Glamwire

“Flogging Molly "…Notes on a Long Running Undergroud Club in Chelsea. A play in one act by Playman

The set: Dave King and Bridget Regan, two member of the Irish Celt Band "Flogging Molly, "have just finished their east coast tour and are heading back to Dublin on Monday. They are staying at the legendary Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street. Having read about “One Leg Up” in the Sexuality in The City column by Susan Crain Bakos, they decide to head to “Flogging Molly” (Not the club's real name) an S &M club near their hotel in Chelsea. Frank Murray , their manager, joins them in their suite after they have returned from the club.

Frank Murray: You guys went to that place….Ewwwww.

Dave: Look it was OTK-over the knee spanking-nite. The place was packed.

Frank Murray: Oh, well that’s different then. Right. Give us a smoke, luv.

Bridget: I went in a school girl outfit and got in for free.

Dave : There were a lot of chicks there in school girl outfits…it was not uncommon to be in a room with like 3 different folks getting spanked. I got spanked by Mistress Gia…I lasted like two seconds…it was killing me.

Frank: Low threshold for pain, eh guy?

Dave: You got it guy. But then a fat black chick spanked me and it was great…for around 3 minutes.

Frank: Ewwwwww.

Bridget: You know Candace Bushnell has done a good job at delineating just how unglamorous these places are…..but ya know, there is a feeling of danger…I kind of needed that just now.

Dave: And I had a heck of a time spanking the shite out of Bridget.

Bridget: He really Flogged my Molly.

Frank: Ewwww.

Bridget: Early on a mistress from “Punishment House,” a famous dungeon that borders and shares some common space with this club walked through with a slave who was nude, tied up and in a hood. Two gross couples with huge breasted chicks practiced breast fondling near the cage…and it was less gross. It’s a place where heavy people do become attractive…sadly the key word behind the concept used to get that going is … “sick.”

Frank: Okay…I just have to add another “Ewwww “…here.

Bridget: Actually, its pretty nice.

Dave: And a beautiful, leathered up chick named “Berlin” was flirting all over the place.

Frank: Ok…I am listening…

Bridget: Apparently an out of town spanking group was there and there was this like 77 year old spanking this 26 year old chick in a school girl outfit.

Frank: Again: Ewwww. Indisputable. Ewwww.

Bridget: Don’t be so sure, Frank…in a few years that man will be you….

Frank: Okay, alright..I’m heading out for a pint.

Dave: Spanking films played and they kept serving cookies at the bar.

Frank: Double Ewwww.

Bridget: However there is something in me that must relate to the most bohemian elements of the past 50 years, this visit and other moves we made on the U.S. tour in someway satisfied that…I feel more alive today, but truly I'd rather go back to Ireland and raise a family….It is however interesting and even fun to be in a risky environment where, ya know, contact may just happen on the fly, and to not have it be at the Three Copper Jacks Nightclub in Dublin after the Scotland Ireland 6 nations rugby match if ya know what i mean. Lotta skirts there but....anyway, its fun to see the dark side and not be horrified or done in by it…to see its pleasures and leave it at that. Another way to ride the river, eh?

Dave: When we came up early Sunday morning…up from the dungeon... t'was the first of the snow of the season.

Frank: Now, that’s lovely.

CURTAIN

After what turns out to be a 39 hour break, the dialog is set to resume. During a 39 hour period, Juan and Juanita have lunched, made love, took naps on brightly colored hammocks, checked their Facebook pages, mingled their blood together in a bowl and mixed that in with what turned out to be a really smashing paella. They danced with castanettes, poured Sangria over each other, made love again, painted each other's portraits and pretty much kept Brian McNalley’s Pastis Barcelona open throughout all hours. In the world premier of this play at the Barbicon Pit in London On October 12th 2008, Peter Hall staged this interim in real time, 39 hours, and two audience members gave birth, while another pair got married, during the show. Juan lights a cigarette and closes his laptop:

Juan: Woody Allen’s last four films have taken place in Europe, mainly in England. Vicki Christina Barcelona is not my favorite of them. “Match Point” made timed to Woody’s Seventieth Birthday, is a masterpiece about something many people call God, and Woody has always chosen to call “Luck.”

Juanita: Right. Major Major Flick. So Major that Scarlet Johanson was actually passable in it. She was flat out sexy in that picture, and, unfortunately, you really do have to pull out a rainstorm on an English country estate to make that happen.

Juan: Easy on the pretentious declarations, Juanita. One man's taco is….another man’s caviar…taco. “Scoop” is also completely brilliant, because it has Woody himself playing a Catskill/Borsht Belt magician named “Splendini” doing card tricks for the English Aristocracy…again on country estates and in city mansions all over England.

Juanita: Smashing.

Juan: For a man whose first movie, “Whats New Pussycat?"referenced Shakespeare over and over again (he…and his managers…gave every indication that they knew exactly what they wanted to do way back then)...to cross a milestone in one of the most, if not THE most significant Shakespeare-like canons in motion pictures by actually going to England and getting it on there…and then nodding to luck on top of all that hard work and sparkling capability…is, yes, brilliant.

Juanita: So why does Vicki Christina Barcelona…which has a much more passing and meaningless relationship to Barcelona than the last few previous films had to England…ring so strongly?

Juan: Well…first of all,. Juanita….it’s a pretty sexy film…right off the bat. Javier Bardem sleeps with entire cast, except for Patricia Clarkson and her husband. And Bardem may sleep with several cast members from the recent “Brideshead Revisted” as well. I mean….the dude is getting it on, and smoking profusely while doing so.

Juanita: Fair, but I have a friend who likens this movie to a “Toothpaste Commercial”....a cheap vicarious nod to Woody’s Inner Sleazebag…where’s the Greatness, Juan?….those other two movies you mentioned are fraught with Greatness. I mean, for someone like my nephew Fritz to see Mr. Allen saying “I want you to just THINK of a card” to a few scattered Lordships and their Ladies is more exciting even than Borat grossing 800 million dollars. Where’s the Greatness in Vicky Christina Barcelona, Juan? I mean the title alone makes it sound like the film was made by the prominent Beverly Hills Hairdresser Jose Eber.

Juan: It all starts with one great line, Juanita. Javier Bardem is asked why his father refuses to publish his poetry: And Bardem replies that the father is a bit misanthropic…when asked why, Bardem says: “ Because after generations of civilization…mankind has not learned how to love ” This line is the secret of the movie and it is in fact as strong of a line as you will find in a PG rated presentation....and it is at the core of why this movie is in fact elbowing towards some kind of excellence.

Juanita: What do you mean, dude? And, this movie was rated PG?

Juan: At 73 years of age, in Spain, Woody Allen set a perfect face-off between the visceral world and the emerging, bullshit, stare-at-your-computer world that is enveloping everyone, particularly in the United States.

Juanita: Ah…I see it now…Javier and Penelope…they’re painters….they smoke, they laugh in cafes with friends, doing nothing but…um, hanging out and talking…

Juan: These people have a better chance of staring at a pack of cigarettes than staring at a friggin' iphone.

Juanita: Ahhhh….

Juan: In this world where a Swiss woman stares early in the morning at a computer screen to touch some kind of birthday based talisman with the words of the man she’s crazy about, yeah okay.....the man she loves....who's writing thousands of miles away, and says to herself, I don’t who you are writing about…but it sure seems like your writing about ME…we all need a Spanish painter to come right up to us, look us in the eye, and ask us to get in a small plane with him and go away for the weekend.

Juanita: Ahhh….I see. Check on that. You know, Juan, the film has too passing of a relationship with Barcelona…but so what?…VCB gets most visceral when Javier and Penelope are painting, and the Woodman has Scarlett shoot film instead of digital for her emerging photographs…and the “scene” between Penelope and Scarlett, while Toothpaste Commercial like….does prove the age old adage…that in a darkroom… things develop. The Woodman had to really be chucking over that one, eh?

Juan: Yes, if we just take less chances…if we just are more passive…less direct…less courageous, less real, more digital…we lose something really serious... not to mention a fuckload of fun.

Juanita: Right….after generations and generations we have still not learned how to love. We’re working on it…but...wait...I'm getting a call...

Juan: Can you not take that please?....We are on stage for christsake....in a frigging Peter Hall Production... okay?

Juanita: Yeah, sure . Fine.

Juan: Thank you. The bottom line is this guy is brilliant…even if there is a narrowness to his budgets and his language and cadence and subject matter….Hitchcock trumps there and Oliver Stone, who may next raise a billion dollars for a single film (Though W. did hit a hard wall in October) also trumps there....but…NO ONE…writes and directs films on that on-the-dot once a year beat the way this guy does…so, so sozzi to that film critic at L Magazine…there is very little you are doing right now to prepare yourself to, let's say, make one eighth of a single critically acclaimed motion picture, of which Woody’s made about 30. So yes, The Woodman himself could get a bit sexier…but he did that here, at 73, by substituting Javier Bardem for himself, and maybe…these combined things…that need for the visceral….the raw excitement of looking onto someone’s eye, finding something there and taking a chance… having a long lunch, you know, painting like a madman, all those things....are why Vicky is playing so strongly.

Juanita: Not to mention Vicky herself, played utterly brilliantly by Rebbecca Hall, who is the British daughter of the brilliant stage director Peter Hall, mentioned all over this play.

Juan: That woman was fucking HOTT in this movie …and is an actual genius. I can tell you that straight away. Watch de fuck out for Rebecca Hall.

Juanita: Not that I have anything against Penelope Snooze...

. Juan: Penelope Cruz is not Penelope Snooze. You’re just jealous that she’s the top Spanish Actress in the World and you’re a part time bullfighter and a part time waitress at The Raddisson on the Place de Feliz.

Juanita: Hey…we have a legendary rooftop bar, okay?

Juan: She was amazing in this movie and is perfect as a passionate insane Spanish gal. I remember seeing her on the street in Telluride, laid out on the ground in front of Belmont Liquors in a flowing Catelonian peasant skit…and she was reaching out toward the street and I turned and saw that she was reaching out to Tom Cruise, who was standing on the street below the curb and who appeared to be, like, four feet tall and who gave me a curt nod under his Yankee cap because we had, in fact, met (Juan winks). But I will tell you if they give Penelope an Oscar because this movie is making some money…the Academy should give an Expensive Cocker Spaniel an Oscar next year for Best Supporting Performance in a Movie by a Internationally Acclaimed Cocker Spaniel.

Juanita: Hey, Penelope is overblown passion personified. She’s good at it, and I love her. Look…Juan....there are any number of ways to make some money and establish a reputation. Making a film a year and writing them…many packed with copious wisps of genuinely edifying crap….Jeeze that’s pure work ethic…his statement in Match Point: “Hard Work is mandatory, but luck is kind o like DEFINITELY necessary” is pretty fucking righteous. So few folk get that first part…the second part is a bit easier but also less thoroughly understood. We buy our lottery tickets but worship the lucky a little bit too heavily I think. Yeah... I think thats one of El Woodman's points. Also, it seems the Woodman’s work is so often packed with understanding about forgiveness of yourself and others…its like a snappy Yom Kippur service, ultimately.

Juan: Less fun…but, yes, you’re on to something, and if you married your daughter you’d feel the same way. Right? But it’s a beautiful message…it’s a big sticky sometimes non-vegetarian burger life is…

Juanita: So is this paella of eat- drink-get-your-finger in-a-little-fluid that might, you know, be actually interesting every once in while ..um…LIFE…finding a balance with the digital life and any kind of work where the work may just not be exciting enough….with a dash of excitement and adventure…seems to kinds be where its at. And VCB screams that.

Juan: Look the digital life is, in fact, interesting. I assure you we’re getting a fully formed, kind of sweet, Swiss musical simply by stalking a few Swiss citizens on Facebook and with the help of that great and astoundingly slim and delightful Swiss art dealer Bjorn Ressle and a random-though-carefully selected musician at Mannes College of Music and that great Swiss singer at the Met… we will be rocking Switzerland HARD come 2012. I will not stand for anything less than Billboards of me and Chayte Hozler all over Switzerland in 2012.

Juanita: Hey that Chayte Holzer's a great Bullfighter...don't mess with him…but, posters of you and Chayte all over Europe aside, you have to live outside of the ring buddy. And you really do have to LOVE…..and if a 73 year old perverted geezer who works as hard as anybody in showbusiness has the courage to throw himself into vat of sangria and roll in it…. Juan: We all have to have the courage to find a balance with visceral passion in our own life….and to do the work and the play of actually learning how to love. Of Bloody Fucking Learning How to Love…without full time Blackberry surfing.

Juanita: Finessed Blackberry Surfing is an art, though.

Juan: I hear u.

Juanita: Anyway....Enjoying visceral, physical, hands on life is what Vicky Christina Barcelona is all about.

Juan: Which is why I’m going to shave with this handy Buck Knife right now…going out tonight , and I thoroughly intend to look into someone’s eyes and eat an alarming number of home baked breadsticks from the Catalan region of Spain and take it from there…hey...I'm only human.

Juan begins shaving. He cuts himself. Juanita slowly moves towards him and then sweetly licks his jaw, and the bleeding, for a moment, stops.

CURTAIN

Juanita: You got it,guy.

Juan: I think its safe to say that one of the things the Woodman writes about is relationships.

Juanita: That's a safe bet Juan.

Juan: Wait a minute...I must take a break for luncheon.

Juanita: Let's take a Siesta.

Juan and Juanita have a thirteen hour luncheon that includes Sangria, lovemaking, and a brief nap. TBC

Younger Playman: Then something happened that I had not seen before….the scoreboard started flashing the number "2003”…..OJ Simpson had just rushed for over 2000 yards in single season…an unheard of feat...the first man to do so, shattering Jim Brown’s long held record for yardage in a single season.

Older Playman: He was one of the greatest athletes I’d ever seen. And you, young man, haven’t even seen any of the "Naked Gun" movies yet.

Younger Playman: That’s true…if you’ve ever seen those financial planning commercials where the young version of a guy is talking to an older version the same guy about his retirement nest egg…that’s what’s happening right now. For me…it's 1974…and yes, I’ve never seen a "Naked Gun" Movie.

OP: Well let me tell you…If no-one ever ran on a football field like the Juicester, nobody definitely ever ran though an airport carrying a briefcase like him….you never saw a Hertz commercial either, right?

YP: No…those, too, were after my time.

OP: Well, then you prolly never smoked crack with a well known crack trust-funder in Malibu, and you never heard that fellow tell you that he was using drugs heavily with OJ in the early 90s pretty much all the time.

YP: You know, sir, I can’t say I did. Though I did see Jill St. John smoking a joint in a tin hot tub with “Mr. Leisure” under this building about an hour ago…

OP: O. J. Simpson may be done. His conviction for armed robbery and attempted kidnapping may very well send him to jail for life…and what I came out here to say is that he took the sway of “that demon life” just a little too seriously.

YP: Elaborate, guy.

OP: His life really probably become cocaine, ecstacy, sex and golf….and the giant buzz the combination of those elements can create…a common combo in South Florida, yes, but OJ took it too far. I mean, after…after most likely killing his wife and her boyfriend, he went to South Florida, partied, got together with a stripper named Chirsty Prody, and allegedly definitely used drugs with her and many other strippers for like…years. In my day that just wasn’t what they called Yale material…

YP: I hear you. Wait…you mentioned something in there I didn’t quite understand….

OP:…and the reason that I’m writing this, is that what I constantly see in young people, and what I saw in myself at your age, is too much of a common emphasis on the desire to have a good time…look I’m not telling you not to have a good time… I am, you know, Playman…but being consumed by it is a mistake.

YP: Listen I have an appointment with “Mr. Leisure” and Jill St John…they’ re going to teach me how to start a fire with just a Spring Roll and a copy of Field and Stream magazine, and….

OP: If the greatest athlete in the world can be consumed and destroyed by that….

YP: I’m listening….um…maybe a little bit more carefully now…

OP: I remember being in Venice in a bar by the beach, hooked on Playdough, Serious in da hood Leisure, Pina Colodas with 151 rum and half-priced sushi happy hour at Chaya Venice…and I remember seeing a white Bronco on the tv in the bar, and a guy saying “At this moment…OJ Simpson is a fugitive from justice…” this was the moment that the entire world realized that maybe, just maybe…the jury got it wrong, and OJ did kill his wife and Ron Goldman.

YP: What? ….what are you talking about?….you were just talking about "Naked Gun 4" and Yale…and…what?

OP: Yeah…that’s what I’m talking about…and I’m not even going to try to make a "Naked Gun 4" joke….

YP: Hey…you’re kidding me… (Young Playman would begin to tear up…but he doesn’t have a face).

OP: No, I’m not kidding you. So I am out here saying that maybe, just maybe , a good time can be had without Cocaine and Strippers.

YP: Look...ok...that’s categorically untrue!

OP: I’m learning that its not, my fren….have you heard “Gator Country” by Molly Hatchet?

YP Also after my time… so you came out to say that a good time can be had without Cocaine and Strippers…Know Yourself, Take It Easy Baby, try not to let a good time be destructive to you and your work ethic, which suffers enough anyway, what with the new season of The View and also Gossip Girl, find Molly Hatchet online and cool it with the Tabasco sauce, right?

OP: Right.

YO: Bravo, sir!

OP : You got it, guy.

YP: Look Playman…next time try not phoning it in.

OP: So far, I’m at the bottom of a abandoned mine shaft in the hills above Telluride…and I’m actually Telexing it in….but I’m just warming up.

CURTAIN