Elmer L. Kline:
Artists are Crap
(1972)
Midafternoon some centuries from now:
NO!artists cluttered basement show-room in artists' quarters of Hell.Larry: Why you NO!artists keeping so busy, four hundred years and you haven't sold a thing?
Stan: Some day some chick will come along—and she'll buy the whole lot.
Boris: Eventually everything will sell, even great art ... Look .. isn't this female perfection? (Takes out of his folio collage dismembered parts of Mae West—Raquel Welch—Sally Rand—Margaret Truman all mixed together, combined with whips, spurs, furs, banana dildos.)
Stan: Looks good enough to fuck.
Sam: Or for Boris to shit on.
Larry: In my day artists were gentlemen .. I remember Sargent ...(Enter Bert, critic-tourist guide with several tourists)
Bert: ... and here, ladies, are representatives of the dregs of American Art, three NO!artists and the world's worst primitive, Larry.
Boris: (bows) Enchanted.
Sam: I'm cheap but good.
Stan: Wanna fuck? Have orgonomic prick: wanna see it?
Bert: You, Boris, tell the ladies why you went sour
Boris: (Gets up on chair and declares) I told the Truth, the unpleasant unvarnished Truth, before its time—nobody wanted to listen.
Sam: (Gets up on chair) We were the revolution before the Revolution—our audience was still in strollers, or else dead in Spain.
Stan: I fucked with my brush and painted with my prick—10000 successfulorgasms! More productive than any other artist!
Gertrude: (a tourist, former art dealer, to Stan) Why didn't you like me? I always thought you were a fag.
Stan: You didn't turn me on.Sam: You mean she wouldn't pay for it. Ladies, Stan is a male whore!
Miss Innocence: (a tourist) What has all that talk to do with Art, real Art that is?
Bert: Miss Innocence, when these creatures flourished below, it was whom you knew and whom you blew.
Miss Innocence: I'll never believe it!
(Enter Carl, on the run. He is a blond, curly haired innocent looking young faun. In his hand, atube of glue).
Bert: How are things?
Carl: Good as usual - want to see my latest review in "Devil's Advocate"? Hi, creeps, still struggling?
Bert: Tell the ladies how you get such write-ups?
Carl: No sweat, the critics swing on my dick! Oh, damn it, (throws away the glue).
Bert: What's wrong with the glue?
CarI: The critic of "Flaming Times" prefers Ky Jelly.
Miss Innocence: But is this young man really any good as an Artist?
Boris: (Gets up on chair and declares) We portrayed disgusting things instead ofdoing them—now ... only now ... am I beginning to understand the sordidness of American life.
Sam: Will you ladies excuse us while Boris and I shit? (Sam already drops hispants.)
Boris: I am terribly sorry, ladies, but I only shit on Sundays.
Bert: This is what we've been waiting for ladies, the NO!artists in action. Realaction!
Gertrude: (to Boris) How much is that? (pointing to an anal production by Boris.)
Boris: 900 Gold Rubles.
Gertrude: It has verve, class .. is a bit gooey ... a little green around the edges ... but I'll take it. Will you send it please? (She beckons to Stan) May I use your pen?
(Stan takes out his prick, she starts to write a check with it).
Boris: I said I wanted Gold Rubles. Definitely no Dollars.
Gertrude: Where could I find Gold Rubles in Hell?
(They all form a circle around Sam as he drops a large pile of Gold Rubles out of his ass.)
Miss Innocence: I'll have to write mother about this.
Gertrude: (to Sam) - You never would have ended up here if you could have done that up there. It fully equals Cezanne.
Bert: Van Gogh.
Miss Innocence: At least the famous pop-artists. (She picks up a piece and hands it to Larry. He disdainfully pushes it aside).
Larry: Here's one artist who will never sell out!
Stan: No one has made him an offer!
Gertrude: Can you show us something else, Bert?
Bert: If you enjoy European art, there's a sensation on Avenue X, an Austrian, Schickelgruber, phantastic on minimal compositions in brown.
Larry: I paint brown cows!
Gertrude: I prefer red cows!
Bert: ... Ready ladies ... now this Schickelgruber didn't do too well as a painter before, but down here ...
(Exit Gertrude, Miss Innocence, Bert.)
Boris: Sonofabitch, I almost made a sale.
Stan: I almost made Miss Innocence.
Sam: Well, I feel much relieved now.
Larry: Hah, hahah, and I got Carl's glue! (He starts sniffing the glue.)
Boris: How does it smell, OLD MAN?
Larry: Not as good as whiskey, but it does make me feel young again. (He leaps upin ecstasy and then falls down dead).
Boris: (Blows a whistle to call the fuz)
(Enter Big Louise, undercover detective and stripper, wearing tassels on her tits, dark glasses, a beaded gee-string, pistol-belt and police star pinned on right check of her ass.)
Big Louise: What's wrong here boys, you damned artists cause me more trouble than even rock musicians!
Boris: Larry died again.
Big Louise: Don't you kid Big Louise,—confess you killed him! You wanted me in your studio to get your rocks off over me. Confess!
Boris: I confess to nothing. I'm insanely in love with you. Can we do it again, right now, right now while I have it ready - now?
Big Louise: You want me, Louise Krakovitch from Johnston Pennsylvania, alias Big Louise Krakovitch Cracker, Sewer Virgin Goddess, Stinktown Flood,—eallya Police Detective—to roll over in Sam's shit for you, cover myself with brown stuff so you can photograph me in this vile state! I do not wish that 10000 times 10000 sex fiends like yourself masturbate to the image of my stinking brown beauty!
Sam: Boris may jack-off looking at that but it don't inspire me to anal creation.
Stan : And I fuck! No hand jobs for me.
Boris: Will you do it, Louise, please!
Big Louise: Beat me first, beat me till I pee!
(Sam and Stan tie her up. Boris takes out of a kettle huge strands of spaghetti, beats her with them. She tries grabbing some with her teeth. The beating-eating is interrupted by the entrance of Chief Devil).
Chief Devil: Big Louise, how many times have I warned you weren't allowed to take graft from poor artists. Now vomit up the spaghetti and comb the marinara sauce out of your box.
Big Louise: You won't report me Sir?
Chief Devil: (On the telephone) Heart attack cases at Artists' Alley. Dispatch Brown Cross ambulance with couple of critics!
Boris: Brown Cross ambulance?
Chief Devil: Artists are crap!
Sam, Boris and Stan (getting up on chairs, together): Even NO!artists ?!
Source: Lurie, Boris; Krim, Seymour: NO!art, Cologne 1988
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ABOUT ELMER L. KLINE: Screenwriter of the Hilary's Blues (1983) and actor as Doc Fallon in the film Hammet (1982) produced by Wim Wenders.
