The film version of Grease turns out to be pretty twisted.
Even though the movie was made in the seventies, it’s supposed to take place in the fifties. The action centers on a group of kids from Rydell High. The guys belong to a gang called the T-Birds and they wear black “greaser” jackets—hence the name, or maybe that refers to Travolta’s hair . . . or eyebrows. The girls who hang out with the T-Birds are known as the Pink Ladies. Travolta’s character’s name is Danny Zuko. He’s supposed to be the toughest of the tough. But when the Olivia Newton-John character, totally squeaky-clean Sandy Olsson, moves from Australia and starts going to Rydell, Danny starts to melt.
“In the original play,” my dad says, “her character’s name was Sandy Dumbrowski.”
“Right,” my mom adds. “She was never supposed to be Australian.”
What’s with all the Australia hate everywhere all of a sudden?
My dad ignores her.
It’s one of those movies where everyone is always breaking into song. I guess that when I signed up for it at school I was dimly aware it was a musical, because school plays almost always are, but I don’t think I realized people were still making break-into-song movies like this in the seventies.
So the basic plot is Danny likes Sandy, Sandy likes Danny, but he’s a greaser while she becomes a cheerleader. People don’t approve of him liking her, so he resists, and there’s some other stuff with people doing outrageous things because they’re jealous, particularly this one girl Rizzo—leader of the Pink Ladies—who likes Danny and is jealous of Sandy. But then Danny realizes he can’t live without Sandy, he becomes a jock to win her heart, and even though his greaser friends should object to this, everyone breaks into song together in the end in one mass show of group solidarity.
Somewhere along the way, Rizzo becomes convinced she’s pregnant, but then she’s not.
Rama lama lama ke dinga de dinga dong.
Yeah, right.
Shoo bop shoo wadda wadda yipitty boom de boom.
I wonder how much this movie version is accurate to the play version, because it sure doesn’t have a whole lot to do with reality.
“Wow,” I say as the credits roll. John and Olivia are still singing. “That was deep.”
“I’m still not sure we should let you do this,” my dad says as Mom turns up the lights.
“It’s just a play,” Mom points out. I know what she’s thinking. Inside, she’s thinking, Hey, at least he’s not trying to join the Science Club again.
“Yes,” my dad says, “but we had an agreement. No extracurriculars.”
“But it’s Grease,” my mom objects. “What kind of trouble can he get into doing Grease?”
“Fine,” my dad says at last. Then he turns to me. “But don’t louse this up. One false move, and you’re out of there.”
Of course, no one says that just because I’m trying out it doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily get the part I want. And no one dares ask just what part me and my hooks expect to get.
Aurora
The drama teacher’s name is Mrs. Peepers, with oversize glasses just like that little woman in The Incredibles, and even I have to work not to laugh at that.
It seems that every girl who’s trying out wants to be Sandy, including me. I guess it’s not surprising that most people would go for the lead, but I’ve never been one of those people. I’ve always preferred seeing my name second or lower down in the program—maybe because I don’t have much faith in my singing voice?—but for some reason I want this. Maybe I just don’t want to be unrecognizable anymore, don’t want any more little girls to mistake me for, I don’t know, Toto the dog. Or maybe I’m just finally ready to take a chance on myself, ready to see if I really have what it takes.
A bunch of us girls are seated together toward the front of the auditorium, waiting our turns. The girls are supposed to all audition first, followed by the guys.
I crane my neck around and see Jessup sitting with Steve and Gary and a few others just a few rows behind us. I’m a little surprised that Jessup is even trying out. He just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would bother acting in plays. He seems more like the kind of guy who would make fun of kids who consider themselves theater people.
Then something catches my eye even further back, far behind Jessup and the others. It’s the glint of light on metal. I squint against the theater gloom, and there, all the way in the back row of the darkened auditorium, I see Lucius.
His eyes meet mine and I raise my hand, give a little wave that I hope he realizes is friendly. He raises a hook to salute me back.
“Are you sure you really want to be Sandy?” Celia whispers to me as Mrs. Peepers reads lines with one of the other girls auditioning now on the stage.
“I’m sure,” I say, wondering why it should matter to her.
“But it just doesn’t make any sense to me,” she says, like she’s annoyed. “Sandy is supposed to have blond hair. You have black hair.”
“So?” I shrug. “I can wear a wig. Or maybe this time there’ll just be a black-haired Sandy.” I remember something. “Anything can happen. You know, in the movie version they made Sandy Australian.”
Suddenly, I like that idea: that anything can happen.
Lucius
It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
No, I know that I did not invent that line, so please do not try to sue me for plagiarism, an offense that seems to be more prevalent in our society than ever before.
But is it? Is it really better to know a thing you love only to lose it?
I think of Nick Greek and his passion for football. He got to at least have a small taste of his dream, being briefly in the NFL. Might he have been better off, though, if he’d never made it that far only to lose it, or, better yet, if he’d never had that passion to begin with? Maybe then he would have applied himself to more practical things while in school. Maybe there would have been more options available to him now. Maybe he would have been happier.
And what of me and my hands? Or, I should say, lack of hands.
My parents have an unusual preference for the musical sound of blind singers. Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Andrea Bocelli—they have them all. What of those men and their blindness? People always regard them as men who have overcome so much, and yet I cannot see it that way, no pun intended. Having sight and then losing it, knowing all the colors of the world only to have them disappear—that is a tragedy. But you don’t mourn what you have never known. Indeed, it is the only existence you do know.
I often think, far too often, that I would have been better off had I been born the way I am now. Sometimes it is agony to think of all the things my hands once did, now can no longer do, will never do again.
If I’d known then what I know now . . .
But that’s always the thing, isn’t it? When you’re living a thing—like Nick living football or me living hands—you don’t know. You take it for granted, like a dog being petted, assuming it will somehow go on forever.
If I’d known then what I know now . . .
I’d have touched everything in sight, everything I could get my hands on. I’d have grabbed the nearest girl I could find and, not even caring how crazy she thought me, touched my hands to her face just to know what that feels like.
Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?
I, never having loved before, have no real answer to that question.
I can’t say I’m surprised that Aurora has the voice of an angel when she sings.
It’s a good thing I don’t have hands anymore, I think, because if I did, I’d be clapping to the point of embarrassing myself.
One good thing, I quickly note, as I listen to the others read their lines onstage while I follow along with the copy of the script Mrs. Peepers gave me: the play version of Grease takes place in Chicago, which I find to be a more apt setting than the beachy California look of the film. One bad thing: the name of the
guys’ gang is the Burger Palace Boys, not the T-Birds. I don’t know—Burger Palace Boys sounds like a lame name to me for a tough gang.
I’m listening to Celia sing—she’s actually not half bad, but totally wrong for Sandy; she’s a deep alto—when in my peripheral vision I catch sight of a shadow in the row I’m seated in, snaking its way toward me.
“Hooks!” I hear Jessup greet me as he, uninvited, parks his butt in the seat next to mine. He says his nickname for me in an overly cheerful way, as though I could somehow mistake us for friends.
I ignore him.
“So, Hooks,” he says, still trying. “What part are you trying out for? I hear they had an Australian Sandy in the movie, but I don’t think anyone’s ever played any of these roles with hooks before. Are you hoping to be the first disabled Danny?”
I have no doubt he is pleased with his alliteration: “disabled Danny.” I suppose I could counter with my own alliteration by saying, “Are you hoping to be the first dickhead Danny?”
But I don’t say that. I don’t say anything, don’t tell him that I can’t sing to save my life and that he has nothing to worry about in that regard.
Instead, I keep my eyes on the stage.
“Come on, Hooks. Who are you going to be? Johnny Casino, the rock-star wannabe? Vince Fontaine, the slimy disc jockey? Eugene Florczyk, the nerd?” His eyes brighten. “I know!” He does a remarkably good falsetto. “You’re going to be Teen Angel, right? You could play it no-armed. Sounds sick to me, but who ever knows what chicks will go for? Maybe you’d even wind up with groupies.” Then in a normal voice: “C’mon, Hooks—tell me.”
I let him wait another moment, then answer:
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Aurora
I must admit: I am shocked at what a good singer Jessup is. In fact, he is so far and away better than any of the other guys, it’s impossible to think Mrs. Peepers will give the role to anyone but him.
And I see what’s coming when Mrs. Peepers asks Jessup and me to go back up onstage at the same time, instructing us to sing a few stanzas of “Summer Nights,” the first duet that Danny and Sandy have together.
I can’t lie: Jessup and I sound good together and I feel the excitement in the room. The play calls for me to look at him intensely and I do that, startled at how intensely he looks back. There’s something naked and disturbing, and yet somehow compelling in his steady gaze. It doesn’t necessarily compel me, but I can see where other girls would find it so, find it impossible to tear away, find it impossible not to give in. It’s a curious thing, becoming aware of how much a guy wants you. And yet, while all this is going on, I am constantly aware of Lucius’s presence at the back of the room.
Jessup and I are the only ones Mrs. Peepers has do this—sing together to see how our duet sounds—so everyone else can’t help but know what’s coming too.
“I can’t believe this,” Celia mutters at my side as we wait outside afterward for Mrs. Peepers to post the names of the cast on the auditorium door. “Sandy is supposed to be a blonde, not dark.”
I’m tempted to point out that as a redhead, she’s no closer to Sandy’s true hair color than I am, and that if Mrs. Peepers just wants a blonde, then she might as well choose Deanie, whose singing, I’m sorry to say, is just plain awful. But I keep my mouth shut, sensing that this dose of common sense will not go over well at this moment.
So instead I simply wait with the others.
Lucius
“You’re a redhead,” I whisper into Celia Wentworth’s ear.
She blinks as she turns to face me. This is the first time, outside of Aurora and Nick, that I’ve spoken to anyone without having them speak to me first, and she’s shocked, as if I’ve struck her or something.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she says.
“Just that if hair color were the sole barometer for the suitability for the part, and not talent, you’d be just as far out of the running as you seem to think Aurora should be.”
Many people have looked at me with disgust or revulsion since I started at this school, and some—I’m thinking specifically of Jessup here—regularly look at me with contempt. But no one so far, at least not that I’ve seen, has looked at me with the naked hatred that Celia Wentworth is bestowing on me right now.
Before she has a chance to respond, however, Mrs. Peepers emerges, tacks the cast list to the door, and then silently but hurriedly departs down the hall, as though someone might physically tackle her for her casting decisions.
The cast list has no surprises at the top.
Aurora Belle is to play Sandy Dumbrowski, which is perfect, Aurora as heroine.
Jessup Tristan is to play Danny Zuko. I can’t help but feel a sigh of disappointment escape me here as I stand at the back of the group. Jessup is not, nor will he ever be, a hero; not even an antihero—that would be me. Really, I’d like to tackle Mrs. Peepers to the ground now myself, or at least beg her to let someone, anyone else, play opposite Aurora.
Most of the rest of the casting is inconsequential, as far as I’m concerned.
Celia Wentworth as the morally questionable Rizzo, a role I think will suit her; Steve, the boy I’ve come to think of as Steve-with-No-Last-Name, as Kenickie, arguably the stupidest and nerdiest name of any character in any play ever. Deanie Daily will be Frenchy; Gary Addams will be Doody, which, come to think of it, rivals Kenickie for worst name ever.
And there are others, going down the list in descending importance.
I feel many pairs of eyes swivel back to look at me when they reach the last line on the list. Most of the eyes are hostile, except for one pair. Those eyes are surprised, happy at what they’ve seen. They are Aurora’s eyes.
And what have they all seen?
That on the very last line, it reads:
Lucius Wolfe, Stage Manager
This time, I didn’t even have to use the words “discrimination” or “lawsuit.” I didn’t even have to pull out the old trusty “My civil rights are being violated here.”
It’s amazing how easy it is to get something no one else wants.
Aurora
We settle in to a routine of practicing Mondays through Thursdays after school.
At first, a lot of the other cast and stage crew are resistant to the idea of Lucius being stage manager. It’s like they think someone with hooks for hands can’t fulfill this important role, but all their talking about it just makes me think they’ve never been in a real play before.
The stage manager in any theatrical production acts as an almost equal to the assistant director during rehearsals. The stage manager, in this case Lucius, keeps all the technical information on cues and blocking and necessary props and everything else.
When opening night comes, he essentially takes control of running the show. He calls the cues for all transitions while also functioning as Communications Central for the cast and crew. Without him, the actors would be singing in the dark or the curtain would rise to an empty stage.
It’s a massive job for one person, and it also makes me wonder why the director is billed far above the stage manager in playbills. I mean, really: What does Mrs. Peepers do all day? What is Mrs. Peepers doing while Lucius does all of this?
And yet he does it all, quietly and without complaint, and before too many days go by, the other cast members have to accept that Lucius is doing a phenomenal job and is here to stay. They don’t even snicker at him anymore when he occasionally loses control of the pencil he holds in his pincers.
One nice thing about playing the Wicked Witch of the West, like I did back in my old school? You’re not expected to kiss anybody.
Since this is just a high school production, Jessup and I aren’t expected to have as much physical contact as the characters in the original play do, but we are expected to kiss at the end.
“Um,” I say to Mrs. Peepers, “do we really need to rehearse this part? I mean, everyone knows how to kiss. It’s not like one of the complicate
d dance numbers or something. So maybe we could just save it for the night of the actual performance?”
Jessup, who has surprised me by being very professional and even kind during our rehearsals, bends over to whisper in my ear, “What’s wrong, Aurora? Haven’t you ever been kissed before?”
“Of course I have,” I say, feeling the blush redden my cheeks, but I am lying. In truth, I have never kissed any boy before, not on the lips. I know that most girls my age already have, and more, but there wasn’t a whole lot of time for me to start kissing boys, what with my mom dying and all. And since then? I’ve been too busy worrying about my dad. Plus, there haven’t been any boys I’ve wanted to kiss before. Okay, so maybe I am an odd girl. But it’s better than doing things with guys just for the sake of doing them or, worse, saying yes to anything for fear of being laughed at when in reality you want to say no.
But if you’re an actress, you can’t say no to a kiss, not when it’s scripted. So my objections fall on deaf Mrs. Peepers ears and she insists that Jessup and I perform the final scene as Jacobs and Casey wrote it. It makes me think immediately that my dad is wrong after all: that sometimes writers insert things that shouldn’t be played out literally as written.
When the moment comes for Jessup-as-Danny to kiss me, he takes his time, placing both his hands on the sides of my face before slowly lowering his face to mine.
His lips at last touch my lips.
I’m pretty sure that a high school play is not supposed to have a kiss go on for this long, no matter how it is written in the script. I feel Jessup-as-Danny’s lips press more firmly into mine before finally, at last, he pulls away.
“There,” he whispers, keeping his voice even lower than a stage whisper so no one else can hear. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“No,” I say, lying, while inside I am thinking: I just had my first kiss.
Crazy Beautiful Page 8
