Painting with John (2021–…): Season 2, Episode 2 - Children Kicking Hamburger All Over the Highway - full transcript

PAINTING WITH JOHN

Are you one of those guys
who stands on the street

and tells women who pass by
that they should smile ?

I hate to be the one to break it
to you,

but that is an asshole thing to do.

And what, do you think some woman's
gonna come by and go,

"Who is this fascinating man
who's interrupted the privacy of my day

with a line I've heard a thousand times
before ?

I think I must have sex with this man."

That's not gonna happen.

In the history of men and women,
it's never happened,



so not only are you creepy,
but you're stupid

and you have to stop doing this.

Okay ? Buddy.

Hey man, how are you ?

Oh you're really gonna go there ?
I was gonna let it go.

But I was gonna let it go, I was here
ten o'clock like you said,

I was here at ten, you weren't here.

No don't give me that shit,
there was no clouds in the sky.

If you were here I would have seen you,
you weren't here.

And wait, you're the fucking Moon,

you've gotta go where you're supposed
to go, you can't just be gone.

What about the tides ?

Oh, man, fuck you motherfucker.

I was here, you weren't here.



I know I was here and you know you
weren't here and so f-, oh...

What ?

You're gonna fuck me up. How you gonna
fuck me up ? You don't have any arms.

You have no arms. You're gonna come
down here and roll over me ?

Rogue Moon.

Come on down, the military
will attack you if they see you like

bombarding towards the Earth.

Oh motherfucker.

You're not a planet.
Who told you you were a planet ?

And if you don't follow your orbit
you're just a piece of debris.

Motherfuck-, fuck you. Fuck,

fuck you,
you fucking asshole.

Who needs you ?

When do we get there ?

The journey is the journey.

Ain't nobody's business nohow.

A long time ago, like 1982/83,

I used to hang out at Squat Theater.

Squat Theater was on 23rd Street

and they were this Hungarian theater
troupe that for

political reasons
had been forced to leave Hungary,

and now they were in New York and they
rented a whole building on 23rd Street,

which is now a movie theater,
like 23rd, between 7th and 8th.

You couldn't do this now,
but they rented the whole place out

and they lived upstairs and did
their performances downstairs.

That's where Eszter Balint is from,
she was like 12 at the time.

But Eszter Balint was part of
Squat Theater.

It's hard to find a place
to play the saxophone at night

so they let me practice downstairs
and I would hang out there.

And then one day I was upstairs and
Peter Halasz was on the phone,

he was one of the leaders of
Squat Theater.

He was really angry and he was on the
phone going, "No, no, no, no."

Finally he just hung up.

I asked what it was about, it turned
out he had said he would do this thing

where he would go to Barcelona

and talk about new technology in the
theater, but now he didn't want to go.

He says, "They only wanna pay $500."

And I said,

"I could go to Barcelona for $500 and
talk about technology in the theater.

I'd like to go to Barcelona."

And Peter knows I know nothing about
new technology in the theater.

He kinds of looks at me like,

with this little leer on his face,

it was all he had to do.
He was like,

this was a great idea,
he was challenging me to go and do it.

So now I had to go and do it.

So a couple of days later I find myself
on a plane to Barcelona.

I'm gonna be okay, it's gonna be

eight depressed guys
on the second floor of some college

and I'm gonna just talk nonsense for
however long I've gotta talk,

really fast, and they won't understand,

and I'll be out of there,
and I'll get to see Barcelona.

They would be so polite they wouldn't
tell me my talk didn't make any sense,

or they would maybe just assume that
they hadn't understood.

So I arrive in Barcelona

and I'm brought to this gigantic
beautiful theater,

it seats 2500 people,
and in those big plush chairs,

and

this is not what I expected.

So then the night before I practiced
talking for 45 minutes.

I buy a little wind-up clock

and I practice talking for 45 minutes
and it's hard,

no matter what. Going one, two, three,
four, five for 45 minutes is hard.

And I'm thinking, oh man,
I'm in trouble now.

And then the day of the thing
I'm brought by my escort to the theater

and it's packed, every seat is taken

and it's the most serious looking
people you've ever seen,

from all over the world,
and they're all wearing headphones.

And I realize that
it's going to be translated.

And I think I'm fucked.

But I'm gonna go through with this,
I have to go through with this.

They could cancel my return ticket
and I was broke then.

I was wondering if most of the homeless
people you see in Barcelona

are people who came to speak about
new technology in the theater

and they canceled their tickets.

So I have to do this and I'm

worried.

So I brought my little clock with me
to put on the podium,

so I speak for 45 minutes.

And I get up there

and I say,
"In smaller parts of the United States,

in the Western Territories,
out in the Prairies,

there have been breakthroughs
in new technology in theater,

and there can be digital engineering
and substitutes that seem to be true,

that are believed to have a vector that
supersedes other parts of

the things
that have come almost sideways

from the advantage of what we now know
to be not true.

And from the outside of the percolating
threats that we have,

you can see that you can plane off part
of it, you can plane off part of it

or some other part of it, and take it
with string, string will work,

you can just take a piece of string,
one piece of string and then another,

and you make it really taut
so it goes boing, boing.

So you've got this string coming across

and you have a nice sounding flat
platform that can move sideways,

or can take

parts of squirrel will work,

but you have parts of a squirrel
that are there

and you just don't quite know
how it's gonna go.

And you have boxes and you stack
the boxes one on top of the other.

And the TV is part of it

but just like a regular TV
like you have at home,

you could put it in the center and
you have string that comes off of it,

like a bunch of string.

And very taut
so when you go boom, boom, boom,

you can touch the string and it makes
a little sound.

It's pleasant the sound,
boing, boing, boing.

And you stack boxes, seven or eight,
you might want to think about this

because children could stack the boxes
and they don't stack them as high,

unless they stand on chairs, so they
could have five,

if it's children,
five, four, two, two, one,

and five, four, two, two, one
on the other side as well.

So they're equal to each other
with the strings going across.

And the children just wait."
And then somebody is rumbling one side,

and I just continue 'cause people are
telling them to, "Shh," "ugh," "shh."

And I went on.

"And you can have it a little higher
or sometimes a lot higher

or you can,
I mean you can take all parts of it,

I mean even just a little piece of
your shoe will work;

take the inside of your shoe
and you can squiggle it up,

you squiggle it really hard, or you can
hire a professional squiggler.

But they usually
don't know what they're doing.

I mean you could have a professional
squiggler but they're expensive

and I think it's not the way to go."

And now, when I look down at my clock

and only like three minutes has gone
by,

I've got to do this for 42 more
minutes,

and it's fucking hard,
it's really hard.

So I go on.

And I go, "This could possibly be a
true breakthrough in theater,

you can have the utmost of all things,

and you've got the boxes in seven,
five, four, three,

or seven, two, two, one, one, one,

and the string really taut, the string
that goes boing, boing, boing.

And you've got hamburger,

you've got hamburger spread out
all over the highway,

and children are kicking it,

it's quite delightful,
you might want to bring your camera

to take pictures of the children
kicking the hamburger."

And somebody stands up and goes,
"You must stop this nonsense now !"

And somebody else stands up and says,
"No, please continue,

this is the most wonderful thing that's
happened at this boring festival."

So I go on.

"So you've got the hamburger spread all
out with the children kicking it

and the birds come and take pieces of
it, just let it go, it doesn't matter,

it's only a little bit of hamburger.

But it's delightful to see the children
kicking,

bring a photographer, 'cause you don't
want to miss something like this.

And if the children are misbehaving,

tell them you're gonna tell their
parents,

and say it in a way that sounds like
you mean it."

Now a fight breaks out,
for real, a fight breaks out.

Two people are fighting

and the security guard comes
swooping in and breaks up the fight,

just as another fight with three people
against three people

on the other side breaks out.

And they're really fighting,
people move away from them,

and I'm just going,

"So you can have a vector of pieces of
string or cheese or hamburger,

and you can divide it into several ways

and the community doesn't always want
to pay but maybe you can get money from

somebody who doesn't know you're
taking it, and then just spread it out,

just spread it out
so it's wild and it's fun.

I mean this is what we're here for,

this is what makes life really
this wonderful thing.

You can have genitals that are just
floating up, up into the sky,

testicles and breasts, just go flying
and floating and you close your eyes

and pretend to be up there with them,
it just feels so, it gives you a w-,"

another fight is going on over here and

so now I'm like moving on
with the time.

"And so you know with
the genitals and the hamburger,

I would like try to keep them separate

because it's not good to mix
the two things up

and the children don't want to know
about some of the stuff,

but you pat the children on the head
gently and go,

"ah you're a fine child,
you're a fine child,"

and they usually are. Sometimes they're
really annoying but they can be okay.

And you have the string that goes
boing, boing, boing, with the wire,

on the boxes that are stacked
seven, five, four, two, two, one,

and on the other side
I think we kept it,

I can't remember how we kept it but
seven, five, two, seven, five, two,

one, one, one, I think on both sides,
that's how we used to do it."

And now the fight is broken up
and I make it to the end.

I make it through 45 minutes of this.

And I'm looking at my clock
and it's like,

the second hand is like ding,
and I'm just,

"So we have we might have a muffin or
we have a microphone or any other wires

that are connected and it doesn't
matter if the currency is

220, 440 or 10,000, it really doesn't
matter what the cur-,"

and my alarm, I set the alarm, and it
goes ding,

and I go, "Thank you,"
and I walk off.

And what I wish I had seen,

what I desperately wish I had seen,

was my escort was all the way at the
back where the translation booths were,

there was like 30 of them,
like these little booths

and you know
they're metal with the holes in it,

and she said that all the doors flew
open and all the translators came out

and they were all drenched in sweat,
some of them were trembling.

I wish I had seen that.

Thank you for the money HBO.

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