CUT
Kevin Killian

for Mary Gaitskill

CHARACTERS (in order of appearance).

"Alfred Hitchcock"/Steve Poitrine, cub reporter for the Berkeley Times
Billy Hammer, gadabout son of Marcella and Douglas Devlin
Marcella Devlin, his mother, a discontented faculty wife
Chita du Sumatra, the maid of Tippi Hedren
Douglas Devlin, director of the Berkeley Film Archive
Stephanie, Princess of Monaco, the daughter of the late Grace Kelly
Tippi Hedren, abiding star of "Marnie" and "The Birds"
Melanie Griffith, her daughter
Andy Griffith, the legendary "Andy of Mayberry"
Isabella Rossellini, Lancome model and daughter of Ingrid Bergman
Jamie Lee Curtis (male)
Jamie Lee Curtis (female)
Karl Lagerfeld, top haute couture man from Europe

[MARCELLA, BILLY, CHITA and STEVE POITRINE onstage during a seance.]

STEVE (imitating "ALFRED HITCHCOCK"). Good evening.

BILLY. Oh, my God, it's Alfred Hitchcock.

MARCELLA (seated). Billy, hush, I'm trying to concentrate.

BILLY (to CHITA). Mother's been a trance medium for twenty-five years, but never before has she been able to bring anyone over from the other side.

STEVE (as "ALFRED HITCHCOCK"). Good evening. [Steps forward onstage and addresses audience, as himself.] I'm not really Hitchcock—I'm me . . . Steve Poitrine! But what could I do? I was young—22—cub reporter for the Berkeley Times—helplessly in love with a married woman [places hands on MARCELLA's shoulders]—an older woman—Marcella Devlin, who I met at a mixer. At thirty, Marcella Devlin had the complex charm of a hot skillet sizzling with brandy and trout.

CHITA (regarding STEVE). He's a big man—with big face.

STEVE (as "ALFRED HITCHCOCK"). Good evening.

BILLY. Mother! Does Daddy know? [To CHITA.] Daddy is the director of the Berkeley Film Archive, and he's planning this big Hitchcock festival April 2.

MARCELLA (eyes closed). No, "Daddy" doesn't know! And don't tell him!

BILLY. I'm his right hand man.

CHITA (admiringly). Billy Hammer, you clever, sadistic bastard.

STEVE (as "ALFRED HITCHCOCK"). Good evening. [Again steps forward onstage and addresses audience, as himself.] What could I do? I went along with her fake seance, since she ordered me to.

MARCELLA (eyes closed). Suggested.

STEVE. She told me that if her plans worked, she would be free—free of the cruel husband—Dr. Douglas Devlin—the man who stole her youth. To seal our bargain she gave herself to me on the bearskin rug at the Faculty Club. "Steve!" she cried. "Steve! All I want is to get my husband to invite Melanie Griffith to the Hitchcock Festival." [As "ALFRED HITCHCOCK:"] I think it would be a marvelous idea to bring together, in one room, on one April afternoon, the daughters of my greatest stars. Marvelous!

BILLY (like Macaulay Culkin). Yes! Yes! [Struck by an abrupt realization.] But Daddy won't like it. [To CHITA.] Daddy's into theory.

CHITA. In Sumatra, we call "theory" the juice of the rubber bug plant, and squish it out of tapir heads.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK. Cut! Good evening! Bring to the conference Stephanie, daughter of Princess Grace; Isabella Rossellini—daughter of Ingrid Bergman; and Melanie Griffith, the daughter of Tippi Hedren.

BILLY. He'll never go for that. He wants people like Jane Gallup and Julia Kristeva.

CHITA (pointing at STEVE). Is that spook or is that man? Me very skeptical, in Sumatra grow up skeptical, like Gulliver.

MARCELLA. Billy, who's your friend and tell her to be quiet! The aura's growing fainter. Mr. Hitchcock! Alfred! Do you have final words for us here in Berkeley?

"ALFRED HITCHCOCK." Every time a director says "Cut," the action stops, and a new action fills the screen. Wouldn't it be nice if life were like that? Good evening.

[Exit STEVE POITRINE.]

CHITA. Look—he hide behind curtain.

MARCELLA. How refreshing, a woman from the rubber rooms of the South Pacific! What brings you to Berkeley? Wedding bells, Billy?

BILLY. Mother—

MARCELLA. Don't roll your eyes, I'm trying to be sincere.

BILLY. Mother, this is Chita du Sumatra—of Beverly Hills. Chita, this is Marcella Devlin, repressed, witty, the talk of the campus.

MARCELLA. Charmed.

CHITA. I go now.

[Exit CHITA.]

MARCELLA. Lovely idea. Billy, what are we to do!

BILLY. When Dad put me in charge of marketing the Festival, he expressly said, no stars. I said, "Dad! Who do you want to attract, a lot of egg-heads?"

MARCELLA. Here he comes now, try to break it to him gently.

[Enter DEVLIN.]

DEVLIN. Marcella! Billy! In one hour theorists from all over the world will descend on Berkeley to try to deal with Hitchcock's work, his delicate negotiation between the rational and the dead. Cultural studies has taken over the University. There's no more this or that, there's only cultural studies. Well, Hitchcock sits, like a fat rock, right in the middle of this swimming stream. You my wife?

MARCELLA. Presently . . . Dear, we've just had an interesting visitor from the spirit world. Alfred Hitchcock. From Heaven.

BILLY. And he wants us to invite stars to your gala!

[Enter STEPHANIE.]

DEVLIN (repelled). Who are you?

MARCELLA. Dr. Devlin, don't you recognize her? That's Princess Stephanie of Monaco!

DEVLIN. When it comes to cultural studies, actors are cattle.

STEPHANIE. Is this the big party with the pictures?

DEVLIN (sternly). This is not "the big party with the pictures"! Who invited you?

BILLY. I did! What's wrong with starpower?

DEVLIN. Billy, we've gone over this again and again. I wanted no stars at this conference, this is serious!

BILLY. I know, I know, you the man, Dad, and I should have respected your orders. But I thought—oh, gee, Princess Grace is dead, and I've been dying to meet the daughter who killed her! I think this cuts to the very core of Hitchcock's universe!

STEPHANIE. The car, the race car, on the steep Riviera slope! And I—filled with a powerful drug that made my foot so heavy on the metal! My mother—screaming! Screaming, "Stephanie! Slow down!"

DEVLIN. Thank you, I suppose, for coming today to be our patron. But Billy—I hope you haven't invited any other so-called "celebrities."

STEPHANIE. And yet my wretched foot got in my way, a foot so heavy it bled the blood of my mother over the hills of our little principality. Which I now own.

BILLY. Stephanie also invented the Wet T-shirt Contest. No, Dad, there are no other stars coming, more's the pity. [To MARCELLA.] I'm lying.

MARCELLA. Princess, are you coming to the Hitchcock fete, topless I assume?

STEPHANIE. Decisions!

MARCELLA (eagerly). Do you know if by any chance Melanie Griffith is flying in?

STEPHANIE (shrugging). Take me to my big chair and the pictures, Devil Man.

DEVLIN (coldly). It's Devlin. Billy, if one other celebrity shows up at this conference, you're a dead son.

[Exit DEVLIN and STEPHANIE.]

BILLY. Oh dear, and I've asked oodles! Want to hear how I do it? [On the phone, in a flashback.] Chita?

[Enter CHITA.]

CHITA. Hello?

BILLY. Hi, I'm Billy Hammer from the Berkeley Film Commission? Have I reached the African home of Tippi Hedren and Melanie Griffith?

CHITA. Miss Tippi, Miss Melanie, not home now. You call back. I give a goodbye.

BILLY. Is this Chita, by any chance? [To MARCELLA.] Chita's their housekeeper. Oh, who knows what she is! [To CHITA.] Chita dear, it's Billy! Remember me, Billy, from college? [To MARCELLA.] We went to Bard together. You have to use any angle with these servants. Actually, Chita's more of a family friend. I think Tippi picked her up on safari somewhere.

CHITA (pondering). Billy—Billy—

BILLY (to MARCELLA). Eventually she came to her senses.

MARCELLA. Interesting.

CHITA. I go and fetch my two blonde girls.

[Enter DEVLIN.]

DEVLIN. Son, what's this collect call from Isabella Rossellini in Rome?

BILLY (to CHITA). I'll come with you! We'll have a class reunion. Of course, we come from different classes.

CHITA. I, from the ruling caste of Cobra Island.

[Exit BILLY and CHITA.]

DEVLIN (to audience.) According to the theorist Joan-Géane Dumbrowski-Huffington, the classic Hollywood cinema is built upon a word, a word unexpressed on the screen you see before you. When that word is spoken, the director, a white, male, Eurocentric, commits an act of violence on the screen, on the text of the film. It is also used to implied sexual activity (unseen) among the actors whose images are thus shredded inside the eyes of the audience.

[Enter STEVE, who stands to one side.]

STEVE. Cut!

[Exit DEVLIN.]

MARCELLA. Oh, God, please let Melanie Griffith say yes! God, God, I've been everything a bad woman can be, and more . . . but let me have just this one wish, and I'll turn over a new . . . can't say "leaf," that's been said already. I'll be less mischievous, how's that?

[Enter CHITA.]

Chita! In the flesh! Chita dear, you've never looked more radiant! And where are our two super guests?

CHITA. Miss Tippi, she come soon. Miss Melanie, she at Betty Ford. Tell me, Mrs. Devlin, who this "Betty Ford"?

MARCELLA. Oh, Chita, let your hair down for once! Look, all the great Hitchcock stars have the famous daughters, right? I know Stephanie will come, all I have to do is say there's cocaine. I'm doing my best to get Isabella Rossellini.

CHITA. I hate her.

MARCELLA. She's not the warmest person, dear, but we all get tired of balls of fire.

CHITA. I guess.

STEVE. Cut.

[Enter TIPPI HEDREN. Exit MARCELLA and CHITA.]

TIPPI. And meanwhile halfway around the world, in my African retreat I, Tippi Hedren, prepare for my comeback. Under a Mercury moon I spin web after web of mosquito wings, my fragile, exoskeletal grease. Chita? Chita? [No reply.] Are the elephants mating, ivory tusks locked in a kiss? Once upon a time the great Hitchcock plucked me out of obscurity and cast me in two films, The Birds and Marnie. I did him right in return! Yet always there was something strained between us, the feeling that one of us was married to another, and my name, "Tippi," which he gave me, saying, "You tippy-toe across my great fat red boulevard of a heart."

[Enter MELANIE GRIFFITH.]

Then Hitchcock died, the screen door slammed and I haven't made a movie in 35 years. This is my daughter, and oh, how it hurts! Melanie, dear, how do I look?

MELANIE. Oh, Mother!

TIPPI. It's so good of you to let me come to the Conference with you. I haven't had a life lately, not since JFK.

MELANIE. You've had bit parts in my films.

TIPPI. Which nobody goes to see or likes anyhow. It's my birthday, darling, be good to me.

MELANIE. Mother?

TIPPI. Yes, Melanie?

MELANIE. Mother . . . were you ever pretty?

TIPPI. Of course I was!

[Enter MARCELLA, who stands alone in another part of the world.]

MARCELLA. Moon, careless moon!

TIPPI HEDREN. And I'm still pretty, if ever you took your nose out of a whiskey bottle long enough to care. Alfred Hitchcock certainly thought so!

MELANIE. Mother, when we get to Berkeley, you won't embarrass me again by claiming that my father was Alfred Hitchcock. Chita!

STEVE. Cut.

[Enter DEVLIN and STEPHANIE. Exit MELANIE and TIPPI.]

DEVLIN (to MARCELLA). Oh! There you are! Watching the skies when you should be working!

MARCELLA. Moon, moon, gold over Berkeley, are you the same moon that shines over Tippi Hedren's Wild Life Kingdom in Equatorial Africa?

DEVLIN. I have no idea. Come to attention! Avital Ronell just sent a fax on my prodigy line, she's expected at dawn. And Laura Mulvey called, Marcella! Imagine, Marcella—Laura Mulvey!

MARCELLA. I know, I know, she invented the "male gaze." But what work has she done on exposing the many contradictions of Melanie Griffith?

STEPHANIE. Moon, lonely moon, high above the night! Look down at my feet, kiss the blood off my hands!

STEVE. Cut.

[Exit MARCELLA, DEVLIN and STEVE. Enter MELANIE and CHITA.]

CHITA. Yes, Miss Melanie?

STEPHANIE. Every time I run a red light, I think of my mother. I run a few fingers through my hair, most of them my own. On water skis I, Stephanie, prowl the beaches seeking redemption.

MELANIE. Now who are these people we're going to meet? Film students?

STEPHANIE. Not really thinking it out, I posed for Playgirl—anything to rebel against my mother and my foot.

CHITA. Ah, your hair gives me a bright pain between my two eyes, let me fix it, my banana girl.

[Exit STEPHANIE. CHITA begins to fix MELANIE's hair.]

MELANIE. Do you have a drink?

CHITA. I used to nurse you with my two big breasts, now you're almost grown.

MELANIE. I am grown, and I don't want to have to babysit my own mother.

[Enter TIPPI HEDREN.]

Hear that, Tippi Hedren! Remember the story we agreed on, all those years ago, when people first started asking, "How come your name is 'Griffith' if your mother's name is 'Hedren'?"

TIPPI. But aren't you tired of the lies, sweetie?

MELANIE (firmly). No! As far as the world is concerned, my father is Andy Griffith! I insist, or we're not going to Berkeley or anywhere else on Earth!

TIPPI. All right.

CHITA. Shall you tell me to pack, Miss Melanie?

MELANIE. I'll tell Chita to pack—twenty bags for me, and your knapsack. Chita, pack! Mother, call Berkeley, tell them we're on our way. It's my birthday present to you.

[Enter STEVE and MARCELLA. Exit MELANIE GRIFFITH.]

STEVE. When will I see you alone?

MARCELLA. I want you, I need you, but let my plans burn down the sky before I give you a kiss.

STEVE. Marcella, you took advantage of my striking resmblance to Alfred Hitchcock. But your lips—like twin cherries—no! One's a cherry, but the other's a bee, stuffed with wine. I must taste those lips. Cut.

[MARCELLA and STEVE now are smoking cigarettes, after sex.]

STEVE. Was that as good for you—drag—as it was for me?

MARCELLA. Not really. I'm a lesbian, you see. Yes, we have sex, but with each other, not with guys like you.

STEVE. A lesbian! Cut!

TIPPI HEDREN (to CHITA). Why did she tell me to call Berkeley? Does she hate me—she must! She knows I have trouble with phone booths—not only here in Africa, but everywhere.

[Exit STEVE and MARCELLA.]

CHITA. Miss Tippi, you must rest now.

TIPPI HEDREN. I remember—the birds . . . flapping at the booth, while I was trying to call my lover—

CHITA. Hitchcock—

TIPPI HEDREN. No—Andy Griffith—I was pregnant—oh, I can't hide the truth from you, Chita. I'd never even dated Andy Griffith.

CHITA. You poor, restless devil of a ham!

TIPPI. The wings—brightly colored as Richmond Burtons—beating on the glass—my pulse beating—little Melanie, kicking against my ribs, and I couldn't remember the number! I tried the phone book. I tried the operator. Then the glass broke and the birds flew in! And my water broke—and there she was, my little daughter of sin. On the floor of the phone booth.

CHITA. Was there liquor on the floor of the phone booth?

TIPPI. The birds—pecking my face—then a strong man came and kind of—swooshed them away—a strong man with a gentle Southern drawl.

[Enter ANDY GRIFFITH.]

[Here ends the first of three parts.]