plays

Valley

or

C’mon, Smell the Jejune!

Written

by

Russell Heller

Story

by

Russell Heller and Joshua Perlson

219 E. 28^th St., Apt. 4D

New York, NY 10016

917.375.7431 – russheller@yahoo.com - www.russheller.com

Russell - 24, character, Jewish but not too, alternates black frame glasses with contacts, cheerfully lachrymose, East Coast in CA

Josh - 25, more conventionally attractive, Jewish but not too, often restless and easily bored, East Coast in CA

InT. car on freeway - DAY

Inside RUSSELL's beat up '93 White Ford Mustang LX Convertible we watch him turn on then occasionally sing along to Belle & Sebastian's "Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying" off of "If You're Feeling Sinister," cut back and forth to credits and either RUSSELL driving continuously or alternate shots from the same position of him moving along, sitting in traffic, creeping in traffic, passing some landmark, perhaps ending with him in the parking lot of the apartment building exiting the car

Music (V.O.)

Ooh Get me away from here I'm dying

Play me a song to set me free

Nobody writes them like they used to

So it may as well be me

Here on my own now after hours

Here on my own now on a bus

Think of it this way You could either be successful or be us

With our winning smiles, and us

With our catchy tunes and words

Now we're photogenic

You know, we don't stand a chance

Oh, I'll settle down with some old story

About a boy who's just like me

Thought there was love in everything and everyone

You're so naive

They always reach a sorry ending

They always get it in the end

Still it was worth it as I turned the pages solemnly, and then

With a winning smile, the poor boy

With naivety succeeds

At the final moment, I cried, I always cry at endings

Oh, that wasn't what I meant to say at all

From where I'm sitting, rain

Falling against the lonely tenement

Has set my mind to wander

Into the windows of my lovers

They never know unless I write

"This is no declaration, I just thought I'd let you know goodbye"

Said the hero in the story "It is mightier than swords

I could kill you sure

But I could only make you cry with these words"

InT. APARTMENT - nIGHT

RUSSELL is sitting at his laptop in a cramped and incredibly disorganized room filled with CD's, headshots, a bed on the floor and a big suitcase instead of a dresser, he is deleting from the screen.  He calls to JOSH in the next room.

RUSSELL

Fuck man Josh, I can't come up with any characters that don't want to be actors or writers or some shit.

InT. APARTMENT - NIGHT

RUSSELL'S ROOM, RUSSELL sits across his bed with his back against a husband pillow and a book or paper next to him, he is listening to JOSH, who is standing in the doorway doing a sort of stand-up routine.  Both are dressed for bed, JOSH occasionally paces out into his room or does a pull-up on a bar across the doorway of his room.

JOSH

This girl wants to talk about her boyfriend, obviously, and whatthefuck I don't care so, "Hey, how did you meet your boyfriend?" And she says, "Well, I was at a bar by myself, and he was the bartender and he was really hot and a real asshole.  I was, like, trying to get him to talk to me, but he must have thought I was an absolute idiot, you know?"

(brief pause)

"So I stayed there until the bar closed, and at the end of the night he wrote his number on a napkin, crumpled it up, and threw it in my face."

(pause)

See what I mean?

InT. APARTMENT - DAY

We watch, perhaps in fast forward, JOSH and RUSSELL doing or not doing various things around the apartment, to get a feel for it's spacing. 

JOSH watching TV.

RUSSELL sitting in front of the living room's enormous bookshelves, looking for something.

JOSH surfing the internet.

RUSSELL walking out the door with a wipe from the brightness outside.

Music cue, The White Stripes' "Little Room" plays throughout:

MUSIC (V.O.)

Well you're in your little room and you're working on something good but if it's really good you're gonna need a bigger room and when you're in the bigger room you might not know what to do you might have to think of how you got started in your little room, na na na...

Ext. SHERMAN OAKS GALLERIA - dAY

JOSH and RUSSELL are sitting at an outdoor table at the Galleria, people walk by but we never look anywhere but at the two of them.

RUSSELL

So, you're 2 1/2 hours away?

JOSH

More like 2, yeah, and I get there at noon and it's a night scene, so of course I pick my ass until 10pm.  Then we start getting ready and I start talking to the girl I'm in the scene with.

RUSSELL

She cute?

JOSH

Not bad.

RUSSELL

Single?

JOSH

Of course not.

RUSSELL

Great, you have this scene slobbering all over this not bad girl, with her ripping her clothes off in a moving vehicle, your first such scene, hopefully not your last, and they can't even get you a single girl.

JOSH

Yeah, right, well but, the girl, well, here's the thing, the girl is really smart, like trained in London.  And she even knows some buddies of mine and she's really nice and smart-

RUSSELL

And then it's ACTION! Time to shove her breasts in your face.

JOSH

Titties, please.  And even weirder because they were gonna shoot it on digital but when I showed up they decided to go 35. 

RUSSELL

Well, that's cool, it won't look like home movie shit.  Or like "Diary of a Sex Addict."

JOSH

Yeah, yeah, but they have no money left.

RUSSELL

So really no foreplay.

JOSH

Yeah.  We get one, maybe two cracks at it with zero rehearsal.

RUSSELL

And her feeling like I do, "Oh I'm so glad I went to college for this."  Was the scene at least hot?

JOSH

It was sort of awkward and rushed.

RUSSELL

So it was verite, great. 

JOSH

Did I mention she had no bra on?

RUSSELL

My god, you're in a soft-core alien slasher movie!  I bet her parents are glad they sent her to London. When do they need you again?

JOSH

Thursday night the alien attacks us and then it either eats me or decapitates me.  It was gonna decapitate me, but they didn't have me come to the head molding and I think they fucked it up.  I think it ends with me all torn up on the hood of the car.

RUSSELL

Too bad. I thought it was gonna bite your head off.

JOSH

Well.  It's also not the biggest alien.

RUSSELL

Uh-oh, what does that mean?

JOSH

The alien is...being played by a Chinese dwarf in an alien suit.

(pause)

EXT. various locations - day/evening

JOSH and RUSSELL shot walking towards the camera from about 10-15 feet away.  Same shot with them walking through the Galleria, the Grove, the 3rd Street Promenade, Pasadena's new area, Universal City.  Music is Modest Mouse's "The World at Large" off "Good News for People Who Like Bad News."

MuSIC (V.O.)

Ice-age heat wave, can't complain. If the world's at large, why should I remain? Walked away to another plan. Gonna find another place, maybe one I can stand. I move on to another day, to a whole new town with a whole new way. Went to the porch to have a thought. Got to the the door and again, I couldn't stop. You don't know where and you don't know when. But you still got your words and you got your friends. Walk along to another day. Work a little harder, work another way. Well uh-uh baby I ain't got no plan. We'll float on maybe would you understand? Gonna float on maybe would you understand? Well float on maybe would you understand?

InT. aPARTMENT - aFTERNOON

JOSH and RUSSELL are in the living room, JOSH in the captain's chair with his feet up, RUSSELL on the goodwill couch.  The TV is muted.  They are playing out a deadpan mock of "Inside the Actor's Studio."

JOSH

And now I'd like to give you the famous questionnaire devised by myself, Jean-Jacques Jejune in all my brilliance, on the legendary talk-show, "Bouillon de Cushion."  What is your favorite word?

RUSSELL

Hooters.  Or fun-bags.  Or ga-ga-loos.

JOSH

What is your least favorite word?

RUSSELL

Communicable.

JOSH

What turns you on?

RUSSELL

Drooling sycophantism.  Honesty.

JOSH

What turns you off?

RUSSELL

Honesty.  Actual honesty.

JOSH

What sound or noise do you love?

RUSSELL

Your students applauding my performance in the Olson twins' seminal and semenal porn, "How the West Was Fun 2: Sword Fight at the BJ Corral."

JOSH

What sound or noise do you hate?

RUSSELL

The sound of your still beating heart, Jean-Jacques, you insufferable cunt.

JOSH

When you reach the pearly gates, what do you want to hear God say?

RUSSELL

Whip it out, big boy, so I can suck it.

Int. bar - nIGHT

JOSH and RUSSELL walk into shot against a large refrigerator with a badly printed sign that says "Bring the beer home!" And serves as a wall in a dimly lit bar (Patsy's near Riverside and Laurel Canyon) with loud loud cover hair band music playing.  We are at about 3/4 shot on them.  They both have beers.  JOSH is drinking Heineken from a bottle, RUSSELL is drinking a pint that he thinks there is something wrong with, but continues drinking.  People wipe the lens but we don't see anyone else clearly.  They look at people, look at the band, stare off into space, point out a girl or two, look bored, give up, put their beers down and leave.

InT. aPARTMENT - nIGHT

Outside RUSSELL's room, he is in bed with the light out but his door is open.  JOSH and he have been speaking and JOSH is going to bed.  JOSH's light is on, he's closing RUSSELL's door and heading to his room.

RUSSELL

Hey,

(JOSH holds the door)

Before you go to bed tell me a bedtime story involving bunnies and a pigeon.

JOSH

Jack the bunny fucked Wally the pigeon.

(closes door)

RUSSELL

I said bunnIES.  Plural.

JOSH

(opens door a crack)

Jack the bunny and his sexy bunny hookers fucked Wally the pigeon.  Then killed him.

(closes door, goes into his room as he closes his door he tosses out)

True story.

Int. APARTMENT - MORNING

JOSH and RUSSELL are reading aloud from David Mamet's "Sexual Perversity in Chicago."  RUSSELL has the book, JOSH a copy of some scenes.

JOSH (Bernie)

The main thing, Dan...

RUSSELL (Danny)

Yes?

JOSH (Bernie)

The main thing about broads...

RUSSELL (Danny)

Yes?

JOSH (Bernie)

Is two things. One: The Way to Get Laid is to Treat 'Em Like Shit...

RuSSELL (Danny)

Yeah...

JOSH (Bernie)

...and Two: Nothing...nothing makes you so attractive to the opposite sex as getting your rocks off on a regular basis. (then out of character) Well he's right about that.

Russell

That is so very not the point.

Josh

It's true though, right?

RUSSELL

Well...yeah.

InT. aPARTMENT - various times of day

RUSSELL in his bathrobe reading Variety on the goodwill couch.

JOSH eating dinner off a plate sitting on top of a cardboard moving box.

RUSSELL standing in front of the heater warming himself up in the morning, roasting his back then his front.

JOSH sitting with his face right in front of the little air conditioning unit in the wall, turned on full blast.

Music is, inevitably, Rufus Wainwright's "California" hitting "Freon" at the shot of JOSH in front of the A/C.

MUSIC (v.O.)

California, California, so much to wonder of that I might just stay in bed, big time rollers, part time models, so much to plunder that I might just sleep instead, I adore this city of neon, thousand surfers, whiffs of Freon...

FADE TO:

Int. APARTMENT - aFTERNOON

RUSSELL sits on the couch reading, let's say, "Less Than Zero" by Brett Easton Ellis, or "Farewell, My Lovely" by Raymond Chandler.  JOSH is pacing restlessly.  He sidles up to the  five foot high heater embedded in the wall.

Josh

(lasciviously)

Hey.  Hello there.  How you doing?

Leering as if he's checking out her ass.

JOSH (cont'd)

You're looking good today, baby.  Lookin' fine.  Oh, yeah, that's my hand on your thigh, what're you gonna do about it.  Ooh, you're naughty.  You bad girl.  Wanna go back to my place?  Yeah, I thought so, mmmm.

JOSH embraces the heater in a passionate clinch. 

JOSH (cont'd)

(oozing smarmily)

Oooh, yeah, daddy like.

RUSSELL, still looking at his book, shudders.  JOSH's manner towards the heater changes.

Josh (cont'd)

(a la "Raging Bull")

You bitch!  You fucking bitch!  I fuckin' love you!  I fuckin' love you you fuckin' bitch!  Why do you make me do this?! I fuckin' love you!  Why do you make me hit you!

JOSH smacks the heater, which vibrates metallically.

Josh (cont'd)

Look what you made me do!  Look what you made me do!  I fuckin' love you you fuckin' bitch!  You miserable fucking cunt! WHY DO YOU MAKE ME DO THIS?!?

JOSH hits the heater again, then feels bad.

JOSH (cont'd)

Awww, baby, awww baby I'm sorry baby.  Shit, baby, shit.  I'm sorry, baby.  Please forgive me.

JOSH penitently embraces the heater and miserably slides to the ground holding it like clinging to a woman by her knees.  He puts his head against it, occasionally looking up as if into a woman's eyes.

JOSH (cont'd)

It's just, I get crazy sometimes.  You know I love you.  You know.  You're my girl.  You're my girl!

He collapses against the heater in penitence and despair, racked with sobs, then lies still.  RUSSELL finally looks up from his book.  JOSH pops to his feet, claps his hands and jogs back into his room without looking at RUSSELL.  RUSSELL goes back to his book.

InT. aPARTMENT - lATER

RUSSELL sits on couch watching TV, JOSH is in background at his computer, we switch perspectives so they change fields.  RUSSELL is eating a sandwich off a plate sitting on a torn moving box he's using as a tray.

RUSSELL

You know...?

JOSH

What.

RUSSELL mutes television.

RUSSELL

You know...far be it from me to propose any, you know, action, or anything like that.  And I certainly don't want to get my ass up.  But what do you say we go to Target right now, get some trays to eat off, get a standing ironing board, buy you a $5 garbage can for your room and maybe go look at beds to get you off that ridiculous air mattress.

JOSH pauses, looks at air mattress, considers, then overlapping:

JOSH

No.

RUSSELL

(overlapping)

Okay.

RUSSELL unmutes television, they resume vegetating.

Int. APARTMENT - DAY           MONTAGE

Bob Dylan's "Talking Hava Negeilah Blues" plays as we cut back and forth between JOSH and RUSSELL getting dressed up in their best.  On the last "odelay-hee" they both put on yarmulkes, and they exit the front door of the apartment on the end harmonica.

MUSIC (V.O.)

Here's a foreign song I learned in Utah:

Ha

Va, Ha Va

Na, Ha Va Na

Gi, Ha Va Na Gi

La, Ha Va Na Gi La

Odelay-hee hee hee heyee

InT. CAR ON FREEWAY - DAY

RUSSELL and JOSH in RUSSELL's car.

RUSSELL

This girl told me I should get my chest waxed.

JOSH

Man.  Is that what people do out here?

RUSSELL

I don't know.  I kind of like my chest hair.

JOSH

Hey, chest hair is back in.

RUSSELL

Yeah, that's what people with chest hair always say.

JOSH

It would show off a six-pack better.  If you ever bought one.

RUSSELL

Imagine a hairy six-pack.  Eyuck.

JOSH

How exactly did this come up?

RUSSELL

She was commenting on my tuft.

RUSSELL primps his tuft of hair at his suprasternal notch.  JOSH feels for a tuft on himself.

JOSH

Tuft?

RUSSELL

See, you have no tuft.

JOSH

Do girls like tufts?

RUSSELL

They say they don't, but in bed they can't get enough of the chest hair.  They nestle.

(pause)

JOSH

Nestle.

RUSSELL

Yeah, nestle.  Burrow.

(hold)

INT. aPARTMENT - aFTERNOON

JOSH is doing pull-ups, RUSSELL is watching.  JOSH does about six, with effort.  He steps aside and RUSSELL jumps up.  He does three and jumps off clapping his hands and pumping his fist.

Music is intro to any of Bob Dylan's "Talkin'" songs, ex. "Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues."

InT. aPARTMENT - aFTERNOON

RUSSELL at his computer, focus is on JOSH as he paces in and out of the room, mock incensed.

JOSH

Are you fucking kidding me?  Are you kidding me?

RUSSELL

No man, think about it.

JOSH

No way.  No way.

RUSSELL

Okay, imagine it were the other way around, does that fit?

(pause)

JOSH

No way I'm Affleck.

RUSSELL

Dude, you're Affleck, all right?

JOSH

Dude, I am not fucking Affleck already, bro.  I'm Affleck?  I'm fucking Affleck?

RUSSELL

So I'm Affleck?  Come on.

JOSH

What makes you so Damon?

RUSSELL

My sensibilities.

JOSH

So what?  So I'm not "independent" enough?

RUSSELL

Come on, not more than I am.  Look man, I just drove in traffic to West LA and back to rent the new DVD of "Salt of the Earth" and find out when "Morvern Callar" comes out.  I think I win.

JOSH

Man.  Fucking Affleck.

RUSSELL

Admit it already, you like Affleck. And you like being Affleck.  And you'd have dug on that JLo's posterior when you had the chance, no matter what comes out of her mouth, I know you.  That's why you're Affleck.

JOSH

So what, I just sign my name on the scripts?

RUSSELL

Hey, Affleck isn't such a bad thing to be.  And he does more than that, he's the panache.  Damon's the hard work but Affleck lets the people know it's a good time, something Damon could be better at.  He projects the effortlessness, just how good it is to be making an obscene amount of money, winning little gold men and getting a girlfriend with an enormous ass.

(pause)

JoSH

(going back into his room)

Can't believe I'm fucking Affleck.

(closes his door)

Int. Russell's CAR - nIGHT

RUSSELL drives

RUSSELL

(Elroy-like)

Gee, Dad, what did you do when you were 22-25?

JOSH

(Dad-like)

Absolutely nothing of value, Son, absolutely nothing of value.

RUSSELL

I bet you were pretty wild, Dad.

JOSH

Didn't get the chance to be, Son.

RuSSELL

Didn't you meet Mom then?

JOSH

No, Son, even your mother wouldn't look at me until I became the national spokesman for "Carb-Burger" and bought a yellow Maserati.

RUSSELL

Gosh, Dad, are you saying Mom's a whore?

JOSH

What you learn when you move to the Valley, Son, is that everyone's a whore in their own special way.

RUSSELL

Hey Dad, is that why we live on Mars?

JOSH

Yes it is, Son, yes it is.

INT. aPARTMENT - Various times

Kitchen.  RUSSELL putting things in the fridge. 

JOSH taking things out of the fridge.

RUSSELL cleaning dishes.

JOSH cooking something involved, stirring things and checking on the broiler.

RUSSELL making something not involved, watching the microwave count down.

Music is "Alameda" by Elliot Smith:

MUSIC (v.O.)

You walk down Alameda, shuffling your deck of trick cards over everyone/like some precious only son/face down, bow to the champion/you walk down Alameda, looking at the cracks in the sidewalk/thinking about your friends/how you maintain all them in a constant state of suspense/for your own protection over their affection/

nobody broke your heart/you broke your own because you can't finish what you start (cut into) nobody broke your heart/if you're alone it must be you that wants to be apart.

InT. LAMplighter restaurant on van nuys - midnight

JOSH is eating soup, beef vegetable, drinking ice water.  RUSSELL is eating a piece of cherry pie and drinking coffee.  Pie has whipped cream, coffee is decaf, RUSSELL is getting a warm-up on his coffee.

JOSH

Why did you wave her off before?

RUSSELL

I hate it when they refill it half-way, it throws off the balance.

RUSSELL is adding 2 creamers and a long stream of sugar.

JOSH

The balance?  Of sugar and sugar?

(pause, they take a bite)

How's the cherry pie?

RUSSELL puts up one hand palm out in reference to Agent Dale Cooper on "Twin Peaks."

RUSSELL

It'll kill ya.  How's the soup?

JOSH

Pretty decent.

RUSSELL

Ah, diner fare.

JOSH perks up as if he hears something.

JOSH

Wait.  Wait a second...

That music comes on.  You know, the song from malls and elevators.  The mother of muzak.  You'll know it when you hear it.  It's in every elevator in the country, you can't imagine it without hearing the beeps from the floors interspersed.  It's "(Theme from) A Summer Place" composed by Max Steiner, performed by Percy Faith.  Do you have any idea what I had to go through to find that out?

RUSSELL

No way.

JOSH

Huh.

RUSSELL

They're really playing it.

They both look around.

JOSH

Fuuuck.

RUSSELL

Surreality quotient of this place just went through the fucking roof.

For the first time we break from them with a 360 around the diner which appears otherworldly and washed out.  The music combined with the faces of the other diners (many older than the dinosaurs who could be extras in a jewish retirement home version of "The Grapes of Wrath") gives it a pathetic balletic quality; reference is the supermarket in Lynne Ramsay's "Morvern Callar" where Samantha Morton is listening to Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra singing "Some Velvet Morning."  We look out the window at the diners on the patio and past them to the Lamplighter sign and the windswept desolation of the Valley at night beyond.  We come back to the table where RUSSELL takes off his black frame glasses and puts his hands together as if praying.  He looks up at the drop ceiling and we look with him then back down as, almost crying, he mouths the words, "Thank you God" only semi-ironically.  We take a moment.

JOSH

Do you really think this is the place?

RUSSELL

Was that not a sign?  Look at that waitress.

JOSH

Didn't the show happen in Washington?

RUSSELL

(glasses back on, note: "Canadia" is on purpose)

The show was written here in LA and he recommended the cherry pie at the Lamplighter.  Twin Peaks the town is supposed to be near the border of Canadia, but they never say what state it is outright.

JOSH

(mock admiringly)

Man.  You are some kinda geek.

RUSSELL

I know.  But what the fuck else were we doing?

Music in segue, Angelo Badalamenti's "Main Theme from Twin Peaks."

InT. cAR - nIGHT

RUSSELL

Man, that Israeli girl...

JOSH

You certainly have a rich fantasy life, bro.

RUSSELL

Listen to you with your fuckin' "dude-bro."

JOSH

At least I'm not saying "brah."

RUSSELL

Fantasy's all I have, brah, my life is pain.

JOSH

My fuckin' heart's pumping pisswater for you.

(dad-like)

You know, son, all the things you've failed at in the past you could fail at again in the future.

RUSSELL

(normal voice)

Gee, thanks dad.

JOSH

Because...everything you do...might not work.  Even. If you try. Even. If you try, your best.

RUSSELL

(ibid)

Really. Thanks dad.

FADE OUT.

Ext. hollywood street - dAY

FADE IN:

RUSSELL and JOSH on the sidewalk waiting to go in somewhere, some Hollywood play or one-person show.  They walk to the curb.  RUSSELL lights a cigarette. 

JOSH

Mr. Fuckin' James Dean smoker.

RUSSELL

Hey, I'm clearing my lungs.

They pace a little.  RUSSELL looks around.

RUSSELL (cont'd)

Nice view of the Hollywood sign.

JOSH looks.  Pause.

JOSH

Wow.

RUSSELL

Dude, it's just the Hollywood sign.

JOSH

Yeah, I've never seen it.

RUSSELL

What? You've lived here for, what, close to six months?

JOSH

Yeah.

RUSSELL

And you've never seen it?

JOSH

Not once.

RUSSELL

How can you miss it?  In six months?

JOSH

I guess I never looked up.

(pause)

RUSSELL

Well.  There it is.

They both look at the sign.  We stay on their faces, never breaking to look at the sign with them.  RUSSELL smokes contemplatively.  "The World at Large" comes back, and we blackout right before the lyrics.

CUT TO black

Music (v.O.)

I know that starting over is not what life's all about. But my thoughts were so loud, I couldn't hear my mouth. My thoughts were so loud, I couldn't hear my mouth. My thoughts were so loud.

Credits roll

After or throughout credits plays the following scene.  RUSSELL is sitting at his computer, JOSH enters the room.

JOSH

How's it wrapping up?

RUSSELL

It's a little metatextual.

JOSH

(pause)

Huh?

RUSSELL

It's like metatextual is...saying that it is a work of fiction and acknowledging that in the devices it uses.  Metatheatrical is like Brecht, where he acknowledges that the play is a work of artifice and doesn't try to get people to completely go along with the sentimentality of the scene or the emotion because he wants to distance them.  I guess in films you'd call it metacinematicality.  A good example would be...Ferris Bueller talking right to the camera.  See, if you show that you know that it's a script and you acknowledge it too much it can come off as smart-ass.

JOSH

You are a smart-ass.

RUSSELL

Well, there's that.

JOSH

Yeah.  Anyway.  I'm gonna go get some pie.

JOSH walks out.

RUSSELL

Oooooh....pie.

RUSSELL runs out after him.

END.