1.
Clarice & Jack
Story-line: Jack Kerouac meets Clarice Lispector inside a painting by Edward Hopper.
Scene 1
In the mid-to-late 1950s, a gas station near Woodstock, New York. It's summer, late afternoon. The scenery portrays the loneliness of an Edward Hopper painting.
A woman in her mid-thirties is standing beside a Studebaker, smoking and glancing up at an empty highway. Her name is Clarice Lispector, a Brazilian writer. She was born in Ukraine, and as an infant, her family moved to Brazil.
A man in his mid-thirties approaches her. He is Jack Kerouac, an American writer, and one of the pioneers of the Beat Generation.
JACK Hello.
CLARICE Hi.
JACK Excuse me. Can I have a cigarette?
CLARICE Of course.
(Clarice opens the Studebaker, takes a cigarette pack, and hands it to him. He taps a cigarette out of the pack, lights it up, and exhales the smoke with pleasure.)
JACK Thank you.
CLARICE No problem.
(Jack looks around.)
JACK Are you waiting for someone?
CLARICE No.
(Pause.)
JACK Have you gassed the car?
CLARICE Yeah.
JACK Sorry. You just want to smoke quietly, and I'm here asking foolish questions.
CLARICE I don't blame you.
JACK What?
CLARICE Because I never know what to say. It's very boring to say something to people that we know, and it gets more difficult when we don't know them.
JACK Surely.
CLARICE So, relax and enjoy your cigarette.
JACK Yeah. Thanks again.
(Silence.)
JACK What do you write?
CLARICE Words.
JACK Funny. Very funny. That's my response when someone asks me.
(Silence.)
JACK I gotta go.
CLARICE Right.
JACK Thanks for the cigarette.
CLARICE That's okay.
(As he's leaving, she talks to him.)
CLARICE And you? What do you write about?
JACK Well, I've been writing all these feelings I feel, that my mind brings to me. Then, I expel all that in the writing, like a factory.
CLARICE I understand.
JACK And you? Why do you write?
CLARICE I write to stay alive. I die when I'm not writing.
JACK Anyway, it's easier to write than to chat.
CLARICE I think so. What I don't know how to say is more important than what I say.
JACK For me too.
CLARICE So, I prefer to write. I write as if to save somebody's life. Probably my own.
JACK Yeah. Writing can save us from ourselves.
CLARICE Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.
JACK You got all that from my head. I think exactly the same way. You said what I feel. Oh my God! Sometimes, my thoughts are confused in a chaotic world, and when my mind is okay, when my thoughts are all right, then, the world gets much more confusing.
CLARICE Unbelievable. But that's true. The mind is tormented because of what we think, not because of what we see. Some people see horrible things and that's okay.
JACK On the other hand it's the same, too. The people see good things and that's horrible.
CLARICE I'm not like that.
JACK Listen… I'm appreciating our chatting. Do you want a beer?
CLARICE Yes. That'd be great.
JACK The summer is burning our souls. Wait a minute.
(Jack goes into the convenience store.)
(Clarice lights another cigarette.)
(Jack comes out of the convenience store holding two beers. He hands her one.)
CLARICE Thanks. (Points to the cigarette.) Another?
JACK (Nodding.) Thank you.
(She gives him another cigarette. He lights it and makes a toast with the beer.)
JACK Cheers.
CLARICE Cheers.
(They drink.)
CLARICE This beer is too hoppy.
JACK Two beers or not two beers. That's the answer. Fuck the question.
CLARICE (Nodding.) Yeah.
(Silence.)
JACK Well, I still don't know your name.
CLARICE Does it matters?
JACK What?
CLARICE Our names?
JACK Of course, not.
CLARICE Call me the woman at the gas station. And I'll call you the beer man.
JACK Sounds good.
(They drink their beers in silence for a few moments.)
JACK This car has a radio?
CLARICE Yes. It's a Studebaker.
(Clarice opens the car, sits down inside, and turns on the radio. We begin to hear a piece of jazz music.)
JACK Cool.
CLARICE Do you like jazz?
JACK Absolutely. At the Vanguard, I get to see inspiration materializing in front of me. It's perhaps the only moment that we can see this phenomenon.
CLARICE Makes sense. I love it. Jazz is something like a soul's dialogue.
JACK Exactly. I feel it in the same way.
CLARICE The voice of the soul meeting the song? Or our inner voice gotta dance?
JACK This stuff reminds me of a case. It happened when I was living in San Francisco. I was at a gas station like this one. I saw a couple, a young couple discussing the inner voice.
CLARICE Really?
JACK The girl wanted her boyfriend to hear her inner voice. But the poor guy heard nothing. Well, they started a verbal fight. A friend of mine, named Jeff, said he was listening to the girl's inner voice. She liked it so much, and soon she gave shit to her boyfriend and went to talk to my friend Jeff. The boyfriend got angry and picked a piece of wood and hit Jeff on the head.
CLARICE Oh my God!
JACK
Jeff fell on the ground, shouting out, "your girl wanna make love with me."
CLARICE Wow!
JACK Then, I got into the fight and broke them up. The girl said to Jeff that she would never make love with him. Never. She was in love with her boyfriend. She just wanted him to hear her inner voice. Just like that.
CLARICE It's very complicated.
JACK After that, the couple left the gas station saying they were going to make love.
CLARICE They had heard the inner voice.
JACK I think so.
(A beat.)
How about another beer?
CLARICE Yes. But now I'll get them.
JACK That's okay.
(Clarice goes into the convenience store.)
(Jack keeps smoking.)
(Moments pass. Clarice gets out of the convenience store. She is holding a pack of beers.)
JACK Thank you.
CLARICE I suppose our night will be long.
JACK Yeah.
CLARICE I bet it will be more sophisticated than my life as a diplomat's wife. Those nights with banquets full of food, and full of empty hearts in the embassy.
JACK Are you married?
CLARICE Totally.
JACK That's very nice. I believe in weddings.
CLARICE Me too. I mean, for others.
(They drink.)
JACK Sometimes I wonder when love is born. What time does it happen? It is with a look, a thought, what defines that moment.
CLARICE I think it's born after the absence - after we've met someone else.
JACK Maybe. Maybe.
CLARICE In the absence, we begin to feel heavy, and the breathing gets hard. I think of it as the exact moment that love is born.
JACK Exactly. After that, we become prisoners from the other. You know. Our life loses all meaning. Everything is strange. Even the scent of the other triggers our saddest thoughts.
CLARICE I hate this prison.
JACK Me too. It's not right. We're free. We need to make our thoughts go up to heaven, and not be in the darkness. It's so unbelievable that we get this way. Oh boy! We need to write, to write, and to write because the voice got lost.
CLARICE I understand you. It's too bad for us. My writing should be more important than that. But not. It becomes cheap. It becomes foolish. Who invented love? God? Why? Adam and Eve?
JACK It would be nicer if the paradise were just sin without love.
CLARICE Absolutely. The world would be strange, however happier. By the way, I hate the word happy. It's so repulsive. Happiness doesn't serve anything. It's just a waste of time.
JACK That's true. I remember when I was leaving New York and met a man named John Brawl. He was working as a taxi driver. He told me he got released from prison after some years. He went to jail because of drugs. He was a drug dealer. One day, he got caught by the police. Then, after serving his sentence, he was free and swore he would never sell drugs again, only buy them. Has he found happiness? I don't know, perhaps.
CLARICE The eternal search for the happiness. People are sad because they have lost a good piece of their lives looking for something. It doesn't exist. Where is the island called happiness? If you find out, please, tell me.
JACK You know. I think that this moment is full of happiness.
CLARICE Here?
JACK Of course. Why not?
CLARICE Really? I'm not happy.
JACK Where would you like to be now?
CLARICE Who cares?
JACK Me.
CLARICE You? I don't believe it.
(Jack gets close to her.)
JACK Why?
CLARICE Why? Because you are like me. You like to dig, dig, dig in the garbage, like a rat, to find words that could save a human being.
JACK You got me.
CLARICE I know you.
JACK You've known me just a few minutes.
CLARICE It could be too much for an ant.
JACK You're right. Sometimes I feel like a bug.
CLARICE Sometimes? I'm a bug. A little bug. A meaningless bug.
(The two look at each other in silence.)
JACK I don't know what to say.
CLARICE So, drink.
JACK Of course.
CLARICE Do you want another cigarette?
JACK Yeah. Thank you.
(Clarice hands him her pack of cigarettes. Jack taps a cigarette out of the pack, lights it up, and returns them to her. She picks a cigarette too.)
CLARICE When the words falter, the thought starts.
JACK My thoughts are starting to fly.
CLARICE Where?
JACK We're in a place that shines brighter than the sun. In this place, there's just the two of us. Nobody else exists. We're like Eve and Adam in the new paradise. We're there to make love and to pay for all new sins. We will make love without fear. Love without ownership. Love without anger. Love without guilt. Love without despair. Love without revenge. Love without judgment. Just love.
CLARICE I hate to have to say it, but love doesn't exist anymore. The last one was sold.
(Clarice opens the Studebaker, picks up the first edition of Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill, and hands it to Jack.)
CLARICE Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill.
(Jack gets the book and checks it out.)
JACK Words, words, words.
CLARICE Eugene O'Neill was born from some characters instead of a family.
JACK (Excited.) Yeah! Yeah! I think that-that-that… Yes, we can do it.
CLARICE What?
JACK I want you to love me with your words.
CLARICE It'd be like sex with the words. Right?
JACK Yes! The most beautiful experience on the Earth.
(They start a dialogue as if they are making love verbally. The cadence will grow until they reach an orgasm.)
CLARICE I say what kind of words?
JACK Say words like that, lemme see… (Thinking.) One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
CLARICE I want vast distances. My savage intuition of myself.
JACK Yeah! I've got you under my skin.
CLARICE (Sighs, excited.) It always shakes me.
JACK The summer is better in Philadelphia than Florida.
CLARICE Do you ever suddenly find it strange to be yourself?
JACK Yes! Yes! Yes!
CLARICE The meaning of life ended when the last dinosaur died.
JACK Charlie Parker lived inside the cage by day, and at night, he suffered like a bird trapped in a cage.
CLARICE Love is now, is always.
JACK Love supplants death.
CLARICE Death doesn't kill soul.
JACK Never.
CLARICE To feel is a fact.
JACK Underground.
CLARICE To think is an act.
JACK If you own a rug you own too much.
CLARICE Ignorance of the law.
JACK Of Mice and Men.
CLARICE I'm a prisoner of myself.
JACK Let's go free.
CLARICE In the nightmare.
JACK The pure wish.
CLARICE To live.
JACK To die.
CLARICE I'm waiting for 'tomorrow'. But it will never come 'today'.
JACK The poem killed the poet.
CLARICE The lie is the truth of the liar.
JACK Sex is just imagination.
CLARICE Life only harms us when we mistreat ourselves.
JACK Go on!
CLARICE Where does music go when it's not playing?
JACK The only truth is music.
CLARICE God! Make sure I have the courage to face me.
JACK All I write about is Jesus.
(They run directly to each other, but before they embrace, they stop.)
CLARICE I wanna scream.
JACK
Go, go, go. go.
CLARICE (Screams.) Ah! Ahhhh! Ahhhhh! Ahhhhh!
(Silence.)
(Jack looks at Clarice. Two breathless moments.)
JACK Can I have a cigarette?
CLARICE Of course.
BLACKOUT
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