Funny Business
A Special Edition of The East Village







Kevin Killian & Jocelyn Saidenberg


Processual Obsession


JOSEPH BEUYS.  I was not after that boy of yours.  That was your delusion!

GIANNI VERSACE.  Thatís what they all say, with their legs in the air and their
delusions in the trash can.

BEUYS.  I've known you for 25 years and -- you make up tales out of whole cloth,
like a couturier!

VERSACE.  That's what I do, that's why I am who I am.  Are you angry that I
forced Reggie to fire Kiri Te Kanawa, is that why you are taking my Pim away from
me?

BEUYS.  Pim?  I thought his name was Andrew . . .?  "Andrew," a name like a
mouthful of sap from a dead tree in the Bavarian forest, like a truffle pigs root
out.  Delicious.  And earthy.

VERSACE.  And expensive, my friend.

BEUYS.  Well, you and I go way back.  When we were young, he was not yet born and
life was so much simpler in the Cold War, when we knew who we were fighting.

VERSACE.  Will you give me your hand in friendship to seal an old pact?

BEUYS.  Not just yet, Gianni.  I am taking guidance from the Dalai Lama, who will
be in the audience tonight, cheering our new star, Lucie Brock-Broido.

VERSACE.  I did not want that rooster woman!

BEUYS.  Nor did I.  That sly fox Reggie made us take her.

VERSACE.  She may be the great poet of the USA, but no, my friend, she is not a
singer, not even a warbler.

BEUYS.  I say feed her to the wolves, even Bartoli would be better!

VERSACE.  I say, she is not worthy to wear my clothes, even Kiri would be better!
 She has stature and dignity, even in extreme old age she is a mannequin.  Heavy
makeup, big wig, and she is my Countess, who is not the spring chicken anyhow!

BEUYS.  Even Bartoli, hardly alive she is so young, has the freshness of a small
coyote cub, rolling in fresh excrement, gleeful, glad to be alive, the air filled
with tang!

VERSACE.  But alas, my friend, we are stuck with Brock-Broido.  If this were a
play, we would need a deus ex machina, but this is life, hard and cold as leaden
glass, cold, like Andrewís heart, and mean, like his face when I donít give him
money.

BEUYS.  One good thing has come of this.  We have seen San Francisco.

VERSACE.  And we have gone to Pier 39.

BEUYS.  And we had our faces photographed and T-shirts made with us smiling.

VERSACE.  And in Alcatraz, we stepped into the cell where they held Al Capone and
Clint Eastwood!  The thrill, the American thrill, of media, the threat of
punishment, the prison motif, no wonder our friend Foucault was so drawn to this
city.

BEUYS.  And driving up Hayes Street and catching a glimpse of the painted ladies
on Alamo Square, and going down Lombard Street in the rickshaw!

VERSACE.  I thought I was crooked, hee hee, but that Lombard Street is crook,
crook, crook!

BEUYS.  No more bird calls, Gianni!  Please, my sides are in a stitch!

		[Enter CECILIA BARTOLI.]

CECILIA.  You!  The man who wanted to put grease on me!

BEUYS.  That was just my way of saying, "I love you."  No, not really, but it was
part of an elaborate conceptual project.

CECILIA.  Oh, really, you relieve me, I was upset.  I cried into my handkerchief
and scrubbed the floor with it, with my tears, my tears salty as saltimboccha.

VERSACE.  So, perhaps you reconsider and you will be the belle of San Francisco.

CECILIA (lightly).  Perhaps!  One good thing has come of this, and that is I have
seen San Francisco, met Robin Williams and those twins who dress alike.

		[Enter the FRENCH TWINS.]

TWINS.  Though we do not dress alike and are of different French races, we are
truly twins, truly detectives, and with a touch of prophecy we can say, like
Cassandra, the worst has happened and will happen now, to your production with
Lucie Brock-Broido.

ALL.  But what?  What has happened?

TWINS.  You will see.

JEAN-CLAUDE.  But at least one good thing has come of this!

JULIETTE.  We came to San Francisco, city of Vertigo, city of Bullitt, city of The Falcon Maltese.

TWINS.  And acted them out on the screen of our own sibling- and twin-ness.

JULIETTE (aside to audience).  And I met my destiny, my tomb-mate, Pim, the
magnificent.

VERSACE.  Basic Instinct was here!

BEUYS.  Von Stroheim's Greed was here!  And Chris Marker's Sans Soleil.

CECILIA.  Mrs. Doubtfire took place here, and Robin Williams is so funny!  He
should be on TV.  I turn on the TV and it disgusts me, I spit, there is not
enough of my funny Robin Williams!

BEUYS.  He is very hairy, with layers of subcutaneous fat.

JULIETTE.  It was Robin Williams who taught the French poets the glories of
American poetry, in The Dead Poetsí Society.  He taught a roomful of cute young
teen boys how to read Williams, Oppen, Niedecker, Spicer and Langston Hughes.

JEAN-CLAUDE.  For me it was Michelle Pfeiffer with her inner city ghetto class in
Dangerous Minds.  They didnít know the difference between Bob Dylan and Dylan
Thomas.

VERSACE.  Also set in San Francisco!

BEUYS.  So?  We are agreed?

VERSACE.  In principle!



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