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THE CRUISE --ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY |
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directed by Bennett Miller, starring Timothy Speed Levitch
The Cruise, directed by Bennett Miller -- Illustrated Screenplay & Screencap Gallery [transcribed from the movie by Tara Carreon, American Buddha Online Librarian] CHARTER FILMS PRESENTS TIMOTHY SPEED LEVITCH IN THE CRUISE [Timothy Speed Levitch] Can you hear me in the back? [Singing] "They are writing songs of love, but not for me. A lucky star's above, but not for me. With love to lead the way, I've found more clouds of gray, than any Russian play could guarantee. La la la la, la la la la la la. Although I can't dismiss, the memories of her kiss, I guess she's not for me." Written by a young, ambitious, desperate New Yorker named Gershwin who lived three blocks off on the left. [Clapping] Thank you now. Welcome to New York City." [Song] They're
writing songs of love, but not for me, [Timothy Speed Levitch] You know, I'm learning slowly in my Cruising career that you cannot expect people to transform in an afternoon. They're not going to rewrite their souls, and redo every day that they've lived thus far before they come onto the Double Decker Bus. And yet, I expect that. I expect the total transformation of their life, the entire re-write of their souls. I am fighting minute to minute -- every moment that they're on the bus -- for every day they've lived thus far to seem as an abstract wreckage that might have happened, but is probably a delusion, and that this is the first real day of their lives. Not to generalize, again, in every bus load there is internationality, and therefore different gradations of Cruising manifestation. But I find myself connecting with some of them more than others. Hello! What's up, Benitez? [Benitez] We're leaving. [Timothy Speed Levitch] We're leaving? [Benitez] Oh, it's raining! [Timothy Speed Levitch] Noooo! It's not raining! Greenwich Village, one of those rare districts that occurs once in a while in human history. Fear -- a basic theme of all of our lives -- is constantly afraid along the streets of Greenwich Village, under threat of assassination. And the assassins are our dreams triumphant. The byproduct of such a pursuit: creativity and radicalization, which are the further themes of Greenwich Village lineage. Right now, you are 6-1/2 blocks from where Thomas Paine dies. Paine, the infidel revolutionary, author of Common Sense, and The Crisis, two of the most influential political pamphlets of American history, both written during the American Revolutionary War. Thomas Paine returns to Grove Street to die in somewhat disgrace soon after being imprisoned by Robespierre in Paris during the French Revolution. You are 3-1/2 blocks from where Mark Twain moves, right after his wife passes away, onto West 10th Street, Twain moving at that time a few doors down from O. Henry. 4-1/2 blocks from where Edgar Allen Poe had a short-term residence deep in the heart of his opium addiction. Although he has many residences throughout that delusional time, he writes The Raven at 61 Carmine Street. Five blocks from where the American novelist Henry James is born, and from where Edith Wharton spends much of her aristocratic childhood on Washington Square Park itself. And this is 7th Avenue South in front of you, the modern, semi-express way of Greenwich Village. Six blocks from the Provincetown Playhouse where Eugene O'Neill begins his early playwriting career. Six blocks from where Henry Miller decides he hates New York City forever and moves to Paris. Two blocks from where Willa Cather lives. Three blocks from where e.e. cummings lives. Three blocks from where Sherwood Anderson lives. Four blocks from where H.L. Mencken lives. Four blocks from where Theodore Dreiser lives. Five blocks from where Nathanael West lives. Five blocks from where D.H. Lawrence lives lasciviously. Four blocks from where Jack Reed lives, author of "Ten Days That Shook the World," the first and only American to be buried in the Kremlin Wall. Before that happens to the radical Jack Reed, he lives youthfully at 42 Washington Square. His neighbor across the hall is Max Eastman, editor of the Masses newspaper published two blocks away in a basement, the major Communist publication of American history. Two blocks from where Arthur Miller, the author, contemplates suicide, and from where Jim Morrison does the same. Five blocks from where the poet Dylan Thomas dies. His famous last words, "I just had my 16th martini." He loses consciousness in the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street and never regains it. Five blocks from where Dorothy Parker wrestled with alcoholism and the defeats of a lifetime, and fails. *** New York City is a living organism. It evolves. It devolves. It fluctuates as a living organism. So my relationship with New York City is as vitriolic as the relationship with myself and any other human being, which means that it changes every millisecond, that it's in constant fluctuation. This winter I really felt like we were getting a divorce. And I was certainly the loser of that divorce. I mean, there was anger. I was overwhelmed. I reemerged into my own naivete. I couldn't believe how angry the city was with me. And it seemed like a vindictive woman to be like no reason whatsoever, just by the pure rage of its own existence. Because the concrete had settled. Because the terra cotta had been meticulously carved. Because some of the buildings are higher than others; the anger, the inferiority that some of the shorter buildings feel, I felt. And I suddenly was not welcome on this island anymore. And the City and I have had a reemergence of some kind in the summer. Maybe because I was able to refuel my Cruise a little bit by working laboriously and crawling my way back onto the island. Because perhaps I paid proper respect. I don't know why the City was so angry with me during this winter. I'm just glad that it's not quite as angry with me right now. [Laughing] I don't want to speak too soon, for God's sake. I mean, like I said, the relationship seems to change as any human relationship would, and with any living thing. Sometimes I think that if this is a living organism, maybe it's more on the lines of a Cyclops. Sometimes I think that if it is a living organism, perhaps it's more on the level of a scintillating, streamlined mermaid who sings to me at night. *** [Timothy Speed Levitch] Joe. [Joe] What are you doing? You're not on the line tonight? [Timothy Speed Levitch] I was just trying to check in. Yeah, I do the 8:45. [Joe] Alright, you can stay out here one night. I'll be right with you. [Timothy Speed Levitch] I think of every double decker loop as another loop towards my death. And that is why I've always thought the double decker loop, each loop, as a continuous and individualized search for perfection. *** H.G. Wells once wrote that to tell the history of New York City is to tell the story of the world. Fasten your seatbelts. 200,000 people work inside the World Trade Center Buildings daily. The World Trade Center Buildings have their own zip code. The World Trade Center towers themselves are built to sway in heavy winds, a foot and a half in any direction. Something to consider. [Man] So what's up, Tim? [Timothy Speed Levitch] Gray Line is like a damn ride. Apple, it was like a living carnival, man. We were cossacks. I mean, we took what we wanted and we threw people overboard off the bus when we didn't like them. I mean, it was our territory. The City belonged to us. [Man] No. 1. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Absolutely. You know, I just had more of an erection when I worked at Apple. I mean, I just felt like so much more of a man. For God's sake. [Man] No. 1. [Timothy Speed Levitch] I'm going to probably get fired. I'll probably be hung from a flagpole somewhere. But for God's sake, Apple is better. [Man] Apple is better. *** I think that the great tour guides of Apple Tours, you know, in that sense, would have been Spartacus. You know, Spartacus is one of the great tour guides of the ancient world. He would have fit in at Apple Tours. Brutus and his conspirators, right before the assassination of Caesar, they were Apple Tour guides. But like Willy Wonka is a Gray Line Tour guide; also one of my great inspirations on the tour route. But that's the difference, right there. Attila the Hun would have been a good Apple dispatcher. Whereas Virgil in the Inferno I think would have worked for Gray Line. *** [Man] How many year now? [Timothy Speed Levitch] Like four years I've been doing the Tour. [Man] No, five. Don't say four, please. Five. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Five years? [Man] Yeah! You know, by the time you work again, you gotta drive the bus, and go to Central Park. [Timothy Speed Levitch] I remember the damn trolley. Yeah, it's been like five years of this. Going in circles. You've been standing on the sidewalk for five years! It's incredible! *** Oh, look. Straight up. Oh, that's a great view! The white terra cotta straight ahead. That's the one building that Louis Sullivan designed for New York City. Look at the meticulousness. And you know, that strong vertical launch in the facade is typical of the Sullivan millieu. You know, terra cotta becomes one of the major materials of New York City architecture. It's like a sand-baked brick that's not quite granite, and it's not quite brick. It kind of walks the mainstream middle. And it was excellent in New York architecture because it could hang off the skeletons of the buildings. It's much lighter than stone. The difference though between stone and terra cotta, I think with me that strikes me the most, is that terra cotta reflects the sunlight and stone absorbs it. You can see the bouncy light along this building. When I see terra cotta like this, it just makes me feel like I'm senselessly running through a meadow, or high grassland area nude, chasing a woman I've never met before who is entirely nude. And it's just the most raw and primordial chase. Two nude human beings running through grassland and marsh area. As you move up the building, can't you feel the undulations of her curvature? The oomph, aaaah, yessss, yessss, that slight groan sometimes that some people have in the act of intercourse. It will be like ooofff, like the somewhat dying grunt of a beautiful woman grunting in the storms of her own melees. You can feel it in the meticulations of the corner signs of the terra cotta. That's why the terra cotta is important to me. It's the uuuhhh, the uuhhhh moments of life. Uuhhh! Uuuhhh! Yessss!!! Yessss! Oh, God, please! The begging parts of life. On the left, you see those like lionesque characters way up there? Please don't stop! Please don't stop! *** Hello. Can you hear me in the back? 27,000 trees are planted. 10-1/2 million cartloads of topsoil imported. And 140 miles of drainage pipes laid. And these are the basic ingredients of this supposedly natural creation called "Central Park." And there is nothing natural about Central Park. Welcome. Frederick Law Olmstead, the essential landscape architect of this original Central Park, sees a group of boys playing a primordial form of baseball on the lower play lawns in the 1850s, and at that moment outlaws baseball from Central Park. The men who build and design this park are transcendentalists. To them, Central Park is a place to become one with nature. to focus on trees, to scintillate with grass, to stare into one another's eyes. No sweating allowed in the original Central Park! No perspiration of any kind. Anyone you see congregating for the baseball game on the left, bicycling, rollerblading, jogging -- they are not historically accurate. Anyone you see lounging in the sun, having a picnic, or kissing -- they are historically accurate. *** Aahh! Muchas gracias. [Woman 1] Muchas gracias. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Nice to meet you. Say "Ola" to Buenos Aires for me. [Woman 1] Que? [Timothy Speed Levitch] Say hello to Buenos Aires for me. [Woman 2] Say hello? Hello? [Timothy Speed Levitch] Yes, "hello." When you get to Buenos Aires. [Woman 2] Ah, yes. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Si. [Woman 2] [Translates] [Woman 1] Beautiful! [Timothy Speed Levitch] Beautiful. We're beautiful The park is beautiful. [Woman 2] Yes. Thank you. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Nice to meet you. Ciao! Adios! Style! *** [Man] I talked to you about this the other day. [Timothy Speed Levitch] I mean, I looked at what's left, and the ones I was interested in were taken. The only one that I would have been interested in that wasn't taken was that 34. But that's got such an early hotel pickup that, you know ... [Man] Okay, so you're not interested. I just wanted to make sure. [Man 2] Pick a bid, so you know you'll have steady work. [Woman] Take the damn bid, Levitch. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Yeah, but I've thought a lot of time about this. I mean, there's no way to re-write the bids, are there? They are like with solidity? [Woman] Take the bid. You don't care when you're up at 7:30 in the morning. You don't know anything anyway at 7:00 in the morning. Neither do I. I'm doing it! You get 20 hours a week. Don't worry about it! [Timothy Speed Levitch] Yeah, you need to clean out his week, and that's one thing. [Woman] That's all you want! [Man] It's being decided now, so if you think you want something. [Woman] That's all you want anyway, Tim. [Man] It may be too late. [Timothy Speed Levitch] So this is my last two minutes to really decide. [Woman] Yeah! [Timothy Speed Levitch] You know, I appreciate it. I'll take these next few minutes and really deeply contemplate and make sure. *** If I have an essential goal on the Cruise right now, I think that the simplest goal is perhaps to be able to exhibit that I am thrilled to be alive and to be still respected. The more soulful of us, I suppose the Buddhist or whatever label you want to put on those experiencing their further individuality, might say like, "Look, why should you care about respect from others? I mean, just the thrill of being alive is your own business. You can do that alone in your living room." But that's not what the Cruise is for me. The Cruise is about the searchings for everything worthwhile in existence. It is about walking into the bar and lusting after all the worthwhile possibilities of the world. It is about flesh. It is about waves undulating. And it is about exhibitionism. You know, I want to look at the flower and appreciate the beauty of a flower, for instance. Somebody else might say, "You can look at the flower and become the flower. Isn't that even better?" But then I further would love it on the Cruise, if I could look at the flower, appreciate the beauty of the flower, and then have the flower appreciate the beauty of me. That's how I feel about Cruising right now. I mean, yes, becoming the flower would be a lot of fun. I mean, I can do that, too. I can do that on Wednesday afternoon. I think I'm free Thursday afternoon. I can try to become the flower. But come the weekend, goddammit, I will appreciate the beauty of the flower, and then likewise I will stand, exhibitionistic, having the flower appreciate the beauty of me. And I think having an intimate, quote unquote "love affair" with a flower is far more psychotic and riveting than having a love affair, quote unquote, with some of the banal creatures of the human race. Although I'd be into that, too. *** Welcome. This is my friend Russio's room, and I'm crashing here right now. Civilization is the amputation of everything that ever happened to us, an experiment created by aliens unable to have sex. Civilization is the molestation of everything we ever could be. A giant repression melting into suppression so that you never say what you mean. Civilization is breathing down our necks, splitting us apart. We are wreckage with beating hearts. Civilization is a can of hairspray spraying for the seasonless vein into a hairnet made up of curls only ever meant to be waves. Civilization, genocide beliefs, moralistic, see-through lace blouses. Missiles, ballistic, lackadaisacal, melancholic, red lipstick, when one feels nauseous but doesn't feel sick. Civilization knew who you were before you were ever born, forgave you when you thought you needed forgiving, and you never once surprised this civilization. And you never once felt that sensation. *** [Oshane] Okay, we're ready to roll. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Ready to roll [Oshane] Let's do this. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Let's do it right. Let's tour. 1,476 feet of organized granite and limestone. 6,400 windows. 27,000 rentable interior metres of space. 7 miles of elevator shafts. A slice of the state of Indiana vaulted onto the corner of 34th street and 5th Avenue. King Kong climbed it. The Empire State Building will be in front of us when Oshane makes the masculine turn. If architecture is the history of phallic emotion, the Empire State Building is utter catharsis, and we are sitting in its silhouette. The beautiful pyramid atop the Chrysler building, meant to be a replica of the front grill on a 1928 Chrysler car. Lewis Mumford, the major architectural critic of that era, called the Chrysler building quote "uninspired voluptuousness." End quote. Uninspired voluptuousness in the sunlight. Sunlight. Powerful. The sun, another great New York City landmark above you on the left. The arch in the park will be on the left side of the bus when Oshane swings us onto 14th street. And 14th street is the widest street of Manhattan. This is where the island is literally 2-1/2 miles wide. And that is it, Ladies and Gentlemen! That is all! 2-1/2 miles is as wide as this cacophany gets. 13-1/2 miles long, 2.4 million people. It would be 1.7 million people I heard recently, but I don't care. The foul to the fish markets will be more of an odor than a landmark at this time of day, but it really swings out at 4:00 in the morning. Another Timothy Speed Levitch recommendation if you can't sleep, and you like fish. I hope you can feel the omniscience of this moment as we have been blocking this traffic as far as you can see on the left. Sense the grandeur of your power as we disrupt one life after another. Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Timothy. Montanez is downstairs. If you need advice or directions on New York City, on style, on how to appear as a debonair individual despite interior feelings of despair, let us know. Please remember that tourism is a service trade and tips are always appreciated. And we mean that. We will remember you. This is our Central Park South stop. *** Oh, it's big money. Thought says you're going to go out later and take your children out for some ice cream cones. [Montanez] And get drunk! [Timothy Speech Levitch] Yeah. That, too. Wow! *** I think one of the great tragedies of this experiment called civilization is the fact that people have to work for a living. And it would be the first thing, if I had a choice, other than my acne, I think it would be the first thing that I would remove from my life. If I could erase an aspect of my life, it would be this need to work for a living. And you understand it has nothing to do with the Tour itself. When I'm on the Tour itself, and I'm showing others the appreciation of beauty, and the hugeness of all this, and experiencing the lascivious voyeurism of the Tour bus, and eroticizing women in a conspiracy with this city, and having spiritual tangic connections with international flesh congregations, this is not, in my mind, working for a living. I mean, yet at the same time it is. Because at the end of the week when I've made $200 after taxes, and I have all these other pragmatic expenses just to keep the Cruise alive, you know, it's ridiculous. I certainly would never wake up early in the morning again. I mean, not unless I was Cruising. *** The roads around you now will become claustrophobic and narrow in feeling. And this will not just be your own projection. The roads are claustrophobic and narrow in feeling. These are the oldest roadways of Manhattan Island. These were designed by the Dutch in the early 17th Century. Welcome to New Amsterdam. Montanez continues to audaciously improvise, not only with the tour route but with his own life. *** [Announcer] Next double decker loop, 20 minutes. No more boarding at this time. Next double decker bus loop in 20 minutes. No boarding at this time. *** [George] You've got blood all over you. [Timothy Speech Levitch] Well, like, that fucking shaving this morning was like a carnage. [George] Just, just, just clean yourself up, alright? [Timothy Speech Levitch] That's exactly what they told me to do. *** George was criticizing the lining. I'll grant you it's not in good shape. It needs new lining. But I don't think that should affect my, you know ... The cosmetics are a tricky thing on the double decker bus. It's not a matter of simple conformist fastidiousness, you know. I'm not dressing to impress my grandmother. I am in a launching vitriolic way trying, at any expense, to grab the collars of people who have no idea what they're surrounded by, and trying to grab their attention in the middle of the greatest tumultuousness. And ripped lining is part of that routine. I don't expect them to understand that, though, because they've never done it. I'd like to see their double decker tour. *** St. Paul's Church in brown in front of the bus, sitting on Broadway itself, was built by the British Empire when this was still a colony in the British Empire and not a state in the Union. George Washington -- you've heard of him -- he took his oath of office as the first President of the United States at the corner of Wall Street and Broad, April 30, 1789. Just after the oath, Washington is marched in a procession here on the left, up Broadway. Taking a further left turn into St. Paul's Church, Washington kneels at the altar on a pillow and prays for the future of the Union. The pillow still sits under glass at the altar in St. Paul's on your left. "I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength in total distress, and grow by reflection." Thomas Paine. *** You know, according to the City reports, 11 people have jumped off this bridge and survived. One of my Cruising dreams would be able to get a Cruise together with those 11. I love these things. I Cruised this bridge once solo when I was in a severe solo angst, when the entire world had divorced itself from me on a singular evening, which is usually on Tuesday nights. And I Cruised the bridge, realizing that the pillars of stone were my friends. They really make me feel whole. And they remind me that my future has a brightness -- perhaps! And even if I'm the only one who believes that, I know that they believe it. One thing I like about having the triptychs of the Brooklyn Bridge, they're friends, certainly, is that it never contradicts me. And if it makes me feel futile, it does it indirectly with a subtlety, and it does it with an ambivalence and aloofness. There is nothing, there is no victory in its subjugation of me. If it subjugates me, that's the delusion, the power of my own mind. The best moments in our friendships are the ones where I become the Brooklyn Bridge in my own mind, when I realize we are equals. *** These are the World Trade Centers. Yeah, you see these two towers. They are twin towers. They are brothers. Sometimes I like to spin inbetween the two towers. You know, like spin around and you make yourself dizzy, and then you look up. And it looks like the buildings are falling in on top of you. Yeah, it's amazing. I recommend that. It's fun if you get to stand in the plaza between the two towers. But don't look up until after you're dizzy. A good view of commuters running towards their destinations and from themselves. *** I think that, when I think about my future, interestingly I think about my grandparents. Because, you know, my grandparents are very important to me. I spent many formative moments in my formative years with them. I mean, all of my summers were Cruising with them. And from their point of view, I know that they feel that I am currently a failure, and will always be a downtrodden failure. And I think that often my thoughts about the future veer towards their points of view on the universe, what they consider to be important. And what they consider to be important is basic self-preservationism, and security, that I am not creating for myself. And what they consider to be important is having an occupation, you know, a niche in society, so that when you're at a party and somebody asks you what you do, you have a single word answer, or at least you can answer within a sentence, you know. And I know that they think that I'm not altogether like with my feet on the ground. And I know that they feel that they're going to be dying very soon with the knowledge that I am going to kind of fade out into a super-terrestrial failure, or a series of aggravations, a series of frustrations. And their lack of confidence in me from the very beginning of my life is something I've always been contending with, and I've always been obsessed with. And if I had an immediate goal on an afternoon like today, it would be to be able to serve some concreteness to them, to give them a platter of success. Even if it was one anecdote, something that they could, in their own world, in their vernacular, taste and say, "Yes, he does have something. There is hope. There is some sort of success in his life." And I grant you all these words I'm using are kind of bland and vague terms, but you understand in my grandparent's world they are the most concrete and absorbing goals a person can have. And I really would like to be able to tell my grandparents that I've done something they can appreciate, they can respect. And I really, really do not want to become the person that they think I'm going to become. *** The image makes me think of this conversation with this woman the other day. She was a fastidious, Judaic-type woman in very sexual slacks. And we were talking about the grid plan. And I made the comment about how, "You know, the grid plan emanates from our weaknesses. This layout of avenues and streets in New York City. This system of 90 degree angles. And to me, the grid plan is puritan. It's homogenizing in a city where there is no homogenization available. There is only total existence, total cacophany, a total flowing of human ethnicities and tribes and beings and gradations of awareness and consciousness and Cruising." And this woman turns to me and she goes, "Well, I never even thought of that." She goes, "I can't imagine it. Everyone likes the grid plan." And of course, the question is like, "Who is everyone?" I mean, it's just what I had said. And I mean, whoever that is under the white comforter, cuddled up with 34th Street and Broadway, existing on the concrete of this city, hungry and disheveled, struggling to crawl their way onto this island with all of their machinated rages, and hellishness, and self-orchestrated purgatories, I mean, what does that person think about the grid plan? Probably much more on my plane of thinking, my gradation of being, which is let's just blow up the grid plan and re-write the streets to be much more a self-portraiture about our personal struggles rather than some real-estate broker's wet dream from 1807. We're forced to walk in these right angles. I mean, doesn't she find it infuriating? By being so completely allegiant to the grid plan, I think most noteworthy is this idiom, "I can't even imagine changing the grid plan." She's really aligning herself with this civilization. It's like saying, "Oh, I can't imagine altering this civilization. I can't imagine altering this meek and lying morality that rules our lives. I can't imagine standing up on a chair in the middle of the room and changing perspective. I can't imagine changing my mind on anything. And in the end, I can't imagine having my own identity that contradicts other identities." When she said to me, after my statements, "Everyone likes the grid plan," isn't she automatically excluding myself from "everyone"? "How could you not like the grid plan? It's so functional. Take a right turn, and a right turn, and a right turn. And then there's a red light, and a green light, and a yellow light. It's so symmetrical!" By saying that "everyone likes the grid plan," you're saying, "I'm going to re-live all the mistakes my parents made. I'm going to identify and re-live all the sorrows my mother ever lived through. I will propagate and create disfunctional children in the same disfunctional way that I was raised. I will spread neurosis throughout the landscape and do my best to re-create myself and the damages of my life for the next generation." *** If you look at the original maps of midtown Manhattan, even from the beginning of this century, Madison Avenue in front of you and in back of you, is not even on the map. This began as a service road for 5th Avenue, one block to the west. Fifth Avenue is Millionaire's Row. It's just aristocratic mansions. This is where the horse stables are; this is where the gardener's shacks are, not that long ago. Madison Avenue -- not even a boulevard until the automobile takes over the island. Will you look at it today? May I re-state, recapitulate, and generally regurgitate, when you are sitting in the middle of midtown Manhattan, you are sitting amongst a 20th Century invention, a city that grew up in an explosion, as an explosion. It is an explosion, an experiment, a system of test tubes gurgling, boiling, out of control, radioactive atoms swirling. Civilization has never looked like this before. This is ludicrousness and this cannot last. The new Ann Taylor store on the right. *** Yesterday, Gray Line finally enforced their obligatory uniform policy. It's a new policy that all the tour guides have to wear Gray Line bright red shirts. And certainly, my illness I think, is associated with this latest legislation. I mean, you know I came to the Double Decker Bus for employment for one reason, and one essential reason only, and that was to meet women. To meet and seduce women from every habitable continent in the world. That's the only reason I'm here. I'm certainly not here for the money. And they're just literally blowing my schtick! I said to George yesterday, like you know, because the dispatcher basically said, "If you don't put on that shirt, we're going to send you home early," and it can lead to my termination. That's how serious they are about this. And I said, "As far as I'm concerned, the official Gray Line policy at this point is, you know, 'Speed, you are not going to get laid on our buses. And that's it. We're going to make sure.'" They're making me pull a schtick that everybody else is pulling, and it's terrible! And I, really, mostly it's the regime sending out a message that I'm entirely replaceable. It's like, "Look, we don't care about your tour. We don't care about you. Like you wear this shirt, and if you don't conform, you're out. We can replace you." Unemployment in the City right now is 7%. *** The anti-Cruise in front of us, "anti" as opposed to "Cruise." This is an elementary and very physical example of anti-Cruise, where our immobility is created by literally a blockade of the sidewalk. The anti-Cruise is everywhere. Every good day of my life is the day I evade the anti-Cruise. At least keep your eyes open, because I do sense a lot of that negative fodder in the air. I don't know about you, but this is a very eclectic and dangerous afternoon. The anti-Cruise is certainly mobilized today. *** On our left will be the criminal courthouse, capital of incarceration. Incarceration, another aspect of our daily lives, utilized in an unoriginal way in the criminal courthouse on our left. And I can personally vouch for that. *** The anti-Cruise is an attempt to imprison us at every level of living that exists. [Sigh] Younger Cruisers have asked me, "Why, why is the anti-Cruise so avaricious and constant in its attempt to stop the Cruise?" And I have no answer! There is no answer. I mean, it's gravitational. It's a relationship that's made up of reciprocals and of pulling gravities. It simply exists. Where there is Cruise, there is an escort of anti-Cruise. But even in a complete bastion of anti-Cruise fodder, which this entire square block is, there is Cruise. Somewhere in there is a sparkle of Cruising energy, deeply sublimated within the bellowing belly of the beast. Survivor! He knows no prison. They are all over the prison floor, but you never saw them looking melancholy. They kept Cruising. No imprisonment for the cockroach. Life impending drastic survivor through the millenias, through the eruptions of time, past the dinosaurs, witnessing the flight of birds for the first time. Clouds dying, asteroids hitting the earth. No prison for the cockroach. I have such respect for those bastards. But I was not so fortunate. But, you know, I was Cruising hard at that time. So when you think about it, the anti-Cruise breathing down my neck could not allow me even physical mobility. And according to them, I was running from the cops for a month before they caught up to me. I was not even aware that I was running from the cops as much as I was aware that I was running from the anti-Cruise. And I felt like a fugitive. But you know what? Every day I feel like a fugitive. It never occurred to them that I'm running from the anti-Cruise every day. And when I was up in front of the Judge for my arraignment, the judge said, "My biggest problem with this case is that this guy, this current person that we're judging, ran from the police for a month." And if I could have spoken -- of course, I wasn't allowed to speak -- I would have said, "It's been a lot more than a month! I've been running from you people all my life. All my life! And I'm going to keep running!" And there's so many prisoners, inmates. There's so many people to be judged. They don't even have time to consider you as a human being. You're filed through as an assembly line. And in some ways it made me think of the fact that in terms of molecular biology, we have the same infrastructure as plants. So this entire notion of individuality is a delusion anyway. It's a direful delusion. There is no real individuality except for that which we project. But sitting in the cell block I realized that the pursuit of that so-called individuality is everything I believe in. The fullest pursuit of those possibilities of that quote, unquote "Individuality," even if it is an absolute failure, is the most beautiful failure I can think of. I don't care if it's a delusion. I don't care if we have the same infrastructure as plants. I want to be the plant that grows the highest. I want to be the beanstalk. I want to be the flower that smells the most profusely, that veers most drastically towards the sunlight. *** Look at these beautiful leaves, for God's sake! You see that? See how stubborn this leaf is? Like I'm trying to pick it up. Like, "Look, pick up the spirit. Like, pick it up now! Let's get some expansion. Let's get some erection going." And he's like, "Look, I'm flaccid. I'm not moving. I'm not doing it today." "Look, come up now, it's West 67th Street. It's Sunday afternoon. It's August. Let's do this!" "No, no, no, no." "Come on, now. Get it up! Get it up!" "No, it's not today. It's not going to happen today." "Like, c'mon now!" Look at this guy. Totally different. Different color, different attitude. Look at that style! And they move with you with such mobility there. This guy is streamlined, like sexy! It's so sexy. Like look at those lines! Beautiful! Gotta rise! *** Rise! Rise to the occasion! These people are on the 12:00 down, and they don't look like it to me. I mean, the 12:00 down on this particular day will never happen again, and I don't think they're understanding that right now. Look at this. Rise! Go for it! Good luck out there! Goodbye. Good luck. *** I think that my favorite victory is the ability to feel. There's such insincerity! It's incredible! I mean, if the Cruise is anything, be it appreciation; be it a voyage; be it an adventure that leads back to ourselves; be it a cartwheel or a somersault; if you find the Cruise in a piece of carrot cake; if you find the Cruise in a topless bar; the one thing the Cruise always is, I think, is sincere. And sincerity is one of my favorite victories in this lifetime. I mean, how much rebellion did I have to experience; how much fighting did I do; how many times did I have to ignore my father's inability to emote? How we all ignore our father's inability to emote in our presence? How much air conditioning did I have to transcend, and the comfort that goes along with it: the comfortable couches, the television, the magnitude of static that surrounds us. I mean, how much daily fighting, infighting, strategizing, evading and running did I have to do to have the ability to feel, for the ability to emote, for the simple moments when I feel actual passion? *** Hello everyone. Can you hear me in the back? Welcome to New York City. H.G. Wells once wrote that to tell the social history of New York City is to tell the history of the world, the story of the world. It's going to be a long morning. *** To all my enemies that add flavor to my life: Why don't you come up here to the Brooklyn Bridge so we can talk about it? Why don't you come up here and talk to me about it? To Leslie Lindenstraus: "Look, if you want to try and choke me when I'm like prebuscent and really much smaller than you, that's fine. I mean, I know that's how we all really feel about each other, and I know that that's what it's really all about. But I'm going to find you and kick your ass 'cause I'm not seven, and I'm not prebuscent anymore. I don't know where you are, but I remember that day." To Jordan: "Look, bananas may be something that you and your friend can eat without me, alright? I mean, yes, I wanted a banana, and yes, you left me out, but that's okay, because I mean there are other bananas. I think I've proved that to you by now." To Tierta: "There was about two hours of my entire life thus far on earth when I was absolutely dependent upon you. And those were a couple of the worst hours of my life." To Charles Purpura: "I know you never read my screenplay." And to Leslie Lee: "I know you didn't read that full-length play. I worked on it, I sweated on it, I turmoiled over it, I malaised through it. I lived above it, under it, because of it, not because of it. I hated it, I loved it, I died, and I re-lived, and I was reborn within the room as I worked on that play. And I know you did not read it. To Swayne, who supposedly was going to read that script I gave him: "And you know what? Fuck the script. You are forever known as the tour guide who got hit by a traffic light. And I think that's the proper epithet for you. And how dare you do a Tina Howe play in the middle of June in New York City as if I have time to sit there and listen to that trash when there's schticking and Cruising to be done. You obviously lead an infant-testamile existence." To Josh: "Your narcissism is mediocre. Narcissism in some ways is inevitable. I mean, since we're all living in the same body for this mortality, it's almost inevitable that we will be self-absorbed at some point. But why is it that so many people have a narcissism -- as yourself -- that leads to mediocrity and nothing else?" To Jan and Michelle: "That was supposed to be an orgy. I don't know how it came down to a double date with me as a fifth wheel. That sucks! I mean, I've never been in a situation where I've been so severely dissed. I mean, an orgy is when everybody participates, not four out of five in the room." To Real: "I am not going to go to some single Jewish party because I'm a dissheveled wreck of a schticker to try and meet some Long Island Jewess and land on a front yard, with a house with two cars, and children who bow at my name through their own salivary glands. That may be your approximate goal, but that is not mine. I am surprised by your unoriginality. And I am tired of your silly emasculations. I would prefer to be emasculated by a woman with much more severity and with a little bit more backbone." To Mem Levitch, "Why don't you leave me alone? I'm trying to lead something of a youthful existence here. I'm standing here on the Brooklyn Bridge today, talking to the Brooklyn Bridge about the miniscule moments of alienation that I remember so well for the last quarter century, and all you can do is leave messages on my machine, and lecture me about how much you need me up there in Westchester. What am I supposed to do? Check the air in your tires? You never once vaulted out of the golden chair. You never had the guts, the audacity to stand up and do something with your life! You could only utilize your own narcissism, and your own self-absorption to always, in an eternal sense, imply to me your child, that I had to save your life. And this has been a daily crusade since the first moment of my birth. And when I emanated from your bloody thighs, if I'd known all this, I'm sure I would have crawled back in. Don't you know that all the menstruation that happened after that was parts of myself left behind that you were choking to death? THAT WAS MY BLOOD!" *** "When I stood atop the Brooklyn Bridge, overlooking the Brooklyn Navy Yard, I felt severed from humanity and the activities of humanity, from man himself. Staring at Brooklyn and then Manhattan, it made no difference which direction I walked in. Either way was hell." Henry Miller, "Tropic of Capricorn," and a good literary description of a New York City nervous breakdown. *** Time Square. The Empire State Building. Greenwich Village. Stop at Bleeker and LaGuardia. Through Soho. Right on Broadway. Chinatown Soho. Little Italy stop. World Trade Centers. Battery Park. Statue of Liberty, of course. South Street Seaport. Wall Street. Up through the other side of Chinatown. Up First Avenue. Delancey Island and Orchard Street Flea Market. The United Nations across 49th Street. The Waldorf Astoria schtick. Park Avenue on either side of you. Up Madison Avenue. Central Park South stop. Down to Rockefeller Center. Back to the terminal. That's life. Life. A circle. Wrought with destinations. People constantly jumping off the bus and jumping back onto the bus. Sea lions. Nabobs. The Circle! *** When you cross the street called Houston Street you enter the district called Soho which stands for "South of Houston." And as we enter Soho today, I'd like to take a moment to dedicate this Cruise and this entrance into Soho to our driver and navigator downstairs, Benitez. In a certain personal despair today I want him to know that I'm with him, and I'm backing him up all the way. We've done many Circles together, and together we've suffered as we enter Soho. We're crossing Houston Street right now. Can you feel it? Benitez, can you feel it? We're entering Soho. *** I wrote John a letter about the lamed-vovniks from the ancient Kabbalah. In Hebrew, lamed-vovnik, I believe it means "36." And essentially, it discusses how there are 36 human beings on the planet at all times -- only 36 -- who uphold and create the equilibrium for all of our sufferings. They take the melees and the maelstrom, persecutions and the disasters of the world onto their own shoulders -- past, present and future -- throughout their flesh, physical incarnated lives. And without these 36 people, the infrastructure of the world would fall apart, and there would be Armageddon, and perhaps the Final Judgment. But not a pretty judgment by any means. Final, but not pretty. Most of the vovniks do not know they are vovniks. They suffer in an incomprehensible hell. And they swim in an entire world full of humility without the knowledge of themselves and who they are, or their importance in the world. And the vovnik Mordechai, who left the large family of the Levis to move to Meersburg on the rocky glaciers of Salacia in the 17th century, where the Baal Shem Tov had set up Cruising headquarters and instituted the beginnings of the Hasidim Hasidic religion. And the Baal Shem Tov, the enlightened rabbi, preaching the carnivorousness and the religiosity "Enjoy," and the ecstasy of prayer. I mean, the Hasids are no longer going to sit with prayer books, you know, silently praying in darkened synagogues. They are going to jump around the room. They are going to scream and yell their love for God. They're going to do cartwheels. And Mordechai went there to help clean out outhouses, basically. He was a peasant living in the town. And derelicts, and bums, and geniuses, and aristocrats, and poets, and men of every kind of occupation and phylum were going to Meersburg on the rocky glaciers of Salacia just to have their own moments with the Baal Shem Tov's enlightened rabbi. And Mordechai reverently stood in the same room with the Baal Shem Tov a few times as he went off to do his daily toil. Eventually they called him the dancer of God because when the Hasids would form for their reels of dance in honor to their ecstasy, their God, Mordechai would jump so high, and would dance with such an exuberance, the other Hasidics were embarrassed about him and for him. And he was exiled from The Dance. And so he appeased himself by dancing alone at night in the shed reserved for the sick and dying. And he would entertain them in the evenings alone. Suddenly, the Geon of Kiev whispers to the Baal Shem Tov one day that there is a vovnik, a holy man. They have another term for it -- "A man of total equilibrium," a lamed-vovnik in town. And so they start searching for who this might be. They interview the derelicts. They interview all the peasants. They interview the handymen. They're looking for the guys who hang out with farm animals, and anybody who might be mentally retarded, as many vovniks are mentally retarded. Suddenly they realize that the guy who cleans the outhouses disappears the next morning. Suddenly rumors spread about. They say to the Baal Shem Tov, "He dances for the sick at night alone. He cleaned the outhouses conscientiously." And the Baal Shem Tov wooed them away, pushed them away, and was crying. And there was silence. And the Baal Shem Tov said simply, "That one was healthy among the sick and I did not see him." *** [Timothy Speed Levitch] How you been? [Larry] Hi man. What's happening/? [Timothy Speed Levitch] Hanging in there. [Larry] I know that feeling. Today's my last day, man. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Really? [Larry] I got the job working for ___. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Alright! Congratulations! [Larry] Thank you. I start that on Tuesday. They wanted me to come in on Monday, but after I heard the weather report, I said no. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Yeah. Absolutely. You're right. [Larry] I've paid my dues. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Well, you've come a long way. You've done a lot of Circles. I'm glad to know there's a finish line to this. I find that interesting. [Larry] That's a cool way of looking at it, man. It's been my pleasure. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Yeah, it's been a damn pleasure. [Larry] I'll be around, earning some extra money from time to time, you know. [Timothy Speed Levitch] Yeah, well, I can understand that. [Larry] You can never have too much money! [Timothy Speed Levitch] That's right. Well congratulations, and keep it alive. *** 244 E. 49th Street will be a quiet, brown row house in the middle of the next block on your left -- still currently the New York residence of Katharine Hepburn. Greta Garbo and Bette Davis, when they were both living, also had residences on this next block. When they asked Greta Garbo why she chose to live in New York City, she said that New York was the only place where she could be alone. *** I am Cruising currently right now. I am Cruising because I have dedicated myself to all that is creative and destructive in my life right now. And I'm equally in love with every aspect of my life, and all of the ingredients that have caused me turmoil, and all of the ingredients that have caused me glory. I am the living whispered mourning in the Roman General's ear, "Glory is fleeting." And in that verb, that active verb "fleeting," there I live. There I reside in this moment. I've dedicated myself to the idiom, "I don't know." I am in love with the frantic chaos of this limitless universe. *** I've faced this before. The second to the last time I tried it, it didn't go off. And I found myself overlooking 42nd Street. I was like exactly 45 floors up, right across the street from the Chrysler building. It was unbelievable. The last time I tried it, I stood atop the Marriott Marquis Hotel thinking that I had so gloriously once again evaded the anti-Cruise fire exit signals, and was then suddenly surrounded by two fire department people. Head of security. A lecture. Reprimand. I barely got out of there alive. I've never seen a key before though. It seems to me it's the potential of turning it off. But I don't know what is on and what is off. Director, Photographer, Producer BENNETT MILLER Editor MICHAEL LEVINE Executive Producers: J.B. MILLER, DAVID YAMNER, TEDDY MILLER, DAVID COHEN Original Music MARTY BELLER Music Supervisor TRACY McKNIGHT Siren YAEL GOLDMAN Sound Editor STEPHEN ALTOBELLO Associate Producer KEVIN McLEOD Sound Mixer DAVID NOVACK Online Editor LESLI LYON Unit Driver DANNY BOY FUTTERMAN Transcription LILA FRIEDLAND Assistant Music Supervisor JOSHUA GREENBERG Title Design 2 x 4, NEW YORK Audio Services SPIN CYCLE POST Sound Mixed at SOUND ONE CORP Post Production Services SONY MUSIC STUDIOS NYC Electron Beam Recording SONY HIGH DEFINITION CENTER THANKS: Jimmy Asnes VERY SPECIAL THANKS: Gray Line New York for their generous cooperation BUT NOT FOR ME, Written by George and Ira Gershwin Performed by Timothy Speech Levitch, Published by Chappell & Co. (ASCAP) BUT NOT FOR ME, Written by George and Ira Gershwin Performed by Chet Baker, Published by Chappell & Co. (ASCAP) Courtesy of Pacific Jazz by arrangement with EMI-Capitol Music Special Markets DEATH AND THE MAIDEN, Written by Franz Schubert, Arranged and Performed by Alex Losorenko AUTUMN IN NEW YORK, Written by Vernon Duke, Performed by Stan Getz & Chet Baker, Published by BMG Music (ASCAP) Courtesy of Verve Records by arrangement with Polygram Film & TV Licensing SPINNING, Written by Marty Beller Performed by Jean Schneider & Pablo Aslan, Published by Skee-Ball Music (ASCAP) SYMPHONY No. 5 IN B-FLAT MINOR, Written by Franz Schubert Performed by The New York Philharmonic Conducted by Leonard Bernstein Courtesy of Sony Classical By arrangement with Sony Music Licensing © 1998 Charter Films Inc.
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