KARAOKE NIGHT AT THE SUICIDE SHACK

COBAIN

It’s gone, man.

 

COBAIN takes his drink to a table and sits.  After a moment, ROTHKO approaches.

 

ROTHKO

Which painting did you see?

 

COBAIN

(a beat, then:) We were in New York for Saturday Night Live. I’d never been to a museum, so we went. And there it was - this gigantic mass of doom. Two dark, monster rectangles.

 

ROTHKO

That narrows it down slightly.

 

COBAIN

It was so ominous, so - I don’t know, man - spiritual. I started shaking. It swallowed me up.

 

ROTHKO

(touched) I’m glad you liked it.

 

COBAIN

I wanted my songs to sound like that - like a wail of agony.

 

ROTHKO

Did they?   Some of ‘em. But then they all started to sound the same.  AABA. AABA -

 

ROTHKO

A signature style. I developed one, too, after thirty years of struggling for success.

 

COBAIN

Shit, man. That’s longer than I was alive.

 

ROTHKO

All of a sudden, everything changed.

 

COBAIN

The beginning of the end, right?

ROTHKO

(nods) As an outsider, I felt bitter. As an insider, I felt worse. I felt (choosing COBAIN’s word) - contaminated.

 

COBAIN

(using ROTHKO’s words) You crave it, and you hate them for it.

 

ROTHKO

Offers started pouring in.

 

COBAIN

You can pick and choose.

 

ROTHKO

I was offered a commission to paint a series of murals for the Four Seasons Restaurant. It was going to be a watering hole for the richest bastards in New York. I accepted, with strictly malicious intent.

 

COBAIN

Yeah, man. Take the money and run.

 

ROTHKO

I wanted to paint something that would ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ate there. I wanted to make them feel like they were trapped in a room where the doors and windows are bricked up, and all they could do is butt their head forever against the wall!

 

HOFFMAN

Right on, brother Rothkowitz!

 

ROTHKO

But I withdrew the paintings and returned what I had been paid of the commission.

 

WHALE

Whatever for?

 

ROTHKO

I am an artist. Not a decorator.

 

HOFFMAN

You gotta draw the line somewhere. Like when they asked me if they could make an Abbie Hoffman doll. “Fuck no,” I told ‘em.

 

DANDRIDGE

You gotta have money to say “no.”

   

VELEZ

Lupe never say no. And no one ever say no to Lupe.

 

WHALE

Almost no one.

 

HOFFMAN

It ain’t about the bread. I never had a nickel in my pocket - and I died broke.

 

ROTHKO

When I walked to my new studio, I still wore my old overcoat and a black hat that had a mouse hole eaten in it.

 

PLATH

Why not use the money in one of your Swiss Bank Accounts?

 

ROTHKO

So what if I made a lot of money? My soul was destroyed.

 

COBAIN

(proudly) I made five million bucks last year, and I was still miserable!

 

VELEZ

Lupe know what to do with money. I buy beautiful jewels. And Casa Felicitas.

 

DANDRIDGE

I trusted the wrong people. Died with two dollars and fourteen cents.

 

WHALE

I hoarded every penny I made, like Silas Marner.

 

PLATH

After Ted left, I could barely put food on the table. Right up to the end.

 

SEXTON

I’d do anything for a buck. I handed out my books like chocolates to the rich and famous. I sent Jacqueline Kennedy a copy of “All My Pretty Ones.”

 

PLATH

Annie, you didn’t!

 

SEXTON

We had a lot in common. She was a woman and a mother, she was cultural -

 

PLATH

She had a husband from Massachusetts, a dead father -

 

SEXTON

- and a uterus!

 

ROTHKO

I attended Kennedy’s inauguration. What on earth was I doing there?

 

HEMINGWAY

They asked me to write something for that, but it just wouldn’t come. Tore me up.

 

ROTHKO

The more acclaim, the darker the paintings became. Turbulent browns, violets and blacks. I was a commodity. The same people who had mocked my paintings were now paying astronomical fees to put them in their penthouses.

 

COBAIN

The fucking creeps who were scoffing up our records were the same rednecks and rapists I hated my whole life!

 

ROTHKO

My marriage broke up. My son refused to speak with me. My health deteriorated. I drank heavily.

 

PLATH

(handing ROTHKO the microphone) And on February 25, 1970?

 

ROTHKO

(peacefully) I swallowed a large amount of Sinequan. I took off my shirt and shoes and put my pants over a chair. I kept my underclothes on, and my black stockings. I took off my glasses. I took a double-edged razor blade, wrapped a Kleenex over one side of it, held it in my right hand and made a cut in my left arm near the elbow. The artery is larger there. I switched the blade to my left hand and made a deeper cut in my right arm. I lay down on my back as the blood poured out. Brown, violet, black.

 

COBAIN picks up his guitar and takes one of the bar stools to the stage area. He sits and sings, head down, accompanying himself on guitar. ROTHKO watches closely.