Savage Grace (3) Everyone loves you, Man. It’s your friends they don’t like. It’s to the Feast Of Lupercal, the Roman festival of fertility. That’s March 15. O’JOHN Where? HENRY (puzzled) The 3rd floor of the Whitney Museum? Where you going, Man?. That’s not for 3 days. O’JOHN I got to meet someone at 11:55 EXT. BAR (NIGHT) TWO HEAVIES are approaching at a 90 degree angle. FREEZE FRAME INSERT OF THEM CLUSTERING O’JOHN (V.O) If they’re really dumb, they’ll cluster and trip all over each other. END INSERT INSERT OF THEM COMING IN FROM OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS O’JOHN (V.O.) (continuing) Slightly less dumb and they’ll and they’ll come in from opposite directions, but that will let you deal with one then turn to meet the other. END INSERT START MOTION O’JOHN (V.O.) (continuing) These are coming in at a 90 degree angle, an optimal attack pattern. Isn’t that interesting, A WHAT?! HEAVY #1 My friend, Azriel says that you are not doing right. We come to discuss that with you. Why is it that you are not doing right? O’JOHN Talk about simplistic. HEAVY#2 No offense, but we got to check that you’re unarmed. and then Heavy#2 gets between O’John and Heavy#1. O’JOHN (V.O.) And suddenly the odds changed. I could deal with them one at a time. which he does. There’s a MOTOR CYCLIST waiting for the light to change. O’John knocks him off with one kick, jumps on and takes off. CHASE: He loses one set of pursuers by driving the cycle down and through the subway . He loses a 2nd set of pursuers by taking the cycle back and forth on the pedestrian bridges over the East Side Drive. He ends up at the 63rd Street heliport just as a helicopter is taking off. He checks his watch. It’s 11:55. There’s a FLIGHT ATTENDENT to meet him. The copter pilot drifts upward it in a lazy circle. O’JOHN Can you describe the passengers for me? FLIGHT ATTENDENT No passengers. No flights this late; he’s going home. O’JOHN He’s taking the scenic route. FLIGHT ATTENDENT Habit. He always does that. Something wrong? O’JOHN No, I guess not. Just then the helicopter explodes in a giant chrysanthemum of orange-red flame. FLIGHT ATTENDENT Oh, Christ, am I gonna get in trouble for this! O’John slowly walks away with fireworks in the background. INT. TAXI (NIGHT) TAXI DRIVER I don’t know, Man, I get these people want to go to an underground club cause they read about it in some magazine and I say: You ever been there before, you know what kind of place this is? And they say: what kind of place is it? and I say… O’JOHN A bucket of blood. TAXI DRIVER Aren’t you a little old for this? They’ll think you’re a cop. In fact, I think you’re a cop. O’JOHN Close, baritone sax. The buck stops here. TAXI DRIVER Not any more it don’t. What ever happened to Jazz? INT. UNDERGROUND ROCK CLUB (GRUNGE) It’s a converted garage. There’s an inch of water on the floor. The ROCK GROUP is roaring at full career, but something is wrong with one of the speakers. It begins to crackle. The LEAD GUITARIST jerks his head and A TECHIE runs on stage and starts futzing with the amplifier. The cracking noises get worse. The lead guitarist starts to smash his guitar in the Savage Grace manner. O’JOHN NOOOOOO! He rushes the stage. He gets through the guards, decks the lead guitarist with a kick to the knee, takes the guitar away from him and runs for it using the guitar like a cudgel staff. He exits thorough the stage entrance with the guards, the guitarist and the crowd in full pursuit. He’s somewhere in Loisaida. The street lights have been shot out and the street is full of the people your mother warned you about. He runs throwing stun grenades behind him. This being Loisaida and everyone has a gun, this might be the place for some John Woo bullet ballet. Anyway, he manages to escape the pack and duck down an alley. He looks at the guitar, throws it down and walks away down the black blasted streets. MUSICIAN #1 (V.O.) I’m short on theory so don’t ask me to explain what I see. INT. AFTER HOURS BAR (FOREIGN AND QUIET) The CLIENTELE are mostly very good looking, very stupid and very crazy. TWO TRUMPETERS are having a cutting session backed by a pianist and a bassist. They’re doing Mingus re-runs and being ignored. O’JOHN is talking to TWO MUSICIANS. Fade in on the sound MUSICIAN #1 It looked like the start of something new and it was for awhile, but it was too limited. Like Coltrane, driving himself crazy, trying to find a way to break the rules that would lead on to something new. MUSICIAN #2 He never found it. I’d like to believe the last albums were brilliant, but they sound like the struggles of a maniac in a straightjacket. O’JOHN The only way out was rock and roll. MUSICIAN #2 Now that’s gone too. MUSICIAN #1 Any art can have a bad generation or 2, I just don’t know of another time when all the arts were in the toilet at once. The trumpeters are doing Sue’s Changes, playing the theme over and over, faster each time. They finally attract some attention. MUSICIAN #1 Those guys have played too many bar mitzvahs. Chuckles all around. O’JOHN Did you ever know Savage Grace? MUSICIAN #1 Yeah, he made the jump to rock and roll, but like that. Like Coltrane. Like he was trying to bypass the music and get to you directly. All that courage and fury. If you ever saw him live, you’ll remember it for the rest of your life, but on disk there’s almost nothing there. O’JOHN Did you know him? MUSICIAN #1 Slightly. He didn’t want any friends, not hostile, just into his own head. O’JOHN You like him? MUSICIAN #1 Well, there are very few Coltrane-influenced guitarists. That’s worth a chuckle all around. MUSICIAN #2 Will someone tell me what were laughing about? Now they’re really laughing. MUSICIAN #1 Well, yeah. Anyone who loves anything that much, that purely, has got to be kind of likable. O’JOHN Was he religious? MUSICIAN #1 RELIGIOUS?! Well, I’ll go along with Paul Tillich who said that there is no clear line between the secular and the sacred. If you get into anything deeply enough, its essence becomes spiritual. Religious? Well, I guess you might say that. You might say it. I never would. O’JOHN He’s not dead. MUSICIAN #1 Who’s not dead? O’JOHN Savage Grace. He got careless. Some people know he’s alive and they’re looking for him. Long silence. MUSICIAN #1 I’ll tell him. The musicians look at him, look at each other and get up and walk away with out a word. INT. HALL OUTSIDE MEG’S APARTMENT O’John knocks on the door and Meg opens it. MEG Come in, I’ve been expecting you. O’JOHN Why didn’t you run? MEG Run where and what do I do when I get there? O’JOHN That’s the most depressing view of life I’ve ever heard! MEG You going to kill me? O’JOHN Do you make good coffee at least? MEG Why? Are you staying? O’JOHN Sitting down. I’m kind of tired. MEG So I hear. Rozzo phoned me. O’JOHN I’m going to have to do something about him. MEG You could try leaving him alone. No, sit there, I’ll get you some chamomile tea and an oatmeal cookie. It’ll calm you down. and she bustles into the kitchen. O’JOHN Aren’t you frightened? MEG Get a grip. I’ll be with you in a minute. He’s looking through a scrapbook of Savage Grace he finds on the coffee table. He flips through it slowly. Savage Grace looks out of the photographs with a knowing smile as if they shared a private joke. There’s a clipping from Rolling Stone lamenting his death. There are Xeroxes of the death certificate and coroner’s report. He slips them out of the plastic holder and put them in his wallet. Meg appears with tea and cookies. MEG So, why did you come back? O’JOHN It feels like we’re on the same side in some way. MEG Trying to run a hot dog stand in the middle of an elephant stampeded? O’JOHN Enough with the bright dialogue already. It feels like you’re throwing ping-pong balls at me. Why didn’t you play dumb? There’s no defense against that. MEG I thought we were friends. She bends over him and gives him mouth to mouth. DREAM SEQUENCES INT. LIVING ROOM (BLOOMINGDALE’S WINDOW STYLE) Some middle aged suits are staging a Black Mass, but the worst thing they can think of to do is reciting Latin prayers backwards. A MAN on the altar is being whipped. He yelps and stuffs a copy of the Village Voice into his pants. Graham shakes his head in disgust and turns away. PLUMPISH MAN You must not defile our ceremony! SAVAGE GRACE God bless you! and the plumpish man staggers off, cringing with his hands over his face. INT. A BALLROOM IS THE HAITIAN PART OF HARLEM A VooDoo ceremony is in progress, but it’s kind of homey, like the one in BLACK ORPHEUS. Savage Grace is talking to the HOGUN who’s wearing an Indian war bonnet with plastic feathers. HOGUN We know nothing of this. We are men of God and enemies of the Devil. SAVAGE GRACE Thank you, I’ll just have to keep trying EXT. A BOMBED OUT CITY (NIGHT) The tracers are whizzing by overhead like in the siege of Baghdad. SAVAGE GRACE is sitting against a fragment of wall with AN ELEGANTLY DRESSED FAT MAN. They each have a frozen daiquiri with a burning umbrella. SAVAGE GRACE You come here often? FAT MAN Every day in my dreams. The umbrella turns into a butterfly and takes off. ONE OF THE LOCALS is running around with a burning tire pinning his arms to his sides. He’s screaming but there’s no sound. SAVAGE GRACE It’s a zoo. FAT MAN It’s like any other kind of politics: the price of activism is the company you keep. SAVAGE GRACE How do you skip on a deal with the Devil? FAT MAN You hire a stand in, of course. O’JOHN That easy? FAT MAN That simple. You swap memories, the spiritual equivalent of changing the photograph on a passport. O’JOHN That’s like dying. My memories are who I am. FAT MAN Your memories are who you were. O’JOHN Let’s get on with it. INT. LIBRARY (STRICTLY MASTERPIECE THEATRE) SMASH CUT. They’re still holding their drinks with butterflies perched on their shoulders . Then fat man takes a massive folio volume down off a high shelf. He turns the pages ponderously until he finds what he wants. There are some geometric diagrams. The rest of the page is densely written in a tiny crabbed medieval script. Then fat man begins to read, pointing out things on the page and translating them. Savage Grace begins to relax, then slowly he began to smile. The fat man stops reading and looks pleased with himself peeping over his bifocals in the Ben Franklin manner. They beam at each other. INT. MEG’S BEDROOM (NIGHT) He sits up in bed and tries to light a cigarette, but tears the heads off 3 matches in a row and quits. Then Meg wakes up. MEG What are you doing? He gets out of bed and walks the length of the room then stands with his hand poised over the phone. O’JOHN Answering the phone. The phone rings on cue and he picks it up. Hello, Azriel. I got your calling card. I’ll be there in 10 minutes. MEG Will you tell me what’s going on? O’JOHN Bad dreams. and he starts to get dressed. EXT. LINCOLN CENTER (NIGHT) O’JOHN (V.O.) She was sitting on the rim of the fountain. It had been turned off for the night and most of the lights. The square looked like the set of a Broadway musical that had closed the night before. She was obscenely beautiful and like all pornography she was better in black and white. He sits down beside her. O’JOHN (V.O.) (continuing) We talked in circles for a long time, not even arguing, just stating our desires at each other like 2 bad actors trying to improvise. Then nothing. We’d repeated ourselves 10 times and there was nothing more to say. AZRIEL Would it help to know that all charges against you have been dropped? O’JOHN You can do things like that? AZRIEL I can do it all. I can make your dreams come true. O’JOHN But you don’t know my dreams. AZRIEL It wasn’t meant as a bribe. O’JOHN (PAUSE) Where does the madness come from? AZRIEL It’s the culture, Mr. O’John. O’JOHN Well, that’s a step up from blaming our parents. AZRIEL It’s a culture that uses up talent very quickly for some reason. They cant believe it’s over so soon. They try to hang on, but nothing works and then they crawl off and overdose. There’s always someone dumb enough to think it was an accident.. Graham, I mean, Savage Grace was a little smarter. I knew that was going to be a problem. O’JOHN The problem is I cant help you. He pulls out the Xeroxes and clippings from Meg’s scrapbook. Death certificate. Coroner’s report. And his finger prints were on file for a New York cabaret card Identification was positive. The man is dead. She pickS up the clipping from the Rolling Stone. AZRIEL It says that Graham was survived by his analyst. he had imaginary problems with his right hand. A lot of musicians do. The doctors kicked him out and told him to see a psychiatrist. Her name is Octobrina. O’JOHN Another comic strip name. AZRIEL After the October Revolution. It’s a common name in Eastern Europe. She works over a Hungarian restaurant at 2nd and 83rd. O’JOHN I read it. It doesn’t say any of that. AZRIEL Then you better write it down. She pats the inside of his thigh and stands up. She hands him another wad of $100 bills. She walks off to the subway and disappears down the stairs. He follows her, but when he reaches the subway platform he finds it empty. He rushes back up the stairs thinking she must have taken the other exit out but the streets are deserted in all directions. At the top of the stairs he hears a train coming and rushes back down. The train is already leaving. He sees it go by with Azriel inside and not looking at him. He leaps the turnstile, running and jumping onto the rear bumper of the train. He stays there, peeping out at every stop to she if she had gotten off. She gets off in SoHo and he follows her to a reconverted tenement. He checks to see if he has enough cigarettes and settle down to wait. THE SAME (DAY) O’JOHN (V.O.) She went to work late. She didn’t leave until 10. Tailing her was easy. Like most beautiful women she didn’t look at anyone in the street for fear it would be taken as an attempt at communication. He follows her through the street, on and off the subway, and into a Madison Avenue building. O’JOHN (V.O.) (continuing) The kind of building that has expensive dentists and bad lawyers with good connections. Then I lost her. She gets into a crowded elevator. He lets it go and watches the indicator above the door. The elevator stops at almost every floor. It’s impossible to tell where she’s gotten off. He checks the building registry and there it is: AZRIEL INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES 1401. He takes the elevator to 14. INT. AZRIEL’S OFFICE (SWEDISH MODERN) There are lots of fashion magazines on the tables in the waiting room, mostly the various editions of VOGUE. CU of the Afghan edition, the cover shows a tent with eyes holes cut into it. SECRETARY May I be of assistance, sir? O’JOHN Yes, well, I don’t know how to say it, but… The secretary smiles and nods encouragement. He starts again. But, well, I’d like my wife’s activities investigated, you see I’m contemplating, well, divorce. SECRETARY (bitter sweet smile) I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t handle that kind of work. O’JOHN This is a private detective agency, isn’t it? SECRETARY Yes, but Ms. Azriel only handles bail jumpers and only if the bail is in excess of $10,000. O’JOHN You mean, she’s a bounty hunter? SECRETARY That is a crudely romantic word to put on it, sir, but that is the work we do. He looks around. Nothing in this room is going to tell him anything. he walks out. The secretary calls after him. I do hope things work out for you, sir. Why don’t you give your wife another chance? INT. ELEVATOR. When it opens on the ground floor, Vito is directly in front of him. VITO So you made a deal with her. Good, I’m glad you’re showing some sense. O’JOHN What are you doing here? VITO Business, what do you think? I mean, what else is there. O’JOHN Come on. He grabs Vito’s arm two handed and steers him out the door to a delicatessen on the corner. INT. DELICATESSEN They sit down in a booth. VITO I’ll have pastrami on white with mayonnaise and a glass of milk, I’m trying to pass for Episcopalian. O’JOHN Make it two. The WAITER spits on the floor and leaves. VITO So? how much do you know? O’JOHN She’s a bounty hunter. VITO So? O’JOHN It means she’s doing the job. I’m just here to draw fire. I’m the decoy. VITO You just figured this out? She’s paying you to find out things she already knows. What did you think was going on? O’JOHN I didn’t know. VITO And you follow her around all night when all you had to do was look her up in the phone book. O’JOHN What is this, another lecture? VITO No, what’s the use. O’JOHN The man is dead. That doesn’t bother me. I can look for him anyway. But why? VITO It’s about the people who’ll panic if they think he’s alive. You met some of them. The waiter arrives with the sandwiches and slams them down on the table loud as he can without breaking the plates. VITO Where’s the milk? WAITER There’s a Jews for Jesus storefront at Avenue B and 10th Street. May I suggest you take your business there. He spits on the floor again and leaves. VITO Strong sense of territory, that one. What was I saying? O’JOHN Goodbye. He walks out and leaves Vito with the check. SERIES OF SHOTS: 1. O’John drawing his money out of the bank. 2. Emptying his safe deposit box. Guns and money go into one of those big hexagonal boxes used to carry 35 mm. film. 3. At a travel agency buying a ticket for Brazil. 4. Interrupting a ballet class to give his cat to an astonished girl. 5. Getting out of a cab at the international departures terminal. 6. Getting his guns past the metal detectors, waving his film box and saying: “Please don’t X-ray it, it’s photographic film.” 7. Taking the last turn in the corridor to the loading gate. INT. LOADING GATE (KENNEDY) ANNOUNCER (V.O.) Flight 319, non-stop to Rio de Janeiro, now loading at gate 25. There are Azriel and her secretary wearing leather raincoats and holding guns in their pockets in the B-movie manner. O’JOHN (V.O.) The raincoats looked to be 3 grand a piece. It was hard to believe they’d shoot through their pockets , but maybe they could charge it to expenses. AZRIEL You’ve got to be kidding. He put a cigarette in his mouth left handed then took a grenade out of his right hand pocket like it was a lighter; a Dutch stun grenade the size of a tangerine. He pulled the pin, but held the handle down. He held out his hand, palm up to show what was happening. AZRIEL (admiringly) All plastic, no metal to detect. O’JOHN All right, bitch, let’s see what you can do. She takes her hands out of her pockets. Her secretary does too. AZRIEL Me? I’m not going to do anything, but I thought I’d tell you that there’s a reception committee waiting in Rio. He thinks that over and replaces the pin in the grenade. He puts it back in his pocket. O’JOHN You know, I believe you. INT. AZRIEL’S LANDROVER (DAY) Azriel is at the wheel with O’John in the suicide seat. The cover girl secretary is in the back leaning forward between them. O’JOHN (V.O.) There was nothing to say so I didn’t say it. AZRIEL Cant we be friends? O’JOHN You should have caught me when I was 17, I was up for anything. OK, let’s start again, tell me the story from the beginning. AZRIEL Once upon a time… O’JOHN Jack Christ! AZRIEL There was a rock guitarist named Graham Savage. He was playing pit stops on the Jersey shore. O’JOHN
Copyright © 2001 Angel Obregon |