Faking it (the script)
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Scene: Kenny’s family home – the hallway desk and telephone
UNCLE ED: (Yelling up the stairs) Kenny! Phone!
KENNY: (shouting back) Who is it?
UNCLE ED: It’s that fucking beatnik friend of yours
KENNY: (Coming down the stairs) He’s not a beatnik; he’s a hippie
UNCLE ED: I don’t care what you call him. I don’t want him dying up the phone. I’m expecting a call.
KENNY: I won’t be long, I promise (goes to the phone and picks up the receiver) Hello?
HANK: Kenny, I’ve done it!
KENNY: Done what, Hank?
HANK: I found us a real hippie party to go to.
KENNY: Where?
HANK: In the want ad section of the Village Voice. It was right there in black and white.
KENNY: I mean where is the party?
HANK: In Greenwich Village, of course.
KENNY: (lowering his voice) You mean in New York?
HANK: That’s the only Greenwich Village I know about.
KENNY: I can’t go into New York on a Sunday. My uncles would kill me.
HANK: You don’t have to tell them exactly where you’re going, do you?
KENNY: And have them murder me when they find out.
HANK: Who said they’ll find out? All you have to do is be back by ten.
KENNY: Nine on weekdays or any other day if I have to go to school the next morning.
HANK: All right. We’ll have you back by nine
KENNY: You promise?
HANK: Have I ever let you down?
KENNY: Constantly.
HANK: Just meet me at the bus stop and stop arguing
UNCLE ED: (shouting from the other room where he is watching TV) Get off the phone
KENNY (to Hank) Got to go (he hangs up)
UNCLE ED: So what did that juvenile delinquent want this time?
KENNY: He wants me to meet him downtown
UNCLE ED: And you’re going? Despite what I’ve said about you hanging around with his sort?
KENNY: Hank is all right. He really isn’t a hippie yet. He just wants to be one
UNCLE ED: So why can’t you find friends who join the U.S. Marines? You have plenty of that sort to choose from at school.
KENNY: Those kind don’t want to be my friend any more than I want to be theirs. And those that I even remotely like spend their time tinkering with projectors in the AV department and have no time to do anything that’s fun.
UNCLE ED: All right. I see that you’ve made up your mind. Go downtown and meet your weirdo friend. But you’d better be back by nine or I’ll ground you for a month.
SCENE TWO: Kenny and Hank riding the bus to New York
HANK: (staring out the window through the trees at the cloudy sky, singing a Simon and Garfunkel song) Cloudy. My thoughts are….
MALE PASSENGER: (Looking from across the aisle where he is trying to read The Wall Street Journal) Could you two stop making noise?
HANK: (ignoring him) Cloudy…
PASSENGER: (yelling towards the front of the bus driver.) Could you make these two radicals stop making a ruckus back here?
DRIVER: You, too! Cut the noise or I dump you out.
KENNY: But we’re not in New York yet.
DRIVER: Exactly. This ain’t no folk festival. And we don’t need to hear you two whining on about the war.
HANK: I was singing about clouds, not the war.
DRIVER: I don’t care if your singing about gold fish, shut it or get out
HANK: Fascist!
KENNY: Don’t push him, Hank. (Kenny looks out the window.) I don’t know exactly where we are but it doesn’t look healthy out there and I don’t know how we would get back to Paterson if he dumps us out.
HANK: All right, I’ll leave the bastard alone (But he continues to hum as the bus winds down the ramp towards the Lincoln Tunnel and through to the buildings on the other side)
SCENE THREE: Kenny and Hank standing in Times Square
KENNY: (looking around at all the confusion) Where now?
HANK: Downtown.
KENNY: Please, Hank, not another bus.
HANK: Of course now. From here we have to take the subway (starts singing Joni Mitchell’s Cloud song) I look at clouds from both sides now.
KENNY: Maybe you shouldn’t sing, Hank. People are looking at us funny.
HANK: Let them look
KENNY: But they think we’re high
HANK: We are high. On life. We’re going to a real hip party in The Village. Aren’t you excited?
KENNY: Nervous is more like it. I don’t know how to act at a regular high school party let alone one where everybody is hip
HANK: Just act naturally. Be yourself. That’s what life is all about.
SCENE FOUR: Hank and Kenny at the subway platform.
KENNY: (walks towards the turnstiles. HANK grabs his arm).
HANK: You have to buy a token before you can go through the turnstiles to the train.
KENNY: What’s a token?
HANK: One of these. (He holds up a small gold coin about the size of a dime in which a y is cut at the center)
KENNY: Where do I get one?
HANK: Over there at the book. It costs fifteen cents. But you might just as well buy two since we’ll have to come back this way later
KENNY (goes through with the purchase) Now what?
HANK: To the platform. (Hank starts singing about clouds again. His voice echoes through the chamber, but is soon drowned out by the road of the approaching train.
KENNY: My God! It’s so loud!
HANK: What?
KENNY: (shouting ) It’s loud! (Covers his ears until the train stops)
HANK: Come on. Don’t stand there (He goes through the open doors and takes a seat) Just don’t stand there. We can’t afford to wait for another train if you have to be back by nine.
SCENE FIVE: They exit onto Waverly Place
KENNY: (sniffing at the air when they reach the top of the subway stairs at street level) Something smells sweet
HANK: (laughing) Don’t breathe too deep. I don’t think you’re uncles would approve
KENNY: For breathing air?
HANK: You might get high.
KENNY: High?
HANK: That’s pot you smell.
KENNY: People smoke marijuana on the street
HANK: People pretty much do whatever they like here. This is Greenwich Village
KENNY: Don’t the police stop them?
HANK: They try sometimes. But mostly they don’t care. I guess they figure they’d rather have a bunch of high hippies down here and than a collection of radicals plotting revolution. People here even make lover in the park if it’s dark enough. (He starts to sing about clouds again, loudly. Some people along the street applaud.) We’d better go find the apartment.
KENNY: You don’t know where it is?
HANK: I have an address. But I’ve never heard of the street. But Greenwich Village isn’t all that big. So it shouldn’t be too hard to find.
KENNY: (looking around) Yes, it does look smaller than I thought it would.
HANK: I never imagined it looking any other way than the way it does. Every time I listened to folk singers like Bob Dylan or Peter, Paul and Marry, this is what I saw in my head.
KENNY: You have a better imagination than I have. Maybe you should become a writer
HANK: I’m going to be a singer
KENNY: You’re already a singer. That’s all you seem to do
HANK: I mean for a living – like Simon and Garfunkel.
KENNY: That’s pretty ambitious. I’ll probably grow up to be just like my uncles with my nose stuck in an outboard motor all the time.
HANK: You don’t have to end up that way, if you don’t want.
KENNY: I can’t think of anything else that I really want to do.
HANK: Hang around this place long enough something will occur to you.
KENNY: (after they have wandered the streets for a while and come upon a street sing that shows West 4th Street interconnecting with West 10th Street) Are you sure you know where we’re going?
HANK (squinting up at the sign) I thought I did.
KENNY: Maybe we should ask someone for directions?
HANK: And look like hicks from the suburbs – no way.
KENNY: But we are hicks from the suburbs
HANK: We don’t have to let on. If we act cool, then people won’t know where we’re from.
KENNY: You mean to say you would rather wander around this place forever than to chance looking un-hip?
HANK: Of course. (starts sing Simon and Garfunkel’s Faking it)
KENNY: That’s nuts (but follows along behind Hank anyway)
HANK (after a long time wandering around) Here it is. I told you I would find it.
KENNY: Yeah, and we wasted time. My feet hurt. I’m tired. I almost wish I could go home now.
HANK: Well, you can’t. Just try and seem a little bit cool and don’t let on we’re from New Jersey.
KENNY: Just ring the bell and get this over with. I might hate home, but at least I don’t have to be anything I’m not.
HANK: ( rings the bell) Don’t cop an attitude, Kenny. It’s a bummer
WOMAN: (dressed in an evening gown opens the door) Hellooooo
KENNY: Holy shit!
HANK: Is this the party
WOMAN: It certainly is. Come right in. We’ve been expecting you. (then to someone inside) Hey, everybody, we got some to come
KENNY: Hank, I don’t think this is such a good idea
HANK: Can it, Kenny. They think we’re the real thing.
KENNY: But we aren’t and I’m too tired to put on an act
HANK: Then just let me do the talking.
KENNY: (glancing into the townhouse where other people in tuxedos and gowns are standing holding wine glasses and smoking cigarettes) I’m not going in there.
HANK: Don’t be such a drag.
KENNY: But they’ll catch on.
HANK: Their kind never do. And this is why they’re having the party so they can meet people like us.
KENNY: You mean like the others (waves his hand vaguely towards the street) out there.
HANK: They’re like us, Kenny. Most of them came from other places, if not New Jersey, then places just like New Jersey.
KENNY: You mean we’re all faking it?
HANK: Exactly.
KENNY: That’s even nuttier than I thought.
HANK: Give me five minutes, and then we’ll go.
KENNY: You can have all the time you want. I’m going back to the park we passed. I’ll wait for you there. If you take too long, then I’m sure I can find my way back to the bus.
HANK: (sighs) All right, I’ll come with you. This wouldn’t be any fun without you.
KENNY: (turning away from the door) Which way? I’m all turned around here – although it all looks vaguely familiar.
HANK: It should look familiar. That’s the subway we came up at.
KENNY: You mean we wandered around to get here for hours when we started out a half block from where we were going?
HANK: We must have turned the wrong way.
KENNY: We seem to be doing a lot of that.
HANK: Life is full of wrong turns, Kenny, but sometimes they lead to things that are more interesting than where we were going in the first place.
KENNY: Now you’re a philosopher as well as a singer
HANK: (grinning) Just like Bob Dylan.
KENNY: Well, maybe you can be another Dylan or Simon & Garfunkel, or even another Plato. But I’m stuck with who I am – the grandson of a boat builder who will grow up to be a boat builder just like my uncles.
HANK: Things don’t have to turn out that way
KENNY: I’m not like you. I can’t do anything else.
HANK: That’s because you haven’t tried anything yet. Nobody knows what they can do until they try.
KENNY: Hey, I hear singing
HANK: It’s coming from Washington Square Park. Let’s go. Maybe you can join in.
KENNY: Sure, that’s just what they need. A frog in their choir. Slow up, Hank, and don’t forget I have to be home by nine…