Wise Guys

CHARACTERS:
Huey Morgan. Guitarist and frontman with the Fun Lovin Criminals. Exudes the suss and streetsmarts of Pacino in Serpico or De Niro in Mean Streets. Even in his slobaround clothes, with thick hair akimbo, the man radiates the kind of fast-talking Elvis/Sinatra post-war masculinity that could charm the knickers off a nun. Huey s spent half his life talking his way out of jams in the joint, the Marines and on the streets of Noo Yawk, so even his most casual speech comes packaged as Scorcesean dinner-table banter. He s the kind of twinkle-eyed hoodlum you could bring home to your mother years in the service have taught him to say sir and ma am and not to take a man s last cigarette.
Fast: FLC bassist/trumpeter/keyboardist.
Mackie: Tough-looking drummer, possibly of Asian/American extraction. Recently replaced original beatkeeper Steve Borovini. Came to the Criminals after tenures with hardcore outfits like Cro-Mags, Bad Brains and Shelter.
The Attorney: Tour DJ.
Michael: Tour Manager.
Suzie Shorten: Promotions executive with Hot Press magazine.
The Reporter: Here to interview Huey.
Winston: A dude.
Fisty: Another dude.
Man With No Name.

INTRODUCTORY SEQUENCE
Int. Day.
(The camera hand-held 8mm of course follows Suzie, The Reporter and Michael through the labyrinthine corridors of the Olympia Theatre s backstage area, until they halt outside the Fun Lovin Criminals dressing room. The tour manager goes inside, and the other two wait.)
Voiceover: The Fun Lovin Criminals, a rock/hip-hop combo from New York City, are huge in Europe, lesser known in their native country. Their sound is a combination of hip-hop, loungecore, metal, jazz, blues and just about any other genre you care to mention. But behind all the sampling and scratching, FLC are still devoted to principles of musicianship, showmanship and the song. On their two albums, Come Find Yourself and 100% Colombian, the band have delivered razor sharp observations of the underbelly of New York, simultaneously lampooning and celebrating hood culture. Their non-musical appeal is based on the kind of furry-freak-brother marijuana camaraderie shared by other acts such as Cypress Hill and The Black Crowes, but made suave by a sort of post-Swingers Rat Pack gangster chic. That Howard Marks is one of their heroes should sum it all up: this is a band with a history of soft drugs, criminal records and a smoke-warped sense of humour.
The Fun Lovin Criminals are in Dublin to start a four-night residency in the Olympia Theatre, on the last leg of a tour which started almost nine months ago. They are disproportionately popular in Ireland, as is borne out by the sell-out shows, the amount of friends they have in the city, and the women baying outside Huey s door. In an era of laptops, personal trainers, macrobiotic cooks, spiritual advisors and Bob Roberts-type touring campaigns, the Criminals are one of the few acts still flying the freak flag for rock n roll outlawry. Their backstage set-up, while efficient, reminds one of the kind of bedouin camp ambience The Stones or Hendrix might ve favoured in their heyday.

CREDIT SEQUENCE
(To the tune of Big Night Out )

SCENE 1: HOW S THE CRACK?

Int. Day. The band s dressing room.
(The room is stocked with racks of stage clothing, munchies, alcoholic beverages, soft drinks and cigarettes. Huey Morgan is sitting by the wall, fooling with a crack-pipe/bong apparatus, a kind of mini goldfish bowl with toking attachment. He s a little stoned, congenial, good-humoured. Michael has just introduced Suzie and The Reporter. The smell of testosterone is thick in the room, and everything s a routine. Think Goodfellas-meets-Don t Look Back, directed by Spike Lee.)
Huey: Do you mind if my attorney s present during this?
Reporter: No. I ve got mine outside. You might know him. He s this Lithuanian dwarf guy.
Huey: Oh yeah? I think we ve heard of him. What s his name?
Reporter: Zeke.
Huey: Zeke the Lithuanian dwarf? (Turns to Attorney). I think we know that guy, right?
Attorney: Yeah, yeah, I ve heard of that guy.
Huey: Bring him on in.
(Suzie hands Huey an invitation to the launch of Hot Press photographer Cathal Dawson s exhibition, taking place just around the corner in the Temple Bar Music Centre. The pass is adorned with a Hot Press cover shot of Noel Gallagher.)
Huey: Is that Noel?
Suzie: It is indeed.
Huey: He actually looks quite handsome once he covers most of his face up. (Laughter.)
Suzie: I ll see you down there, okay?
Huey: Take care. God bless.
(Exit Suzie.)
Reporter: We don t have much time, so I ll get started.
Huey: Fire away.
Reporter: Okay, what about this film you ve written, Taxi Ride?
Huey: Yeah, but I dunno if that s the thing, cos you got Taxi Driver, Taxi Ride, the Robert De Niro connection, maybe that s not the best title. But it does have to do with a dead rock star, his widow, a mad scientist and a time machine that is made out of a New York city cab.
Reporter: Is this really going to happen?
Huey: Well, I believe it will. With all the money that these people gave us to do this, if we don t, they re gonna come after us.
Reporter: Christopher Walken s in it?
Huey: No, I dunno how that got in there. I might ve been drunk talkin shit really, that s probably how that happened. If anything I d like to see if Laurence Fishburne could be in it.
Reporter: You ve done a movie with him already.
Huey: Yeah, he wrote and directed this movie called Once In A Life, and I got a small part playin like a Puerto Rican drug dealer. Which is really a big stretch for me, but I managed somehow. My thespiatic (sic) research pretty much includes, you know, life experience. If they had asked me to do something I d never done, I probably would not be very good at it. I mean, that s my guess. But if they give me the money up front, I don t see why I wouldn t try it. (To attorney.) Good idea, right?
Attorney: As long as the money s up front.
Reporter: As a former serviceman, what s your take on the current crisis in Kosovo?
Huey: Well, you know, I can t pretend to understand the dynamic, or what s going on with those crazy bastards over there, but I do know for one thing, that they re killin people cos of what they are, not who they are. So I think fundamentally that s wrong. But at the end of the day, what we re gonna have to do is take these people in. I dunno, there was some talk, they re gonna bring some refugees over to England and Germany, the United States, so I guess what we should do is not make fun of the way they talk, don t break their balls cos they already had it rough, and give em a shot, have em come and try to be part of the free world there, y know?
Reporter: The refugee situation has been a real bone of contention here in the last two years we never had any racial problems before, because we never had any races.
Huey: You re a dark-haired Irishman! You re a blonde Irishman!
Reporter: The race thing is pertinent to the Fun Lovin Criminals, because magazines like Rolling Stone have been trying to lump you in with this whole white rap thing, Eminem and Everlast and so on.
Huey: The way we are in the United States is a lot different. Like, if you seen us play or you know our music, you know we re kind of like a band. And it s a lot of our record company and people who are trying to help us, who are trying to get us included with these other people, cos they happen to sell records. That s cool I guess. But if you listen to like, an Everlast record, then you listen to our record, there s a lot of differences goin on. I think he s probably the best out of that whole lot, the Sugar Rays and . . . they just might as well just become Boyzone Mach 2000, they have that one song and sell ten million records, people know em and that s their deal.
Reporter: What do you make of Eminem?
Huey: Well it s not his fault he was born white. I heard that one song. I thought it was kind of funny because all the bad things were bleeped out, but then when I heard the album version, I m like, This guy is talkin a lotta shit . I guess you gotta have, y know, who was that guy, GG Allen, remember that guy? He was some sick guy in New York, he used to like do bizarre things, horrible malicious things to the audience. He d sexually assault members of the audience, be thrown in jail, he was just awful, people would beat the hell out of him with bats on stage, he was just the worse guy ever. And he was like, I guess what Eminem is aspiring to be, if Eminem didn t care that he got his nose broke every show.
Reporter: You re pretty big in Europe, yet when you get home, nobody knows who the hell you are. How does that feel?
Huey: It s cool. To be honest with you, it s cool. I mean, if we were popular in the United States, I don t think I d have any kind of like, safe zone. Everybody knows me in New York as Huey who used to work at The Limelight, not like, Huey, oh, he s in that band . So it s kinda cool with me.
Reporter: Do you become a different kind of person over here?
Huey: The only thing I did recently, cos I was kinda forced to, was I just changed my name in hotels. I never did that before, I didn t think I had to, and next thing you know, you open your door and it s like (makes noise of cameras flashing), and you re like, Wow, what the fuck?!! It s something that s bizarre. I mean I don t act any differently, I m like, walkin out with everybody, it s not like I got security people with me or anything like that, but it gets weird when you got people comin to your door and stuff. That s the only thing I had to do.
Reporter: And then if you re so much as seen at a table with somebody, you re dating.
Huey: Oh yeah, yeah . . . well, it works sometimes! Ha ha ha!
(Enter Mackie)
Huey (to reporter): So, you want some crack wit us? (Turns attentions to pipe, and pours bowl of crack , which looks suspiciously like granulated sugar, onto an album sleeve.) Mackie, I m scandalising myself! Have you met Mackie?
Reporter: Hi. (Shakes hands.)
Mackie: Hi, how are you? (To Huey.) You should bring this shit (indicating crackpipe) out on stage for the Scarface scene. That was the other thing! We got the phone ringin . . .
Huey: . . . now we just gotta get the freebase goin! (To reporter.) We do this thing on stage now, Huey s Acting School, and we take a scene from a favourite movie and re-enact it on stage, and this week s movie is Scarface.
(Enter Fast, who takes a look at Huey s pile of crack on the record sleeve.)
Fast: Let me get my record, man.
Huey: What am I gonna do with all my sheeeut!
Fast: What is that, man, sugar?
Huey: Naw. Yeah. (Chuckles, obviously stoned now.) Naw-yeah. (Uncontrollable giggling.) Alright, well, yo, I gotta put this back in the sugar bowl to make some tequila drinks later. (Tries to put sugar back in the bowl and ends up spilling it everywhere.) Look what God just did to us!!!
Attorney: You did it, you fuckin narc!
Fast: You got that blue lighter?
Huey: I betcha you got my blue lighter.
Fast: Me? Naw.
Mackie: My suit s here, right?
Huey: I got your black suit, I put it in the dry-cleaner. The pin-stripe one?
Mackie: Yeah.
Fast: I got your blue lighter right here.
Reporter (Sensing things getting out of hand): How do you deal with customs when you re in Europe?
Huey: You mean just gettin dry-cleaning done and shit? Well you see, everybody got like ten shirts and three or four suits.
Reporter: I was talking about transporting your smoke.
Huey: Oh, that stuff s easy. You just call ahead. To be quite honest, you can just roll around, everybody knows you re a band, they all probably know you got shit on board. But then you re not trafficking shit, personal use they call it, right? And we have friends in Ireland and England, so everything works out alright.
Reporter: With your reputation, don t you get particular attention from the law?
Huey: Yeah, yeah, the French really come after us. And also, we cruise around in a bright purple tour bus too. You can t miss this fuckin thing! You d pull it over just to see who s inside it! We were actually making fun of the French border guards guns last time they came on board. We were like, Revolvers?!! They re born with their hands up, the whole lot of em. Those guys d be speaking German if it wasn t for the United States Marine Corps and the Royal Marines, you know what I m sayin ? I know that s rough, but it s true. It s a beautiful country if you don t have to stay there. If you can stay in Paris, it s nice.
Reporter: Does all the travelling agree with you?
Huey: He (indicating Fast) loves it, man. He can t get enough, cos he can go all over the world and get Star Wars stuff. Actually, the touring will stop this coming May 19th so we can watch Episode 1. We ll have to camp out, isn t that right Fast?
Fast: (Mumbles)
Huey: Thanks for, uh, interjecting that, bro. He s a good kid. We re trying to talk about Star Wars, you walk outta the room. Bollocks on your Star Wars!
Fast: I wasn t talkin about it!
(Enter man with no name, bearing record sleeve held horizontal with block of hash on top.)

SCENE 2: EVERY GIRL CRAZY BOUT A SHARP DRESSED MAN

Int. Day. The same dressing room, 10 minutes later . . .
Reporter: You re famous for looking sharp. What s your personal criteria for dressing well?
Huey: My personal taste? I think white shirts are out when you re wearing a suit. You lend yourself to the daytime walkaday world when you wear a white shirt. You re subscribing to the whole sociecal . . .
Reporter: Nice word . . .
Huey: . . . yeah I know. I wanna write that one down. You subscribe to the whole banker/insurance salesman kinda vibe when you wear a white shirt. We have white shirts, you can t not have white shirts, but the tip is not to wear em as much as you possibly can.
Reporter: How about shoes?
Huey: Shoes? Shoes are the thing you gotta spend your cash on. Cos you can go to Marks & Sparks and buy a decent suit, take it to a tailor and have it, y know, taken in and whatever, make it look really great, but your shoes? You gotta have great shoes. Personally, we all like Gucci, cos they do make nice style shoes.
Attorney: Did you see the Stylistics shoes, man?
Huey: Yeah, they were horrible, like, patent leather joints. Slippers with pointed toes?
Attorney: Accch!
(Several Criminals and entourage were spotted at the previous night s Stylistics show in HQ, arguing over how many original members were still in the group.)
Reporter: What about all this Rat Pack revival thing?
Huey: What, the Ian McCulloch type o thing? I don t know how it happened, man. I guess it s a resurgence . . . I mean, uh, what s cooler than Frank Sinatra and his boys, y know? Warrant? Whitesnake? No. Y know what I mean? You gotta go to what s real, the quintessence of it all. That s definitely what those guys were. They d be hangin out at five-thirty in the morning, all fucked up, but they d look sharp. They d be good-lookin guys.
Reporter: Was Sinatra one of the big guys for you when you were growing up?
Huey: Yeah, definitely. Where I grew up, he was looked on as a God. Instead of Elvis I liked Sinatra. Winston!
(Enter Winston, a large black gentleman who gurns at The Reporter, but barely says a word.)
Attorney: Winston, you got any cigarettes, bro?
Winston: No.
(Enter Fisty)
Huey (to reporter) : Can I bum a Marlboro from you, man? You got one left? No, I won t take your last one, it s bad luck. I can get one probably offa Fisty. Hey Fisty! You got a stoge, boss? Takin a man s last cigarette, y know . . .
Reporter: I m gonna get more.
Huey: We re all gonna get more, it s only a matter o when.
(Enter Michael)
Huey: When are the doors?
Michael: Seven o clock.
Attorney: Five minutes.
Huey (To Attorney): What are you gonna do?
Attorney: I m gonna DJ til 7.45, and then I m gonna take my show over to the hotel, drop at the room and eat dinner. Change. I ll take the crack pipe for the stage.
Huey: It s all settled then.
(Exit Michael.)

SCENE 3 - NEW YORK STORIES

Int. Day. The same dressing room, minutes later . . .
Huey: Few artists these days tell it how it is, they tell it how they d like it to be. You see a lot of this rap music, it s not realistic, it s bizarre. What are they talkin about? You ever see this movie Clockers? It s a Spike Lee movie, Harvey Keitel. There s a funny scene in it where these kids are sitting on a bench in the project, drug dealers, and they re talkin about who s their favourite rapper. It s funny the way they go back and forth, y know (goes into Clockers routine), He didn t actually kill nobody, he ain t hard.
Attorney (Joining in): How that nigger hard, man? He ain t got no bodies!
Huey: If he had bodies he wouldn t be rappin man, he d be in jail! That s where all the rappers are!
Attorney: All I m sayin is I like positive rappers man, that s all I m sayin !
(Laughter.)
Reporter: So what s your band s credibility like in New York?
Huey: We do pretty good in New York, we play Irving Plaza, what s that, 1500 or something like that? So yeah, we can play like a decent-sized place, but you know, a lot of people just don t wanna be down with some weird shit that no-one really understands all that fully, cos we do kinda make fun of that whole shit. Y know, the music scene in the United States is very professional wrestling, it s style over substance really, and when you talk about stuff like that you re fuckin with people s livelihood, so they hate us.
Reporter: Plus they re all going, That s just Huey from the Limelight . . .
Huey: Oh yeah: That s Huey from the Limelight who gave him a fuckin band?!!
(Re-enter Michael.)
Reporter: Are we done here Michael?
Michael: I just wanted to inform Huey that the Clarenceburgers have been ordered, and we are converging on the Clarenceburgers eating spot momentarily.
Huey: Yesssss!
Michael: I come to you Huey, with happy good news. May your first burger be a masculine burger.
Huey (To reporter): You re comin to the show right?
Reporter: Hope so. I m going to get sorted out with the promoters.
Huey: Well, you can talk to Mike here . . .
Michael: Yeah, we ll put you on a list, but also they said that you had hooked up to the promoters, so we should just step to them. Your name again is . . .
Reporter: Peter Murphy.
Michael: Done. In.
Huey: You re not the Peter Murphy are you?
Reporter: The guy with the cheekbones?
Huey: Do they mess wit you a lot on that shit?
Reporter: Yeah.
Huey: Is Bela Lugosi really dead?
(Laughter. All concerned get ready to leave the building. The reporter packs his tape recorders and papers into a briefcase. Huey picks up a black asbestos bag, hefts it over his shoulder, prepares to leave.)
Huey: Don t you be messin with my stuff now.
Reporter: I won t.

SCENE 4: UNTITLED

Ext. Evening.
(Huey and Man With No Name walk down the street in the direction of The Clarence Hotel. The reporter peers after them for a moment, then heads off in the opposite direction. No dialogue. Fade to black. Credits. End.)