Linda Rosenkrantz: Talk

MARSHA: But you were a Catholic.

VINCENT: Yeah, but I went to public school and I was Italian. They hated me.

MARSHA: I never knew that.

VINCENT: I was Italian, you knew that .

MARSHA: You mean they were Irish.

VINCENT: They were all freckles with blue eyes and I was dark-haired and olive. They hated me.

MARSHA: Were you the only one?

VINCENT: The only one on the block. But my life became terrific when I went to high school and all my friends were Jewish. Now it’s sort of balanced out, half and half. Except my psychoanalyst is Jewish, and I’m sure that’s all that counts.

MARSHA: They’re all Jewish.

VINCENT: There are very few Italians, that’s for sure.

MARSHA: Sick Joan’s doctor is named Martucci.

VINCENT: Really?

MARSHA: But it’s spelled in some Jewish way.

VINCENT: Yeah, it ends with a berg.

MARSHA: No, stein. Martuccistein. Next weekend you aren’t having any Jews out, Vinnie. Three Gentiles.

VINCENT: Yes, but the thing is that finally you arrive at a third period, which I’m in now, you go from black to white and then you get gray, and all your friends who are Christian—

MARSHA: Are very Jewish.

VINCENT: Right, are very Jewish. All Italians are Jewish, real Italians from Italy.

MARSHA: Tim Cullen is not in the least Jewish.

VINCENT: No, but he’s so beautifully the opposite of it that he becomes algebraically the same thing. Did I ever tell you that when I was in college, I not only wore a Jewish star to seem Jewish, but I would lose it on purpose every month so I could put on the bulletin board “Vince Miano Lost One Jewish Star.”

MARSHA: Vinnie, you have terrific fillings.

VINCENT: You mean a lot of them?

MARSHA: No, they’re a beautiful copper color.

VINCENT: Look at this. You know how short Alan Ladd is?

MARSHA: Was. Why, is there a picture that finally shows it?

VINCENT: Look at this magazine. You can tell here how short he was. And there’s a girl who’s half his size. How small can she be?

MARSHA: But look how she’s leaning on a chair with her legs collapsed.

VINCENT: You know he was my favorite? When I was a child, he was my absolute favorite.

MARSHA: Mine too. Do you have any idea why?

VINCENT: He had a perfect marriage, you know.

MARSHA: Do you have any idea why he was your favorite? I can’t understand how we thought he was attractive. I wouldn’t look at him twice now.

VINCENT: That’s because you’ve grown up, my hon. You know I’m getting worried about you, Marsh.

MARSHA: Why? You mean lethargic?

VINCENT: Yeah, I think you’re getting very lethargic. Maybe it’s a reaction to not going in to see your doctor anymore. You’re trying to make yourself sick, with your legs aching and everything.

MARSHA: My legs aren’t aching anymore.

VINCENT: I think you have a very low sex threshold.

MARSHA: What do you mean?

VINCENT: I mean you’re really not very interested in sex, you don’t have much sexual desire. I think you just need affection.

MARSHA: No, I just don’t show it because the people I’m sleeping with aren’t the right people.

VINCENT: Will they ever be?

MARSHA: When there was one, I was insatiable.

VINCENT: You were not. Who? Zeke? You were insatiable?

MARSHA: With Zeke I was insatiable: I was totally, perpetually, persistently sexed-up.

VINCENT: Marshie, I think we’re in trouble. We’ve come to a sunless beach. Here it comes, here it comes. Let’s shoot it down as it’s coming. Wouldn’t it be awful if it was the shadow of some monster?

MARSHA: It’s only a cloud, hon.

VINCENT: Listen, I’ll drop you off and bring the car back later.

MARSHA: No, you can’t take the car.

VINCENT: I have to, so I can buy strandbeagles on the way.

MARSHA: What?

VINCENT: Strawberries for my Nico when he comes home. You realize that I won’t be going to get the afternoon mail anymore? I won’t need to because everything I want will be here. I won’t have to be compulsive. I can be restrained and constrained. My Nico’s very unneurotic.

MARSHA: What do you mean?

VINCENT: His responses. He’s so sure of himself, he’s so sure of himself that it’s beautiful. He’s very good to me, Marshie.

MARSHA: Wait a minute. I’m dropping you off because I need cottage cheese.

VINCENT: I know. Do you think the iconography in my painting is slight?

MARSHA: No.

VINCENT: It’s everyday material.

MARSHA: I think it’s massive. I’m getting very depressed.

VINCENT: You’re getting anxious because Tim’s coming out this weekend. You have to sleep with him and you don’t want to, but getting depressed is not going to solve anything.

MARSHA: I do want to sleep with him.

VINCENT: No you don’t. I was just thinking about Emily — you know you’re getting to be a smoking addict, Marshie — and what she does is perfectly normal.

MARSHA: What does she do normally?

VINCENT: She drinks and gets drunk. It’s our response that’s abnormal.

MARSHA: No, sweetheart, you’re contradicting everything we agreed on, about her abnormal reaction to drink. She loses her whole reality.

VINCENT: I’m saying she’s an alcoholic but it doesn’t matter.

MARSHA: She just better be good this weekend. There are going to be a lot of Fourth of July parties and she just better be good.

VINCENT: What did you just do? Is it an age we’re getting to that we’re all belching? Clem kept doing it last time I was with him.

MARSHA: Emily too. Are they older than we are?

VINCENT: Certainly, if you measure it by glasses of wine.

MARSHA: How old is Clem?

VINCENT: Clem is seven thousand eight glasses of scotch.

MARSHA: No, how old is he?

VINCENT: Thirty-one.

MARSHA: And how old am I?

VINCENT: Thirty-one.

MARSHA: And Emily?

VINCENT: Thirty-one, two.

MARSHA: Twenty-nine.

VINCENT: Is she really? Oh, that’s doubly tragic. She’s going to commit suicide when she’s thirty.

MARSHA: Oh shut up.

VINCENT: You don’t think she could commit suicide?

MARSHA: Never.

VINCENT: I don’t really think so either. She could have maybe a year ago, but she won’t now.

MARSHA: She never would have.

VINCENT: Why? Is she too weak or too strong?

MARSHA: Too strong.

VINCENT: You’re sure?

MARSHA: I know my Emmy.

EMILY: I’m putting a little gorgonzola into the salad dressing to brighten it up. Is there any sour cream or anything like that?

MARSHA: Nothing of that nature.

EMILY: The salad has to marinate.

MARSHA: It’s marinating in water at this moment.

EMILY: Could you limp it out of the water, helper that you are? Marinating in water, pretty funny. That’s one of your real cul-de-sac remarks. Hey, I haven’t told you about the big breakthrough I had last week. I had a very big breakthrough.

MARSHA: What was the breakthrough?

EMILY: I did a scene in class, that’s what it was really all about. I had to do a monologue and I picked the end of La Notte , where she reads the letter. And it was fantastic, it was the best work I’ve ever done for myself. I was able to beat a problem that I’ve never been able to beat before. I won’t go into the whole complicated nature of it, but it had to do with like when you’re all alone and you have certain kinds of private thoughts, maybe you read a love letter and you cry, in a way you could never cry if anyone was with you. Well I was able to do that on the stage, with all those people watching me, absolutely purely, with no concern for the audience. It was an incredible thing — I think very few actors ever do it. You see, as I read the letter, I personalized it as if it was from Philippe, I recreated our little apartment in Paris. The scene starts and as I read this letter, the tears begin to fall down my face, it was the most intimate private thing. Acting-wise it was a very big breakthrough and everybody loved it. They had tears in their eyes too. I was marvelous, not marvelous the way I might be at a party, but pure, private and pure, simple and moving. And what I did was right scene-wise, it was right for the interpretation of the character and everything else. So anyway, the next night I went to a party where Michael Christy was, and I was completely calm. And then I realized what it was all about. It wasn’t that I had suddenly gotten healthier, it was that in the acting I was able to put my feelings where they belonged. Those feelings, those hysterical feelings for Michael Christy, they’re not really frantic, hysterical feelings. They’re damaged, abused love feelings about Philippe, and I brought them to my acting, I was able to feel them at the right place about the right things, about Philippe, so they weren’t repressed, neurotic, to be pushed into other channels and played out with Michael Christy. It was the first time I was able to do it on the stage and it had a real effect on my life. It’s not as moving to translate it verbally.