A Party in Fitzroy

CONTACT: anthony blair @cameron creswell agency

A PARTY IN FITZROY Ross Mueller

©COPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

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[LIGHTS UP ON GORDO ALONE ON A ROOFTOP IN THE NIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF RICHMOND. IT IS CHRISTMAS EVE AND HE IS ATTIRED IN JEANS, Weddings Parties Anything, T-SHIRT AND NOVELTY PARTY HAT. DRINKING FROM A VB CAN & ATTEMPTING TO LIGHT A CIGARETTE] GORDO:

A picture's worth a thousand words... but it can barely scratch the surface.

Of what I have seen and heard... [LIGHTER ISN’T WORKING] We should make a movie about this, we should write a bloody script and make a bloody movie. A "Motion Picture" in tech-ni- colour [GIVES UP ON LIGHTER] ‘Bout us... about us! Brian? You and me and the Weddoes...

The central characters in the greatest drama ever brought to the silver screen of life, it’d be insane, ‘d’be great. [DRINKS] And there should be a scene it, with you and me on Christmas Eve and we’re a bit pissed, right? Okay? Yeah, and we’re on top of this roof in Richmond, just after the last Christmas gig , just like this!

And, and we’ve had a couple and we’re talking, right?... and I, I, I say to you...

“We should make a movie about this...”

What do you reckon? [SMILES] That could be in the movie. That could be the opening scene, immediately after the credits. What do you reckon, Bri? I wanna know, your input is very important to the viability of the project, mate.

[SMILES] Be a ball tearer, don't ya think? I reckon it would.

A movie about a couple o' guys, talkin' about makin' a movie about... a couple o' guys talkin' about makin' a yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah and so forth.

[SMILES] The MCG! [POINTS] I can see the MCG. [BEAT] If the Saints get done again, by Christ I could not care.

Can you see the MCG?... with me?

[YAWNS. SNIFFS FORM THE COLD. CHECKS HIS WATCH. PULLS A CIGARETTE OUT AND ATTEMPTS TO LIGHT IT UNSUCCESSFULLY] Okay, okay, okay... who’s it gonna be? Let's get serious, we've gotta make some decisions and do some meetings, who is it gonna be Bri? Who... if you had the choice of any actor in the entire bloody world, who would you cast as us? [SMILES] ...I suppose, in truth, what I am asking is, who would play me? Who would be able to capture my essence?....

Have to be a bloody good actor to get me down pat... bloody good.

[BEAT] Brad Pitt, wouldn't you think?... Wouldn’t ya? Wouldn't ya reckon?

Absolutely sensational... The Pitt-ster. The Pitt-meister?

©COPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

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Maybe Benny Affleck, the young and brash face...

Beautiful worker and can pull the chicks. Then again, dunno... a bit short?

Maybe?

Granted he could be seen in the Dustin Hoffman style of mode as the New Breed of the "short arsed young and brash Leading Man style of bloke"... but he's... you know? Even for a man of his height... he's fuckin' short.

I don't want that.

[BEAT] Actors are shorter than you think. [BEAT] Very much shorter than many of them are prepared to admit.

You would never see an actor playing in the Ruck for the Sainta's, that’s for sure, too bloody ... ugh!

[INDICATING THE HEIGHT WITH A KARATE CHOP] More likely to be ranging around in the back pocket, under the packs, burrowing in Nathan Burke style, a brain bucket and an Equity Card and in they bloody go, mate! Those actors, never met one, but I hear they lie about their height. Complete bullshit. Full of it.

In the name of Art, they pull the wool over the eyes of the world.

Unbelievable. Lie about anythin' you want... reverse the truth, make the blind see, cripple the healed, the dead come back to life. [BEAT] That's the point, in't it, the whole point of making a movie.

Lies make truth more believable.

[LIES FLAT, ARMS AND LEGS MOVING IN SLOW MOTION; CROWD SURFING. HE ROLLS ONTO HIS CHEST, STANDS UP, BREATHING HARD AND COVERED IN SWEAT. MOUTHS A WILD AND EXHAUSTED YELL] Sundown on Swan Street, orange and dusty, we wonder, wonder, wander, Laughing Boys in stupid conversation Central Club lies ahead.

Hear it, see it, smell it, I’m sure you can smell the beginning.

I'm sure you are by my side as we stagger at the traffic lights in an orderly fashion, Half a dozen pots in the Great Britain has made a fool of me, tryin' to impress the world with silence and sober gazes Soon as you step inside… Step Out. She takes your money, she takes my money, she smiles

©COPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

She stamps “Confidential” where you're supposed to slit your wrists and you smile, at her, at me, we all smile together, “Have a good night.” She says.

"That's why we're here!"

That is why we are here.

Two steps in and there stands the... Lead guitar: Introducing Mr.... Paul Thomas!

The Peter Fonda style role, relaxed and dangerous in an Easy Rider kind way, Cuts a fine Cult figure in Hawaiian shirt.

Lounging, smiling, waiting, smoking, seems nervous under the clocks, like he's waiting for somebody famous, or somebody beautiful, or something “Gidday Paulie” says you and we smile at the world again, He's polite and says "Hallo", what a gentleman, what a guy!

He will not know us from Adam. Doesn’t matter. Not at all!

One word in a foyer at the start of the evening and I’m special, you’re special, we're all special together here tonight.

We will wave to Paul later to try and make him think he knows us, make him think we're famous, or beautiful or something but we're not, We're just the Sundown on Swan Street long bound friends with a love for the Weddings a passion of devotion of these Difficult Lovers.

[BEAT] Let’s go! Green and cold! Let’s go!

Sink it quick and keep ‘em coming!

Cannot stop smiling, cannot stop breathing, cannot wait to surf this crowd.

Here we are here! Here we go! Happy Christmas, kids!

One, more, time!

Thirty fuckin’ bucks for a fuckin’ T-shirt! Jesus!

Fuckin’ thirty fuckin’ bucks?!... The fuckin’ Weddoes owe me mate, Let me tell you, Michael fuckin’ Thomas fuckin’ owes me big time!

Thirty bucks?... Shit that's more than I earned in a week of washing dishes!

[BEAT] Yeah, gimme two, thanks mate, long sleeves, medium and large.

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©COPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

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Look good this year, don't they, very nice.

Sandra always had to be early, get a little spot down the front.

Christmas time hot and sweaty in Richmond, a bit of a wander around the first couple of rows of punters, never know who you might find, who you haven't seen for a hundred years.

A Christmas reunion of long, lost closest friends.

Can in hand, she would walk the room, in the background, a sound track sound check for some band you've never heard of and would never see again. Extras filling the room and flooding onto the stage.

When they started to play, they were songs we cannot understand, lyrics buried in a big PA and a rough mix. A hiding to nothing really.

"Who are these guys?!" She would yell into your ear.

"When are the Weddoes comin' on?! When are the Weddoes comin' on Brian?!"

"They can't play all night. " You would shout back.

"Get us another drink when you go past the bar."

But the bar is ten deep with punters from all over the country and everybody is shouting in everybody's ear, everybody's shouting for "another can of beer!"... for people, for friends that nobody has seen Interstate, overseas, round the bend, up the bush, down the coast, Away, Away...

Away, away but we went back; to a pub, to a Club, to dance and sing to chant and surf and sway and to cry and hold each others hand because beneath it all everyone of us were fan-atics... People who understand they need each other, more than we need any band.

[DRINKS] Marcus Graham would jump at the chance to be me.

[BEAT] Think he could capture my, rugged sort of, you know... good looks?

He’d see it as a challenge, obviously but I think he could handle it, with a certain amount of workshopping. Granted, he's mostly been a televisual performer to this stage , but his Management would probably jump at the chance to throw him something meaty, something he could really get his teeth into and let's face it mate, I could be that bit of gristle that the kid's looking for.

Get him on the horn and see if he wants the gig. [DRINKS] [BEAT] [POINTS] The fuckin’ G...

[PRETENDS TO TAKE A SLOW MOTION "SPECKY"]

©COPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

You little beauty !... [PAUSE] Michael Thomas, Michael Thomas... Lead Singer and Songwriter, Obviously an integral role in the picture, obviously more than your average Cameo...

We need a special kinda bloke to portray the sensitive, sensible man..

Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael...

[BEAT. CLAPS HANDS WITH INSPIRATION] Of course!

Eddie McGuire... Eddie would play a beautiful Mick.

The suave, debonair, Front Man with the goods, Eddie's the boy for the job!

Absolutely, and could be interested, do with a bit of a career change...

[DRINKS] [BEAT] [SMILES] Hey, hey Brian... [LAUGHS] I had an idea, hey!!

Wouldn’t it be fuckin’ great if... if, if, if...

[DRINKS & PUTS CAN DOWN FOR A MOMENT] Okay, okay, okay, okay... in the movie, right?...

Marcus is playing me and lying about his height, and there’s this scene where they’re up on this roof in Richmond and me, Marcus, that is I say...

“Wouldn’t it be great if we made a movie about us.”

Right? and then, and then and then you’d say, or rather the character of you Brian, as played by...

I dunno, Chewbacca The Wookie or someone, he says, like, you know; “Well, who would you cast in it?”

No! No! No, wait a second, wait a second, no, I [Marcus Graham] says ; “Who would you cast as me?” and you say; “Really only one choice; Marcus Graham...”

Who already is me, right? Right? Yeah, you with me?

And I, that is Marcus as me, he says; [BEAT] “Marcus Graham's too short... besides, you'd never get him to play such a crap role anyway.”

But he already is, because he is me in the movie, saying that he wouldn’t do it...

That would be funny, because he is already doing it, already... get it?...

You get it, Brian? I really want you to get it.

[LONG SMILE. PAUSE. SNIFFS. FUMBLING WITH HIS BELT]

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©COPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

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In honour of me and Marcus and you and Chewbacca...

I will now moon the MCG. [HE BEGINS TO MOON AND THEN HAS SECOND THOUGHTS] First time you saw the Weddoes, you didn’t even wanna go!

“Some hick band at the Barwon Heads Hotel, fuck off mate, come on, come on."

We listened to the album at her house, the night before.

Her brother in Bendigo had sent it on down.

You always said that Sandra's house was too far to walk to, but Sandra's house was warm and welcome, Sandra's house was full of hippies, Sandra's house smelt of cigarettes and potpourri, Sandra's house was made of vinyl, thirty three and a third... thirty three and a third.

[PAUSE] "Shut up and listen." She said... "He sounds like a tiger, don't you reckon?"

I agreed with every syllable she said. Every Sandra analogy; like the Pogues and Neil Diamond and a bit of Billy Bragg.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." We drank cheap Australian sherry, and the words of Big River, freedom and fantasy flowed though my furious head.

Sandra escorted us to conscious, she made a place where we could dance, be passionate in a public forum... at thirty three and a third.

[BEAT] All I remember is the scorn of the women and a white feather that I received in the mail...

We both fell in love as we held back a tear.

[PAUSE] "yeah.. sounds o'right..." You said and I sank.

Next afternoon at the Barwon Heads Hotel, we got our wrists tattooed "Confidential".

The secret would be safe for the rest of our lives.

Bought some beers and sat at a table, The Barwon Heads Hotel...

Lead Vocals: Michael Thomas! as played by Eddie McGuire, Up front and solid! Singing, swearing, drinking Strongbow and wearing an ancient Bowling Club blazer, bandanna ‘round the wrist... what a bloody magnificent attitude! Bloody beautiful!

Sixteen punters on a windy afternoon, and me and Sandra forced you to come.

You didn't wanna go, you didn't wanna go!

©COPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

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Sandra wanted to dance and I was embarrassed, I wanted to throw my arms around her, to embrace the moment and get carried away but I was scared to death of the scorn of sobriety, "Everybody’s gonna look, everybody will see."

Was the furious flood that filled the blowhole, so I sat on a pot and I shook my head slowly, spent an hour and a half tryin' to forget about passion, Wanting to let my feet do the talking, my heart do the dancing, but I was born in a town where Real Men don’t dance, They just sit there and drink and say; "What a load o' shit."

Squeeze Box Wally as played by himself, because only he could do justice to the role, was strong and silent, with harmonies rising like Benson and Hedges smoke and I thought that was cool.

He was full of the passion I longed to emit, but he had the right air, like; "Maybe, I give a shit."

[BEAT] Then... in an instant, the afternoon was closing, the whole gig amounted to one last number, Confidentially at the point of no return!

The band began to play; “Away, Away” A picture's worth a thousand words...

Sandra was up on the floor by herself, blissful in a state of grace, and while all around is worthless.

The sound and the pound and the body I was watching I was dying inside, she the most beautiful sight on the whole South West Coast, I see you in sepia, I see you in Black and white And you leaped up to your feet, you dead, drunk bastard and you started swinging her around! A-way, A-way, A-way!

Everybody saw ya! Everybody bloody saw ya!

Dancing like a morons! Where only memory can find you!

Fuckin' hell Brian, you knew I loved her and the whole room was watching you and her dance, in a pub in Barwon Heads and they all leapt to their feet, like you'd raised them yourself they started moving like animals, the whole empty room... dancing...

©COPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

and I smoked and drank and said "what a load o' shit".. and I wished I was sober, and I wished that I was [BEAT] When I hate everyone, I hate every-thing that is keeping me from ...you.

Twenty fuckin’ dollars for a CD?! Jesus!

Fuckin’ twenty fuckin’ bucks?! The fuckin’ Weddoes owe me mate, Let me tell you somethin' buddy, that fuckin' Michael fuckin’ Thomas, God love the man, god love him!

Mick fuckin’ owes me.... big time! [SNORTS] Twenty bucks?... Shit. [BEAT] Yeah, yeah, fair enough, gimme two, thanks mate, thanks a lot.

Listen, do you reckon you could get Mick to sign one for me mate?

It’s like mooning a cathedral, maybe even the Vatican.

You think it’s a sin, Bri? You think I’ll go to hell because I was a bad person.

I was profane, I drank too much and had too much fun and I mooned the MCG. [PAUSE] Nobody ever had too much fun.

Nobody should ever die from having too much fun.

[PAUSE] There should be a scene, you and me and Sandra, three of us standing in the Eureka Hotel on a beer soaked carpet. Yeah, yeah...

A new character comes into our fast developing epic sized drama: Introducing, on the drums, the meat behind the beat: Mr... Marcus Schintler!

Now, casting could be difficult, but I reckon, work with me on this one Bri, I reckon the guy who played The Greatest American Hero would come pretty close to perfect... Believe it or not.

So there he is, Eureka Hotel setting up his kit in readiness to take us all to 20,000 feet. Timing so solid, rolls so perfect, rim shots of passionate tension, and the camera follows him, follows his movements closely, a dolly shot across the stage, he moves the Ride Cymbal two, no! three millimeters to the left. Too much! Careful!

The High Hat, an inch, no more, no less.

He's out there alone, amongst the extras, well before the rest of the band,

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©COPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

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he's prowling that stage with an attention to detail, leather jacket, sticks in the back pocket, wandering, wondering, wondering, just like us, mate... and then... then.

We see him in a private moment, concentrating on the crucial preparation for the ritual about to occur. He's fair dinkum, this bloke, he's the full quid.

[PAUSE] “Now I’m ten cents short of a dollar, But I feel like a man with a ticket in Tatts, Camera pan's back slowly Brian, the Eureka gig gets underway, the reality begins to merge with the lies of a hundred beers and a hungover morning and we see you in the distance, dancing with Sandra again... making a habit of it mate, in the front couple of rows, you are blissfully unaware that you are filling the frame of the eye of the camera, you are captured forever on film!

We got, blue skies and window shopping...

She closes her eyes, throws her hair back and tells the whole world that she loves you, she doesn't say it, but it's in the way she holds your hands, in the way she trusts your drunken ways!

And our wide shot shows that I'm not there at all.

Marcus Graham is alone, standing at the bar, waiting for the drinks that he was asked by you to get. Chewbacca is cutting his lunch again and there's nothing that Marcus Graham can do, because Eddie McGuire, Squeeze Box Wally and The Greatest American Hero have launched the place into the stratosphere and the Eureka is not big enough to hold the three of us anymore, So Marcus Graham jumps onto the bar and he yells his guts out!

He says that he cannot take it anymore, that his lies are filled with truth and his honesty is a stone that he carries across his back. Jumps into the crowd and begins to surf. This is his first time, held in the air by the strangers below because the back lane's full of cats Brian!... The back lane's full of fuckin' cats! [PAUSE] Now that... would be a ripper of a scene, Bri... tell it like it is stuff. What do you reckon, mate?

©COPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

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[CROWD SURFING] “He’s a danger to himself. We’re always the ones who pick him up, he never has to be responsible. Who picked him up from the pile of gravel?

Face down in a pile of gravel?

Where the fuck is he any way? Where is he now?"

[STILL SURFING] The first bloke who jumped into a crowd of people at a concert wasn’t thinking to himself; “If I distribute my mass across so many hands, then the weight of my body will drop in accordance with the mass beneath that is supporting me...”

He just bloody jumped! Threw his trust to the hands of the faithful.

Mathematically, it’s a simple formula; Sociologically, it’s a bloody community!

One hundred people you’ve never met, but you trust them with your life.

Drunk and sweating and dancing, it's Christmas and your whole life passes across the room.

[STANDS UP] So much noise so little sleep, I just lie awake in bed, and I ...

I imagine that you're here, that you never went away... it gets so easy to dream But oh, so hard to face the day.

[BEAT] I cannot believe that you can surf a crowd, Bri... that you can throw you life on the hands a of hundred strangers, cheating fractured bones and broken noses, abrasions, concussions and death ... and then end up drowning face down in a puddle, in a pile of gravel on the street on the way home.

Face down on Christmas Eve... come on, mate...

I will not accept that as reality. [PAUSE] That does not provide an appropriate scene to conclude the Motion Picture... gotta have something better than that before we run the credits.

[BEAT]

ŠCOPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

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It will be different.

It will be... Romantic.

I will not be angry, I will not be bitter.

I will sit in some bar with your memory and it will rain and it will rain.

And we will talk about loving Sandra and we will drink all that we can stomach.

And we will fondly remember the Eureka and Barwon Heads how we three danced together, how we held each others hand.

And we will talk of loving the Weddings and Strongbow, and beer, and with faces full of porcelain, we will hurl out our guts, weeping great huge sobs of rejection, tear drops landing on our sick-ridden knees in the dunnies out the back of some Punters Club Hotel, because the Weddings are no more, they have left us all alone, the last Christmas gig is over, the last welcome home is gone.

And you will turn to me and ask me; "What will happen to us Gordo, when we can't meet once a year?

When we cannot see each other, will we all just disappear?"

[PAUSE] And your memory stands and staggers, swaying slowly in some bar Sandra walks in crying, asking where the hell we both have been, and she tells us that she loves us both at thirty three and a third forever and she wonders aloud how she happened to end up married to a lawyer in Bendigo, with Articles pending, a friend of her brothers, who likes country and gospel.

©COPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

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[BEAT] I see you now, before me, red in the face and sweating, blood and spit and a heaving chest.

And you leap onto the bar and yell down from the Heavens: "Let’s get a drink and forget about everything!"

That's what you say.

"Let’s get us some liquor, and some hot dogs from the guy out the front!...

Whatever you like friends, it's all on me!

I'm buying the last round at Christmas, for the very last time!

Then we all leave the bar, get a hot dog and they roll the credits...

And I can forget everything, at last... and get on with my life.

[PAUSE] I’m gonna forget this day like I have never forgotten anything .

I’m gonna forget so much that I’m not even gonna remember I forgot.

I’m gonna forget her name, where I come from and the Barwon Heads Hotel, and Weddings, Parties, Anything, I'm gonna forget that they all left me, and the thirty dollar t-shirts, the hundred dollar nights and the fingers down your throat and the car keys dropped in Richmond, and the CD’s and the Sundowns and Away, Away and Bowling Club Blazers The Easy Rider and Squeeze Box Wally and Peter Lawler; with the face of an Axe Murderer and the voice of an Angel and Dave and Marcus and The Messenger; Barclay and Jen bloody Anderson and the whole fucken bunch, every single soul who ever played a note!

And the hands that held me softly, Everyone I ever loved.

Everyone I never met...

Laughing boys.

Fanatics.

Addicted.

ŠCOPYRIGHT. A Party in Fitzroy. ROSS MUELLER. 1999.

And I will sit alone on this roof and cry like a baby because the MCG isn't big enough to hold my grief... its boundaries will bulge with the sorrow that fills my guts... because I'm so sad, so jealous, so lonely... there's no more party in Fitzroy.

[SILENCE] You stupid bastard, you stupid dead bastard.

Someone should make a movie about you, mate... but what's the bloody point?...

Hey?...

[LIGHTS THE CIGARETTE] ...it could barely scratch the surface.

[CURTAIN]

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