Cabaret dressingroom—devoid of people, if recently left with shallow jars of make-up, swabs and tissues, a tipped-over can of Diet Coke in its own, all-but-drunk, puddle. A note stuck on the mirror expresses in block letters: YOUR WELCOME, NOW GET OUT THERE & WIN! Reflected to the right of this note, the dressingroom door wedges open and a familiar pompadour pops in:
Too soon? (enter slo-mo like a battleship; grin at the intro of Kid Rock’s “Cold and Empty”; halt in the center as cabaret figures slither in real speed from all corners of the room)
I don’t have to be here, do I. (scan them, raise palms, thrust eyebrows, then wink an ‘Unbelievable!’) That’s right—you want me back. (where’s Camera 3?) Always keep ’em begging. What for?
—Kid Rock stops, as do the slithers—
More.
Now the walls split open like the Red Sea, as if Charlton Heston had raised his staff. A crowd cheers from the blinding spotlights that pull us to the stage and festooned lectern. The mic needs no adjusting, yet seems to love the power wiggle and half-a-dozen rasps of “Thank you, Thank you very much” to let the audience exalt.
You know, the great Hulk Hogan once told me—we were, I dunno, on some boat—and he drapes his arm around me and says, ‘Sir’—classy guy, the Hulk—‘you need the crowd… you NEED the crowd to cover up the cries of losers, let ’em save a little face.’ So true. Because by winning—
Cut to a tee-d up golf ball, swacked to the oohs of a cozier crowd. ‘MEET YOUR NEW INSTRUCTOR’ underscores the hugeness of the drive. Then right back to the cabaret stage:
—you make the losers feel you’ve graced them with your win. (swell like Mussollini to punctuate that point; turn shoulders before the cock of head; look with feigned surprise at the video montage that shows eternal rallies just like this—a house of mirrors rippling the message; listen in like one of the crowd): ‘It’s good to have a jester—a rake—and Rudy has been great from New York’s rubble to all these Sunday morning posers in the media.’
Close-up in a quiet office suite with nothing on the desk:
Be smarter than smart. Read the titles of things—that’s enough. ‘Enemy of the People’, I’ve heard, had terrible reviews from Norway—Norway, of all places! So I did those folks a favor and made that book a #1 best seller.
Cut back to the note: YOUR WELCOME, NOW
Grab ‘em by the hand, those wanabees, and power shake to show who’s boss. You saw how Frenchy flinched and tried to hijack the headline.
Macron dissolves on the cabaret montage; focus returns to the quiet suite:
I’d like to see him sweat the grip of Kim Jung Un (pull that letter from the drawer; muse as the montage swings to the DMZ; act surprised when Dennis Rodman dunks a basketball and hands it to the chubby chairman, declaring, “this dude’s dope, y’all.”) ‘Living proof, folks, worth repeating: “What the hell (swirl a hand to stir the cadence for the cabaret audience to chime in) have you got to lose?!”’
Hand-held camera, strolling through a hushed and darkened corridor:
The best ideas (pre-nup pause and hover at the gold-star door) come from here—
Open to the opulence of gold-replacing-porcelain, glitterballing to the sound of disco muzak and discovering a cell phone balancing atop the roll of toilet paper. Within the characteristic light blue frame a message of ‘COVFEFE’ appears ambivalent to the index finger jabbing toward its ‘send’:
—and that’s the way to keep ’em coming: relevance in random streams. (complete the operation; kiss the faithful digit) And the world becomes your oyster, (eyeball the bucket of KFC half-empty and act wry) though I prefer the flyover cuisine.
The cockpit of a helicopter, lifting off a building roof, the camera feeling it has access to the controls:
And here’s a little secret: they really do let you fly (another wink? Nah—the pursed lip bop to a distant beat; time this to believe it): when you’re the chosen one.
Panning out a dusky sky, where oversized stars start to spackle into rows of 5, underwritten with endorsements from EIB, Rosanne, Hannity, Las Vegas Sands, scrolling Star Wars-style into oblivion. The montage at the cabaret returns, a Guilfoyle gearing up to say in unison:
‘The BEST / is YET / to COME!’ (thanks, Kim—now just me) You’re in this not for what your resumé suggests. That and a nickel will get you on the subway. Instead, you must adopt the instincts of a shark—move forward or you die. But here’s the hitch—
back to the dressingroom, noiseless and devoid of slithering figures—
you’re nothing if you stop at this advice. It’s like date-night with your better half—
turning to the mirror and speaking to its visage—
you gotta listen to the yappin’ if you plan on getting lucky. Afterwards, (pull the sharpie from your pocket, punctuate the note to show you’r not a moron) you’ll know that luck has nothing to do with it.
Final image of the cabaret montage: the trophied bible clutched in front of St John’s Episcopal, Lafayette Square; the chorus of ‘Gaslighter’ rises to the smirk of self-awareness:
I’m the Chosen One, and this (press the goddam dentures to behave) is my Masterclass.
Fade to white with little legalese to bug across the screen.
Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2021)
