SUPERMAN COMES TO THE SUPERMARKET (Prt 2)

The offices of The Paris Review, New York City.
George Plimpton, editor at large, moves around his desk throwing his Wilson football to wide receivers disguised as tired furniture.

Plimpton: (interior monologue) Nothing new, nothing fresh…What’s wrong with me? What is new and fresh? Come on Plimpton, sort it fellow! Well… Football, check, in ‘Paper Lion’ , a personal favourite and also a critical and commercial success no less, I covered football better than any New Journalist in the genre. Plus there was my follow up a few years later ‘Mad Ducks and Bears’ a cult classic, oh yes more football thus more success, but what of football now, nothing to write about, just stats, steroids and sticky business!
Baseball, nailed that beast too, oh yes, ‘The Curious Case of Sid Finch’ turned the genre on it’s head once again, ‘was it journalism as a novel or a novel as journalism’ they cried, whatever it was it was certainly novel, oh yes!
But what of the here and what of the now? Lordy, what to do? I’ve got nothing new to offer the literary world I have served so well, surely my ink well has not completely dried up, surely not.
Only one thing for it, beg, steal and borrow from a dear friend, a major rival and above all else a lesser genius than my good self. Must call Mailer!

A house in the Hamptons, New York.
Norman Mailer sits alone, staring out of a window and the rolling coast line.

Mailer: (interior monologue) Here he sits, upon his literary throne, solitary, held prisoner by his genius as the social commentator of American life for the past 50 years. The co-founder of the controversial Village Voice, scribe of such works as ‘The Armies Of The Night’, ‘The Naked & The Dead’ and ‘The Fight’. Oh, he’s seen, done and written about it all;
Mailer, the man, the myth, the…

Mailer’s phone rings

Motherfucker!
Hello, who is it now?

Splitscreen

Plimpton: Mailer, it’s me, Plimpton.

Mailer: I should have known it was you, how are you ol’ motherfucker you?

Plimpton: Well, if you could refrain from swearing Mailer that would help. But to answer your question, not good old sport, not good at all.

Mailer: Not surprised to hear it George. You realise the phone I am talking to you on is defunct?

Plimpton: Whatever do you mean Mailer?
Mailer: I tore it out of the wall two years back and threw it at my wife, it hasn’t worked since?

Plimpton: Which one?

Mailer: Which wall or which wife?

Plimpton: I don’t suppose it really matters does it?

Mailer: Well not to you buddy, you’re dead.

Plimpton: But…

Mailer: All you dead guys, you keep ringing on the phone that don’t work no more. You, Heller, Vonnegut, Thompson and then once you’ve called and we’ve had a chat you forget you were talking to me. Wolfe has had the same problem. Supposedly Hunter keeps calling him and screaming abuse at him. I don’t know which magazine you are working on there, but it sure as hell has low circulation. Maybe it’s ‘the New Yorker’ their writers are like the living dead recently.

Plimpton: What about Breslin?

Mailer: Well, I wish he was dead, but he’s still writing the same bull about who the tough guys are in Queens and all that horse.
Hey George, it comes to us all. I’m waiting and I dare say Wolfe, even with his clean living ways will not be too far behind.

Plimpton: How bizarre, the deadlines, they feel real enough.

Mailer: It must be something to do with the big G or the big D. That last great American writers death package, deluxe edition, that sort of thing.

Plimpton: Interesting. Well it’s a success, I was utterly convinced!

Mailer: What are you working on?

Plimpton: I haven’t even come up with an idea. The juice it’s all gone.

Mailer: There you go, you’re finished old timer, I’ll see you when I get there. Give Hunter a call, he may have some wider eyed vision of what you are going through. I’m sure it wont help in the slightest, but it may act as some kind of comfort blanket.

Plimpton: I’d rather not disturb him, it’s after 9.00 in the morning, he would have started drinking by now.

Mailer: Call Heller or Vonnegut then.


Time Magazine office, New York City.
The Editor slams a huge manuscript down in front of Joseph Heller.

Editor: I wanted a piece, not War & Peace for crisakes!

Heller: It’s all I’ve got chief, I can’t think of anything.

Editor: This shit here, is an age old Heller. It’s the old shit dressed up in a new shitty suit. Bombadiers, serial affairs, lack of emotion in lead characters, German classical music with a bit of Coney Island and Oy Vey thrown in for good measure.

Heller: Give me 12 hrs and I’ll give you a masterpiece!

Editor: Oh really, what is this one gonna be? Catch Heller’s career it’s plummeting from a b52?

Heller: You cannot talk to me like that. I outsold the Bible!

Editor: Ancient history Joe. Your stuff stinks. Catch 22, that’s all I goddamn hear. Give me something new, something fresh or your already tarnished reputation is out on the sidewalks with all those other bums, you hear me?

The Editor exits.

Heller’s phone rings, he picks up, split screen with Plimpton.

Plimpton: Heller, it’s Plimpton.

Heller: Good to hear from you George, a friendly voice at last.

Plimpton: How are you?

Heller: Well everything is a little on the weird side. I’m back at Time Magazine, where I used to write advertising copy back in the day, after the war. But I don’t understand why I’m here again. And the editor is a total motherfucker.

Plimpton: Ah yes, well if you could you just refrain from swearing Heller, I’ll try to explain something to you that Mailer told me?

Heller: That old goat? Isn’t he senile?

Plimpton: That may be, but he is in a gargantuan better state than you or I.

Heller: Oh yeah? Like how?

Plimpton: Well, he’s not dead for starters and he’s just written another bestseller.

Heller: Motherfucker!

Plimpton: Please Joe, the swearing!

Heller: Yeah, yeah, I hear ya Plimpton.

Plimpton: How did you get to the office today?

Heller: I don’t even remember turning up, I’m just here.

Plimpton: You’re dead Joseph and Mailer seems to think the big G or the big D has put together a death package for the last great witers if America, the New Journalists and the like.

Heller: Christ, Wolfe is gonna love this. His stupid little name for irrational journalism has made it to the afterlife!

Plimpton: Well at the moment, he’s still alive.

Heller: Well the best die first right George? How did his last book do, not that I’m remotely interested.

Plimpton: I’m not entirely sure, but like Mailer’s work I’m guessing it ran off the shelves.

Heller: Motherfucker!

Plimpton: Bye Joe.

Heller puts the receiver down and the editor re-enters.

Editor: Got anything Heller?

Heller: Well yeah, it’s about how Joe Heller, fucked the editor of Time Magazine in the ass and then murdered all his family.

Editor: Brilliant, what’s it called?

The Rocky Mountains, Colorado.
Hunter S. Thompson is riding a BSA 650 at a crazy-assed speed on dirt tracks, with a bottle of Wild Turkey in one hand.

HST (Interior Monologue): Something new, something fresh. Jesus Thompson, how hard can it be? Got to call somebody, need help, need a mind bending and life enhancing arsenal of chemicals. Great God! Kill the body and head will die!

HST’s BSA 650 hits a tree and explodes. HST lies on his back, checking his body for any damage.


HST (Interior Monologue): Where’s the kit bag, mescaline, need it now!

HST finds some Mescaline in his underwear and gobbles it down.

HST (Interior Monologue): Remember there is no such thing as paranoia???? When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Got to get those juices flowing again. Plimpton, only he can save me now, or that whacked out, straight edge, square pusher Wolfe.

HST walks into a hotel lobby. A lobster stares at him from behind the reception.

HST: A lobster phone, it’ll have to do.

HST reaches over and tears the lobsters head off and starts to scream into it.
Split screen with Tom Wolfe sitting in his office in New York City dressed in his ice cream suit and matching honbo hat.

Wolfe: Hello?

HST: Wolfe, it’s Dr. Thompson, and as you know there is no way in Nixon’s hell that I would ask you for help unless it was absolutely necessary. So you listen good Wolfe man.

Wolfe: All ears Thompson, which is more than I can say for you dear boy. You would found dead in the Rockies with half your face blown off by a gun, it looks like you did it yourself.

HST: Go to hell Wolfe, you’re a motherfucker. I’m calling Plimpton, he’ll make some fucking sense out of this, well a little.

Wolfe: I shouldn’t bother old chap, he’ll see your name come up and wont answer you know how he abhors your drunken little swear sprees. Oh and he’s dead too.

HST: Plimpton, dead. Shit no! Who else?

Wolfe: Vonnegut, Heller most of us really.

HST: Don’t tell me you, Breslin and Mailer are still stealing oxygen from the masses?

Wolfe: The very same. Mailer called earlier, he told me a few of you were calling again. This isn’t the first time we’ve gone through this with you lot you know? You all have writers block, am I correct?

HST: Shit, this is the worst trip known to man. What’s Mailer writing abaout?

Wolfe: His last book was about Hitler, Satan and all of that kind of stuff.

HST: Still playing the ol’ Jew card eh? The cheek of it, that man is Satan! Wife stabber motherfucker! And you? What are you doing you silly suited freakzoid?

Wolfe: Don’t knock it, it’s a cultural reference point for a lot of people, a symbol if you will, like Huey’s beret or Springsteen’s headband…

HST: Or Hitler’s moustache! Go fuck yourself you legion on literature and may you burn!

Wolfe hangs up.

HST: Shit, Jesus, fuck, crap. Turmoil of the lowest order, what to do in a giant lake of Satan’s jizz. Wait a minute, where did all those bats come from, Steadman you freak!

Kurt Vonnegut.Jr is sitting on a deck chair on Cape Cod, he sees Joseph Heller approaching, gets another chair and pours two whiskeys. Heller sits down, downs his drink in one. Vonnegut pours him another. Heller holds his head in his hands.

Heller: So, how’s it with you?

Vonnegut: Well, it is what it is. I figured it out a while back. And so.

Heller (with tears in his eyes): Kurt, when did it end?

Vonnegut: No idea. So it goes.

Heller: Has Plimpton or HST called?

Vonnegut: No, I figured it out when I couldn’t write anymore. Don’t cry Heller, what happened to the steely son of a bitch who wrote Something Happened?

Heller: He died?

Vonnegut: Well played.

Heller: You were always the wisest of all us guys. I used to hold that against you, but I always admired you, almost loved you.

Heller: It’s natural as a writer to feel animosity towards other writers, especially when they’re better.

Heller smiles and wipes his eyes.

Heller: Well, I’ve got a great gig going on back at Time magazine. The editor loves my new piece, he thinks I’ll be up for an award.

Vonnegut: What’s it called?

Heller: If I tell you, you’ll call me an idiot.

Vonnegut: I’d never kick a dead man when he’s down.

Heller: Ok. It’s called Catch 22….2!

Vonnegut: You’re an idiot.

The End.

By Simon Rance.