Emerald City

by David Williamson

  ELAINE: My daughter teaches handicapped kids on a wage marginally higher than the dole. I keep telling her she’s exploited and overworked, but she doesn’t want to do anything else. She was born and raised here.

  COLIN: Elaine, it’s a city that walks over its fallen heroes and picks their pockets on the way!

  ELAINE: [running out of patience] Go back to Melbourne then, you whinger! Your inner demons won’t get you into trouble down there. They couldn’t think of anything to suggest! [Shaking her head] Brisbane boys are rough as guts, Adelaide’s a shade on the prissy side. Perth persons are a worry, but you Melbournians—you’re so stuffed full of moral rectitude, the only time you open your mouths is to lecture. [She turns to go away, then turns back.] If you’re going to stay here, for God’s sake go away and write me a screenplay or we’ll both be on the dole!

  ELAINE goes.

  COLIN: [to the audience] Go and write me a screenplay. About what? Critical patience for my observations of middle-class life was running thin. Corruption was passé. The boom area was the underprivileged, the unemployed and exploited minorities. Did I have the depth to identify with their anguish and pain? Did I have the soul? Did I have any alternative?

  KATE storms in, slamming things around and looking furious. She sees a newspaper COLIN has been reading and hurls it in a wastepaper basket.

  Something upsetting you?

  KATE: Bloody journalists! Have you read it?

  COLIN: Certainly have.

  KATE: [staring at him] Do you agree with her?

  COLIN: I think she’s got a case.

  KATE: She’s being totally hysterical!

  COLIN: If she doesn’t want to sell the film rights, why should she?

  KATE: A film will triple the sales of the book.

  COLIN: Did you describe the film as being Australia’s The Color Purple?

  KATE: No! I said that The Color Purple had shown that films about the mistreatment of minorities could make powerful movies and attract large audiences! She’s the one who’ll be getting most of the money. We only take twenty percent.

  COLIN: She said she had written the book to help her people, not to gain personal fortune or fame.

  KATE: She’ll just have to cry all the way to the bank.

  COLIN: You’re going to go ahead and sell the film rights?

  KATE: We’ve sold them.

  COLIN: Without her consent?

  KATE: Her contract gives us the right to act as her agents. Colin, she’s just being hysterical.

  COLIN: She says she’s scared the film will sensationalise and cheapen what she’s written.

  KATE: It’s sure to be less subtle than the book. Films always are, but it will triple the sales of her novel!

  COLIN: Wouldn’t it have been smarter to wait and see if she won the Booker? If you’re determined to make money with film rights, they’ll be worth much more if she wins.

  KATE: She’s not going to win the Booker. Ian felt it was best to take the offer we had.

  COLIN: Who did you sell the rights to?

  KATE: [full of guilt] I’m sure the film will be hideous, but it will triple the sales of the book, and the book is what is going to have the lasting impact.

  COLIN: You didn’t sell it to—

  KATE: They offered twice as much as anyone else.

  She sees the look on COLIN’s face and gets even more defensive.

  You can’t live in a dream world! You’ve got to take profits into account.

  COLIN: Kate, can you imagine what someone with the sensitivity of a Mike McCord will do with Black Rage?

  KATE: They’ve got international connections. If the film works in the States, the book will sell in hundreds of thousands.

  She sees COLIN’s look.

  Colin, when you’re in a top-level executive position the pressures are enormous. Ian and I have a board of directors to answer to. How am I supposed to explain to them that we turned down a prime international marketing opportunity because I don’t like Mike McCord?

  COLIN: I presume you won’t be going to London now?

  KATE: [puzzled, defensive] Why?

  COLIN: Now that you know you’re not going to win the Booker.

  KATE: We’re not absolutely certain.

  COLIN: And now that your author is refusing to go.

  KATE: That’s her decision.

  COLIN: Your boss’s secretary phoned.

  KATE: What about?

  COLIN: She said the Dorchester was confirmed for both of you.

  KATE: [embarrassed] Ian’s decided to come now that Kath has pulled out.

  COLIN: [tersely] Great.

  KATE: [defensively] Surely you haven’t got any worries on that score.

  COLIN: [tersely] Why shouldn’t I have?

  KATE: You’ve seen him.

  COLIN: Yes. He looks like the young Richard Burton.

  KATE: He looks like a garden gnome. Colin, grow up. Ours is a strictly business relationship. [To the audience] He did look more like the young Richard Burton than a garden gnome, and there had been certain indications of interest. I had no intention of taking them up. [To COLIN] Colin, I feel just as badly as you do about a philistine like Mike getting the film rights, but unfortunately that’s how the commercial world works.

  COLIN: I suppose there is a certain justice. Without Mike the book would never have been published.

  KATE exits.

  [To the audience] At least I was able to play that one last trump card on that desolate afternoon. When Kate had left for London I got a phone call from the person I least expected.

  MIKE enters and COLIN sits in front of him.

  MIKE: Busy?

  COLIN: Not particularly.

  MIKE: Done a script for Elaine, I hear.

  COLIN: [nodding] First draft.

  MIKE: What’s it about?

  COLIN: The victims of corporate greed.

  MIKE: Got the money?

  COLIN: No.

  MIKE: Subject like that might be difficult to raise money on.

  COLIN: It will. It’s set in Australia, it’s saying something important and has characters who spend part of their time outside cars and who occasionally talk.

  MIKE: Got something you might be interested in.

  COLIN: Really.

  MIKE: The Yanks have really gone for Black Rage.

  COLIN: I’m surprised.

  MIKE: Colin, I’ve got to be honest with you. We’ve already had a writer working on it, but the script’s got a fair way to go.

  COLIN: You’d like me to do the changes?

  MIKE: There’s eighty grand in it for you if you see it through to final draft. It’s going to be a big film, Colin. First writer was a hot-shot young American and he couldn’t come up with the goods. If you can bring it off, it’ll make your reputation over there.

  COLIN: Why are the Americans interested in the plight of our Aboriginals?

  MIKE: It’s been relocated.

  COLIN: Relocated?

  MIKE: It’s been reset in Tennessee. The characters are black Americans. Richard Pryor is very interested in playing the lead.

  COLIN: Mike, do you have the faintest idea why I might not want to take this job?

  MIKE: The story is universal. Poverty-stricken black girl grows up to be a human rights lawyer. Could happen anywhere.

  COLIN: Mike, there are vast differences between our Aborigines and the American blacks.

  MIKE: People are people wherever they live, Colin. This is the era of the global village.

  COLIN: Not quite. Hundreds of years of separate histories and environments aren’t swept away because ‘Sesame Street’ teaches our kids to say, ‘Have a nice day’.

  MIKE: Colin, nationalism is one of the most destructive of all human forces. Caused countless wars. Billions of deaths.

  COLIN: Where are you resetting the Sanzari story? Wyoming?

  MIKE: Nebraska, and there might be some work for you on that one too.

  COLIN: You’re a harlot, mate. You�
�ve sold your soul to the highest bidder, and you can stick your eighty grand up your arse!

  MIKE: [puzzled, hurt] We can’t go backwards, mate. I’m flogging myself to within a scalpel’s width of major surgery to keep our industry afloat. Trying to generate a hundred million dollars worth of filmmaking—a fair proportion of which will stay in Australian pockets. How does that make me a harlot? I don’t understand your point.

  COLIN: [to the audience] I wasn’t sure I did either. I’ve always hated flag-waving chauvinism. What’s so special about being Australian? What’s to rejoice in that I’m a member of this polyglot lot of pale-skinned usurpers who treated their predecessors abominably and resent giving them back some tracts of arid desert and one big rock? Why bother whether we have our own stories or not? My only answer to that is that we have a right to them. We are human beings with our own feelings, strengths and weaknesses and we need to know what we are like, and we need to know that we are important enough to have fictions written about us or we will always feel that real life happens somewhere else and is spoken in accents other than our own. But then again, that might be a rationalisation. If there are no Australian stories told I’d be out of a job. If my version of ‘Miami Vice’ had sold to a US network, would I be so virtuous today? Who was I to be judgemental? I thought seriously about relocating Black Rage to Tennessee and it started to make a certain amount of sense. Eighty thousand dollars worth of sense. But by the faintest whisker some residual integrity, some deep-rooted sense of patriotism, or just the ignominy of having to work for Mike prevented me doing it.

  MIKE: [to the audience] The bastard walked out of here and made me feel like a grubby little louse. I sat at my desk and stared into darkness for hours. I finally got up from behind my desk and shouted, ‘Alright! I’m a harlot! Some of us don’t have any choice!’

  HELEN enters.

  HELEN: I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of this view. Come and have a look. The eighteen-footers have got their spinnakers out.

  MIKE: Colin turned down eighty grand today.

  HELEN: Colin?

  MIKE: I’ve been hearing stories that he’s really down on his luck. Nothing’s been happening for him. I get on the phone to LA and convince them he’s a top writer, which is bloody hard given his current track record. I call him in, offer him the job and he calls me a harlot.

  HELEN: Why?

  MIKE: Because the story’s being relocated to Tennessee.

  HELEN: A story’s a story wherever it’s set.

  MIKE: Exactly.

  HELEN: I can understand why he might be a bit…

  MIKE: What?

  HELEN: Reluctant to work for you.

  MIKE: I can’t.

  HELEN: Now your roles are reversed. It would be a bit hard.

  MIKE: So he throws away eighty grand just to spite me? It’s insane.

  HELEN: Any luck with ‘Lesbian Nuns’?

  MIKE: Got it through last week.

  HELEN: You didn’t tell me. Did you have to change the script much?

  MIKE: A bit. Only one of the nuns is allowed to be lesbian, and it’s got to be a tendency. Not consummated.

  HELEN: Mike, that’s crazy. Isn’t the whole point of the story that there are a lot of lesbian nuns and they’re suffering a hell of a lot of guilt?

  MIKE: Honey, you sit at my desk day after day and try and get any film through the American system and you’ll realise that what I’ve done is a bloody miracle.

  HELEN: Can’t they show the truth of anything just for once?

  MIKE: Jesus, honey. We get enough truth in our lives. We don’t want it up there again on our screens.

  HELEN: I know the commercial logic, but occasionally I’d like to see the truth!

  MIKE: The only truth that matters in this situation is that they have the money and if they ask me to change nuns into astronauts and lesbians into doughnuts, I will make them a movie about astronauts eating doughnuts. They ask. I give. It’s called commerce; it’s grubby, and it’s how I paid for this view. If you don’t like it, well go back to Dri-Tot Manor.

  HELEN: I just can’t believe people wouldn’t be interested in a movie about the real situation.

  MIKE: They probably would, but the men who have the money don’t believe they would. And that, I’m afraid, is an end to it.

  MIKE and HELEN exit. COLIN enters and sits reading. The doorbell rings. COLIN frowns and goes to get it. It’s KATE with a suitcase. COLIN embraces her with passion.

  KATE: Kids in bed?

  COLIN: [nodding] Even Penny. Sorry you didn’t win.

  KATE: I knew we wouldn’t. Still. [She shrugs.] That was a warm welcome. I’m surprised.

  COLIN: So am I. I was planning to be cold and distant.

  KATE: Bad time while I was gone?

  COLIN: Awful. Shopping without lists is a major trauma, and our daughter’s been a monster.

  KATE: You said on the phone she had a new boyfriend.

  COLIN: Yes.

  KATE: He goes to an ordinary high school?

  COLIN: Yes.

  KATE: That should make you pleased.

  COLIN: He was kicked out of his private school for selling dope in the toilets.

  KATE: She told you this?

  COLIN: No, I listen to the phone calls on the extension. How was the Dorchester?

  KATE: Overrated.

  COLIN: And the garden gnome?

  KATE: [embarrassed] Oh, I, er, didn’t see much of him. He found himself a native.

  COLIN: Black lady?

  KATE: English rose. How’s work?

  COLIN: On to the second draft of the screenplay. No money in sight.

  KATE: Tell me something cheerful.

  COLIN: I’m very glad to see you home.

  KATE: [to the audience] And I was very glad to be home. Ian didn’t find an English rose. He found me, but what Colin doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I’d been promoted, I’d been unfaithful, and the marriage was back on an even keel.

  COLIN: I did some thinking about the future while you were away. Did you?

  KATE: [guiltily] Ah. No. It was all a bit frantic.

  COLIN: I thought we should go back to Melbourne.

  KATE: Melbourne? But Colin—

  COLIN: [interrupting] But then I changed my mind. Do you know what made me change my mind?

  KATE: What?

  COLIN: I was waiting for a taxi in the city and there were two derelicts asleep on benches. A City Mission van drove up and a young guy went across and talked to them without any hint of judgement, and took them somewhere safe and warm.

  KATE: How does that relate to Melbourne?

  COLIN: That young guy doesn’t dream of waterfront mansions. He gets a couple of hundred dollars a week, a handful of people know that he’s a good human being, and as far as he’s concerned, that’s enough.

  KATE: What are you telling me, Colin? You’re going to work for the City Mission.

  COLIN: No. I’m not as good a human being as he is, and after the film deal you did on Black Rage, neither are you. The incident reminded me of something Elaine said. Don’t blame the city. The demons are in us.

  KATE: So we’re going to stay in Sydney?

  COLIN: Yes.

  KATE: [drily] Good. Now that we’ve settled our future, and you’ve established that we’re both evil, do you think we could go to bed?

  KATE exits. COLIN stands by himself. Cocktail chatter is heard in the background. MIKE enters and walks up to him.

  MIKE: Finally got that film of yours up.

  COLIN: Yes, we did.

  MIKE: How were the reviews?

  COLIN: Very good. Excellent.

  MIKE: I only saw the one in the Herald.

  COLIN: That was the only bad one.

  MIKE: Pity. That would’ve been the most important one for you.

  COLIN: Not really.

  MIKE: Meant to catch it. Didn’t seem to be around long.

  COLIN: It did eight weeks.

  MIKE: Eight?

 
; COLIN: If I’d wanted to run for a year I’d’ve written ET.

  MIKE: Won’t be much return for the investors.

  COLIN: We’re hoping for an overseas sale.

  MIKE: Wish you luck.

  COLIN: The American reviewers seemed a bit cool to Sister Nun.

  MIKE: Crying all the way to the bank. Had a six-million US presale.

  COLIN: I read that you’re cutting back on production.

  MIKE: [swallowing a tablet] It’s been tougher than we expected, but we’re getting there.

  COLIN: No plans for Black Rage?

  MIKE: We’ve put that one on the back burner. Poor black kid making it is big news here, but it happens every day over there. Be hard for you to get a new movie up now, I suppose?

  COLIN: It’s always hard. Having problems with Equity I hear?

  MIKE: Storm in a teacup.

  COLIN: I heard they were axing your next movie unless at least one Australian got a lead role.

  MIKE: They’ve got their head in the sand. How can I pre-sell our movies to the States with unknown actors in the lead? [To the audience] Why does the Film Commission invite him? Everyone in the industry knows his last film was a disaster. Eleven thousand in its first week and it went down from there. He’ll be lucky if he ever gets another film up in his life, poor bastard. Can’t help feeling sorry for him. I just wish the papers would start employing critics who like what the public like for a change, instead of giving losers like that the good crits.

  COLIN: [to the audience] Why does the Commission keep inviting him? If he knew the contempt he was held in by all the people in this room, he’d never show his face around here again. I can’t bring myself to hate him anymore. He’s a figure of great pathos. The only thing that makes me angry is the money he makes. I don’t want to be rich, but it’s sad to see the dollars go to turds like that, while serious filmmakers beg and scrape.

  MIKE: Take care.

  COLIN: You too.

  MIKE and COLIN nod at each other and turn away to face the audience. They stand there shaking their heads, assuming with never a doubt that the audience is on their side. As they share this certainty with the audience, the lights fade.

  THE END

  Also by David Williamson:

  The Indecent Exposure of Anthony East

  You’ve Got to Get on Jack

  Celluloid Heroes

  The Perfectionist