Thursday, October 14, 2010

Svengali

In checking my files I located something I’d written back in the l980s. Although a bit dated, it seemed to hold up reasonably well, so I decided to send it because copying is easier than thinking.    
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In perusing the pages of a recent issue of TV Guide I came across a listing for the film “Svengali.” Not the 1931 version with John Barrymore in the title role, but one made in 1983 starring Peter O’Toole. His protégé Trilby, if the names are the same, is played by Jodie Foster. In the recent version the role of Trilby has been changed from that of an opera singer to a rock star. The prospect of Svengali mesmerizing a rock singer to greatness is enough to boggle all but the most boggle resistant minds. Maybe in the next remake Mesmer will be Svengalizing her. I never saw the film, but here is my guess at the how the screen play might have gone.
The action begins in a luxurious hotel suite. Seated in a chair is a middle aged man who resembles Peter O’Toole. He has a full beard and is wearing a jacket with extremely broad shoulders and wide lapels, pants that are wide at the knees and narrow at the cuffs. His shoes are tan suede and he sports a gold watch chain. His attire can be described as neo zoot suit. He extracts what looks like a narrow hand rolled cigarette from his pocket and proceeds to smoke it without the benefit of a match or lighter.
In a bed with the covers over her head is a woman who, it will be seen, is in her twenties and has platinum hair, a platinum gown, platinum skin and platinum eyes. She awakens:
TRILBY: Oooooh, where am I ?
SVENGALI: At the Beverly Hills Hotel Pussykins.
TRILBY: What time is it ?
SVENGALI: Six.
TRILBY: AM or PM ?
SVENGALI: PM.
TRILBY: Oh my God ! (staggering to her feet) I’ve got to get myself together. (She sings a D    natural scale. Her voice is clear and full and her intonation faultless)
SVENGALI: No no no ! (he rises, takes a vial from his pocket and pours some of the contents on a hand mirror which he gives to her along with a short straw) Here liebchen.
TRILBY: (sniffs and then a short pause) Now you’ll see. (She sings. Her voice is now in its rock mode, a combination of a high school cheerleader at a Thanksgiving Day football game and Tarzan’s jungle cry as performed by Buster Crabbe)
                      Oh Daddy, I want stuff
                      Hot hot hot stuff
                      Reeally hot stuff
                      Yeah Yeah Yeah
SVENGALI: That’s more like it songbirdsky. By nine o’clock the world will be yours.
TRILBY: No problem. It already is. Who else is in the show?
SVENGALI: Well there’s Leopold and Loeb and then……
TRILBY: (shouting) Not those two old fogeys! Why they’re thirty five if they’re a day. Why am I personally responsible for their comeback. The last time we worked Loeb puked right in the middle of my primal scream. Oh no no no ! (she breaks into the Spring Song from the Valkyrie)
SVENGALI: (handing her the mirror which he has refilled) Worry not my nightingale. Svengali has worked out a regurgitation clause. You and only you can puke. Besides, it was Leopold.
TRILBY: Don’t get picky (after sniffing) who else is in the way?
SVENGALI: Atilla and her Nuns.
TRILBY: (shouting louder) How can you keep sixty five people still during the climax? You know nobody is supposed to move when I wrap my tongue around the mike. Oh this is impossible ! I don’t know why I …..(she sings the Musetta Waltz from La Boheme)
SVENGALI: Wait, wait Darlinsky. Here. (the mirror vial and straw are presented again)
TRILBY: (partakes an after a long pause sings)
                        Cuff me, stuff me put an apple in my mouth
                        Cuff me, stuff me put an apple in my mouth
                        Cuff me, stuff me put an apple in my mouth
                        Oink oink oink oink oink…………………..oink
SVENGALI: Wonderful! And tomorrow we fly to Majorca.
TRILBY: Majorca? I thought we were going to the Tahiti plantation.
SVENGALI: They couldn’t get the jet strip fixed in time. Some sort of labor problem. Look darlinsky. Have I not made you what you are today? Who got you on the cover of People Magazine three times this year? Who got you on the list of the ten best and worst dressed women? Who arranged an audience with the Queen of England? Who….
TRILBY: So where was the Queen ?
SVENGALI: I told you, you have to go to the palace. The Queen doesn’t go to hotels. Oh Booblinchka, let’s not quibble. (business with mirror)
TRILBY: (sniffing a bit more profusely and shaking her head) I guess you’re right. Before I met you I was only an unhip featured soprano at the Met, Oh thank you, thank you! (kisses him and disappears into dressing room singing.
                      I want to do it to you baby
                      I want to do it to you baby
                      Yeaaaaah  etc.
(while this is happening Svengali pours the entire contents of the vial on the mirror, sniffs and keels over dead.
TRILBY: (enters room) Oh Sven baby, how about one for the other side? (sees him on the floor) Oh Sven! Well we knew you had a weak ticker. There will never ever be another like you, you wonderful wonderful man! Where’s the stash? (sees empty vial) Why you pig ! There’s got to be more. (tears at his clothes while shrieking epithets and is finally dragged from the room singing the Habanera from Carmen)
The film ends in a padded cell. Trilby is singing from the suicide scene in La Giocanda. (she is actually lip synching a Maria Callas) Trilby is obviously a broken woman.   

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