Dutchman (1966) - full transcript
A sinister, neurotic white girl Lula, with the provocation of her lovely, half-naked body and of her startlingly lascivious speech, lures to his doom a good-looking young black man Clay, a stranger whom she has picked up in the subway and whom she mocks for wearing the clothes and employing the voice and manners of the conventional white intellectual. The man, who, at first seeing no reason to resist the girl's advances, perceives too late that he is being used by her, drops his "white" disguise, and launches a wild and bitter counterattack on her and on the entire white race.
Hello.
Uh, hi're you?
I'm going to sit down .... O.K.?
Sure.
Oooof! Too much weight.
Ha, doesn't look like much to me.
It's so anyway.
Weren't you looking at me through the window?
What?
Weren't you staring at me through the window? At the last stop?
Staring at you? What do you mean?
Don't you know what staring means?
I saw you through the window ...
if that's what it means. I don't know if I was staring.
Seems to me you
were staring through the window at me.
I was. But only after I'd turned around
and saw you staring through that window down in the vicinity of
my ass
and legs.
- Really?
- Really.
I guess you were just taking those idle potshots.
Nothing else to do. Run your mind over people's flesh.
Oh boy.
Wow, now I admit I was looking in your direction. But...
the rest of that weight is yours
I suppose.
Staring through train windows is weird business.
Much weirder than staring
very sedately at abstract
asses.
That's why I came looking through the window
.. so you'd have more than that to go on.
- I even smiled at you.
- That's right.
I even got into this train, going some other way than mine.
Walked down the aisle ... searching you out.
Really?
3. 4
00:06:41,821 --> 00:06:45,510
- That's pretty funny.
- "That's pretty funny."
God, you're dull.
Well, I'm sorry, lady, but I really wasn't prepared for party talk.
No you are not.
What are you prepared for?
I'm prepared for anything. How about you?
- What do you think you're doing?
- What?
You think I want to pick you up, get you to take me somewhere and screw me, huh?
Is that the way I look?
You look like you been trying to grow a beard.
That's exactly what you look like.
You look like you live in New Jersey with your parents
and are trying to grow a beard. That's what.
You look like you've been reading Chinese poetry
and drinking lukewarm sugarless tea.
You look like death eating a soda cracker.
Really? I look like all that?
Not all of it. I lie a lot.
It helps me control the world.
Yeah, I bet.
But it's true though, most of it, right?
Jersey?
- Your bumpy neck?
- How'd you know all that? Huh?
Really, I mean about Jersey ... and even the beard.
Have I met you before?
You know Warren Enright?
You tried to make it with your sister when you were ten.
- But I succeeded a few weeks ago.
- What are you talking about?
Warren tell you that?
- You're a friend of Georgia's?
- I told you I lie.
I don't know your sister.
I don't know ... Warren Enright.
You mean you're just picking these things out of the air?
Is Warren Enright a tall skinny black black boy
with a phony English accent?
- I figured you knew him.
- But I don't.
- I just figured you would know somebody like that.
- Yeah, yeah.
Dull, dull, dull.
I bet you think I'm exciting.
You're O.K.
Am I exciting you now?
Yeah, right.
- That's not what's supposed to happen?
- How do I know?
You want this?
Sure.
Eating apples together ...
... is always the first step.
Or walking up uninhabited Seventh Avenue in the twenties on weekends.
Can you get involved?
Get us involved.
Would you like to get involved with me, "Mr. Man"?
Sure. Why not?
A beautiful woman like you. Huh, I'd be a fool not to.
And I bet you're sure you know what you're talking about.
I bet you're sure of almost everything anybody ever asked you about ...
Right? Right?
Yeah, right. ...
Wow, you're pretty strong, you know? Whatta you, a lady wrestler or something?
What's wrong with lady wrestlers? And don't answer because
you never knew any.
That's for sure.
They don't have any lady wrestlers in that part of Jersey. That's for sure.
Hey,
you still haven't told me
how you know so much about me.
I told you I didn't know anything about you ...
- you're a well‐known type. - Really?
Or at least I know the type very well.
And your skinny English friend too.
Anonymously?
What?
- Without knowing us specifically?
- Oh boy.
What a face.
You know, you could be a handsome man.
I can't argue with you.
What?
I can't argue with you.
My…
My hair is turning gray.
A gray hair ....
for each year and type I've come through
- Why do you want to sound so old?
- But it's always gentle when it starts.
Hugged against tenements, day or night ...
- What?
- Night!
Hey, why don't you take me to that party you're going to?
You must be a friend of Warren's to know about the party.
Wouldn't you like to take me to the party? Oh, come on …
ask me to your party.
Of course I'll ask you to come with me to the party. And I'll bet you're a friend of Warren's.
Why not be a friend of Warren's? Why not?
Have you asked me yet?
How can I ask you when I don't know your name?
Are you talking to my name?
What is it, a secret?
I'm Lena "the hyena".
- The famous woman poet?
- Poetess!
- The same! - Well, since you know
so much about me ... what's my name?
- Morris "the hyena".
- The famous woman poet?
The same.
You want another apple?
Can't make it, lady. I only have to keep one doctor away a day.
I bet your name is ...
something like ... Gerald
- or Walter. Huh?
- God no.
Lloyd, Norman?
One of those hopeless colored names creeping out of New Jersey
Leonard?
- Like Warren?
- Definitely.
Exactly like Warren.
Or Everett.
Well, for sure, it's not Willie.
It’s Clay.
- Clay?
- Yeah.
- Really?
- Yeah, really.
Clay what?
Take your pick.
Jackson, Johnson, or Williams.
Oh, really? Good for you.
But it's got to be Williams. You're too pretentious to be a Jackson or Johnson.
Thass right.
But Clay's O.K.
So's Lena.
It's Lula.
Lula "the hyena".
- Very good.
- Now you say to me,
"Lula, Lula, why don't you go to this party with me tonight?"
It's your turn, and let those be your lines.
Lula, why don't you go to this party with me tonight, Huh?
Say my name twice before you ask, and no huh's.
Lula, Lula, why don't you go to this party with me tonight?
I'd love to go, Clay, but how can you ask me to go when you barely know me?
That is strange, isn't it?
What kind of reaction is that?
You're supposed to say, "Aw, come on,
- "we'll get to know each other better at the party"
- That's pretty corny.
What are you into anyway?
Just what are you into?
What thing are you playing at,
Mister? Mister Clay Williams?
What are you thinking about?
You better watch it now, you're gonna excite me for real.
I bet!
I thought you knew everything about me. What happened?
Are you going to this party with me, Lula?
I don't even know you.
- You said you know my type.
Don't you get smart with me, Buster.
I know you like the palm of my hand.
- The one you eat the apples with?
- Yeah.
And the one I open doors late Saturday evenings with.
That is my door. Up at the top of the stairs. Five flights.
Above a lot of Italians, and lying Americans.
And scrape carrots with.
Also the same hand I unbutton my dress with ...
or let my skirt fall down.
Same hand. Lover.
Are you angry about anything?
Did I say something wrong?
Everything you say is wrong.
That's what makes you so attractive.
In your funnybook jacket with all the buttons.
What've you got that jacket and tie on in all this heat for?
And why're you wearing a jacket and tie like that?
Did your people ever burn witches or start revolutions over the price of tea?
Boy, those narrow‐shoulder clothes come from a tradition you ought to feel oppressed by.
A three button suit.
What right do you have to be wearing a three-button suit and a striped tie?
Your grandfather was a slave,
he didn't go to Harvard.
My grandfather was a night watchman.
And you went to a colored college where everybody thought they were Averell Harriman.
All except me.
Who did you think you were?
Who do you think you are now?
Well, in college I used to think I was ...
Baudelaire.
But I've slowed down since.
I bet you never once thought you were a black nigger.
I take back what I said before. everything you say is not wrong. It's perfect.
You should be on television.
You act like you're on television already.
- That's because I'm an actress.
- I thought so.
Well, you are wrong. I am no actress.
I told you I always lie.
I'm nothing, honey, and don't you ever forget it.
Although my mother was a Communist.
The only person in my family ever to amount to anything.
My mother was a Republican.
And your father voted for the man rather than the party.
Right!
- Yea for him. Yea, yea for him.
- Yea!
And yea for America where he is free to vote for the mediocrity of his choice! Yea!
Yea!
And yea for both your parents
who even though they differ about so crucial a matter as the body politic
still forged a union of love and sacrifice
that was destined to flower at the birth of the noble Clay ...
- What’s your middle name?
- Clay.
A union of love and sacrifice that was destined to flower at the birth of the noble ...
Clay Clay Williams.
Yea!
And most of all yea yea for you, Clay, Clay.
The Black Baudelaire!
Thank you, ma'am.
My Christ!
My Christ!
The people accept you as a ghost of the future.
And love you,
that you might not kill them when you can.
What?
You’re a murderer, Clay,
and you know it.
You know goddamn well what I mean.
I do?
So...
we’ll pretend the air is light
and full of perfume.
It is.
And we’ll pretend that people cannot see you.
That is, the citizens.
And that you are free of your own history.
And I am free of my history.
We’ll pretend that we are both
anonymous beauties
smashing along through the city’s entrails
GROOVE!
The party!
Party!
I know it'll be something good.
You can come in with me,
looking casual and significant.
I’ll be strange
haughty and silent,
and walk with long slow strides.
Right.
When you get drunk ...
pat me once very lovingly on the flanks,
and I'll look at you cryptically
licking my lips.
Yeah, it sounds like something we can do.
You'll go around talking to young men about your mind,
and to old men about your plans
If you meet a very close friend who is also with someone like me,
we’ll stand together,
sipping our drinks
and ... exchanging codes of lust.
The atmosphere will be slithering in love
and half‐love
and...
very open moral decision.
Great. Great.
And everyone will pretend they don't know your name,
and then ...
later
when they have to,
they'll claim a friendship that denies your sterling character.
- And then what happens?
- Then?
Well, then we'll go down the street, late night,
eating apples ...
and winding very deliberately
toward my house.
Deliberately?
I mean, we'll look in all the shop windows, and make fun of the queers.
Maybe we'll meet a Jewish Buddhist
and flatten his conceits over some very pretentious coffee.
In honor of whose God?
Mine.
- Who is ...?
- Me...
And you?
A corporate Godhead.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Go on with the chronicle. Then what happens to us?
- To my house, of course.
- Of course.
And up the narrow steps of the tenement.
You live in a tenement?
Wouldn't live anywhere else.
Reminds me specifically of my novel form of insanity.
Up those tenement stairs.
And with my apple‐eating hand
I push open the door
and lead you,
my tender big‐eyed prey,
into my ...
God, what can I call it ...
- into my hovel.
- Then what happens?
After the dancing, after the long drinks,
the long walks,
the real fun begins.
Ah, the real fun.
- Which is ...?
- Real fun in the dark house,
high up above the street and the ignorant cowboys.
I lead you in,
holding your wet hand gently in my hand ...
- Which is not wet?
- Which is dry as ashes.
And cold?
Don't think you'll get out of your responsibility that way.
It's not cold at all. You Fascist!
Into my dark living room.
where we’ll sit ...
and talk ...
endlessly, endlessly.
- About what?
- About what?
About your manhood.
What do you think?
What do you think we've been talking about all this time?
Well, I didn't think it was that. That's for sure.
Every other thing in the world but that.
Hey, I didn't even notice when all these people got
Yeah, I know.
Man, this subway is slow.
Yeah, I know
Well, go on. We were talking about my manhood.
We still are.
All the time.
We were in your living room.
My dark living room.
- Talking endlessly.
- About my manhood.
I’ll make you a map of it.
- Just as soon as we get to my house.
- Well, that's great.
That’s…
one of the things we’ll do
while we talk.
And screw.
We finally got there.
You...
3. 4. 5
00:33:04,965 --> 00:33:07,448
You'll call my rooms black as a grave.
You'll say, "This place is like Juliet's tomb.
- Yeah, I might.
- I know. You've probably said it before.
And is that all? The whole grand tour?
Not all.
You'll say to me ...
very, very close to my face,
many, many times, you’ll say,
you’ll even whisper,
that you love me.
Maybe I will.
And you'll be lying.
I wouldn't lie about something like that.
Hah. It's the only kind of thing you will lie about.
Especially if you think it'll keep me ...
alive.
Keep you alive?
- I don’t understand.
- You don’t understand?
Well, don't look at me.
That is the path I take, that's all.
Where both feet take me when I set them down. One in front of the other.
Morbid. Morbid.
You sure you're not an actress? All that self‐aggrandizement.
Well, I told you I was not an actress.
but I also told you I lie all the time.
Draw your own conclusions.
All scribed?
- There's no more?
- I've told you all I know.
- Or almost all.
- There's no funny parts?
- I thought it was all funny.
- But you mean peculiar, not ha‐ha.
You don't know what I mean.
Well tell me the "almost" part then.
You said "almost all”. What else?
I want the whole story.
All stories are whole stories.
All of 'em.
Our whole history ... nothing but change.
How could things go on like that forever? Huh?
Except I do go on as I do. Apples and long walks with deathless intelligent ...
lovers.
But you mix it up, all the time.
Look out the window.
Change, change, change.
Till, shit!
I don't know you.
Wouldn't even know you for that matter. You are too serious.
I bet you're even too serious to be psychoanalyzed.
Like all those Jewish poets from Yonkers,
who leave their mothers looking for other mothers,
or others' mothers,
on whose baggy tits they lay their fumbling heads.
Their poems are always funny,
and all about ...
Sex.
They sound great. Like movies.
But ... you change.
Things work on you till you hate them
Wow. All these people, so suddenly.
They must all come from the same place.
Right. That they do.
- Oh? You know about them too?
- Yeah.
More about them than I know about you.
- They frighten you? - Frighten me? Why should they frighten me?
'Cause you're an escaped nigger.
Yeah?
- 'Cause you crawled through the wire and made tracks to my side. - Wire?
Don't they have wire around plantations?
You must be Jewish.
All you can think about is wire.
Plantations didn't have any wire.
Plantations were big open
- whitewashed places
- like heaven,
and everybody on 'em was grooved to be there.
Just strummin' and hummin' all day.
- Yeah Yeah.
- And that's how the Blues was born.
Yeah Yeah.
And that's how the Blues was born.
And that's how the Blues was born.
And yeah, yeah, that’s how ...
Son of a bitch,
Get out of my way!
Yeah.
And that's how the Blues was born.
Ten little niggers sitting on a limb, but none of them ever looked like him.
Come on, Clay.
Let's do the nasty.
'Rub bellies'.
'Rub bellies'.
Hey, what was in those orange?
Good, Clay.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?
Snow White, baby, and don’t you forget it.
Come on, Clay. Let's rub bellies on the train.
The nasty. The nasty. Do the gritty grind, like your old rag‐head mammy. Grind till you lose your mind.
Shake it, shake it ...
Come on, Clay. Let's do the choo‐choo train shuffle, the navel scratcher.
Hey, you coming on like the lady who smoked up her grass skirt.
Come on, Clay ...
let's do the thing.
Clay! You middle‐class black bastard.
Forget your social‐working mother for a few seconds and let's knock stomachs.
Clay, you liver‐lipped white man. You would‐be Christian.
You ain't no nigger, you're just a dirty white man.
Get up, Clay. Dance with me, Clay
Lula! Sit down, now. Be cool.
Be cool. Be cool.
That's all you know ...
Be cool ...
shaking that wildroot cream‐oil on
your knotty head,
jackets buttoning up to your chin, so full of white man's words
Christ, God!
Get up' and scream at these people.
Like scream meaningless shit in these hopeless faces.
Red trains cough Jewish underwear for keeps!
Expanding smells of silence.
Gravy snot whistling like sea birds.
Come on, Clay, come on.
Get up and scream at these people.
Don't sit there dying the way they want you to die, baby!
Get up!
Get up! Get up!
- Damn it, sit down!
- Screw yourself, Uncle Tom!
Thomas Woolly-Head.
There's Uncle Tom.
I mean, Uncle Thomas Woolly-Head.
With old white matted mane.
He hobbles on his wooden cane.
Old Tom.
Old Tom.
Let the white man
hump his ol’ mama,
and he jes' shuffle off in the woods and hide his gentle gray head.
Ol’ Thomas Woolly-Head.
Ol’ Thomas Woolly-Head.
You let me go!
You black son of a bitch!
You let me go!
Now you shut the hell up.
You don't know anything. So just keep your stupid mouth closed.
You are afraid of white people.
Shit!
You don't have any sense, Lula, I could murder you right now.
Such a tiny ugly throat. I could squeeze it flat, and, watch you turn blue,
on a humble. For dull kicks.
And all these weak‐faced ofays squatting around here, staring over their papers at me. Murder them too.
That man there ...
I could rip that Times right out of his hand, as skinny and middle‐classed as I am,
I could rip that paper out of his hand and just as easily rip out his ...
throat!
It takes no great effort
For what? To kill you soft idiots? You don't understand anything but luxury.
You fool!
I'm not telling you again, Tallulah Bankhead! Luxury. In your face and
your fingers.
You telling me what I ought to do.
Well, don't!
Don’t you tell me anything! If I'm fakin’ a middle‐class white man ... let me be.
I'll rip your lousy breasts off!
Uncle Tom. Thomas. Whoever. It's none of your business
You don't know anything except what's there for you to see. An act.
Lies. Device. Not the pure heart, the pumping black heart.
You’ll never see that.
And I sit here in this buttoned‐up suit to keep myself from cutting all your throats.
I mean wantonly. You great liberated whore!
You ball some black man, and right away you're an expert on black people.
What a lotta shit that is.
The only thing you know is that you scream if he bangs you hard enough. And that's all.
'Belly rub'? Shit, You wanted to do the belly rub? You don't even know how.
That ol’ dipty‐dip shit you do, rolling your ass like an elephant.
That's not my kind of 'Belly rub'.
'Belly rub' is not Queens.
Belly rub is dark places with big hats and overcoats held up with one arm.
The 'Belly rub' hates you ...
Old bald‐headed four‐eyed ofays ...
popping their fingers,
and don't know yet what they're doing.
They say, "I love Bessie Smith
and don't know yet that Bessie Smith is saying, "Kiss my ass,
kiss my black unruly ass."
Before love, suffering, desire or anything you can explain, she's saying,
and very plainly,
"Kiss my black ass."
And if you don't know that, it's you that's doing the kissing.
Charlie Parker?
Charlie Parker. All the hip white boys scream for Bird.
And Bird saying, "Up your ass, feeble‐minded ofay! Up your ass."
And they sit there talking about the tortured genius of Charlie Parker. Shit!
Bird would've played not a note of music if he just walked up to East Sixty‐seventh Street
and killed the first ten white people he saw.
Not a note!
And I’m the great would‐be poet.
Yeah, That's right! Poet.
Some kind of bastard literature.
all it needs is a simple knife thrust.
Just let me bleed you, you loud whore, and one poem vanished.
Shit!
A whole people of neurotics, struggling to keep from being sane.
And the only thing that would cure the neurosis would be your murder. Simple as that.
I mean if I murdered you, then other white people would begin to understand me.
You understand? No I guess not.
If Bessie Smith had killed some white people she wouldn’t have needed all that music.
She could have talked very straight and plain about the world.
No grunts. No metaphors. No wiggles in the dark of her soul. Just straight …
two and two are four. Money. power. Luxury. Like that. Shit!
Crazy niggers!
turning their backs on sanity. When all it needs is that simple act: Murder.
Just murder!
Would make us all sane.
Shit...
Who needs it?
I'd rather be a fool.
Insane. Safe with my ...
words, and no deaths,
and clean, hard thoughts, urging me to new conquests.
My people's madness.
Boy, That's a laugh. My people.
They don't need me to claim them.They got legs and arms of their own.
Personal insanities.
Mirrors.
They don't need all those words.
They don't need any defense.
But listen, though, one more thing.
And you tell this to your father, who’s probably the kind of man
who needs to know at once. So he can plan ahead.
Tell him not to preach so much rationalism and cold logic to these niggers.
Let them alone. Let them sing curses at you in code and ...
see your filth as simple lack of style.
Don't make the mistake, through some
irresponsible surge of Christian charity, of talking too much about ...
the advantages of Western rationalism, or the great intellectual legacy
of the white man, or maybe they'll begin to listen.
And then, maybe one day, you'll find they actually do understand exactly what ...
you are talking about, all these fantasy people.
All these blues people.
And on that day, as sure as shit,
when you really believe you can accept them into your fold,
as half‐white trusties late of the subject peoples.
With no more blues, except the very old ones, and not a watermelon in sight,
the great missionary heart will have triumphed,
and all of those ex‐coons will be stand‐up Western men,
with eyes for clean hard useful lives,
sober, pious and sane,
and they'll murder you.
They'll murder you, and have very rational explanations. Very much like your own.
They'll cut your throats, and drag you out to the edge of your cities
so the flesh can fall away from your bones, in sanitary isolation.
I've heard enough.
I bet you have.
I guess I better collect my stuff and get off this train.
Looks like we won't be acting out that little pageant you outlined before.
No. We won't. You're right about that, at least.
I'm sorry, baby, but I don't think we could make it.
Sorry is right.
Sorry is the rightest thing you've said.
Get this man off me!
Hurry, now!
- Hey, brother!
- Hey!
Uh, hi're you?
I'm going to sit down .... O.K.?
Sure.
Oooof! Too much weight.
Ha, doesn't look like much to me.
It's so anyway.
Weren't you looking at me through the window?
What?
Weren't you staring at me through the window? At the last stop?
Staring at you? What do you mean?
Don't you know what staring means?
I saw you through the window ...
if that's what it means. I don't know if I was staring.
Seems to me you
were staring through the window at me.
I was. But only after I'd turned around
and saw you staring through that window down in the vicinity of
my ass
and legs.
- Really?
- Really.
I guess you were just taking those idle potshots.
Nothing else to do. Run your mind over people's flesh.
Oh boy.
Wow, now I admit I was looking in your direction. But...
the rest of that weight is yours
I suppose.
Staring through train windows is weird business.
Much weirder than staring
very sedately at abstract
asses.
That's why I came looking through the window
.. so you'd have more than that to go on.
- I even smiled at you.
- That's right.
I even got into this train, going some other way than mine.
Walked down the aisle ... searching you out.
Really?
3. 4
00:06:41,821 --> 00:06:45,510
- That's pretty funny.
- "That's pretty funny."
God, you're dull.
Well, I'm sorry, lady, but I really wasn't prepared for party talk.
No you are not.
What are you prepared for?
I'm prepared for anything. How about you?
- What do you think you're doing?
- What?
You think I want to pick you up, get you to take me somewhere and screw me, huh?
Is that the way I look?
You look like you been trying to grow a beard.
That's exactly what you look like.
You look like you live in New Jersey with your parents
and are trying to grow a beard. That's what.
You look like you've been reading Chinese poetry
and drinking lukewarm sugarless tea.
You look like death eating a soda cracker.
Really? I look like all that?
Not all of it. I lie a lot.
It helps me control the world.
Yeah, I bet.
But it's true though, most of it, right?
Jersey?
- Your bumpy neck?
- How'd you know all that? Huh?
Really, I mean about Jersey ... and even the beard.
Have I met you before?
You know Warren Enright?
You tried to make it with your sister when you were ten.
- But I succeeded a few weeks ago.
- What are you talking about?
Warren tell you that?
- You're a friend of Georgia's?
- I told you I lie.
I don't know your sister.
I don't know ... Warren Enright.
You mean you're just picking these things out of the air?
Is Warren Enright a tall skinny black black boy
with a phony English accent?
- I figured you knew him.
- But I don't.
- I just figured you would know somebody like that.
- Yeah, yeah.
Dull, dull, dull.
I bet you think I'm exciting.
You're O.K.
Am I exciting you now?
Yeah, right.
- That's not what's supposed to happen?
- How do I know?
You want this?
Sure.
Eating apples together ...
... is always the first step.
Or walking up uninhabited Seventh Avenue in the twenties on weekends.
Can you get involved?
Get us involved.
Would you like to get involved with me, "Mr. Man"?
Sure. Why not?
A beautiful woman like you. Huh, I'd be a fool not to.
And I bet you're sure you know what you're talking about.
I bet you're sure of almost everything anybody ever asked you about ...
Right? Right?
Yeah, right. ...
Wow, you're pretty strong, you know? Whatta you, a lady wrestler or something?
What's wrong with lady wrestlers? And don't answer because
you never knew any.
That's for sure.
They don't have any lady wrestlers in that part of Jersey. That's for sure.
Hey,
you still haven't told me
how you know so much about me.
I told you I didn't know anything about you ...
- you're a well‐known type. - Really?
Or at least I know the type very well.
And your skinny English friend too.
Anonymously?
What?
- Without knowing us specifically?
- Oh boy.
What a face.
You know, you could be a handsome man.
I can't argue with you.
What?
I can't argue with you.
My…
My hair is turning gray.
A gray hair ....
for each year and type I've come through
- Why do you want to sound so old?
- But it's always gentle when it starts.
Hugged against tenements, day or night ...
- What?
- Night!
Hey, why don't you take me to that party you're going to?
You must be a friend of Warren's to know about the party.
Wouldn't you like to take me to the party? Oh, come on …
ask me to your party.
Of course I'll ask you to come with me to the party. And I'll bet you're a friend of Warren's.
Why not be a friend of Warren's? Why not?
Have you asked me yet?
How can I ask you when I don't know your name?
Are you talking to my name?
What is it, a secret?
I'm Lena "the hyena".
- The famous woman poet?
- Poetess!
- The same! - Well, since you know
so much about me ... what's my name?
- Morris "the hyena".
- The famous woman poet?
The same.
You want another apple?
Can't make it, lady. I only have to keep one doctor away a day.
I bet your name is ...
something like ... Gerald
- or Walter. Huh?
- God no.
Lloyd, Norman?
One of those hopeless colored names creeping out of New Jersey
Leonard?
- Like Warren?
- Definitely.
Exactly like Warren.
Or Everett.
Well, for sure, it's not Willie.
It’s Clay.
- Clay?
- Yeah.
- Really?
- Yeah, really.
Clay what?
Take your pick.
Jackson, Johnson, or Williams.
Oh, really? Good for you.
But it's got to be Williams. You're too pretentious to be a Jackson or Johnson.
Thass right.
But Clay's O.K.
So's Lena.
It's Lula.
Lula "the hyena".
- Very good.
- Now you say to me,
"Lula, Lula, why don't you go to this party with me tonight?"
It's your turn, and let those be your lines.
Lula, why don't you go to this party with me tonight, Huh?
Say my name twice before you ask, and no huh's.
Lula, Lula, why don't you go to this party with me tonight?
I'd love to go, Clay, but how can you ask me to go when you barely know me?
That is strange, isn't it?
What kind of reaction is that?
You're supposed to say, "Aw, come on,
- "we'll get to know each other better at the party"
- That's pretty corny.
What are you into anyway?
Just what are you into?
What thing are you playing at,
Mister? Mister Clay Williams?
What are you thinking about?
You better watch it now, you're gonna excite me for real.
I bet!
I thought you knew everything about me. What happened?
Are you going to this party with me, Lula?
I don't even know you.
- You said you know my type.
Don't you get smart with me, Buster.
I know you like the palm of my hand.
- The one you eat the apples with?
- Yeah.
And the one I open doors late Saturday evenings with.
That is my door. Up at the top of the stairs. Five flights.
Above a lot of Italians, and lying Americans.
And scrape carrots with.
Also the same hand I unbutton my dress with ...
or let my skirt fall down.
Same hand. Lover.
Are you angry about anything?
Did I say something wrong?
Everything you say is wrong.
That's what makes you so attractive.
In your funnybook jacket with all the buttons.
What've you got that jacket and tie on in all this heat for?
And why're you wearing a jacket and tie like that?
Did your people ever burn witches or start revolutions over the price of tea?
Boy, those narrow‐shoulder clothes come from a tradition you ought to feel oppressed by.
A three button suit.
What right do you have to be wearing a three-button suit and a striped tie?
Your grandfather was a slave,
he didn't go to Harvard.
My grandfather was a night watchman.
And you went to a colored college where everybody thought they were Averell Harriman.
All except me.
Who did you think you were?
Who do you think you are now?
Well, in college I used to think I was ...
Baudelaire.
But I've slowed down since.
I bet you never once thought you were a black nigger.
I take back what I said before. everything you say is not wrong. It's perfect.
You should be on television.
You act like you're on television already.
- That's because I'm an actress.
- I thought so.
Well, you are wrong. I am no actress.
I told you I always lie.
I'm nothing, honey, and don't you ever forget it.
Although my mother was a Communist.
The only person in my family ever to amount to anything.
My mother was a Republican.
And your father voted for the man rather than the party.
Right!
- Yea for him. Yea, yea for him.
- Yea!
And yea for America where he is free to vote for the mediocrity of his choice! Yea!
Yea!
And yea for both your parents
who even though they differ about so crucial a matter as the body politic
still forged a union of love and sacrifice
that was destined to flower at the birth of the noble Clay ...
- What’s your middle name?
- Clay.
A union of love and sacrifice that was destined to flower at the birth of the noble ...
Clay Clay Williams.
Yea!
And most of all yea yea for you, Clay, Clay.
The Black Baudelaire!
Thank you, ma'am.
My Christ!
My Christ!
The people accept you as a ghost of the future.
And love you,
that you might not kill them when you can.
What?
You’re a murderer, Clay,
and you know it.
You know goddamn well what I mean.
I do?
So...
we’ll pretend the air is light
and full of perfume.
It is.
And we’ll pretend that people cannot see you.
That is, the citizens.
And that you are free of your own history.
And I am free of my history.
We’ll pretend that we are both
anonymous beauties
smashing along through the city’s entrails
GROOVE!
The party!
Party!
I know it'll be something good.
You can come in with me,
looking casual and significant.
I’ll be strange
haughty and silent,
and walk with long slow strides.
Right.
When you get drunk ...
pat me once very lovingly on the flanks,
and I'll look at you cryptically
licking my lips.
Yeah, it sounds like something we can do.
You'll go around talking to young men about your mind,
and to old men about your plans
If you meet a very close friend who is also with someone like me,
we’ll stand together,
sipping our drinks
and ... exchanging codes of lust.
The atmosphere will be slithering in love
and half‐love
and...
very open moral decision.
Great. Great.
And everyone will pretend they don't know your name,
and then ...
later
when they have to,
they'll claim a friendship that denies your sterling character.
- And then what happens?
- Then?
Well, then we'll go down the street, late night,
eating apples ...
and winding very deliberately
toward my house.
Deliberately?
I mean, we'll look in all the shop windows, and make fun of the queers.
Maybe we'll meet a Jewish Buddhist
and flatten his conceits over some very pretentious coffee.
In honor of whose God?
Mine.
- Who is ...?
- Me...
And you?
A corporate Godhead.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Go on with the chronicle. Then what happens to us?
- To my house, of course.
- Of course.
And up the narrow steps of the tenement.
You live in a tenement?
Wouldn't live anywhere else.
Reminds me specifically of my novel form of insanity.
Up those tenement stairs.
And with my apple‐eating hand
I push open the door
and lead you,
my tender big‐eyed prey,
into my ...
God, what can I call it ...
- into my hovel.
- Then what happens?
After the dancing, after the long drinks,
the long walks,
the real fun begins.
Ah, the real fun.
- Which is ...?
- Real fun in the dark house,
high up above the street and the ignorant cowboys.
I lead you in,
holding your wet hand gently in my hand ...
- Which is not wet?
- Which is dry as ashes.
And cold?
Don't think you'll get out of your responsibility that way.
It's not cold at all. You Fascist!
Into my dark living room.
where we’ll sit ...
and talk ...
endlessly, endlessly.
- About what?
- About what?
About your manhood.
What do you think?
What do you think we've been talking about all this time?
Well, I didn't think it was that. That's for sure.
Every other thing in the world but that.
Hey, I didn't even notice when all these people got
Yeah, I know.
Man, this subway is slow.
Yeah, I know
Well, go on. We were talking about my manhood.
We still are.
All the time.
We were in your living room.
My dark living room.
- Talking endlessly.
- About my manhood.
I’ll make you a map of it.
- Just as soon as we get to my house.
- Well, that's great.
That’s…
one of the things we’ll do
while we talk.
And screw.
We finally got there.
You...
3. 4. 5
00:33:04,965 --> 00:33:07,448
You'll call my rooms black as a grave.
You'll say, "This place is like Juliet's tomb.
- Yeah, I might.
- I know. You've probably said it before.
And is that all? The whole grand tour?
Not all.
You'll say to me ...
very, very close to my face,
many, many times, you’ll say,
you’ll even whisper,
that you love me.
Maybe I will.
And you'll be lying.
I wouldn't lie about something like that.
Hah. It's the only kind of thing you will lie about.
Especially if you think it'll keep me ...
alive.
Keep you alive?
- I don’t understand.
- You don’t understand?
Well, don't look at me.
That is the path I take, that's all.
Where both feet take me when I set them down. One in front of the other.
Morbid. Morbid.
You sure you're not an actress? All that self‐aggrandizement.
Well, I told you I was not an actress.
but I also told you I lie all the time.
Draw your own conclusions.
All scribed?
- There's no more?
- I've told you all I know.
- Or almost all.
- There's no funny parts?
- I thought it was all funny.
- But you mean peculiar, not ha‐ha.
You don't know what I mean.
Well tell me the "almost" part then.
You said "almost all”. What else?
I want the whole story.
All stories are whole stories.
All of 'em.
Our whole history ... nothing but change.
How could things go on like that forever? Huh?
Except I do go on as I do. Apples and long walks with deathless intelligent ...
lovers.
But you mix it up, all the time.
Look out the window.
Change, change, change.
Till, shit!
I don't know you.
Wouldn't even know you for that matter. You are too serious.
I bet you're even too serious to be psychoanalyzed.
Like all those Jewish poets from Yonkers,
who leave their mothers looking for other mothers,
or others' mothers,
on whose baggy tits they lay their fumbling heads.
Their poems are always funny,
and all about ...
Sex.
They sound great. Like movies.
But ... you change.
Things work on you till you hate them
Wow. All these people, so suddenly.
They must all come from the same place.
Right. That they do.
- Oh? You know about them too?
- Yeah.
More about them than I know about you.
- They frighten you? - Frighten me? Why should they frighten me?
'Cause you're an escaped nigger.
Yeah?
- 'Cause you crawled through the wire and made tracks to my side. - Wire?
Don't they have wire around plantations?
You must be Jewish.
All you can think about is wire.
Plantations didn't have any wire.
Plantations were big open
- whitewashed places
- like heaven,
and everybody on 'em was grooved to be there.
Just strummin' and hummin' all day.
- Yeah Yeah.
- And that's how the Blues was born.
Yeah Yeah.
And that's how the Blues was born.
And that's how the Blues was born.
And yeah, yeah, that’s how ...
Son of a bitch,
Get out of my way!
Yeah.
And that's how the Blues was born.
Ten little niggers sitting on a limb, but none of them ever looked like him.
Come on, Clay.
Let's do the nasty.
'Rub bellies'.
'Rub bellies'.
Hey, what was in those orange?
Good, Clay.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?
Snow White, baby, and don’t you forget it.
Come on, Clay. Let's rub bellies on the train.
The nasty. The nasty. Do the gritty grind, like your old rag‐head mammy. Grind till you lose your mind.
Shake it, shake it ...
Come on, Clay. Let's do the choo‐choo train shuffle, the navel scratcher.
Hey, you coming on like the lady who smoked up her grass skirt.
Come on, Clay ...
let's do the thing.
Clay! You middle‐class black bastard.
Forget your social‐working mother for a few seconds and let's knock stomachs.
Clay, you liver‐lipped white man. You would‐be Christian.
You ain't no nigger, you're just a dirty white man.
Get up, Clay. Dance with me, Clay
Lula! Sit down, now. Be cool.
Be cool. Be cool.
That's all you know ...
Be cool ...
shaking that wildroot cream‐oil on
your knotty head,
jackets buttoning up to your chin, so full of white man's words
Christ, God!
Get up' and scream at these people.
Like scream meaningless shit in these hopeless faces.
Red trains cough Jewish underwear for keeps!
Expanding smells of silence.
Gravy snot whistling like sea birds.
Come on, Clay, come on.
Get up and scream at these people.
Don't sit there dying the way they want you to die, baby!
Get up!
Get up! Get up!
- Damn it, sit down!
- Screw yourself, Uncle Tom!
Thomas Woolly-Head.
There's Uncle Tom.
I mean, Uncle Thomas Woolly-Head.
With old white matted mane.
He hobbles on his wooden cane.
Old Tom.
Old Tom.
Let the white man
hump his ol’ mama,
and he jes' shuffle off in the woods and hide his gentle gray head.
Ol’ Thomas Woolly-Head.
Ol’ Thomas Woolly-Head.
You let me go!
You black son of a bitch!
You let me go!
Now you shut the hell up.
You don't know anything. So just keep your stupid mouth closed.
You are afraid of white people.
Shit!
You don't have any sense, Lula, I could murder you right now.
Such a tiny ugly throat. I could squeeze it flat, and, watch you turn blue,
on a humble. For dull kicks.
And all these weak‐faced ofays squatting around here, staring over their papers at me. Murder them too.
That man there ...
I could rip that Times right out of his hand, as skinny and middle‐classed as I am,
I could rip that paper out of his hand and just as easily rip out his ...
throat!
It takes no great effort
For what? To kill you soft idiots? You don't understand anything but luxury.
You fool!
I'm not telling you again, Tallulah Bankhead! Luxury. In your face and
your fingers.
You telling me what I ought to do.
Well, don't!
Don’t you tell me anything! If I'm fakin’ a middle‐class white man ... let me be.
I'll rip your lousy breasts off!
Uncle Tom. Thomas. Whoever. It's none of your business
You don't know anything except what's there for you to see. An act.
Lies. Device. Not the pure heart, the pumping black heart.
You’ll never see that.
And I sit here in this buttoned‐up suit to keep myself from cutting all your throats.
I mean wantonly. You great liberated whore!
You ball some black man, and right away you're an expert on black people.
What a lotta shit that is.
The only thing you know is that you scream if he bangs you hard enough. And that's all.
'Belly rub'? Shit, You wanted to do the belly rub? You don't even know how.
That ol’ dipty‐dip shit you do, rolling your ass like an elephant.
That's not my kind of 'Belly rub'.
'Belly rub' is not Queens.
Belly rub is dark places with big hats and overcoats held up with one arm.
The 'Belly rub' hates you ...
Old bald‐headed four‐eyed ofays ...
popping their fingers,
and don't know yet what they're doing.
They say, "I love Bessie Smith
and don't know yet that Bessie Smith is saying, "Kiss my ass,
kiss my black unruly ass."
Before love, suffering, desire or anything you can explain, she's saying,
and very plainly,
"Kiss my black ass."
And if you don't know that, it's you that's doing the kissing.
Charlie Parker?
Charlie Parker. All the hip white boys scream for Bird.
And Bird saying, "Up your ass, feeble‐minded ofay! Up your ass."
And they sit there talking about the tortured genius of Charlie Parker. Shit!
Bird would've played not a note of music if he just walked up to East Sixty‐seventh Street
and killed the first ten white people he saw.
Not a note!
And I’m the great would‐be poet.
Yeah, That's right! Poet.
Some kind of bastard literature.
all it needs is a simple knife thrust.
Just let me bleed you, you loud whore, and one poem vanished.
Shit!
A whole people of neurotics, struggling to keep from being sane.
And the only thing that would cure the neurosis would be your murder. Simple as that.
I mean if I murdered you, then other white people would begin to understand me.
You understand? No I guess not.
If Bessie Smith had killed some white people she wouldn’t have needed all that music.
She could have talked very straight and plain about the world.
No grunts. No metaphors. No wiggles in the dark of her soul. Just straight …
two and two are four. Money. power. Luxury. Like that. Shit!
Crazy niggers!
turning their backs on sanity. When all it needs is that simple act: Murder.
Just murder!
Would make us all sane.
Shit...
Who needs it?
I'd rather be a fool.
Insane. Safe with my ...
words, and no deaths,
and clean, hard thoughts, urging me to new conquests.
My people's madness.
Boy, That's a laugh. My people.
They don't need me to claim them.They got legs and arms of their own.
Personal insanities.
Mirrors.
They don't need all those words.
They don't need any defense.
But listen, though, one more thing.
And you tell this to your father, who’s probably the kind of man
who needs to know at once. So he can plan ahead.
Tell him not to preach so much rationalism and cold logic to these niggers.
Let them alone. Let them sing curses at you in code and ...
see your filth as simple lack of style.
Don't make the mistake, through some
irresponsible surge of Christian charity, of talking too much about ...
the advantages of Western rationalism, or the great intellectual legacy
of the white man, or maybe they'll begin to listen.
And then, maybe one day, you'll find they actually do understand exactly what ...
you are talking about, all these fantasy people.
All these blues people.
And on that day, as sure as shit,
when you really believe you can accept them into your fold,
as half‐white trusties late of the subject peoples.
With no more blues, except the very old ones, and not a watermelon in sight,
the great missionary heart will have triumphed,
and all of those ex‐coons will be stand‐up Western men,
with eyes for clean hard useful lives,
sober, pious and sane,
and they'll murder you.
They'll murder you, and have very rational explanations. Very much like your own.
They'll cut your throats, and drag you out to the edge of your cities
so the flesh can fall away from your bones, in sanitary isolation.
I've heard enough.
I bet you have.
I guess I better collect my stuff and get off this train.
Looks like we won't be acting out that little pageant you outlined before.
No. We won't. You're right about that, at least.
I'm sorry, baby, but I don't think we could make it.
Sorry is right.
Sorry is the rightest thing you've said.
Get this man off me!
Hurry, now!
- Hey, brother!
- Hey!