Chuck Palahniuk - Tell-All
The hyperactive love child of Page Six and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? caught in a tawdry love triangle with The Fan. Even Kitty Kelly will blush.
Soaked, nay, marinated in the world of vintage Hollywood, Tell-All is a Sunset Boulevard–inflected homage to Old Hollywood when Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost; a veritable Tourette’s syndrome of rat-tat-tat name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list; and a merciless send-up of Lillian Hellman’s habit of butchering the truth that will have Mary McCarthy cheering from the beyond.
Our Thelma Ritter–ish narrator is Hazie Coogan, who for decades has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine “Miss Kathie” Kenton—veteran of multiple marriages, career comebacks, and cosmetic surgeries. But danger arrives with gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III, who worms his way into Miss Kathie’s heart (and boudoir). Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written a celebrity tell-all memoir foretelling Miss Kathie’s death in a forthcoming Lillian Hellman–penned musical extravaganza; as the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans—and for posterity.
Tell-All is funny, subversive, and fascinatingly clever. It’s wild, it’s wicked, it’s bold-faced—it’s vintage Chuck.
→ ACT I, SCENE ONE Act one, scene one opens with Lillian Hellman clawing her way, stumbling and scrambling, through the thorny nighttime underbrush of some Germanschwarzwald , a Jewish baby clamped to each of her tits, another brood of infants clinging to her back. Lilly clambers her way, struggling against the brambles that snag the gold embroidery of her Balenciaga lounging pajamas, the black velvet clutched by hordes of doomed cherubs she’s racing to deliver from the ovens of some Nazi death camp. More innocent toddlers, lashed to each of Lillian’s muscular thighs. Helpless Jewish, Gypsy and homosexual babies. Nazi gestapo bullets spit past her in the darkness, shredding the forest foliage, the smell of gunpowder and pine needles. The heady aroma of her Chanel No. 5 . Bullets and hand grenades just whiz past Miss Hellman’s perfectly coiffed Hattie Carnegie chignon, so close the ammunition shatters her Cartier chandelier earrings into rainbow explosions of priceless diamonds. Ruby and emerald shrapnel blasts into the flawless skin of her perfect, pale cheeks.… From this action sequence, we dissolve to:
→ ACT I, SCENE TWO If you’ll permit me to break the fourth wall, my name is Hazie Coogan .
My vocation is not that of a paid companion, nor am I a professional housekeeper. It is my role as an old woman to scrub the same pots and pans I scrubbed as a young one—I’ve made my peace with that fact—and while she has never once touched them, those pots and pans have always belonged to the majestic, the glorious film actress Miss Katherine Kenton .
→ ACT I, SCENE THREE Katherine Kenton lived as a Houdini . An escape artist. It didn’t matter … marriages, funny farms, airtight Pandro Berman studio contracts … My Miss Kathie trapped herself because it felt such a triumph to slip the noose at the eleventh hour. To foil the legal boilerplate binding her to bad touring projects with Red Skelton . The approach of Hurricane Hazel . Or the third trimester of a pregnancy by Huey Long . Always one clock tick before it was too late, my Miss Kathie would take flight.
→ ACT I, SCENE FOUR The career of a movie star consists of helping everyone else forget their troubles. Using charm and beauty and good cheer to make life look easy. “The problem is, ”Gloria Swanson once said, “if you never weep in public … well, the public assumes you never weep.”
→ ACT I, SCENE FIVE Clare Boothe Luceonce said the following about Katherine Kenton —“When she’s in love, nothing can make her sad; however when she’s not in love, nothing can make her happy.”
We’re playing this next scene in the bathroom adjacent to Miss Kathie’s boudoir. As it opens, we discover my Miss Kathie seated at her dressing table, facing three mirrors angled to show her right profile, her left profile, and her full face. The bouquet of pink Nancy Reagan roses and yellow lilies delivered by Webster Carlton Westward III occupy a vase, those few flowers reflected and reflected until they could be a florist shop. An entire garden. This single bouquet, multiplied. Made infinite. Not left at the crypt to rot.
→ ACT I, SCENE SIX The next sequence depicts a montage of flowers arriving at the town house. Deliverymen wearing jaunty, brimmed caps and polished shoes arrive to ring the front doorbell. Each man carries a long box of roses tied with a floppy velvet ribbon, tucked under one arm. Or a cellophane spill brimming full of roses cradled the way one would carry an infant. Each deliveryman’s opposite hand extends, ready to offer a clipboard and a pen, a receipt needing a signature. Billowing masses of white lilac. Delivery after delivery arrives. The doorbell ringing to announce yellow gladiolas and scarlet birds-of-paradise. Trembling pink branches of dogwood in full bloom. The chilled flesh of hothouse orchids. Camellias. Each new florist always stretches his neck to see past me, craning his head to see into the foyer for a glimpse of the famous Katherine Kenton .
→ ACT I, SCENE SEVEN In the establishing shot, a taxicab stops in the street outside Miss Kathie’s town house. Sunshine filters through the leaves of trees. Birds sing. The shot moves in, closer and closer, to frame an upstairs window, Miss Kathie’s boudoir, where the drapes are drawn tight against the afternoon glare.
→ ACT I, SCENE EIGHT We open with a panning shot of Miss Kathie’s boudoir mantel, the lineup of wedding photos and awards. Next, we dissolve to a similar panning shot, moving across the surface of a console table in her drawing room, crowded with more trophies. Then, we dissolve to yet another similar shot, moving across the shelves of her dining room vitrines. Each of these shots reveals a cluttered abundance of awards and trophies. Plaques and medals lie displayed in presentation boxes lined with white satin like tiny cradles, each medal hung on a wide ribbon, the box lying open. Like tiny caskets. Burdening the shelves are loving cups of tarnished silver, engraved,To Katherine Kenton,In Honor of Her Lifetime Achievements, Presented by the Baltimore Critics Circle . Statuettes plated with gold, from theCleveland Theater Owners Association . Diminutive statues of gods and goddesses, tiny, the size of infants.For Her Outstanding Contribution. For Her Years ofDedication . We move through this clutter of engraved bric-a-brac, these honorary degrees from Midwestern colleges. Such nine-carat-gold praise from the Phoenix Stage Players Club . The Seattle Press Guild . The Memphis United Society of Thespis . The Greater Missoula Dramatics Community . Frozen, gleaming, silent as past applause. The final panning shot ends as a dirty rag falls around one golden statue; then the camera pulls back to reveal me wiping the award free of dust, polishing it, and placing it back on the shelf. I take another, polish it and put it back. I lift another.
→ ACT I, SCENE NINE “The most cunning compliments,” playwright William Inge once wrote, “seem to flatter the person who bestows them even more than they do the person who receives them.”
Once more we dissolve into flashback. Begin with a swish pan, fast enough to blur everything, then gradually slow to a long crane shot, swooping above round tables, each dinner table circled with seated guests. The gleam of every eye turns toward a distant stage; the sparkle of diamond necklaces and beaming, boiled-white tuxedo shirts reflect that far-off spotlight. We move through this vast field of white tablecloths and silverware as the shot advances toward the stage. Every shoulder turns, twisted to watch a man standing at a podium. As the shot comes into deep focus, we see the speaker, Senator Phelps Russell Warner , standing behind the microphone.
→ ACT I, SCENE TEN The scene opens with Lillian Hellman grappling in barehanded combat with Lee Harvey Oswald , the two of them wrestling and punching each other near an open window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository , surrounded by prominent stacks of Hellman’sThe Little Foxes andThe Children’s Hour andThe Autumn Garden . Outside the window, a motorcade glides past, moving through Dealey Plaza , hands waving and flags fluttering. Hellman and Oswald gripping a rifle between them, they yank the weapon back and forth, neither gaining complete control. With a violent head butt, slamming her blond forehead into Oswald’s, leaving his eyes glazed and stunned for a beat, Hellman shouts, “Think, you commie bastard!” She screams, “Do you really want LBJ as your president?”
→ ACT I, SCENE ELEVEN If you’ll permit me to break character and indulge in another aside, I’d like to comment on the nature of equilibrium. Of balance, if you’d prefer. Modern medical science recognizes that human beings appear to be subject to predetermined, balanced ratios of height and weight, masculinity and femininity, and to tinker with those formulas brings disaster. For example, when RKO Radio and Monogram and Republic Pictures began prescribing injections of male hormones in order to coarsen some of their more effete male contract players, the inadvertent result was to give those he-men breasts larger than those of Claudette Colbert and Nancy Kelly . It would seem the human body, when given additional testosterone, increases its own production of estrogen, always seeking to return to its original balance of male and female hormones.
→ ACT I, SCENE TWELVE Act one, scene twelve opens with another flashback. Once more, we dissolve to Katherine Kenton cradling a polished cremation urn in her arms. The setting: again, the dimly lit interior of the Kenton crypt, dressed with cobwebs, the ornate bronze door unlocked and swung open to welcome mourners. A stone shelf at the rear of the crypt, in deep shadow, holds various urns crafted from bronze, copper, nickel. The urn in her arms, engraved, Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq. , Miss Kathie’s fifth “was-band.”
→ ACT I, SCENE THIRTEEN The scene opens with a tight shot of John Glenn strapped into the astronaut seat within the capsule of the Friendship 7 spacecraft, the first American to orbit Earth . Beyond the capsule’s small window we see our glorious blue planet swirled with white clouds, suspended among the pinprick stars in the deep blackness of space. As Glenn’s gloved hands fiddle with the wide assortment of controls on the panel before him, flipping a switch, turning a knob, he leans into a microphone, saying, “Mission control, I think we might have a problem.…”
→ ACT I, SCENE FOURTEEN Cut to me, running, a trench coat worn over my maid’s uniform flapping open in front to reveal the black dress and white apron within. In a tracking shot, I hurry along a path in the park, somewhere between the dairy and the carousel, my open mouth gasping. In the reverse angle, we see that I’m rushing toward the rough boulders and outcroppings of the Kinderberg rocks. Matching my eye line, we see that I’m focused on a pavilion built of brick, in the shape of a stop sign, perched high atop the rocks.
→ ACT II, SCENE ONE Katherine Kenton continues reading as voice-over. At first we continue to hear the sounds of the park, theclip-clopping of horse-drawn carriages and the calliope music of the carousel, but these sounds gradually fade. At the same time we dissolve to show Miss Kathie and Webster Carlton Westward III lounging in her bed. In voice-over we still hear Miss Kathie’s voice reading, an audio bridge from the preceding scene: “ ‘… On the final day of Katherine Kenton ’s life, she dressed with particular care.’ ”
→ ACT II, SCENE TWO Webb planned to kill her on this night. Tonight they had dinner reservations at the Cub Room with Alla Nazimova, Omar Sharif, Paul Robeson and …Lillian Hellman . Their plans had been to spend the afternoon together, dress late and catch a taxicab to the restaurant. Miss Kathie hands me the manuscript, telling me to sneak it back to its hiding place in Webb’s suitcase, under his shirts, but on top of his shoes, tucked tight into one corner.
→ ACT II, SCENE THREE We cut to the interior of a lavish Broadway theater. The opening mise-en-scиne includes the proscenium arch, the stage curtain rising within the arch, below that the combed heads and brass instruments of musicians within the orchestra pit. The conductor, Woody Herman , raises his baton, and the air fills with a rousing overture by Oscar Levant , arrangements byAndrй Previn . Additional musical numbers by Sigmund Romberg and Victor Herbert . On the piano,Vladimir Horowitz . As the curtain rises, we see a chorus line which includes Ruth Donnelly, Barbara Merrill, Alma Rubens, Zachary Scott and Kent Smith doing fan kicks aboard the deck of the battleship USSArizona , designed by Romain de Tirtoff and moored center stage. The Japanese admirals Isoroku Yamamoto and Hara Tadaichi are danced by Kinuyo Tanaka and Tora Teje , respectively.Andy Clyde does a furious buck-and-wing as Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki , the official first Japanese prisoner of war.Anna May Wong tap-dances a solo in the part of Captain Mitsuo Fuchida , and Tex Ritter fills in for General Douglas MacArthur . With Emiko Yakumo and Tia Xeo as Lieutenant Commander Shigekazu Shimazaki and Captain Minoru Genda , the principal dancers among the Japanese junior officers.
→ ACT II, SCENE FOUR In voice-over, we hear Terrence Terry reading from the revised final chapter ofLove Slave . As we dissolve from the theater of the previous scene, we continue to hear the ambient sounds of the rehearsal: carpenters hammering scenery together, tap dancing, machine-gun fire, the dying screams of sailors burned alive, and Lillian Hellman . However, these noises fade as once more we see the soft-focus interior of Miss Kathie’s boudoir. We see Webster Carlton Westward III , shot from the waist up, his naked torso shining with sweat, as he lifts one hand to his nose, the fingers dripping wet, and inhales deeply, closing his eyes. His hands drop down, out of the shot, then rise, each hand gripping a slender ankle. Lifting the two feet to shoulder height, he holds them wide apart. Webb’s hips buck forward, then pull back, drive forward and pull back, while the voice-over reads, “ ‘… On the final day of Katherine Kenton ’s life, I oh-so-gently nudged the prow of my aching love stick against the knotted folds of her forbidden passageway.…’ ”
→ ACT II, SCENE FIVE While my position is not that of a private detective or a bodyguard, for the present time my job tasks include plundering Webb’s suitcase in search of the latest revisions toLove Slave . Later, I must sneak the manuscript back to its hiding place between the laundered shirts and undershorts so the Webster specimen won’t realize we’re savvy to his ever-evolving plot.
→ ACT II, SCENE SIX “ ‘On the day she painfully fried to death,’ ” I read in voice-over, “ ‘my beloved Katherine Kenton enjoyed a luxuriant bubble bath.’ ”
→ ACT II, SCENE SEVEN We cut back to the auditorium of the lavish Broadway theater where a Japanese bomb explodes, blasting shrapnel intoYul Brynner in the role of Dwight D. Eisenhower . TheUSSArizona lists starboard, threatening to capsize onVera-Ellen singing the role of Eleanor Roosevelt . TheUSSWest Virginia keels over on top of Neville Chamberlain and the League of Nations .
→ ACT II, SCENE EIGHT The voice of Terrence Terry continues as an audio bridge from the previous scene, reading, “ ‘… my most beloved Katherine would shatter every single, solitary bone in her alluring body, and her glamorous Hollywood blood would be spattered over half of Midtown Manhattan …’ ” as we dissolve once more into a fantasy sequence. Here, the lithe, idealized Webster and Miss Kathie cavort about the open-air observation deck on the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building .
→ ACT II, SCENE NINE Forgive me, please, but I must violate the fourth wall once more. Even as Miss Kathie dodges and parries the attempts on her life, a curious reversal appears to be taking place. The constant threat of violent death sculpts Katherine Kenton down to tensed muscle. The perennial threat of poisoning deadens her appetite, and the need to be continually vigilant deters her from indulging in pills and alcohol. Under such strain, her spine has stiffened with resolve. Her carriage stands erect, her stomach is hollowed, and she carries herself with the bravado of a soldier advancing onto a field of battle. The presence of death, always haunting, always at hand, has awakened a sense of vibrant life within her. Roses bloom in the cheeks of my Miss Kathie. Her violet eyes sparkle, alert for sudden danger.
→ ACT II, SCENE TEN “ ‘A Yakuza assassin,’ ” reads the voice of Terrence Terry , “ ‘can perform an execution in as little as three seconds.…’ ” We dissolve to a misty street scene. The fantasy stand-ins for Miss Kathie and Webster stroll, window-shopping along a deserted city sidewalk, gilded by a rind of magic-hour sunlight. Whether this is dawn or dusk, one can’t tell for certain. The lithesome pair linger at display windows, Miss Kathie perusing dazzling necklaces and bracelets proffered there, dense and heavily set with glittering clusters of diamonds and rubies, even as Webster never takes his eyes off her face, as bewitched by her beauty as she is by the resplendent wealth of lavish, sparkling stones.
→ ACT II, SCENE ELEVEN Professional gossip Elsa Maxwell once said, “All biographies are an assemblage of untruths.” A beat later, adding, “So are allautobiographies.”
The critics were willing to forgive Lillian Hellman a few factual inaccuracies concerning the Second World War . As presented here, this was history—but better. It might not be the actual war, but this was the war we wished we’d fought. For that, it was brilliant, dense and meaty, with Maria Montez slitting the throat of Lou Costello . After that, Bob Hope tap-dancing his signature shim-sham step through a field of live land mines.
→ ACT III, SCENE ONE For this next scene, we open with a booming, thundering chord from a pipe organ. The chord continues, joining the melody of Felix Mendelssohn ’s Wedding March. As the scene takes shape, we see my Miss Kathie garbed in a wedding gown, standing in a small room dominated by a large stained-glass window. Beyond an open doorway, we can make out the arched, cavernous interior of a cathedral where row upon row of people line the pews.
→ ACT III, SCENE TWO We continue with the audio bridge of Webster Carlton Westward III reading, “ ‘… Katherine Kenton committed suicide on what seemed like such a joyous occasion.’ ”
The mise-en-scиne shows my Miss Kathie in her dressing room, backstage, the soft-focus stand-in perfect and lovely as if filmed through a veil. We watch as she sits at her dressing table, leaning into her reflection in the mirror, fixing the final smears of blood and scars and crusted scabs for her upcomingGuadalcanal battle scene. From outside the closed dressing room door we hear a voice call, “Two minutes, Miss Kenton.”
→ ACT III, SCENE THREE We open with the distinct pop of a champagne cork, dissolving to reveal Miss Kathie and myself standing in the family crypt. Froth spills from the bottle she holds, splashing on the stone floor as Miss Kathie hurries to pour wine into the two dusty champagne glasses I hold. Here, in the depths of stone beneath the cathedral where she was so recently wed, Miss Kathie takes a glass and lifts it, toasting a new urn which rests on the stone shelf beside the urns engraved Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., Loverboy, Lothario . All of her long-dead loved ones.
→ ACT III, SCENE FOUR Here we dissolve into yet another flashback. Let’s see the casting office at Monogram Pictures or Selig studios along Gower Street , what everyone called “Poverty Row,” or maybe the old Central Casting offices onSunset Boulevard , where a crowd of would-be actresses mill about all day with their fingers crossed. These, the prettiest girls from across the world, voted Miss Sweet Corn Queen and Cherry Blossom Princess . A former reigning Winter Carnival Angel , a Miss Bountiful Sea Harvest . A pantheon of mythic goddesses made flesh and blood.Miss Best Jitterbug . A beauty migration, all of them vying for greater fame and glory. Among them, a couple of the girls draw your focus. One girl, her eyes are set too close together, her nose dwarfs her chin, her head rests squarely on her chest without any hint of an intervening neck.
→ ACT III, SCENE FIVE We slowly dissolve back to the present. The mise-en-scиne: the daytime interior of a basement kitchen in the town house of Katherine Kenton; arranged along the upstage wall: an electric stove, an icebox, a door to the alleyway, a dusty window in said door. A narrow stairway leads up to the second floor. Still carved in the window glass, we see the heart from Loverboy ’s arrival as a puppy, oh, scenes and scenes ago.
→ ACT III, SCENE SIX We continue with the audio bridge of Katherine Kenton reading from the manuscript ofParagon , “ ‘… the glorious day I first met my dearest friend, Hazie Coogan …’ ”
Once more we see the two girls from the casting office. In a soft-focus montage of quick cuts, the ugly girl combs the long auburn hair of the pretty girl. Using a file, the ugly girl shapes the fingernails of the pretty girl, painting them with pink lacquer. Pursing her lips, the ugly girl blows air to dry the painted nails as if she were about to kiss the back of the pretty girl’s hand.
→ ACT III, SCENE SEVEN My life’s work is complete.
For one final time we open in the crypt below the cathedral, where the veiled figure of a lone woman enters carrying yet another metal urn. She sets the urn alongside the urns of Terrence Terry, Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq. , and Loverboy , then lifts her black veil to reveal her face.
→ ACT III, SCENE EIGHT Act three, scene eight opens with Lillian Hellman throwing herself across the plush boudoir of Katherine Kenton , rocketing through the room and landing with her full weight upon the gun hand of a masked Webster Carlton Westward III . Lilly and the Webb struggle, throwing themselves about the bedroom, smashing chairs, lamps and bibelots in their raucous fight for survival. The muscles of Lilly’s slim elegant arms strain to subdue the attacker. Her Lili St. Cyr lounging pajamas flapping and torn. Her Valentino hosiery devastated. Her elegant white teeth bite deep into the Webb’s devious, scheming neck. The combatants tread on Lilly’s fallen Elsa Schiaparelli hat while Katherine can only watch in abject horror, shrieking with doomed panic.
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