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THIS MATERIAL IS COPYRIGHTED
Compiled by Jonathan Harris
(As the audience is entering the theatre, they discover ANDY seated upstage of a small
cafe table. Two chairs are on either side of him. All is silver: the chairs, the table,
the ashtray, the wine glasses, ANDY's camera, the floor of the stage. ANDY is in black and
occasionally snaps a flash picture of the audience. No less than three pre-show tapes are
playing incessant chatter. Monologues. It should build to a veritable din. As the house
lights begin to dim, BEAUTY ONE and BEAUTY TWO enter. The tape fades with their entrance.
They babble thus: ANDY I really look awful. And I never bother to primp up or try to be appealing because I just don't want anyone to get involved with me. And that's the truth. I play down my good features and play up the bad ones. So I look awful. And I wear the wrong pants and the wrong shoes and I come at the wrong time with the wrong friends and I say the wrong things and I talk to the wrong person, and then still sometimes, somebody gets interested and I freak out and I wonder, "what did I do wrong?" (pause) I think I'm missing some chemicals and that's why I have this tendency to be more of a... ONE (Breaking freeze) ...sissy... ANDY No, a... TWO ...mama's boy... ANDY ...A...
BOTH Butterboy. ANDY I think I'm missing some responsibility chemicals and some reproductive chemicals. If I had them I would probably think more about aging the right way and being married four times and having a family. ONE Wives and children. TWO And dogs ANDY I'm immature. But maybe something could happen to my chemicals and I could get mature. I could start getting wrinkles and stop wearing my wings. (PAUSE) I thought that young people had more problems than old people, and I hoped I could last
until I was older so I wouldn't have all those problems. Then I looked around and saw that
everybody who looked young had young problems and everybody who looked old had old
problems. (PAUSE) At one time the way my nose looked really bothered me. It's always red. (BEAUTIES GIGGLE) I decided that I wanted to have it sanded. (BEAUTIES GIGGLE LOUDER) Even the people in my family called me: ANDY; THE RED-NOSED WARHOLA. BOTH awwww... ANDY I had another skin problem, too. I lost all my pigment when I was eight years old. Another name people used to call me was "spot". (HE looks at BEAUTIES) This is how I think I lost my pigment. I saw a girl walking down the street and she was two-toned and I was so fascinated I kept following her. Within two months I was two-toned myself. TWO (GOSSIPY) And he hadn't even known the girl. She was just somebody he'd seen on the street. ONE He asked a medical student if he thought he'd caught it just by looking at her. ANDY He didn't say anything. (LIGHTS OUT FAST. THERE IS A SLIGHT PANIC TO ANDY'S VOICE AS HE SPEAKS FROM THE DARKNESS.) ANDY Are the lights on or off? Is the water on?
Is the back door closed? Is the elevator working? Is there anyone in the lobby? (PAUSE) Who's that sitting in my lap? (ANDY'S FLASH CAMERA GOES OFF POINTED AT THE AUDIENCE. LIGHTS UP FAST. THE REST OF THE PLAY IS QUICK AND ANIMATED. SET FREEZES ARE IN STAGE DIRECTIONS. OTHERS CAN BE ADDED AS SEEN FIT.) ONE Being clean is so important. Well groomed people are the real beauties. It doesn't matter what they're wearing or who they're with or how much their jewelry costs or how much their clothes cost or how perfect their make-up is, if they're not clean, they're not beautiful. TWO The most plain or unfashionable person in the world can still be beautiful if they're very well groomed. ONE Beauty really has to do with the way a person carries it off. TWO When you see beauty, it has to do with the place, with what they're wearing, what they're standing next to. ANDY What closet they're coming down the stairs from. TWO When you're interested in somebody, and you think they might be interested in you, you should point out all your beauty problems and defects right away, rather than take a chance they won't notice them. ONE What if, say, you have a permanent beauty problem you can't change, such as short legs? TWO Just say it. "My legs, as you have probably noticed, are much too short in proportion to the rest of my body." Why give the other person the satisfaction of discovering it for themselves? Once it's out in the open, at least you know it will never become and issue later on in the relationship, and if it does, you can always say... ANDY Well, I told you that in the beginning. ONE Beautiful people are sometimes more prone to keep you waiting than plain people are, because there's a big time time differential between beautiful and plain. TWO Also, beauties know that most people will wait for them, so they're not panicked when they're late, so they get even later. ONE Then by the time they arrive, they've usually gotten to feel guilty, so then to make up for being late they get really sweet, and being really sweet makes them more beautiful. ANDY That's a classic syndrome. ONE The most fashionable girls around town now are the girls of the night. They wear the most fashionable clothes. TWO They were always behind the times, looking old-fashioned, but now, they're the firs ones on the street with the new clothes. ONE They wised up. More intelligent girls are girls of the night now, too. More liberated. TWO More liberated. ANDY But they all still use those ugly shoulder pocketbooks. TWO Everybody's sense of beauty is different from everybody else's. When I see people dressed in hideous clothes that look all wrong on them, I try to imagine the moment when they were buying them and thought: ONE "This is great. I like it. I'11 take it." TWO You can't imagine what went off in their heads to make them buy those maroon polyester, waffle-iron pants or that acrylic halter top that has "MIAMI" written in glitter. ONE You wonder what they rejected as not beautiful. ANDY An acrylic halter top that had "CHICAGO". ONE A person has to be very careful about what she's buying these days or else they'll wind up buying junk. TWO And paying a lot for it too. ONE So this means that if; you see a well-dressed person today, you know that they've thought a lot about their clothes and how they look. ANDY And then that ruins it because you shouldn't really be thinking about how you look so much. TWO The same applies to girls but not as much - they can care a little more about themselves without being unattractively self-centered. Because they're naturally prettier. ONE But a man caring about how he looks is usually trying very hard to be attractive. ANDY And that's very unattractive in a man. TWO Whenever people and civilizations get degenerate and materialistic, they always point at their outward beauty and riches and say that if what they were doing was bad, they wouldn't be doing so will, being so rich and so beautiful. ANDY People in the Bible did that when they worshiped the golden calf, and then the Greeks when they worshiped the human body. ONE But beauty and riches couldn't have anything to do with how good you are, because think of all the beauties who get cancer. TWO And a lot of murderers are good looking so that settles it. (THEY PONDER THE POINT.) ONE Jewelry doesn't make a person more beautiful either, but it makes a person feel more beautiful. If you draped a beautiful person in jewels and beautiful clothes and put them in a beautiful house with beautiful furniture and beautiful paintings, they wouldn't be more beautiful they'd be the same, but they would think they were more beautiful. TWO However, if you took a beautiful person and put them in rags, they'd be ugly. ONE Oh, you can always make a person less beautiful. ANDY Beauty in danger becomes more beautiful. But Beauty in dirt becomes ugly. ONE People tell me that some beauties lose their looks in bed when they don't do the bed things they're supposed to.
TWO I don't believe those things. (DURING NEXT SPEECH THE BEAUTIES SLOWLY COVER THEIR FACE WITH DOWNSTAGE HAND. AS IF TO HIDE THEIR UGLINESS.) ANDY When I did my self-portrait, I left all the pimples out because you always should. Pimples are a temporary condition and they don't have anything to do with what you really look like. Always omit the blemishes - they're not part of the good picture you want. (THE FEEL HAS NOW CHANGED TO A SLIGHTLY MORE OMINOUS TONE.) ONE I know a girl who just looks at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror and never looks below her shoulders, and she's four or five hundred pounds but she doesn't see all that, she just sees a beautiful face and therefore she thinks she's a beauty. And therefore she is a beauty, too. ANDY I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images. Their self-images have more to do with the way they think than their objective images do. ONE (STILL LOST IN SELF) Maybe she's six hundred pounds, who know? If she doesn't care, I don't. TWO Sometimes people having nervous breakdown problems can look very beautiful because they have that fragile something to the way the move or walk. ANDY They put out a mood that makes them more beautiful. (DURING NEXT SPEECH THE BEAUTIES SLOWLY RAISE THEIR HEADS AS IF LOOKING AT SOME HUGE STRUCTURE. WHEN THEY LOWER THEM IT IS IN THREE STACCATO BEATS. SHORT AND QUICK.) ANDY Some kind of beauty dwarfs you and makes you feel like an ant next to it. I was once in Mussolini Stadium with all the statues and they were so much bigger than life and I felt just like an ant. Lather I was painting a beauty and my paint caught a little bug. I tried to get the paint off the bug and I kept trying until I killed the bug on the beauties lip. So there was this bug... (BEAUTIES LOWER HEADS PART-WAY) That might have been a beauty... (AGAIN) Left on a beauty's lip. (BEAUTIES LOOK DOWN) That's the way I felt in Mussolini Stadium. (BEAUTIES LOOK TO ANDY) Like a bug. TWO Sometimes something can look beautiful just because it's different in some way from the other things around it. One red petunia in a window box will look very beautiful if all the rest of them are white. ONE And vice-versa, when you're in Sweden and you see beautiful person after beautiful person after beautiful person and you finally don't even turn around to look because you know the next person you see will be just as beautiful as the one you didn't bother to turn around to look at - in a place like that you can get so bored that when you see a person who's not beautiful they look very beautiful to you. ANDY They break the beautiful monotony. TWO The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald's. ONE The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald's. TWO The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonalds's. ANDY Peking and Moscow don't have anything beautiful yet. ONE If a person isn't generally considered beautiful, they can still be a success if they have a few jokes in their pockets. ANDY And a lot of pockets. ONE I really don't care that much about Beauties. ANDY What I really like are talkers. To me, good talkers are beautiful because good talk is what I love. The word itself shows why I like talkers better than beauties. Why I tape more than I film. TWO Talkers are doing something ONE Beauties are being something ANDY Which isn't necessarily bad, it's just that I don't know what it is they're being. It's more fun to be with people who are doing things. (PAUSE) Like talk-show hosts. TWO A person I know told me he can look at people who do interviews on television and know where they're from, what kind of schools they went to, what religion they are, just by seeing what kind of guests they have on their show and by hearing what kind of questions they ask their guests. I'd love to be able to know everything about a person from watching them on television - to be able to tell wheat their problem is. ONE Can you imagine watching a talk-show and knowing immediately things like (SHE POINTS TO AN AUDIENCE MEMBER) This one's problem is he wants to be a beauty. TWO (LIKEWISE) This one's problem is he hates rich people. ONE (AGAIN) This one's problem is he can't get it up. TWO (AGAIN) This one's problem is he wants to be miserable. ONE (AGAIN) This one's problem is he wants to be intelligent. ANDY And maybe you'd also be able to figure out why Dinah shore doesn't have a problem . (BEAUTIES LAUGH LOUD AND CUT IT SHORT. ANDY STANDS TO EXIT. LOOKS AT BEAUTIES. CHANGES MIND. SITS. ACTION PICKS UP IMMEDIATELY.) ONE Certain people have TV magic: they fall completely apart off camera but they are completely together on camera. They shake and sweat before they go on, they shake and sweat during commercials, they shake and seat when it's all over; but while the camera is filming them, they're poised and confident looking. TWO The camera turns them on and off. ANDY I never fall apart because I never fall together. ONE I just sit there saying: "I'm going to faint. I'm going to faint. I know I'm going to faint. Have I fainted yet? I'm waiting for a faint." ANDY That's a live television appearance stream-of-consciousness. BEAUTIES Taped is different. TWO Before media there used to be a physical limit on how much space one person could take up by themselves. ONE (ALL THREE BEGIN STARING OUT AT AUDIENCE. THEIR HEADS TURNING SLOWLY BACK AND FORTH, ROBOT-LIKE.) People, I think, are the only things that know how to take up more space than the space they're actually in, because with media you can sit back and still let yourself fill up space on records, in the movies... TWO Most exclusively on the telephone and least exclusively on television... ANDY Some people must go crazy when they realize how much space they've managed to command... TWO If you were the star of the biggest show on television and took a walk down an average American street one night while you were on the air, and if you looked through windows and saw yourself on television in everybody's living room, taking up some of their space... ALL (FREEZE FRONT, STARING AT AUDIENCE) Can you imagine how you'd feel? (THEY ALL LEAN FORWARD SLIGHTLY.) ONE I don't think anybody, no matter how famous they are in other fields, could ever feel as peculiar as a television star. TWO Not even the biggest rock star whose records are playing on sound systems everywhere he goes could feel as peculiar as someone who knows he's on everybody's television regularly. ANDY No matter how small he is, he has all the space anyone could ever want, right there in the television box. I've always had a conflict because I'm shy and yet I like to take up a lot of personal space. Mom always said... ANDY/ONE "Don't be pushy, but let everybody know you're around." ANDY I wanted to command more space than I was commanding, but then I knew I was too shy to know what do do with the attention if I did manage to get it. That's why I love television. That's why I feel that television is the media I'd most like to shine in. I'm really jealous of everybody who's got their own show on television. I want a show of my own called: Nothing Special. TWO (OBLIVIOUS) Can't I deduct liquor if I have to get high to talk and talking's my business? ONE (BABBLING AND IN ONE BREATH) Sometimes in the middle of a sentence I feel like a foreigner trying to talk it because I have word spasms where the parts of some words begin to sound peculiar to me and in the middle of saying the word I'11 think "Oh, this can't be right, this sounds very peculiar, I don't know if I should try to finish up this word or try to make it into something else, because if it comes out good it'll be right, but if it comes out bad it'll sound retarded." I sometimes get confused and try to graft other words on top of them, sometimes this makes good journalism and when they quote me it looks good in print, and other times it's very embarrassing. (PAUSE) ANDY You can never predict what will to sound strange to you and you come out when the words you're saying start start to patch. ONE I admire people who do well with words. ANDY I thought Truman Capote filled up space with words so well that when I first got to New York I began writing short fan letters to him and calling him on the phone everyday until his mother told me to quit it. TWO Being famous isn't all that important. ANDY If I weren't famous, I wouldn't have been shot. ONE Maybe you would have been shot for being in the army. TWO Or maybe you would have been a fat schoolteacher. ANDY How do you ever know? (PAUSE AS THEY WONDER ABOUT IT.) ONE A good reason to be famous, though, is so you can read all the big magazines and know everybody in all the stories. Page after page it's just all people ;you've met. TWO I love that kind of reading experience. ONE That's the best reason to be famous. ANDY Some company was recently interested in buying my aura. (BEAUTIES SNAP THEIR FINGERS, FROM ANDY'S FACE WITH THEIR HANDS AND AVERT THEIR EYES AS IF BLINDED BY HIS AURA) They didn't want my product. They kept saying: "We want your aura." I never figured out what they wanted. But they were willing to pay a lot for it. So then I thought that if somebody was willing to pay that much for my "it", I should try to figure out what "it" is. TWO I think aura is something that only somebody else can see. ONE And they only see as much of it as they want to. TWO It's all in the other person's eyes ONE You can only see an aura on people you don't know very well or don't know at all. ANDY I was having dinner the other night with everybody from my office... ONE Who. ANDY Everybody from my office. TWO Oh. ANDY The kids at the office treat me like dirt, because they know me and they see me everyday. But then there was this nice friend that somebody had bought along who had never met me, and this kid could hardly believe that he was having dinner with me. ONE Everybody else was seeing you, but he was seeing your aura. TWO When you just see somebody on the street, they can really have an aura. But then when they open their mouth, there goes the aura. ANDY Aura must be until you open your mouth. ONE People with pretty smiles fascinate me. You have to wonder what makes them smile so pretty. TWO I always think that when people turn around to look at somebody on the street it's probably because they smell an odor from them, and that's what makes them turn around. ONE And on. ANDY Funny people are the only people I ever get really interested in, because as soon as somebody isn't funny, they bore me. ONE But if the big attraction for you is having somebody be funny you run into a problem, because being funny is not being sexy, so in the end, near the moment of truth, you're not really attracted, you can't really do it.
ANDY I'd rather laugh in bed than do it. TWO Get under the covers and crack jokes? ANDY If I went to a lady of the night I'd probably pay her to tell me jokes. ONE People's fantasies are what give them problems. If you didn't have fantasies you wouldn't have problems because you'd just take whatever was there. TWO But then you wouldn't have romance, because romance is finding your fantasy in people who don't have it. ANDY A friend of mine always say, "Women love me for the man I'm not." ONE With everything changing so fast, you don't have a chance of finding your fantasy image intact by the time you're ready for it. TWO Like all the little boys who used to have fantasies about girls in beautiful lace bras and silk slips. ONE They don't have a chance of finding what they'd always looked forward to, unless the girl had just made a trip to the local thrift shop. ANDY That's worse than nothing. TWO After being alive, the next hardest work is having sex. ONE For some people it isn't work because they need the exercise and they've got the energy for the sex and the sex gives them even more energy. Some people get energy from sex and some people lose energy from sex. TWO I've found that it's too much work. ONE It's just as much work for an attractive person not to have sex as it is for an unattractive person to have sex. ANDY So it's helpful if the attractive people happen to get energy from sex and if the unattractive people happen to lose energy from sex. ONE Then their wants will fit in with the direction that people are pushing them in. ANDY Truman Capote told me once that certain kinds of sex are total, complete manifestations of nostalgia. (NO RESPONSE FROM THE BEAUTIES.) I think that's true. TWO Other kinds of sex have nostalgia;in varying degrees, from a little to a lot, but I think it's safe to say that most sex involves some form of nostalgia for something. ONE Sex is nostalgia for when you used to want it, sometimes. ANDY Sex is nostalgia for sex. ONE Love and sex can go together. TWO Sex and unlove can go together. ONE Love and unsex can go together. ANDY Personal love and personal sex is bad. (PAUSE) The best kind of love is not-to-think-about-it love. TWO Some people can have sex and really let their minds go blank and fill up with the sex. ONE Other people can never let their minds go blank and fill up with the sex, so while they're having the sex they're thinking: "Can this really be me? Am I really doing this? This is very strange. Five minutes ago I wasn't doing this. In a little while I won't be doing it." ANDY "What would mom say?" ONE "How did people ever think of doing this?" TWO So the first type of person - the type that can let their minds go blank and fill up with the sex and not think about it - is better off. ONE Fantasy love is much better than reality love. ANDY Never doing it is very exciting. ONE The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet. ANDY Everybody has a different idea of love. TWO One girl I know said "I knew he loved me when he didn't come in my mouth." ANDY The symptom of love is when some of the chemicals inside you go bad. ONE So there must be something in love because your chemicals do tell you something. TWO Love affairs get too involved and they're really not worth it. ONE But if you feel that they are worth it you should put in exactly as much time and energy as the other person. ANDY I'11 pay you if you pay me? ONE Exactly . TWO When you want to be like something it means you really love it. When you want to be like a rock, you really love that rock. ANDY I love plastic idols. ONE I love every 'lib' movement there is, because after the 'lib' the things that were always a mystique become understandable and boring, and nobody has to feel left out if they're not part of what is happening. TWO Like single people looking for husbands and wives used to feel left out because the image marriage had in the old days was so wonderful. Jane Wyatt and Robert Young. ONE Nick and Nora Charles. TWO Ethel and Fred Mertz. ANDY Dagwood and Blondie. TWO Being married looked so wonderful that life didn't seem liveable if you weren't lucky enough to have a husband or wife. ONE To the singles, marriage seemed beautiful, the trappings seemed wonderful, and the sex was always implied to be automatically great - no one could ever seem to find words to describe it because... BOTH You had to be there! ANDY To know how good it was? TWO Almost like a conspiracy on the part of the married people not to let it out how it wasn't necessarily completely wonderful to be married and having sex. ANDY They could have taken a load off the single people's; minds if they'd just been candid. ONE But it was always a fairly well kept secret that if you were married to somebody you didn't have enough room in bed and might have to face bad breath in the morning. ANDY I don't see anything wrong with being alone.
ONE It feels great to me. TWO People make such a big thing about personal love. ONE It doesn't have to be such a big thing
ANDY The same for living. People make a big thing about that too. Personal living and personal loving are the two things the Eastern-type wise men don't think about. Mom always said not to worry about love, but just to be sure - get married. ONE I always knew that I would never get married, because I don't want children. I don't want them to have the same problems that I have. I don't think anybody deserves it. TWO You can be just as faithful to a place or a thing as you can to a person. A place can really make your heart skip a beat. ANDY Especially if you have to take a plane to get there. ONE (SUDDENLY) Airline stewardesses! They have the best public image - hostesses in the air. TWO Their work is actually what the waitresses in Bickford's do. ANDY Plus a few additional duties. TWO I don't want to put down the airline stewardesses. ANDY I just want to put up the Bickford ladies. ONE The difference is that airline stewardesses are in a New World job that never had to contend with any class stigmas left over from the Old World peasant/aristocracy syndrome. (PAUSE) I'm thinking in particular about maids. TWO It really has to do with how you're raised. Some people just aren't embarrassed by the idea of somebody else cleaning up after them. ANDY Even though I talk about a maid not being any different from any other job because I know it shouldn't be considered any different from any other job still, somehow, deep down, I'm truly embarrassed at the idea of somebody cleaning up after me. ONE If one were able to think about being a maid the same way one think about, say, being a dentist, one wouldn't be any more embarrassed to let a maid clean up after one than one would be to et a dentist fix one's teeth. ANDY Well...actually...dentist is a bad example, because I am embarrassed to let a dentist fix my teeth, especially if my skin is broken out and I'm sitting under those green lights. But I'11 stick with that example because the embarrassment I feel about letting someone clean my teeth is nowhere near the embarrassment I feel when someone is around cleaning up after me. (PAUSE. BEAUTIES SUDDENLY LOOK AT HIM) BOTH What?... ANDY (SIGHS) I said I confront the problem of how to look at a maid only when I'm staying at a European hotel. TWO It's so awkward when you come face to face with a maid. ANDY I've never been able to pull it off ONE Some people I know are very comfortable looking at maids and even telling them what they'd like done. ANDY I can't handle it. When I go to a hotel, I find myself trying to stay there all day so the maid can't come in. I make a point of it. ONE I don't know where to put my eyes, where to look, what to be doing while they're cleaning. ANDY It's actually a lot of work... (HE LOOKS AT BEAUTY TWO) Avoiding the maid... (HE LOOKS AT BEAUTY ONE) When you think about it. (THERE IS A PAUSE AS THEY CONSIDER WHAT TO DISCUSS NEXT.) ONE (SLOWLY, AS IF SUGGESTING A TOPIC) I love European hotels... TWO Remember that afternoon we spent sitting on a couch in the lobby of the Grand Hotel in Rome, watching the stars and their hairdressers go up and down the marble staircase? ANDY It was just like watching a play. TWO We were celebrity spotting. (THROUGHOUT THE NEXT EXCHANGE, ANDY SPEAKS PRIMARILY TO BEAUTY ONE. BEAUTY TWO GETS MORE AND MORE ANIMATED IN DESCRIBING THE EVENT AND EVEN APPEARS TO BE ACTUALLY THERE. ANDY TALKS TO TWO ONLY AT THE MOST HEATED MOMENTS NEAR THE END. BEAUTY TWO LISTENS) ANDY I'd been flown to Rome for an Event that evening which had pulled a lot of big stars into town. TWO We were Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz. ANDY I'd been saying for years that Rome was the new celebrity center. The new Hollywood. TWO I was feeling very grand. "This means you've really made it." I said. "When they fly you in and we can sit around all day in a glamorous lobby like this, watching everybody we've ever seen in every magazine and every movie..." ANDY At that moment Ursula Andres appeared at the top of the stairs. TWO She looked beautiful.. ANDY She was talking to her hairdresser. I could tell they were talking about her hair. He was making gestures around it as if he were giving ideas. TWO It was a very glamorous scene. ANDY I mentioned how short she was. TWO She looks great. She doesn't look short. ANDY I said: "I know she doesn't look it. But, she's very short." TWO But, she doesn't look short. ANDY I said: "She has shoes on." TWO She has underarm perspiration. Look! She's smelling under her arms. ANDY I said: "That's right, but she's smart not to use deodorant because it's poison, and also you never know when you're nervous. She's smart to want to know when she's nervous." TWO She still doesn't look short to me. ANDY I said: "I know she doesn't look it. I didn't used to think she was so short either until I saw pictures of her." TWO But you're looking at the actual woman! Does she look short to you?! ANDY I said: "She's standing next to her hairdresser and her hairdresser's short too, so you can't tell. BOTH She started down the staircase! ANDY (NOW HE'S DIRECTING THE ARGUMENT DIRECTLY TO BEAUTY TWO) Look, she's two steps up from him and she's not looking down at him. Come on, admit it. She's a peanut. TWO Alright, she's not tall! (PAUSE) But she's not a peanut! ANDY (GOADING) I bet she's even shorter than I think. I bet she has those big, high shoes on. We can't see them because her pants come right down to the rug, but I bet she has four inch clogs on. TWO But her look is so long. She's certainly not as short as some people. ANDY Yes she is. She's shorter. TWO YOU ARE DETERMINED TO BELIEVE SHE'S A PEANUT! ANDY I MET HER! YOU MET HER TOO! YOU KNOW HOW SHORT SHE IS! TWO SHE WAS SITTING DOWN! ANDY SHE GOT UP!! (AWKWARD SILENCE) ONE You sound like two old ladies. (BEAUTIES DO NOT MOVE AS ANDY LOOKS OUT TO AUDIENCE) ANDY (A LITTLE FRIGHTENED) Yes. I do... (PAUSE) I was standing on a street in Paris once and this old lady was looking at me, and I thought, "Oh, she's probably staring at me because she's English." Because English people always know me from a London television disaster that somehow starred me. So I sort of looked away and she said: ONE "Aren't you Andy?" ANDY I said: "yes", and she said: ONE "You came to my house in Provincetown twenty-eight and a half years ago. You were wearing a sunhat. You don't even remember me, but I'11 never forget you in that sunhat. You see, you couldn't take any sun." ANDY I felt so strange because I couldn't remember at all and she remembered to the month. Because to remember... ANDY/ONE "Twenty-eight and a half years ago." ANDY Without even stopping to calculate must mean that she really kept track and would say... ONE "Well, it's nineteen years now since he was here in that sunhat." ANDY It was very peculiar. BOTH Very American. ANDY The other day something very American happened to me. I was going into an auction at Parke-Bernet and they wouldn't let me in because I had my dog with me, so I had to wait in the lobby for the friend I was meeting there to tell him I'd been turned away. And while I was waiting in the lobby I signed autographs. It was really a very American situation to be in. ONE What's great about America is that it started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola and you know that the President of The United States of America drinks Coke, American Superstars like Liz Taylor drink Coke and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum on the corner knows it and you know it. Everyone in America knows it. TWO I love American money. It's very well designed, really. I like it better than any other kind of money. I've thrown it in the East River down by the Staten Island ferry just to see it float. ONE Money is the moment to me. ALL Money is my mood. ONE Money is money. TWO It doesn't matter if I've worked hard or easy for it. I spend it the same. ONE When I have fifty or sixty dollars in my pocket, I can go into Brentano's and buy THE LIFE OF ROSE KENNEDY and say: "May I please have a register receipt?" And the more receipts I get, the bigger the thrill. They're even getting to be like money to me now. TWO When I go to the numbers-racket-newspaper-greeting-card-store in the neighborhood because it's late and everything else is closed, I go in and I'm very CHIC because I have money. I buy Harper's Bazaar and then I ask for a receipt. The newsboy yells at me and then he writes it on a plain white paper, I won't accept that. "List the magazines, please, and put the date. And write the name of the store at the top." That makes it feel even more like money. The reason for doing it is I want that man to know I am an Honest Citizen and I save my stubs and I pay my taxes. ANDY (TO BEAUTY ONE) I don't think everybody should have money. TWO It shouldn't be for everybody. ONE You wouldn't know who was important. TWO How boring ONE Who would you gossip about? TWO Who would you put down? ANDY Never that great feeling of somebody saying: "Can I borrow twenty-five dollars?" ONE After you pay somebody back you never run into them anymore. But before that, they're every where . TWO I don't understand anything except green bills, not negotiable bonds, not personal checks, not traveler's checks. ONE And if you give anybody a hundred dollar bill in the supermarket they call the manager. ANDY Money is suspicious. TWO People think you're not supposed to have it, even if you do have it. ANDY I'm paranoid now when I go to a department store because I always have another shopping bag with me and they tell you that you have to check it, but I won't. ONE A lady doesn't have to check her pocketbook. ANDY I won't check my bag. TWO It's the principle. ANDY So then I'm paranoid they'll think I'm stealing. So I hold my head up high and Look Rich. Because I don't steal. ONE Rich people don't carry their money in wallets or Gucci this-es or Valentine thats. They carry their money in a business envelope. In a long, business envelope. TWO And the tens have a paper clip on them. ONE So do the twenties. And the money is usually new. It's sent over by special messenger from the bank office. TWO Or their husbands' offices. ONE They just sign for it. And it stays there. ANDY Till they have to dish out a twenty to their daughter. TWO I had a very good French wallet that I bought in Germany for a hundred and fifty dollars. ONE For the big money? TWO For the big size foreign money. But then in New York it ripped and I took it to the shoemaker and by mistake he stitched up the part where you put the paper money, so I can only use it now for change. ANDY I hate pennies. I wish they'd stop making them altogether. ONE I would never save them. I don't have the time. TWO I like to say in stores: "Oh, forget it, keep those pennies. They make my French wallet too heavy."
ANDY Change can get to be a burden. TWO But it can also come in very handy when you have no money. ONE You hunt for it. You can look under the bed, you go through all the coat pockets, saying: ALL Maybe I left a quarter there...or there! ONE Sometimes it can be the difference between buying a pack of cigarettes or not. TWO To only be able to dig up sixty nine cents instead of seventy cents. You hunt... ONE And hunt... ANDY And hunt for that last penny. The only time you like a penny is when you need one more. TWO If you look like a rag, but if you've got fifteen dollars in your pocket, you can still impress people that you've got money. All you have to do is go down to the liquor store and buy a bottle of champagne. You can impress a whole roomful of people and with luck maybe you'll never see them again, so they'll always think you've got money. ONE I can never have money and pretend I'm poor. I can only be poor and pretend I'm rich. ANDY Lying in the bathtub with a pillow behind my head makes me feel very rich - the pillow that I sent away for for $3.95 and a box top. TWO Maybe it's an illusion. ONE Of grandeur. ANDY When you pay the phone bills every month that I do, you know you have the money. ONE I have a fantasy about money: I'm walking down the street and I hear somebody say...in a whisper... ALL There goes the richest person in the world... (THEY ARE LOST IN FANTASY FOR A MOMENT) TWO I know a woman who calls somebody up every afternoon and says: ONE I'11 give you a hundred dollars to fuck me." ANDY Fabulous. TWO She makes sure they're very attractive and from good families and everything, but they need maybe a few more dollars to spend on wheels for their Mercedes. This girl does not have diamonds, nothing she wears costs that much, and yet there's money in her nose and in her ears and in her brain. ONE In her cheekbones, too? TWO It gives her structure. ANDY A delivery man from the coffee shop might come in and you could ask him: "Look at her, is she poor or rich?" And he'd know? TWO The face is money. She can be walking down the street smoking a cigarette and she can hail a cab in just such a dainty way that the whole affair changes. ANDY It's great to buy friends. ONE I don't think there's anything wrong with having a lot of money and attracting people with it. Look who you're attracting... (THEY ALL LOOK TO AUDIENCE) ALL Everybody... (THE BEAUTIES APPLAUD THE AUDIENCE AND FREEZE. HANDS CLAPPED TOGETHER. ANDY SPEAKS TO NO ONE IN PARTICULAR.) ANDY One day I was having lunch with a princess and she had this little scotch purse that was in the motif of a plaid cap with a pom-pom. We were at the Women's Exchange on Madison Avenue. And she took this crisp money out of her purse and she said: ONE (HOLDING FREEZE) "You see? I fold it in the Rothschild manner. It lasts longer that way. I've been doing it all my life. (AS ANDY SPEAKS, BEAUTIES TAKE OUT A CRISP BILL AND FOLD IT ACCORDINGLY) ANDY She folded each bill separately, length-wise, and then folded it again, lengthwise. All new money. All in a little stack. The theory is that it lasts longer. That's the Rothschild way of folding money - that you can't see it... (BEAUTIES TURN OUT AND HOLD BILL AS IF TO SIGNAL WAITER) ...that's the Rothschild story... (BEAUTIES PLACE BILL BETWEEN THEIR TEETH AND BITE. STILL HOLDING ONTO END OF BILL. LIGHTS DOWN TO SINGLE SPOT ON ANDY AS BEAUTIES HOLD FREEZE.) You take some chocolate...and you take two pieces of bread...and you put the candy in the middle...and you make a sandwich of it...and that would be cake. (BLACKOUT)
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