Scene 4:
Drunk Guy
Drunk Guy, Bartender, Waitress, SomeoneElse [maybe
Male from Couple?], Female from Couple
[sitting at bar—can we view him from along the
bar? Some of Bartender at edge, but
mostly Drunk Guy, various glasses, bar effluvia, change, scraps of his torn
manuscript everywhere—disordered, mess, sticky.
Bartender might even emphasize this by wiping bar in wide swatch around him.]
Drunk Guy [sips his beer, sloshes some, crumples a
few of his paper scraps and tosses them][outburst]: Jane fucking
Austen! [drinks more, quickly]. Charles-the-dick. ‘It was the best of times.’ Yeah?
[turns looking for someone to ask, no one there] When the hell was that?
Drunk Guy [motions to the Bartender, who doesn’t
acknowledge anything except drink orders]:
Know what they want? [rips a couple more manuscript pages]. They want ‘all the dogs to make it
home.] They want ‘daddy, teacher says
every time a bell rings, angel gets his wings.’ [motions for shot, tapping
empty overturned shot glass. Bartender
refills.] They want to make Mrs.
Doubtfire 2 with an animated Robin Williams, all manic and fine. [slams half shot, dribbles] They want to do Naked Lunch as a Disney film.
Drunk Guy [corners Someone stopped at the bar,
perhaps will even in the next diatribe grab a shirt or arm. This as Drunk Guy’s most irritating, reaching
crescendo of dislike]: Yeah, I drink too
much. And do drugs when I can afford
them. [belch or hiccup] I betray people
every time I write. And about everything
I write sucks or I can’t finish it or some shit. [drink, hopefully still holding on to
someone] And nobody reads anything. [shakes someone, holds out handful of
scraps] You want to read this?
Someone [tries to escape]:
Drunk Guy [lets go]:
No? Can’t you read, you
asshole? Just gonna leave me here buried
in a mountain of my own crap? [throws of
a blizzard of MS. Scraps] You just want some
fucking country song? Mother in jail and
the damn train and the pickup truck? [yells] Darlin’!
[shift, Drunk Guy turns in his chair, facing out
away from bar, totally composed, hair combed, maybe even a crisp white shirt, etc,
talks directly to the camera]
Drunk Guy:
So, do you get any of this? Have you taken time off from your cell phone
to look up? [pause, as if responding to puzzled look from the camera] What, you never saw Moonlighting? Not even on
Netflix? You weren’t even born back when
Bruce Willis had hair? [he laughs,
quietly, which also sounds out of character].
This writing. [holds some of his
scraps. laughs] Sure, we dream of writing the next Harry
Potter, or a Great Gatsby, or even
the next 52 shades of whatever. But that’s
not it. [pauses, gestures with a few
scraps of his papers, as if piecing them back together]. What I’m trying to say, is it’s the writing
that keeps us human. Keeping that something alive, not matter how much we
screw up, no matter how much we fail.
That something that lets living on earth be worthwhile.
[if still be available, both Waitress and Female
from Couple will lean in and kiss him on opposite cheeks, same time.]
Drunk Guy [half smile]: All worthwhile. [then he turns back to bar, changes back to
other self/disorder/shirt, yells for a drink, but also picks up a pen and
starts scribbling…]
