music
All the tourists come to ‘have a time’ Oh what sweet romance
Though that sight might send you running Oh what sweet lovin’
Spring is sweet and summer’s coming
Order some wine and raise a glass We’d go all night
To crazy times and red hot jazz Making love and sweet delight
Watchin’ the people as they pass Until daylight
Bobby runs on, still holding handbills.
ALL: Along the streets of Paris
Along the streets of Paris
Along the streets of Montparnasse
BOBBY: Bricktop! Madame Select gave me pain au chocolat!
BRICKTOP: That’s nice, honey.
BUFFY: That’s not nice. That’s a miracle.
KAY: But she wouldn’t let you put up the handbills?
BOBBY: I’m sorry, mama.
KAY: Don’t be silly, pooch. The woman is a spotty-bottomed philistine. Now you hurry along with Bricktop and be a good girl.
Bobby hugs Kay.
KAY: And, you’ll see, I’ll find a place for both of us before you know it.
Bricktop crosses and takes Bobby’s hand.
KAY: I can’t thank you enough, Brickie.
BRICKTOP: That’s true. (laughs) Are you kidding me? Having this little angel around illuminates my life. Come on, honey. Pigalle calls. I need to get the place set up for tonight. We going to see you, Bob?
MCALMON: Bricktop’s is the pulsating golden heart of this tired old poule called Paree. How could I stay away?
BRICKTOP: Keep out of trouble ’till then, you hear?
Bricktop and Bobby exit hand in hand. Kay blows her daughter a kiss.
KAY: Isn’t Bobby wonderful. Looking more like her father every day.
MCALMOM: Looking like Walsh? Poor little girl.
KAY: Walsh was the most beautiful man in Paris and we both know it.
MCALMON: A bit too American Modern/French troubadour for my tastes, but a lovely guy.
BUFFY: She lives with Bricktop?
KAY: Temporarily, I can’t find a place for the two of us. Oh hell, I’m practically living on the street myself. But I need to write.
BUFFY: You could join me beneath the Pont Neuf. Inspirational views, sports fishing optional.
KAY: It’s not funny. You don’t know what it’s like – farming your daughter out to friends. She’s all that’s left of Walsh and she should be living with me.
MCALMON: I’m sure she should and I’m equally sure that, brilliant as Walsh was, a great poet, editor and drunken dancer of he-land flings, that it is time to make your peace with his spirit and move on. Fall in love. Or something.
BUFFY: Love?
MCALMON: Sweet love. Tender love. Love like a pair of humping rhinos lost in the dust of the veldt.
Morley, who has been ignored and listening to all this decadent chatter, casually pulls a small notebook out of his pocket and starts taking notes.
KAY: Love!
MCALMON: Well, humping at least.
KAY: There’s only one other man I could ever fall in love with, Bob.
MCALMON: (looks away) I’m happily married.
KAY: To a woman living in Switzerland with a mannish poet of uncertain scansion?
MCALMON: Exactly. How much happier could I be? Still working on your autobiography, Buffy?
BUFFY: No time. I’m turning out illustrated pamphlets for a specialty publisher. At the moment my subject is historical…and Greek.
KAY: And is this your sole source of income?
BUFFY: If I can ever get him to pay. I spent the better part of the winter in the employ of Madame Halles – screwing old ladies and even more elderly gentlemen.
KAY: How awful.
BUFFY: Yes. Came down with a frightful dose of clap.