PUNCHING UP
THE SCRIPT:
CAR WASH (1976).
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My changes on page 21:
DUANE is dancing around a customer's car acting like he's styling his afro in the newly cleaned and polished car's reflection. The owner, SULLY, frustrated by DUANE's clowning around on the job, comes out of the office and yells at him. Instead of responding with his characteristic hangdog pouting and shrugging, DUANE starts to perform an elaborate Haitian ritual believed to "stain" the soul of any man indicted in the ceremony—in this case, SULLY. As DUANE's playful dancing turns into a foreboding kinetic storm of channeled spiritual bloodlust punctuated with violently mimed self-sacrifice, SULLY's expression of grumpiness fades. In SULLY we now see the eyes of a man facing his mortality head on, facing his fate as a man marked by an island culture's darkest forces. He starts to react to an apparent pain or physical force in and around his neck and face.
SULLY: (Choking.) You ... have ... summoned Loa. The next world awaits. Dark ... ness ...
DUANE: I come in many forms. You have created me. You have called this unto yourself. I am playful and content until someone insists upon his own demise.
That is when I appear. Your fear was your wish all along.
MUSIC CUE: "I Wanna Get Next to You" by Rose Royce
My changes on the bottom of page 70:
LINDY is busy doing his thing and buffing out the A-plus wax job he's put on MS. BEVERLY HILLS's Mercedes-Benz. Just as he's about to finish the job off, he takes one last look at his work and adds the final touch: he wets his finger with spit and gets one last speck of dirt off the paint.
LINDY: Ah, perfect. A topnotch job! Now you'll look real nice driving through Beverly Hills.
MS. BEVERLY HILLS: Well, that is, assuming I can get it out of this neighborhood in one piece.
LINDY: Hey, what are you saying? Why you gotta be up on a high horse like that, lady?
MS. BEVERLY HILLS: I don't know. Money has made me into something I am not; a person I wasn't raised to be. I've mistaken privilege for power. I often challenge myself when I've had too much to drink. (Addressing herself.) "Hey, lady! If you're so rich and you're so fearless, why haven't you really tested your courage? Kill bums just to see if it arouses you! Drive up into the hills and set a starlet's house on fire just to see someone so pretty weeping in a bathrobe on a front lawn and see if it turns you on! Go to the edge, lady. Otherwise, you're still just the fat poor girl from Kansas City that you've always been. Go to the edge, that place few ever return from, and see what the hell it feels like to look over the side. You've got the dough. Take that fucking ride."
LINDY: Uh, anyways ... I put a real nice shine on there for you, ma'am.
MS. BEVERLY HILLS: (Handing Lindy a tip.) I know you did, baby. We're all diamonds. We're all shining. You shine from the inside; you radiate. I'm ready to fly so close to the goddamn sun that I catch fire and shine forever.
MUSIC CUE: "Car Wash" by Rose Royce
LINDY: (Resumes dancing.) OK, ma'am. Well, that'll be $3.10, please. Have a nice day!
My changes to the ending,
on the bottom of page 120:
Entire cast is out on the lot dancing to theme. Customers have joined in, even the stuffiest of them are cutting loose. Even the owner, SULLY, has loosened his tie and is getting down. Everyone is lost in the music and the moment. Well, almost everyone: C/U on DUANE. He has refrained from joining in the celebration.
DUANE: (To camera.) If you are watching this in the future, know that time has had its way with us, and that we knew it would. And it will with you. There is no escaping this. In a strange way, it's what makes life so beautiful and strange, that nothing alive stays the same.
MARLENE THE HOOKER comes up to DUANE and playfully snap-whips a wet towel at his butt.
CREDITS ROLL
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Dan Kennedy's
Other Features.
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OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
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Punching Up the Script: Car Wash (1976) By Dan Kennedy
I Am Tired of Being Mistaken for a Golden-Rumped Lion Tamarin By Dave DeFina
Bobby Wolff's Recent Aces on Bridge Column as Played by My Father and His Three Siblings By C.B. Haas
Suggested Poses for Photo-Booth Pictures By Ted Travelstead
What Happened After I Lost My Guardian Angel: A Timeline By Jon Methven
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