Chuckerman Makes a Movie

by Francie Arenson Dickman

  The packets turned out to be excerpts from our own scenes that, Laurel explained, we were going to use for an exercise in dialogue. “Too many of your characters are talking to set up the plot or to just hear themselves talk. Rambling won’t fly in film.” Rambling a bit herself, she explained that when a character speaks, his words must have a purpose. “Conversations need to be brief and move the story forward. They need to teach us about a character, flip the balance of power between characters, or create tension. Good, old-fashioned dramatic tension.”

  She also told us that our characters should sound like real people. “How do you know if dialogue sounds real? You read it aloud. Hence,” she said, pausing to hold up a packet, “our exercise.”

  For the first excerpt, Laurel tapped Rhonda and Carl, the guy who sits next to the window, to read.

  “Run zigzag, Pharis, run zigzag. Gators can move, Pharis. So shake your ass.” Carl spoke with none of the urgency that one generally associates with an alligator chase. Nonetheless, this was undoubtedly a scene from Vile Bodies. Judd beamed as though he was getting an Oscar nod.

  Rhonda, in the role of Pharis, did a better job of getting into character, moaning and feigning tears as she read. “One more kiss, Caleb, one more kiss. If I die here in the reptile house, I want to go down heavy in your arms.”

  Carl: “You’ll go down, babe, but in the arms of the beast. My arms and every other part of me will be long gone.”

  “I assume we are going from weakest pieces to strongest,” I whispered to Don, who, along with the rest of the couples club, had given me a warm welcome-back reception at the start of class. Pats on the back from the men. Hugs from the women. They’d been worried about me.

  Susan, her hair now even more blond, said, “If we are going from worst to best, then I’m sure mine is somewhere toward the back of the packet.”

  As Don groaned and Rhonda finished reading Judd’s nonsense, I scanned the pages to see if any of the scenes Laurel had picked were mine. My guess was no, since I’d all but dropped out of the class. I didn’t recognize any of the characters’ names that lined the left-hand side of the papers. But, when I got to the last one, the words rang a bell.

  Girl: Of course, I would be happy to convert for the right man. (Girl looks at Guy in a way that suggests he is the “right man.”)

  Guy: I don’t think you should convert for any man, including me. If you get married and have kids, I think it would be better if your children weren’t Jewish. (Guy polishes off a shot of vodka and pours another.)

  Girl: Why?

  Guy: In case there’s another Holocaust, and there will be another Holocaust. It’s inevitable judging from 9/11, which I experienced firsthand, though slightly sedated from the dentist’s office in Midtown.

  Girl: That’s ridiculous.

  Guy: Trust me, babe. History has a way of repeating itself.

  Girl: What if we don’t have kids?

  Guy: Then why bother getting married?

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. I wanted to protest. Not only had the teacher paraphrased my conversation, the paraphrasing made me seem—if possible—like even more of a jerk than I actually had been. To protest, however, would be to acknowledge that I was the Guy. I decided to stay quiet and instead shoot an angry look to the front of the room.

  Laurel ignored me until we got to the end of the packet. “Would you be willing to read this with me?” she said, strolling over to my desk and smiling to the extent that her super-tight hairdo would allow.

  “Why don’t you give me a moment to familiarize myself with the lines so I can—you know—get into the Guy’s head.”

  She crossed her arms and smirked. “I don’t think that’s necessary, David. It’s a class exercise. Just wing it.”

  So I did what the schoolmarm said and when we finished, Susan said, “That dialogue seemed decent to me.” She asked Laurel if it was from one of her movies, noting that Laurel had mentioned taking conversion classes.

  Laurel shook her head no. “But you are correct. It is an example of dialogue that works.” She turned to me. Her eyes lit up. “Part of the authenticity comes from David, who did a fabulous acting job.” She patted me on the shoulder. Then she turned her attention back to the class, asking, “What makes it work?”

  Someone said it flowed. Other people thought the characters sounded honest and real.

  “Duh,” I mumbled. Laurel was still standing next to my desk. I mumbled some more. “Lucky for you I showed up today to read my lines.”

  “Not really,” she whispered. “Marcy told me you’d be here.” She winked and walked to the front of the room, where opinions over the passage were bounding back and forth.

  “Personally, I think the Guy sounds like an ass,” Candy said.

  Another front-row girl agreed. “The Guy’s lines are subtext for, ‘I don’t want to marry you but I’m too chicken to do the dirty work so I’m going to force you into breaking up with me’.”

  A less demoralized man might have gone off script and added, “What about the backstory, baby? What about the rabbi and the fling and your arrival as the unexpected guest?” Instead I spoke more generally and only to Don. “It seems like we’re studying dialogue in a vacuum.”

  “You’re the asshole, aren’t you?” Don whispered.

  I didn’t even pretend innocence. I sighed, relieved to not be alone in this charade. “How’d you know?”

  Don told me that I was a terrible actor, and that my face was stone white.

  In the meantime, Carl at the window was arguing with Candy. “The girl seems desperate.”

  Laurel scrunched her brows. “I don’t know about that.”

  “It’s like she’s forcing herself on him,” he added. “Maybe he’s not ready to think about getting married yet, and she’s already talking a change of religions. That would freak me out.”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” I piped in. “Like maybe he thought the relationship was just a fling.”

  Laurel rolled her eyes at me, shook her head at Carl, and then took control of the conversation. “Whatever your opinion, you can see how the dialogue moves the story along. The exchange reveals something about the characters and creates conflict, as demonstrated by our class discussion. It also leaves the girl with a choice about what to do next.”

  “She should jump ship,” Rhonda offered.

  “She should tell him he’s an asshole,” Candy added.

  “Truthfully, I don’t know why the Girl would want to be with the Guy anyway,” Susan said. “He seems paranoid and depressed.”

  “And like he may have a drinking problem,” Helene offered.

  I felt like I was listening to Rachel and Marcy all over again.

  At least I had Don. “If I thought another Holocaust was inevitable, I might have a drinking problem too,” he offered.

  Laurel didn’t give me up. She worked the class with confidence.

  “In movies, saying the wrong thing is usually better than saying the right thing. The wrong thing leads to conflict, conflict leads to pain and suffering, suffering spurs action.” Laurel appeared to speak off the cuff but without skipping a beat, as if she gave this lecture every session. But I knew she didn’t. Hadn’t she said before, at our first meeting at the 3 Woos, that every session was different? That students and their characters dictated the course of the curriculum more so than the syllabus? I might have been on iffy personal terrain with the teacher, but I was as confident in my mind as she was with her words that no other class had gone quite like this. Because she wasn’t lecturing the class, she was lecturing me.

  She told us, when we wrote our next scenes, to have words come out of our characters’ mouths that we’d never dare to say. “Make them ugly and uncomfortable,” she instructed, “then sit back and see what kind of chaos ensues.”

  This assignment wouldn’t be difficult for me to do with my movie. My next scene was Saturday Night Fever, and it oozed ugly and uncomfortable. My real life did, too. Though in my real lif
e, chaos had ensued already.

  SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER

  INT. OF THE SUNNY ISLES THEATER. 7:00 PM SHOWING JUST UNDERWAY

  The scene will open into movie-theater darkness, as the narrator voices over. Large and once grand, like movie palaces used to be, the Sunny Isles Theater was, by 1977, just ten degrees above a rundown show. But expectations that night ran high for the folks who filled the worn red velvet seats. It was a sold out house, with the entire Melman family filling a row, balancing tubs of popcorn, boxes of candy, and Cokes on our laps, as neither the drink holder nor the concept of low-carb had yet been created.

  That night, a few of Marcy’s Junior Mints dropped onto my seat and mashed into my light-colored painter’s pants when I sat down. So in my own movie, while Tony Manero, in his red satin shirt and black leather jacket, saunters down the sidewalk to “Stayin’ Alive,” the audience will see me yelling at Marcy for causing me to look like I’d had an accident.

  My mother, sitting next to me, will whisper, “Shh, the stain will come out in the wash.”

  My father will lean over my mother. “Forget about the pants,” he’ll say, pointing to the movie screen.

  My Grandma Estelle will lean over both my father and mother. “Don’t worry, Davy, I’ll get you some new pants at the mall tomorrow when we go to get the new shoes.”

  “Enough with the new shoes already,” Slip, seated on Estelle’s other side, will bark.

  Finally, my father will tell us all to sit back and enjoy the show. “You are about to see some first-rate dancing,” he’ll say, as he’s been saying for the past several days.

  Ironically, he’d chosen the movie with my Grandma Estelle, a first-rate dancer herself, in mind. But, as I’m sure you know, the Electric Slide was not the Charleston and the Brothers Gibb were not the Gershwins. From the second John Travolta strutted onto the screen, I knew that the movie pick had been a mistake. With each pelvic thrust, I could feel the heat of my parents’ faces intensify as they glared at me and Marcy.

  If you’ve ever watched a show while someone is watching you in embarrassment and horror, you know that enjoying that show is pretty hard to do. Well, take it from me, enjoyment becomes downright impossible when you find your head suddenly covered in a sweater, which was what happened to me about twenty minutes in, around the time a nude dancer threw off her top. My mother removed and replaced the sweater throughout the film, as she saw fit.

  “A prophylactic measure,” I heard her say to my father. She also said that next time, she’d pick the movie.

  I heard my father apologize but tell her not to worry. “If I have no idea what’s going on, I doubt that they do.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I understood enough to be happy that I was hidden beneath a sweater. As I’ve mentioned, I hated anything to do with even innocent interactions between the sexes, and I hated the movies. It strikes me only now that the only reason I sat through Saturday Night Fever was because I didn’t have to watch it.

  Marcy laughed at my covered head and I heard my mother say, “Not so fast, Little Miss, I’m only one more set of titties away from taking off my own shirt to cover your head too.”

  So you see now why my memory of the movie is spotty. Maybe then you’ll also understand why I didn’t notice my Grandma Estelle’s knuckles clutching the sides of her seat. (“White and trembling” was the description I’d get later.) I didn’t notice her gasping for breath, either. I didn’t notice my mother handing her napkins to blot her forehead. I didn’t notice my father instructing her to relax and breathe deep.

  The audience, on the other hand, will be aware of both my ignorance and Estelle’s symptoms, which will start during Disco Inferno. She’ll stabilize for a while but relapse during the second dancing scene at 2001 Odyssey, so that by the time Tony leaves the club to bang Annette in the backseat of his car, my grandma can take no more.

  From beneath the sweater and the blare of “You Should Be Dancing,” I’ll hear my father say to Slip, “Sit still. I’m going to get her out of here, get her some air.”

  “Perhaps she needs more than some air,” my mother will say.

  “He is a doctor,” my Grandma Estelle will remind my mother. I remember being buoyed by the sound of her voice, although weak, as well the predictability of her statement.

  “He’s a dentist, Estelle,” my mother will reply. “And you’re not having trouble with your teeth.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Slip will mumble without moving his eyes off the screen.

  The people behind us will wallop the back of my parents’ seats and tell us to hush. I will push away my covering in time to see my grandfather turn around and tell the strangers to mind their own goddamn business, and my father stand and escort Estelle into the lobby. The aisle inclined, so the audience will see my father’s hands press into Estelle’s rounded shoulders as if to keep her from falling back.

  “Good thing for her Adidas,” I will say to Marcy.

  “Let’s go and make sure everything is okay,” Marcy will whisper.

  “We’re going?” Rachel will lean toward me and, assuming that I am the reason for the departure, shoot me a look so dirty—snarled nose and scrunched brows—it penetrates the dark.

  “No, we are not going,” I will announce. I will push myself farther into my seat and pop a Milk Dud in my mouth to make clear my intent to stay.

  “Fine, stay. But your grandmother may be about to die,” Marcy will say as she shuffles down the aisle.

  “Grandma will be okay,” my mother will say. “Nobody has to leave.” Then she’ll mumble to herself, “Although we’d all be better off if we did.”

  I stayed. I watched as Tony’s brother left home, as Tony’s girl, Stephanie, moved to the city, as the two of them sat on a bench beneath the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and talked about its construction. All the while, I imagined my grandmother lying on a bench in the lobby waiting for the paramedics. I listened for the sound of sirens. But any way you slice it, I didn’t make a move. I regretted the decision as I made it and still do.

  At the end of the movie, as I head out of the darkness of the theater, I will see the three of them lined up next to each other on a metal bench across from the door. My father will sit on one side of Estelle, Marcy on the other, where she will be rifling through my grandma’s purse, chewing her Juicy Fruit, and slathering her peach polish on her nails. My mother will walk next to me, holding my hand, patting my head, hoping to undo the movie’s damage with her affection. Rachel and Slip, the only Melmans to both see and enjoy the show, will walk ahead of us discussing the movie with the same enthusiasm displayed by Laurel’s students when she shows a film in class.

  “Now that was a movie,” Slip will tell Rachel. He’ll hit her on the back and do a few hip thrusts. “I could move like that in my day. Nobody was better than me, except maybe your grandma.” He’ll nod toward her on the bench.

  As he does, the bench will come into tight focus, and the audience and I will catch the image of my father sitting next to my grandma. His arm will be around her and his hand will hold a red and white Coke cup that Grandma Estelle will sip from on occasion, as directed by my father. Intermittently, my father will swap the cup for a damp handkerchief that he puts against Estelle’s forehead and, every so often, against his own.

  “How Deep is Your Love” will play as we exit with—or, more accurately, as we are carried by—the tide of catatonic Jews eager to put this R-rated Christmas behind them.

  “How is she?” Slip will ask my father when he reaches the bench. He’ll pull a tub of popcorn from the inside of his wind-breaker and set it next to my grandmother. “Hungry?”

  “I’m just fine,” Estelle will answer, but she won’t look fine. Then she’ll turn to me.

  “That was some movie, Davy. Should we go see it again tomorrow?” She’ll laugh. So will I. Who knows where I got the notion that a sense of humor was synonymous with sound health, but her joke gave me relief.

  “I think we should take
her to the hospital,” my father said. “Have her heart checked.”

  “Now?” I asked. “Is the hospital open on Christmas?”

  My mother told me that it was.

  “But who knows what kinds of doctors they’ve got working,” Slip said. “I say, if she hasn’t keeled over by now . . .” He winked at my grandmother as he unwrapped a cigar.

  “They’ve probably got all the Jews working,” Rachel said. “This is a great time to go.”

  “Forget about it, Allen,” my Grandma Estelle told my father. “It was indigestion.”

  “Indigestion from what?” Finally, the last of the moviegoers—my Grandma B and Aunt BoBo—will reach my Grandma Estelle. They will have watched the movie from the front row of the theater, per usual, so no one could block their view. It will seem that they, unencumbered by kids and unflustered by the foul language since they can’t hear it, have taken to Saturday Night Fever like bees to honey—John Travolta being the source of attraction.

  They’ll point to Travolta in the poster above our heads, they’ll refer to him as Johnny, and they’ll talk about how well he wore his suit. “He didn’t look nearly so handsome in Welcome Back, Kotter,” my Grandma B will profess. She’ll smile up at him as if he might ask her out.

  “You watch Welcome Back, Kotter?” my mother will ask. I was thinking the same thing.

  Marcy will interrupt. “Maybe the indigestion is from the meatballs?”

  I’m sure others were thinking this as well, but it will be Marcy—never scared to get her hands dirty—who speculates aloud that the source of the sickness was BoBo’s kitchen.

  “Impossible,” Aunt BoBo will assure us. “We’ve been making those meatballs for how many years now? No one’s ever gotten sick.”

  “Maybe it’s from the throwing of the meatballs rather than the consumption of them,” my mother will suggest. “The scene at dinner was a bit unsettling.”