"I Cry All The Time"-Published at Zoetrope

God grant me the serenity to remember who I am.”-Joe South


Las Vegas Evening: Heat Exhausted Birds Fall Dead From the Sky

I was in bed on Saturday night, crying, watching Univision, not understanding a word. I was crying while Don Francisco hollered hysterically at Jackie the weather girl, dancing a teasing little twitch in front of the band. My phone played “Stranglehold.” My brother, living near elderly mother in Dallas, was taking care of things as usual, feeling the heat and looking back in a bloody rage.
“Nice going,” he said, his voice at organ stop vox drill-sergeant sarcastic.
“What’s the matter?”
“Don’t ever tell Mom about your out-of-control blood pressure again. She’s crying, ‘my baby, I almost lost him when he was a baby’ and the rest of it. Did you tell her you quit smoking, you liar?”
“Probably. I’m sorry. We were talking about something else. I called her to verify a story about Michelangelo and Leonardo tending to an eye injury with pigeon blood.”
“What the hell are you talking about? No, don’t tell me, just don’t make me call again about this. I’ve got my own problems.” Dead connection.
There was nothing to do but get up and ankle out onto my little terrace with a cold bottle from the refrigerator. I drank cold water in the Las Vegas pizza-oven heat, praying my headache would ease. One thing I knew for certain. I knew what it felt like to love a creation so much that you wanted to talk to it. That was one thing I had in common with Michelangelo, the bearded, marble dust covered genius of Florence and Rome. I wrote about Gerda Taro, and in the middle of the screenplay I fell in love with her. I fell in love with a woman killed 70 years ago in the Spanish Civil War. I had an orange tattoo on my forearm: “Photo Taro”, her logo. I wanted to travel somewhere and talk to her. It’s different with living people. I tend to travel the other way from them. I don’t have any pity for my own blood. This was interesting, because my own blood pressure was killing
me. Who said there was no balance in the universe, no consequences for actions? My years of drinking, weight, and cigarettes were chickens on the roof beam now. Maybe that’s what made me fascinated with a marble sculpture depicting a mother and her dead son, a son who once told his mother, on the street, that he did not recognize her, that he had no family, and yet there she was at the end. The Pieta. It sure is. A mother’s unconditional love shown for all of us. There was a line from an Emmylou Harris song where God says: “you may be a mess, but you’re still my child.” There is a connection somewhere, but you get it.


Behind the Hard Rock

Huge shallow pools, bright and sparkling in the enormous sun like a titanic turquoise and silver necklace. Sleek young women wearing good jewelry, heels and tiny swimsuits at poolside, the men in surfer trunks milling about in crotch deep waters where they could drink, gamble, connect with beautiful young women who know more then the men do, but keep it camouflaged until they know the score.
I, along with two guys from Miami, was sitting in a fully appointed (wet bar with bikini’d bartender) party cabana behind the Hard Rock. I was making a movie pitch to two indie-movie producers who needed a solid project to launder some money for some people who didn’t listen to movie pitches. The hired producers to do that. The two men from the Miami wore David streamline shades and Technicolor pool clothes, Prada flip flops. A platinum haired bartender from an agency in hot pink bikini tended bar behind them. They were drinking. I was applying for a job. I guess you could say we were all working. I told them about the scupture, a mother holding her dead son and grieving.
“I don’t get it,” the hairier producer said. “Help me out. Are you talking about Michelangelo the rapper, because I kind of get a woody thinking about that.”
“No, the sculptor, ” I said, lighting a Camel.
“Ok, let‘s cut the shit and get down to it,” the shaved head producer said, glancing at his clunky platinum watch and making a face. “ By the way, this is a no-smoking cabana unless it‘s weed . So put that out. I didn’t come to Vegas to get smoke blown up my ass. So here I am, listening about a piece of shit sculpture of a broad holding her dead son. Just so you know, I’m doing this because I’m re-paying an outstanding marker to a dear friend . Otherwise, the closest you’d get to me would be bringing the ice and wiping my ass. Why should we make this? Who even cares about it?” He sat back and waited. It was a good question. Maybe nobody. Maybe everybody.
“Michelangelo,” I said, evading the question, “made his masterpiece at the height of his powers and under enormous pressure. He suffered an injury to his eye while using a thin chisel and thought he’d lost it.”
“Lost what? His schwantz?” The hairy one shook the ice in his drink to signal bikini girl. He had a twenty dollar bill wrapped around the glass.
“I’m falling asleep here,” the shaved one said
“An apprentice” I continued, “took him to his greatest rival, Leonardo-not the ninja turtle- who knew something of human physiology. He sprayed cool pigeon blood into the eyes, and the shard of metal eased out. Leonardo bandaged him, a patch actually, and asked him about “The Pieta.”
“The what?”
I ignored them.
“Leonardo said ‘I heard you threw a mallet at the base because it wouldn’t talk to you.’ Michelangelo looked at him with one burning eye and said, ‘no, I threw it because I couldn’t talk to them.’”
“Ha” the hairy one said. “Wack job. He wanted to talk to the statue”
The shaved one took a long drink. He looked at me with no hostility on his faceted, hairless face. Maybe was thinking about a muscular, lusty Italian sculptor, sexing up a hot babe beneath a huge Italian moon, ripped off from“300“. Leonardo. The old hateful prick who trains Mike for the big project, a statue of the broad with the dead guy in her lap. “Fanfare for Mike” by Bill Conti, Jr.
“You want something to drink, Johnny?” The shaved one was genial now, using my name for the first time.
“How about some water,” I said.
“Hey, Seka the Bartender. Some Pellegrino for our guest” The platinum girl got a small green of bottle Pellagrino out of the refrigerator and handed it to me. She smiled.
“Do I tip you?” I asked
“Let them handle it. I love the idea, Honey. It reminds me of when I used to go to mass” she said. Just then, I started to cry.
“What‘d she say to you? Hey, what did you say?,” the shaved one said.
“Allergies,” I said. That was a lie. The meds that flattened out my blood pressure made me cry all the time.
“I’m kinda getting a hold of this thing’s jerk rope” the shaved one said. “You got a script?
I handed him a manila envelope containing 233 pages.
“He was switch hitter, wasn’t he? Michelangelo,” the shaved one asked.
“I don’t know. He loved beauty in men and women. He was in love with a woman and probably in love with a man. It wasn’t considered unusual. There is nothing known for certain of his personal life. My script is a story about his work and the pressures around him. Think “Amadaeus” meets “Rome.”
“We could shoot in South Africa. Or Libya,” the shaved head producer said. “Even in the Caymans.”
The hairy one was quiet now.
“Why don’t you let us look at this fucking thing” the shaved one said. “Who is your agent?”
“Beth Planet.”
“We heard of her. Tough bitch.”
“She’s my niece.”
“Oh, sorry. Anybody else seen this?”
“ Russell Crowe,” I lied.
“Shitsky,” the hairy one said, sitting back into the coral cabana lounge.
“He‘d be perfect as Michelangelo” the woman piped up.
“Just stay out of it and get our guest here another Pelligrino. We got enough producers around here.” the shaved head producer said. To me, genially: “What did he say?”
“Russell said he was thinking about some things.”
“Listen, take some Pelligrinos with you. It’s hot like a rented box in this desert,” the shaved one said, gesturing with irritation toward the platinum haired woman “Get him some Pelligrinos, for Christ’s sake. Johnny, we’ll be talking with you. Hey, are you still boxing?” He dropped into a mild boxer’s crouch.
“No,” I said. “I’m 55 years old. I’m a carpenter.”
“Oh yeah,” said the hairy one from the coral cabana lounge. “That sucks.”
“Being a carpenter or being 55?”
“Never mind, “ the hairy one said. “I don’t know what I meant.”
“Hey, how would you like to meet Tommy Lee? His cabana is just over there.”
“No thanks, I’ve got to get to work.”
I had gone maybe twenty feet when the platinum bartender touched me. She had a net bag clinking full of Pellegrino bottles.
“Don’t forget your water, Baby. And I loved your idea. Don’t let those guys make you cry. We’re all just making money. Why don't you call me? My card's in this bag. I'll make us a nice light supper. Take these and God Bless.”

Beth Planet Calling

“Hello Uncle Johnny… You’ll never guess who just called… No. Russell Crowe… Yes... He wants to know why everyone knows about the Michelangelo script except him… He thinks it‘s a great idea… He almost fired his California office… I faxed it to him…You need to get out here today…Dallas? …Well tell Grandma you have to go see Russell Crowe and she’ll understand …She thinks he broke up Meg Ryan’s marriage?… Put Grandma on ”