Alysse Aallyn

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  • The Crimes of Woody Allen – a film review by Alysse Aallyn

    THE CRIMES OF WOODY ALLEN

    This film, probably his last, is not the movie to rescue the 88 year old filmmaker but it certainly marks an advance in his artistic life. Throughout his career, Allen has leveraged an apparently traumatically low self-esteem, inviting us to laugh at the hoops society forces ordinarily inadequate people to jump through for admiration, employment, companionship & love.

    As he matured, he began implying that society itself is a crime and we are its victims (Shadow & Fog, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Hollywood Ending, Match Point, Broadway Danny Rose, Cassandra’s Dream, Interiors, Irrational Man, Scoop, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Bullets Over Broadway.)

    I’ve come to believe he’s our Marcel Proust – sharply attuned to the pathos and ambition of our social signaling and teasing us with scandalous gossip about how far some of us might be willing to take our desperate impostures. What will we do to get what we want and what might we do when challenged?

    Throughout his career, he has presented beautiful young women as the ultimate desirable acquisition of the good life; otherworldly angels whose psyches are completely closed to him, but whose bodies he hopes to subjugate.

    Coup de Chance offers one of these mysterious creatures as its protagonist, a beautiful gallery worker “rescued” from her life with a shiftless musician by a wealthy, jealous man terrified of losing her. Yet she is bored, bored, BORED by his dull existence of object acquisition and gourmet travel and secretly falls for a handsome, exciting young man with a head full of dreams.

    This film was banned from Cannes as a show of solidarity with the credible accusations of sexual impropriety by Allen’s daughter, whose story as an adult and a child, has never varied. The persona who comes across in Allen’s stories is inquisitive and clueless and needy enough to have done what he is accused of, yet most of us will never know the truth. Creator of his own worst fears, he triggered their realization. “Exposed”, discredited and cast out; still he is making films.

    Artists we can unreservedly admire as human beings are rare, Picasso and Tolstoy and Byron, for example, displayed outrageously cruel, downright illegal behavior for all to see. But it’s quite possible that the sinner’s story is always the more interesting one from the perspective of our own humdrum lives. Certainly no one knows crime as intimately as a criminal.

    Unlike the brilliant Match Point, the intensely immersive Cassandra’s Dream, the creepy Crimes & Misdemeanors and the tour de force Irrational Man, Coup de Chance’s plot is a mere story board, lacking the three-dimensional richness this collaborative art usually supplies, but it closes with Allen’s final gift to us, the end philosophy of his lifetime of restless questing. His last word? That each of us is a lucky miracle and that life itself is a miracle we must learn to revel in and appreciate.

  • The Demon Lover – a play for 2 voices by Alysse Aallyn

    SCENE IV – THE LAST SCENE

    EVA
    I am gnawed by an aching hopeless wish.
    Loneliness leads to breakdown,
    Becomes dementia. I batter
    Around the rooms of this castle,
    However brightly-plumaged,
    Knocking into furniture,
    A tragic bird who’s trapped indoors.
    Even dizzy with drink I maintain the frigidity
    Of an Edwardian hostess
    Intolerant of scenes at meals.
    Without you life’s a half-lit room.

    EVAN
    I’ve become a character in your melodrama
    An absurd creature of romantic vice.
    Hopeless dilemma.

    EVA
    What could be more beautiful than our ten days in New York,
    Walking among the perverted architecture.
    No loss of illusion, rather an increase.
    I’m in the midst of a dreary financial crisis,
    Having breakdown on my feet.
    I hope I don’t sound too shocked and sad.
    You are life to me as nothing is.
    My fingers still tremble,
    Touching you after 17 years.

    EVAN
    This is the Eva I first met, first knew, first loved.
    We waited it out and didn’t lose each other.
    I was sane or mad to doubt you & myself.
    We are like two people sweating blood
    I feel further from you than ever. I dread losing you
    But Elayna’s power still holds me.
    I fear I may do one of you harm.

    EVA
    Thanks for the money,
    I hope it doesn’t embarrass you too much.
    You are a reviver and a balm.
    We must be in Paris together before we die.

    EVAN
    If you want me to be unselfish, let me be unselfish.
    You are my greatest friend. I’m
    Trying to keep off the drink while you’re here,
    Otherwise I know I’ll wreck everything.
    Three manhattans makes me crazy.
    Your feverish cheer does not seem solid.
    Is this the wreckage of our love?
    Once frightened of your clinical eye
    Now I’m more frightened of my own.
    I’ve matriculated in
    Your fearful university.

    EVA
    We sheer away in horror
    Scenting fumes of evil
    As we lose control.
    Defeat and exhaustion, alarm and despondency.
    Demoralized and sad.
    Slam down the lid on pain and resentment:
    I have taken against your family.
    Let’s dance. To sit
    In silence denigrates our love.

    EVAN
    My heart aches for you.
    We talked for the first time in weeks
    About hurt and resentment.
    I could manage my life if it weren’t for you
    And you could manage yours if it weren’t for me.
    You infect me with your despair and I flee to my wife
    To release the pressure.
    Her quickening influence works my imagination.

    EVA
    I hate that you are in New York without me.
    You pervade that place as God pervades our hearts.
    My life is based on my assumption
    Of togetherness and my
    Secret fear you’re being got at
    When we could be snug together.
    I obsess that you’re in places where I’m not.
    I could not live without seeing you.
    I dread our visit may turn sour.

    EVAN
    Everything except your beautiful self rusts
    Or dies or goes away.
    My love only seems dead;
    it’s alive underneath. If you die
    I shall never forgive you
    We need ideas that are less about ourselves.

    EVAN
    I hurt Elayna tonight
    But there’s no help for it.
    She cares for me and I only care for a life apart.
    A clean break, an amputation
    Makes me frantic and guilty.
    She says we have a happy marriage only because
    She willed it. This smell of death and decay
    Makes me long for sex.
    Could you help me find a girl – any girl you choose –
    Or will you call me a sex mad degenerate?
    Panic makes my hands shake.
    I thought of Elayna and I wept.

    EVA
    I received your sad, wild letter.
    I accept that you can’t free yourself.
    Do you accept it?
    I feel so very near you.
    I accept that you make sex
    Desperately with strangers –
    Do you accept it?
    Can anyone love such a cold-blooded person?

    EVAN
    How silly I am, I thought
    I was reconciled to our ending,
    Expected a falling off of tension & illusion.
    But it’s a prospect I can’t face.

    EVA
    Miracles happen but
    The gift of love causes guilt & pain.

    EVAN
    I am utterly becalmed.
    What I dread most is silence,
    The latest form of impotence.
    I need stringing up and tautening.
    Revenge on love. Revenge on me.

    EVA
    I am suffused with love because I am free.
    My work becomes our child,
    An extension of us. Immortal. Still,
    Something vanishes when you’re not there.

    EVAN
    Elayna broke her hip.
    How irreplaceable she is to me.
    Our brand of married happiness is entirely unsung.
    I shrink to leave her even for a day.

    EVA
    I’m sorry it’s not fatal.
    Am I dispensable to you?
    You love no one. If you turn against me
    I’ll die in a week because
    I have no one looking after me.

    EVAN
    Turn against you! Agonizing!
    In spite of the hangover of humiliation
    I broke down all reserves so we could be together.
    A very happy day and I was sorry to leave you.

    EVA
    Wed & sad.
    Past distress is muffled by age & habit.
    Today we meet formally as if at a garden party.
    A promise unfulfilled.

    EVAN
    You looked so ill
    I was nagged by fear I bored you.
    I long for the happiness of old age,
    Guilt free, pain free, fear free.
    In your silence
    I feel your calming hand.

    EVA
    I invited Elayna to lunch.

    EVAN
    I am not best pleased.
    The day you come to like each other
    Our love will die. It will be
    Poison to our love.
    Elayna rarely admits depression.
    I have had not just love but loyalty.
    Your ghost will haunt me till I die.
    You force ruthlessness.
    It is a good thing your throat is sore
    Or you would never stop talking.

    EVA
    Are you sending me your signet ring?
    I want something solid to remember you
    As I dodge death, fight off this
    Paralyzing loneliness.
    Our last communion.

    (EVA fades away. EVAN is alone.)

    EVAN
    Is the flaw in love a flaw in me?
    I never should have married.
    My heart jumps with pain like a hooked fish.
    I am rudderless. Upon your death
    My ring comes back,
    All your contrivances revealed.
    Now you are gone, I find you everywhere.
    We will never see each other again;
    Never, never, never.
    You are gone from me forever.
    I walk the streets and weep.
    Is this delayed shock? Boredom or despair?
    I will never cease to feel this pain till
    I cease feeling anything.
    For the last three nights, I dreamed of you.
    Did I anger you, neglect you?
    It’s too late to pray –
    I await your final book with horror.
    I need to know I was your life.
    Please
    Come back one last time to tell me
    Just for an hour.
    If you ever thought you loved more than I
    You are revenged.

    THE END

  • The Demon Lover – a play for 2 voices by Alysse Aallyn

    SCENE III

    EVAN
    This is the letter I would write you if I dared,
    if I weren’t frightened bf the cancer
    Of your Elayna-hatred.
    I am overworked, wrung out.
    I feel possessed by you.
    You must always live at the pitch of anguish.
    Our love has roots in good and evil,
    It lives in the darkest places of our natures
    Despite of its pleasant surface.
    Shall we end by destroying each other?
    You have the deadlier weapons.

    EVA
    I have a bad effect on people.
    Guilt, conspiracy, love,
    I cannot breathe without them.
    Oh, the pain of your reproach!
    Not seeing you would kill me.
    I live for the memory of our every moment.
    I wouldn’t give a damn if I had a month to live.

    EVAN
    Boredom, dissipation, remorse,
    And apprehension– I can’t escape this obsessive cycle.
    Beneath the controlled surface of my mind
    Opportunities to be frenzied are endless.
    I’m afraid of saying something evil which many stick.

    EVA
    Gratitude for our happiness chokes me.
    This restlessness of things going to waste.
    Missing you is like an illness.
    I have never fallen out of love with you.
    The flame is always there.
    The place is full of you.
    I can no longer look at hyacinths

    EVAN
    There’s a worm in this bud
    But who is its corruptor?
    Your insights are so powerful they alter mine.
    I’m sorry for your husband’s death.
    I feel a shift in the angle of vision.
    A sadness fell on me
    A foreboding so final it seemed the end.
    Your pleading for our life dissolved my will.
    I agree to renewal, something I can live by
    But I refuse your guilt.

    EVA
    Did I leave my diary behind?
    Don’t read it, not that you would.
    It’s anaphrodisiac. I am filled with envious admiration
    For the way you spend your time.
    You get so much done!

    EVAN
    Of course, it’s an incentive to work, being alone.
    You have created your own circle
    Even if the intelligentsia is as insensitive as you say.
    I’m grateful we are calm,
    Those fearful scenes never likely to begin again.
    I’m sure the panic of youth has played a part.
    I used to hope you would love me less over time
    But now I think we love each other equally.

    EVA
    I believe we should exchange rings.
    Do you think this faux? Would Elayna object?
    This is so I have something in case you die of that itch or fall out of an airplane.
    I wonder why Elayna’s throat won’t heal?
    I believe she is ice-bound.
    She’s sealing you away from life.

    EVAN
    You witch, you have
    Frozen Elayna’s throat.
    I begged you not to. You make
    Sadness physical.

    EVA
    Elayna’s frozen her own throat
    I wish you’d see it.
    Depression is hallucinatory.
    Guilt and sorrow undermine all confidence,
    I refuse to give them credence.

    You are so near me I feel we are one person.
    I feel you now beside me.
    I will make you real.

    EVAN
    These acute waves of feeling sometimes come over me
    As if you’re signaling.
    I owe you happiness
    But I can’t express it.
    We must always believe life is as beautiful as the music
    Says it is. The illusions you must cultivate are in fact
    A form of courage.
    Forget my deficiencies
    Find amusement in the worldly game.

    EVA
    Without Allen, I re-experience my youth.
    Oh, the bafflement of the young!
    I broke off my engagement because I loved too much
    And cast about for a spouse I could
    Control. I believe you did that, too.

    EVAN
    Our parting was unbearable.
    I had to run away –
    Your rush of talk was like someone bursting into tears.
    I feel like an executioner robbing you of sleep.
    My nose began to bleed and
    It’s been bleeding ever since.
    We must love each other less to become more tranquil.

    EVA
    I am a witch and you should fear me.
    I glow with contempt and boredom and fury.
    I don’t understand why
    I can’t experience life by your side.
    We share the same senses,
    The same vein of joy.
    Our life together is timeless, continuous.

    EVAN
    Your letter’s fraught with dynamite.
    I can never be alone, it is me and the gin bottle.
    I am home nowhere now – except with you.

    EVA
    I don’t want you getting yourself into a state
    But Edgar has proposed, forcing me to face the fact
    That I literally cannot live without you.

    EVAN
    I dread you will fall for Edgar.
    You called him “sweet” and “cozy” and “brilliantly entertaining”
    And I am none of those things. Did you bewitch him?
    he said in a persecuted voice.
    It would your justice, sending me to hell.
    We would lose each other by inches,
    But aren’t we doing that already?

    EVA
    I can’t show Edgar the brutal candor
    Behind my loving kindness.
    He mistakes the hostess for a person.
    I arrange the flowers in symbols of you
    And everyone’s too stupid to notice.
    To bed alone again tonight.
    I wish Elayna would die.
    Then we should be equals.

  • The Demon Lover – a play for 2 voices by Alysse Aallyn

    SCENE II

    EVAN
    Do you really love me?
    Why should you?
    I don’t seem any longer
    To be able to cope with friendships.

    EVA
    It is a horror, an outrage
    That we should not be here together. I struggle against
    The wound of not knowing where you are each minute.
    Everything you do is more important to me than my own life.
    The whole of me is with you.
    I see and feel you so distinctly,
    your beloved cold hand in mine
    Your touch on the nape of my neck.
    Both joy and agony
    – my insides torn by pincers.
    A double goodbye would have been awful
    – two bites on the bullet of pain.
    This love is like something we have given birth to.
    We must never blunt our imagination or tenderness.
    Don’t get a cold in your soul.

    EVAN
    I disappoint everyone.
    I deliberately left one of your letters for Elayna to find.
    With me love is linked with
    A need to betray. I invite possessiveness.
    She made me promise our love would never be physical.
    I lied fluidly.

    EVA
    Even the thought of
    Such a loss of pleasure tears at my heart
    Like some medieval torture.
    You harrow me unbearably.
    My defenses are down.
    I’m filled me with a sense of ghastly injury.
    How I wish I were more beautiful –
    It’s my mouth that ages me.
    I want you seeing all of me –
    Even if it hurts.
    You are your own child,
    You preserve your youth with the harm
    That you cause.
    I am dead and already
    Interred – in you.
    You are my eternity.

    EVAN
    You can’t have everything.
    I am kept aloft by the conflict of
    Unbearables.
    I am happy.

    EVA
    Our dancing life is over –
    Shall I enter a convent?
    There’s no point in being alive
    if we’re not together.
    I show my deepest self to you alone.

    EVAN
    Please – no more shaming conversations
    Over Irish whisky. Let’s cut our losses
    And get some fun from life.

    EVA

    
The gash in our love might close
    But I can’t forget it’s there.
    Life with you is a remote happiness to which I cling.

    EVAN
    And all this time you write
    Fantastic books. If you were as unhappy as you say,
    You couldn’t write so well.
    I am the whetstone on which you sharpen –
    I should be thanked for all your works.

    EVA
    You shed your light around me.
    I am always aware of that other world we share
    – Or do we? Our pattern seems set –
    If treachery can’t break it,
    There is no death.

    EVAN
    I am losing interest in sex.
    My bed gets so icy in the small hours of the morning –
    I feel I am trying to communicate with the spirit world.
    I am in limbo and will never escape this place.
    The adolescent remains alive in me, I have a
    Panic fear of conformity.
    So I cast myself as the elderly rake.
    I’m the bore –
    Marriage gets me down.

    EVA
    When you go on and on about yourself
    You’re a man I don’t recognize.
    I prefer your adolescent self.
    The man of the house is a free agent.
    A respected prowler
    Who looks benevolently upon the faces of his womenfolk.
    Then he’s away – with mistresses or boyfriends.
    In my attack of loneliness, I’m housebound,
    Eating baked beans and drinking stewed tea.

    EVAN
    In other countries women
    Are less bossy and more decorative.

  • The Demon Lover – a play for two voices by Alysse Aallyn

    Scene I

    EVAN

    I like women willful, late
    For appointments,
    fond of showy clothes and society, vague, drifting, dreamy,
    yet of course all of that is tiresome.
    But I don’t like competence, intellectual honesty, intelligent sensuality.
    Women keep turning on me saying,
    “You don’t love me.”
    What good is it to have been so happy
    when it ends so painfully?
    I am a “crook”, a “torturer of women”,
    “Murderer.” She has made me feel a monster.
    Below the surface of the will
    I feel deep animal distress, as if I had wives
    Hidden away somewhere
    To marry my present wife.

    EVA
    I find your misery gratifying.
    When I was younger I used to
    Accommodate everyone –
    Now I’m recalcitrant.
    You’re never out of my thoughts, but
    Sadness dulls one.
    Honestly, I always risk failing you,
    Failing you in outstandingness.
    You are extraordinary, I am extraordinary,
    we have been extraordinary together.
    We’re specimens under glass.
    It hurts because the pin runs through both of us.
    The agonizing force of missing you
    Is sweeping over me.
    We have eternity connecting us,
    Backward & forward but
    I can’t get anyone to believe it.

    EVAN
    Would my death simplify things?
    My wife struggles with carrying the conversation
    While I stare glumly at the rain.
    We go to an expensive little restaurant
    And pretend we are on a date to really talk.

    EVA
    That woman’s killing you.
    Imagine if you were dead and your wife
    Wrote a book explaining you
    To everyone! That’s true suffering –
    Fodder for the mealy-mouthed.

    EVAN
    My wife won’t be writing any books
    About me or about anything. You’re the one
    To write the book.
    I feel safe in your hands.

    EVA
    Except I’ve told you over and over
    You’ll outlive me.
    You’re killing me.
    Or your wife is.
    I’ll die of my addiction –
    We always do.
    We prefer it.
    Will you write about me?

    EVAN
    I’ve lied to everyone for
    So long, I’m sure that truth
    Is beyond me.

    EVA
    I’d rather see you dead at my feet
    Than dead ON your feet.
    That would be a mercy killing –
    The last unbearable agony –
    Wondering if you existed at all.
    I have small talent for this.
    I have disgraced my idealism,
    Pretending boredom can be fruitful.
    Waiting, waiting for you everywhere. I
    Wake one day to find I’ve lost my looks, my hair,
    fascination, brain – everything.

    EVAN
    You’re simply waking up
    In an empty hotel.
    The light is always different
    The morning after.
    This is what middle-aged people do.
    I love the brutality of your world.
    You never fade. You are my word made flesh.

    EVA
    You are my religion.
    Until In fell in love with you I was 25 inside.
    I lived in a world of dreams and theories.
    Your experiences seem realer to me than mine.

    EVAN
    To have touched the same places
    Is a bond between us.
    Social instinct is my religion.

    EVA
    Middle-aged people go to weddings
    Out of perverse fascination for the bride.
    I was that bride –
    My day was all champagne.
    Anaesthetized
    It doesn’t hurt so much.
    Such a sense of enormity came over me
    I almost fainted. I gave Allen the dirtiest look: “You caused this.”
    Without wedding dress
    I was a restless, dowdy snob.
    People were falling in love left and right –
    Even in decaying marriages.
    I wanted that –
    He read my subtext.
    And I was caught.

    EVAN
    These dreary parties have a decaying effect.
    My loneliness for you is like a whiplash.
    Your absence is a bitter injury
    But nothing can injure our love –
    We’re too strong for them.
    I’m silenced till I hear from you.
    If I let myself go I would feel desperate.
    I can’t bear you’re going to France without me –
    isn’t love our country?

    EVA
    I won’t say “I’ll die if you don’t come”
    Because I know you would come if you possibly could.
    What a skeleton in the cupboard a wife is.

    EVAN
    Don’t be jealous of Elayna. You are the only goal
    Toward which my life is tending.
    You are the meaning of my life.
    I could never live for work alone.

    EVA
    You enlarge my soul.
    In your mind is my existence.
    You’re more real to me than me.
    I’m in a peculiar psychic state.
    It’s an atmosphere of illusion.
    I envy Elayna all the time.
    It drips like an irritant over my nerves.

    EVAN
    What of Allen? You
    Have your worse half too.

    EVA
    Oh, Allen spends his time lost in woods,
    Falling in love with trees. He’s
    No threat to anyone.

    EVAN
    To understand one’s destiny
    One needs a framework for this mass of experience.
    How can I live separated from you?
    If I stopped caring for you
    I couldn’t care for anything.
    I need my wife, her whip-cracking organization.
    I loathe living in the squalor I get into on my own.
    Having breakfast OUT of bed is the last horror.
    Miasmic feelings of impossibility and terror. Help me.

    EVA
    We help each other
    By existing. Except for God I have no help but you.
    Our love is growing more formidable as our unshakeable belief
    Grows stronger. Like grace, it renews itself.
    All yesterday I glowed. My inability to accept your wife
    Is my deformity – help me with it.
    The light of our love is the only light for me.

  • Motive: a curtain-raiser play by Alysse Aallyn

    (A chorus of Cardinals, sedate & proper, approaches from right, a more colorful chorus of Goombas from left.)

    CARDINALS
    Oyez, oyez, oyez.
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
    pro in iudico minimum definitionem,
    quo justo intellegebat ne.

    GOOMBAS
    A guy’s gotta live
    Ain’t a guy gotta live? You
    Do right by me and I’ll do right
    By you.

    JACK RUBY
    (Appearing on balcony – flat affect – as crowd blends in below)

    The world will never know the true facts
    Of what occurred. My motives.
    I’m the only person in the background
    That knows the truth pertaining to
    Everything relating to my
    Circumstances. The people who have had
    So much to gain and had such an
    Ulterior motive to put me in this position
    Will never let the true facts come
    Out to the world.

    GOOMBA # 1
    But you’re crazy!

    JACK RUBY
    I have locomotor attacks-you.

    (Spreading his arms, he falls ritualistically off balcony & is absorbed into crowd. JOE KENNEDY
    appears on balcony)

    JOE KENNEDY
    Has anybody seen my son? I’m looking for my son.

    GOOMBAS & CARDINALS TOGETHER
    Woe is you! Woe is you!

    JOE
    Has anyone seen my boy?

    CARDINAL VOICE
    Which one, your honor?

    GOOMBA # 1
    You rat, you.

    JOE KENNEDY
    The big one. My big boy.

    GOOMBA #2
    But he’s crazy.

    JACK RUBY
    He’s been struck. He’s been struck down.

    GOOMBA #3
    We all get hit. Take a rap, be a prince.

    CARDINALS
    (together, waving arms)
    Vidit scriptorem vix in,
    ceteros tractatos assentior pro no.
    Ius etiam ornatus voluptua ne. Invenire democritum
    consectetuer an eum.

    GOOMBA #4
    Give us a taste! Just a little taste!

    CARDINALS
    An offering! An offering!

    JOE
    (Rains fluttering bills upon the crowd)
    My wife went to church
    My daughters prayed –
    I had four fine sons.
    Joe was smart, Jack was charming
    Bobby was loyal and Teddy –

    (Pauses. Sighs.)

    Teddy runs to keep up.

    GOOMBA #5
    Didn’t you make a deal?

    JOE
    Deal? I made plenty
    Turned one dollar into twenty
    To forty, to five million.
    Of course I made deals.

    CARDINAL #1
    The father shall eat sour grapes
    And the children’s teeth
    Shall be set on edge.

    (The CARDINALS break ranks and look at each other, amazed.)

    CARDINAL #2
    If you sow the wind you
    Reap the whirlwind.

    (The CARDINALS & GOOMBAS merge together, oohing and sighing as if a wind shudders through them.)

    GOOMBAS
    Omerta! Omerta!

    CARDINALS
    Qui habitat! Qui habitat!

    GOOMBAS & CARDINALS TOGETHER
    A deal’s a deal! A deal’s a deal!

    JOE
    But I wanted only fine things
    My boys to grow up

    Grab everything they wanted
    Take their place, rule the world.

    GOOMBAS
    But you gotta play ball!

    JOE
    I played ball with the unions!
    I played ball with the cruisers
    Settled scores with the bruisers.
    I know to grease skids
    I know to oil palms.

    GOOMBA #1
    We helped you with Jack
    And you sicced us with Bobby!

    JOE
    I never sicced anybody!

    (the crowd jeers and boos, CARDINALS cover faces in shame)

    GOOMBA #2
    Bobby won’t play right.

    GOOMBA #3
    Bobby’s a hard ass!

    CARDINAL #3
    (Very offended)
    Bobby’s a good boy!

    GOOMBA #4
    He’s TOO good a boy if you know what I mean.

    JOE
    I’ll speak to Bobby! Let me speak to Bobby!

    GOOMBAS
    Too late. It’s too late.

    JACK RUBY
    You can’t speak to nobody, Joe.
    You’ve been struck down.

    (JOE throws out his arms and falls into crowd as if dead. The CARDINALS rush out a wheelchair. NORMA JEANE appears sneaking through crowd. As JOE is whisked offstage, attention turns to her, in spite of the fact that she’s wearing dark glasses, a kerchief, halter top, ballet flats and Capri pants)

    GOOMBA #1
    Hey, guys, it’s Marilyn!

    GOOMBAS
    (chanting)
    Marilyn, Marilyn!

    NORMA JEANE
    That’s not me, boys, I’m Norma Jeane.

    GOOMBA #2
    Aw, come on Marilyn, there’s no disguising that shape!

    GOOMBA #3
    I can smell her!

    NORMA JEANE
    Marilyn is dead, boys, everyone knows that.

    (Takes off her glasses)

    See? It’s just me. Poor old Norma-never-been-nowhere-Jeane.

    CARDINAL #3
    Lying’s a sin, Marilyn.

    GOOMBA #1
    Dance for us, Marilyn. Do a little of this- and that –

    (he simulates a bump and grind)

    And these and those!

    CARDINAL #1
    Just give us a little song, Marilyn. Just for the kids. We’d be ever so grateful.

    NORMA JEANE
    You all know Marilyn’s dead. I’m just trying to find Bobby.

    CARDINAL #2
    Bobby? What do you want Bobby for?

    CARDINAL #3
    Are you trying to get that nice boy in trouble?

    GOOMBAS
    (Chanting)
    Marilyn! Marilyn!

    (They grab her up on their shoulders and lift her up to the balcony)

    NORMA JEANE
    No! I don’t want to go! There’s no more Marilyn!

    (But they are touching her everywhere. She gives up and climbs into the balcony.)

    OK, boys, one last time.

    (She throws off her glasses and kerchief, shakes out her hair, one grind, one bump, blows a kiss, EXITS.)

    THE END

  • Film Review – The Three Faces of Alfred Hitchcock

    APOLOGY FROM ALYSSE – Somehow the first version of this came out in Plaintext! Sorry.

    Film Review: Spellbound

                A Viennese psychiatrist in this movie demands a dream “the more cock-eyed, the better” and Hitchcock obliges with this wildly uneven picture offering us Alfred at is best and worst. This film about psychoanalysis is schizy; pretentious, illogical, childish and afraid of its own emotions. Unfortunately it starts with an awkward, talky beginning in which misogynist doctors accuse Ingrid Bergman (for the first time in her life, I’m sure) of being a “glacier” who’s uninterested in men.

                No one heats up a screen like Ingrid Bergman, shooting smoke and fire in all directions from the get-go and it will surprise nobody to find out she and Gregory Peck conducted a hot affair during filming. 

                Dr. Constance Petersen is a psychoanalyst at an upscale Vermont looney bin full of nymphos and weirdos, galvanized by the arrival of Gregory Peck as the new doctor in charge and he’s just as worked up about her. It doesn’t even faze her to discover that he’s an impostor, the real Dr. Edwardes is missing and her swain is accused of his murder.

                The film begins to gather speed as the couple goes on the run together with Connie telling everyone they’re on their honeymoon.  She takes the amnesiac to her training psychotherapist’s house in Rochester where she promises to “cure” him.

                Her teacher tells her that “love smitten analysts playing dream detectives” make “the best patients” but she is making good progress breaking down Peck’s resistance when the police show up and the couple flees to a ski resort called “Gabriel Valley”. 

                The famous dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali is pretty interesting – gamblers in a club decorated with eyes, a man tumbling down a rooftop and a masked man laughing behind a chimney brandishes a wheel.  Constance interprets this as her boss murdering Edwardes on a ski vacation to prevent the younger man from replacing him and framing her lover for the crime.

                When she tells this discovery to her boss he threatens her with the very same gun, but she faces him down and he shoots himself instead. Seen from the killer’s perspective the gun fires directly at the screen.

                Film ends with Constance Petersen and her Big “100% Cured” male making out at the train station. To get to this point Hitchcock had to battle a sappy film score, (Bernard Hermann wasn’t available), a bossy, clueless, tone deaf producer (David O. Selznick) and a woman-hating screenwriter (Ben Hecht) to ignite a modicum of his signature passion and suspense. At least it was a huge hit and broke all records. What a film this could have been without the frozen art direction, the awkward rear projection and the hysterical film censors. Someone should definitely take another stab at it.

  • Secrets of the Self – Second Book Contract by Alysse Aallyn

    My second book contract was a two-book contract. I had long been working on a novel, Model Prisoner, that was based largely on the true crime story described in Barthel’s Death in California , where a man murdered his best friend and kidnapped the friend’s wife. I was working through the issues created when women are forced to cooperate with dangerous men. As often happens, the characters hijacked the story. The relationship between the two men became more and more important – my poor heroine was just a marker of success or loss. In a lucky flash of intuition, I realized the mythic proportions of what I was dealing with – my protagonist became Persephone, uncomfortably contended over by two Lords of Darkness.

    Another character pushed his way onstage – Persey’s dog, Digger. Because Persey loved him, he was an object of jealousy by the Lords of Darkness, who wanted her all to themselves. This evoked the legends around domesticating wild creatures into household pets and the story became Woman Into Wolf.

    When I was ready to submit the novel I discovered my publisher Bridgeworks had been bought by another publisher, Rowman & Littlefield, so I sent it to them and prepared myself for the uncomfortable weeks long wait for consideration lowly authors are subjected to. A few weeks later I heard from my old editor (who I’d dedicated my second novel to!) that Rowman & Littlefield in fact had no editorial department, and so my contract was essentially null and void. I submitted Woman Into Wolf to my old editor to see if she had any good ideas about what I should do next. She suggested I de-emphasize one of the characters (the Bird Lady) and play down Persey’s past life – I took all her suggestions. But when I sent her the revised manuscript I discovered she had forgotten all about it and wanted me to tell her how the novel USED to be!

    At that point I lost faith in her. My trusty Girl Focus Group (my daughter’s friends) loved the book, and I feared further monkeying around might break something important! It seemed a better idea to jut publish the thing myself. And the reviews bore me out.

    …a thrill-ride, unique and highly recommended reading.” –Entrepreneur.com


    “deceit, rape, fertility, imprisonment and a mother’s grief…as each piece of the tightly coiled fiction was loosed I waited for the revelation to come…she couldn’t imagine the extent of the deception until it was spelled out. Neither could I.” – MyShelf.com

    “one of the most unusual mysteries I have ever read…I loved reading Woman Into Wolf … kept me on the edge of my seat right through the end…I highly recommend this novel to fans of crime mysteries that also
    enjoy some extra spice in their stories.” – Readerviews.com

    “a very fine psychological thriller…
    the characters in this book are as bright
    as crystal and as sharp as shattered glass.
    Aallyn not only can describe them to a
    neo-noun, she can make them speak
    true to those characters.
    Quite a talent…a novel every bit as worthy as
    her first.” –ArmchairInterviews.com

    “Satisfying as hell.” – Quoth the Raven

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    The Daisy – Love:

    If This Card Chooses You – You are surrounded by magical possibilities. Are you dreaming of eternal bliss? Floating in connectedness? In Love the boundaries of the other disappear, all is forgiveness. Merge fearlessly, knowing you will be able to get yourself back any time, soothed, improved, and healed.

    We Are Warriors For Love – Love is the spirit that animates the empty spaces between humans. Once charged, these spaces become a powerful force for growth and change – uncharged they are so much dead air. This is the space that warriors protect. Love is the longing to be truly alive and to share life with the Blissed, Blessed Others.

    Our Yearning Defines Us – As children we thought we knew the meaning of life but it seems we have forgotten. As warriors we fight for our ancestral memories of trust and closeness. How we long to be reminded of the ecstasy of selflessness, to re-experience the borderlessness between creatures that makes the dead universe come alive.

    Love Is Our Armor – It’s a spiral, our labyrinth, remember? We can’t go back, we can only go forward. We practice techniques and invent others as we design and redesign purposeful maps in a threatening and uncertain world. We have the collective confidence of all the brilliance of the warriors who came before us. Someone loved us once, eternalizing the golden moment, now we can re-create and perpetuate that magic.

    Warrior Danger – Danger lies in narrowing, exclusionary definitions. Love must ever open outwards. As soon as we turn Love into a zero sum game with a shut-off valve focused on our own gratification, Love dies.

    Warrior Opportunity – The possibilities of a warrior are endless because we have chosen, in our flexibility and understanding, to be endless. Close your eyes and assume yoga’s starfish pose. We are open to what the universe longs to teach and once we commit to pass it on, we form an unbreakable chain, free at last from the bonds of selfishness. Clasp the hand (or paw) that generously, trustingly takes hold of yours. Let’s venture forth together.

    Models & Mentors – ‘to love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides” – David Viscott

    “Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, only what you are expecting to give, which is everything” – Katherine Hepburn

    “Love gives you a piece of your soul you never knew was missing” – Torquato Tasso

    “Love is the gift of oneself” – Jean Anouilh

    “I love you for who I am when I’m with you” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    #Haiku: Love Transfer

    The secret of breaking
    Any bad habit
    Is to love
    Something more

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Homing – Forgiveness:

    If This Card Chooses You – Do you need to forgive? Or be forgiven? Most of us require both! Ask your dreams. Do you dream of home? Sometimes we dream of a home that no longer exists, or never existed. “Home” represents the state of psychic absolution where all mistakes are forgiven and forgotten.

    Warriors Create The Future – We commit to the ultimate compassion that we are all in this together. Jesus suggests that understanding doesn’t arrive until we learn to be the “forgivers”. Obviously, this means we must learn – somehow – to forgive ourselves.

    Warriors Create Heaven – Such forgiveness helps us achieve the state of spiritual lightness that allows a warrior to float through time, history, even the universe.

    Warriors Are At Home In the World – What’s your “dream home”? A warrior’s training emphasizes understanding and managing the fragility of the human body and the objective world, and accepting our healing and unifying mandate. Once we have scoped out the terrain and the inhabitants, Warriors are at “home” anywhere.

    Warriors are About Justice – But not the kind that leaves more brokenness behind. Warriors achievements and physical selves display the triumph of thought, will and love.

    What Does It Mean to “Start Over”? – We don’t wish to be free of “consequences”. We want to learn and grow from our mistakes but not be humiliated and punished for them. Pretending they didn’t happen doesn’t free us. Seeing our mistakes as moves in a dance we are all contributing to frees us from painful rumination and helps escape and explain the prison of blame. “I did this because you –“… Human interactions are a tar-pit in which we trap and tar ourselves. We realize we need to forgive every chain in the event pattern if we are ever to have any peace.

    It’s All About You – Robert Frost defines “home” as a place where, when you show up, they have to take you in. Defining “they” defines your group, your original home. Philosophy may provide an answer. Buddhists see history as a circle, Christians as a spiral. The question for Christians is, which direction is the spiral headed and do we have time to learn what we need to know before there’s a cataclysm? Can you define the mess we’re in and intuit your behavioral contribution? Is it possible to detach from the mess? In what group – or even in what “moment” can you detach from the mess?

    Warriors’ Danger – We can’t afford to get mixed up about right and wrong. “By their fruits shall you know them.” Think it through. One avenue leads to health, dignity and growth; the other leads in the opposite direction. Don’t make the mistake of “fundamental attribution error”. The threat is NOT coming from inside the house. Martin Luther King Jr. made the wise comment that our specific brand of capitalism tends toward is “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the rest of us.” It certainly suits corporations to lecture their employees on building a better world without incorporating any of those ideas into the bigger picture, where we have no control and they demand absolute freedom.

    What Is The Bigger Picture? Health and safety for all living things to achieve their growth potential as part of a harmonious, non-exploitative whole. It is key that our resistance – which is necessary and life-giving – not embitter us.

    Forgiveness Is Our Armor – Forgiveness doesn’t require ignoring the past or accepting bad behavior. It’s part of an interaction where forgiveness is a request, not a demand. Usually there is a recognition of fault or an expression of remorse: “I’ll never do that again!” When the requesting party instead seeks permission for the suffering to continue, “I can’t change – that’s the way I am” — that’ a different request. “Home” is not re-created that way. Hell is. Your opportunity is to point this out – if necessary, (because of safety) only to yourself. “If I’m not willing to try giving up my participation in this suffering because I think I’m not able to, then this pattern will continually get worse.” Time to construct a better – more intelligent map.

    Models & Mentors – “It’s not an easy journey to get to a place where you forgive people. But it’s a powerful place, because it frees you” – Tyler Perry

    “The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world” – Marianne Williamson

    “The weak can’t forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong” – Mahatma Gandhi

    “To forgive one another, we must understand one another” – Emma Goldman

    “Forgiveness does not exonerate the perpetrator. It liberates the victim. It’s a gift you give yourself” – T.D. Jakes

    #Haiku: Forgiveness

    Returning home with
    Newborn eyes
    Strong hands
    Fresh translations
    Future’s past