REDEEMER & PROVIDER
This is a “play” for two “characters” named REDEEMER & PROVIDER.
Neither is redeemable or provident.
1.
“It’s over, man. Jobs, everything.”
“I’m just, I . . .”
“I don’t even know why we pay taxes anymore.”
“You pay taxes?”
“Well, no. But still—”
“I just need one getaway. One heist.”
“Yes.”
“You think we could pull it off?”
“You’re bringing me into this?”
“I mean — you want brung in?”
“What you got?”
“Well, you seen all these schemes, right, where people get fixed up with a bunch of money because something happens to them, like, on camera?”
“You talking about, like, America’s Funniest Home Videos, or?”
“No! Fuck, no. I mean like, they’re out in public somewhere and somebody gets to harassing them, gives them a hard time. You know, pranksters.”
“I fucking hate pranksters, man.”
“Well what if we pulled a real big prank?”
“What you mean?”
“What if we got over on ‘em all?”
“Can you be any less clear?”
“Check it out — you fake the encounter.”
“Fake what encounter?”
“Like you, right. You’re blind. You’re sympathetic. Somebody beats on you there’s no way you’re not gonna get at least twenty, thirty thousand out of it.”
“Twenty-thirty thousand isn’t doing shit these days.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“We need more.”
“So you’re in?”
“I’m not out.”
“Well, think about it — how can we, what, uh, maximize the uh, the efficacy? The emotional vulnerability . . . How can we go, like, viral?”
“We gotta piss people off man.”
“Go on.”
“Make ‘em real mad. It’s gotta be more’n me bein’ blind.”
“Alright.”
“We gotta tap into real animosities, deep-seated shit, you know what I mean?”
“I think I do. . .”
“So you got all type of shit in society now, right, you got everybody mad at the Boomers, Boomers don’t give a fuck cuz they’re holding all the chips just checked out but you gotta figure they hate the kids cuz god damn look at the kids, and plus, when hasn’t the old always hated the young, you know what I mean? And anyway on top of that you got the gender wars, and all that jailhouse race shit—”
“You’re thinking we make it a clash of civilizations?”
“Gotta be, right? I mean I’ve got a look, I’d say. A strong look.”
“It’s true.”
“Right? So I’m gonna come across, I’d come across a particular way.”
“They’re gonna think some type of way about it.”
“Okay so how do we work ‘em?”
“Like kayfabe the thing?”
“Exactly.”
“Shit. This whole world’s carnivals and casinos.”
“And porno.”
“And porno.”
“So you gone beat or get beat one way or the other.”
[BOTH LAUGH]
2.
“Okay so you’re at the store, right. And you’re — what? You’re working, you’re shopping?”
“I don’t want to be working.”
“Well hell neither of us does, that’s kind of the point of this exercise, dumbass. You’re wanting to cash out and I’m trying to cash out with you.”
“Alright. Eyes on the prize.”
“Right.”
“So I should be shopping.”
“Yeah, at the store. Cuz all anybody knows is stores. We gotta generalize.”
“The General Store.”
“Something like that.”
“Good and generic.”
“Close enough.”
“Close enough to work.”
“I’d say.”
“So I’m at the store shopping, and I’m buying, shit, I don’t know, a can of Pringles and some beef jerky.”
“Like them red Pringles the normal ones or some other shit?”
“Just the reds.”
“They make all type of Pringles now I seen.”
“Yeah at the dollar store the other day I seen some discontinued kind that come in a orange can said something about ‘Mesquite.’”
“Maybe it was mosquito flavored.”
“Boy the way the One World Government wants us to live I wouldn’t be surprised anymore.”
“I tell you what I’ll eat my gun before I eat a bug.”
“Oh I’m sure I’ve eaten bugs before, in my sleep or at restaurants or whatever, just off drinkin’ or dreaming or whatever it is, you know, man, but fuck no I ain’t lettin’ no European Commission tell me what the fuck to eat.”
“We come up off this shit you should get a side of beef, or I think that’s what they call it, like where you get the whole freezer just fulla that meat.”
“I had a neighbor who did that with deer.”
“I had a neighbor they said fucked her dog, or got fucked by it, or him, I guess.”
“I remember you tellin’ me about that.”
3.
“So how you gonna enter the store?”
“You gotta figure I come in making a big working man’s fuss about what a difficult day I’ve had.”
“They don’t need to know what a pampered princess you are.”
“No they don’t.”
“So you walk in and what, you just start cussing up a storm about your nag wife and your seven kids, or what?”
“No, no, we don’t gotta do all that. I just walk like a man’s had a long day of work. Hard work. Machine work.”
“Punching the clock.”
“They still do that?”
“Fuck if I know, man.”
“You still know anybody’s got a job?”
“Hell I don’t even know but I tell you what the other day Denny call’t me up said ‘YOU KNOW WHAT REDEEMER, I’M THINKIN’ BOUT GETTING A JOB.’”
“Denny’s gettin’ a goddamn job?”
“Well, listen — I said ‘Denny you ain’t gettin’ no god-damn job’ Denny says ‘AND YOU KNOW WHAT TYPE OF JOB, REDEEMER?’”
“Shit.”
“I said ‘No Denny, I don’t know.’ He says ‘REDEEMER I’M GONNA BE A MAIL CARRIER.”
“Denny’s gonna be a fuckin’ government man?”
“Just wait — I says ‘Denny go on,’ and he’s ‘REDEEMER YOU WANNA KNOW WHY I’M GONNA BE A MAIL CARRIER?’ and so I’m like ‘Well hell Denny I don’t know that I do but I’m damn sure you’re gonna tell me one way or the other,’ and so Denny says ‘CUZ I BEEN WANTIN’ A FOOT JOB FOR A LONG TIME REDEEMER,’ and then he hung up the damn telephone and I swear to god the whole county had to Of heard him hollerin’ that stupid-assed laugh of his, I never been pranked on the phone so hard before.”
“I fucking hate pranksters.”
“Man come on man that was a pretty good one.”
4.
“Okay so when we’re making the video I should be wearing, what, like nice clothes or like normal clothes or a uniform or what?”
“You gotta figure everybody looks like shit these days, on account of havin’ no jobs.”
“True.”
“So you’d stand out more if we put you in something proper.”
“Like a shirt and tie?”
“No tie. Too much pomposity. No one’s gonna sympathize with a man’s already hanged himself these days.”
“What about a bolo?”
“Like bein’ on the lookout?”
“No like one of them Western ties.”
“I don’t think we should present you as a cattleman if the whole purpose of this exercise is for you to get your shit rocked, you know what I mean.”
“You’re right, I shoulda thought of that.”
“So what’s the most convenient thing you can be if you’re gonna get your ass beat?”
“I don’t wanna look like no pansy.”
“You won’t look like a pansy, you just gotta be sympathetic to the, uh . . .”
“The fans?”
“I suppose that’s what they are, yeah.”
“The marks?”
“I mean, I don’t want to think of them as victims . . .”
“They’re willing participants.”
“Folks do love a spectacle.”
“How about an All Leather Look?”
“I think that’s unnecessary.”
“Could be fun though.”
“There’s a lot of fun a man can have if he lets himself get wandering enough. We need reliable returns. We need you looking overpowered.”
“We gotta get a big man, then.”
“A heavy.”
“A superheavyweight. A giant.”
“We gotta get a real big guy to clean your clock. What are you these days? 140 lbs?”
“119. I keep eating. I don’t know where it goes.”
“I knew I was guessing high I was just trying to make more of a man of you. Whatever. So we play into that willowy shit. We gotta find a real ogre to put a pounding on you.”
“What’s he hitting me for?”
“Being a fag seems too obvious.”
“Gotta be some type of hatred.”
“Something unwarranted.”
5.
“So is this what they’d call a psyop?”
“I’d say so.”
“We’re engineering a reaction.”
“I’m P.T. Barnum.”
“I’m Vince McMahon.”
“You think when they shot at the president it was real?”
“Which time?”
“Any of them.”
“You gotta wonder.”
“I mean I seen footage looked real.”
“We’re about to make footage’ll look real.”
“Here’s hoping.”
“Well hope’s hard of hearing so grab that bitch by the earring tell her ‘GIVE ME MY MONEY!’”
“You just make that shit up?”
“Naw I seen it in a comedy special once.”
“Really?”
“No I just made it up.”
6.
“Okay so figure right we got you in the foreground in like a iPhone portrait mode, cuz it’s gotta look like it was shot casual, like it should cut in at some weird time when things already escalated a bit, tension’s built, you’re mise-en-scene, you know what I’m saying.”
“I think you mean in media res.”
“Whatever, you know what the fuck I mean.”
“I did understand you but you gotta be wary as a pitchman of vernacular jargon. You don’t wanna be showing your ass.”
“Speakin’ of showin’ ass what if our superheavyweight yanks your shirt up over your head a bit, like a hockey kind of thing?”
“If I’m wearing the cardigan that ain’t gonna work.”
“And you’re dead-set on the cardigan.”
“I think the mohair’s gonna look really good under them fluorescents.”
“That’s true.”
“If I gotta get popped I wanna pop you know what I’m sayin’?”
“Of course.”
“Plus if I get color hardway off the punch you gotta figure between the blonde hair and the white sweater it’s gonna look fuckin’ amazing.”
“What type of shirt you gonna wear?”
“Who said I was gonna?”
“Come the fuck on, man, we gotta get on with this. If we don’t do it somebody else is gonna.”
“Boy I hate when people steal my ideas.”
“No shit. So are you doing a T-shirt or a buttondown.”
“Dress shirt. Two buttons deep.”
“Dress shirt? But you’re supposed to be a repairman.”
“You can repair in anything.”
“We gotta sell this shit, though.”
“You think the common viewer knows the difference between a Windsor knot and a fat set of nuts?”
“You got a point.”
“So I’m coming in with the white mohair sweater, white cotton batiste shirt, gonna do lizard on the belt, gold buckle, black jeans.”
“Black jeans.”
“Black jeans, black boots.”
“Lizard boots?”
“I’d do it if I had ‘em but I don’t got ‘em.”
“We could eBay it. Or Etsy.”
“Too much time. Plus the fit could be off. The boots I got, I know how to walk in ‘em.”
“We don’t wanna throw off your gait. Especially if we go multi-cam and pull security footage. And if we bought online it could turn out they was fake anyway, not even real exotics.”
“Embossed leather.”
“Exactly.”
“So I go in with the, uh, the normal leather boots. They got some wear on ‘em so I’ll be convincing as a tradesman.”
“And we get our lunk to, what? Just bop you on the head?”
“Naw, it’s gotta be more than that. It’s gotta come in stages.”
“How do you mean?”
“I should be paying with cash. An honest, working man’s cash.”
“Man nobody’s got any cash these days.”
“Exactly. So here I am, counting it out, right, in front of some cashier, some broccoli-headed kid that you know the audience is banking on — heh, no pun intended — but you gotta figure the audience is thinking ain’t no way that kid can count change back or forward, gotta figure that kid is dumb as fuck, probably barely speaks English and don’t speak nothing else neither, so we’re gonna need a young kid and a big guy.”
“Probably some bystanders, too.”
“Least a couple. Women.”
“Or something like it.”
7.
“So we get ourselves a fat boy with a mean old face and he just smacks them dollars out your hand, change goes flying and everything.”
“Yeah. I got it all folded up real neat on my palm. A five and three singles. Fifty-seven cents.”
“Is that what Pringles and jerky costs these days?”
“I looked it up. Always be prepared. I did a dry run, a trial run, in my mind.”
“Like a astral projection thing?”
“Kind of.”
“Okay and so we got our big boy hittin’ on you, then what?”
“I gotta say, ‘You can’t hit me, I’m blind!’”
“And then he’s gotta just sock the shit out of you.”
“Right.”
“One time, hard in the ear, like we talked about.”
“Yep.”
“Then it’s like, the audience is like, ‘Damn! This man is already blind! How much more can he take?’”
“You got it.”
“So now they’re wondering about your withering senses, and in the meantime we’re thinking the cashier just laughs at you too, right?”
“For sure.”
“Really make it seem like you don’t got a friend in the world. All the odds stacked against you.”
“Yes.”
“And then in the background, we get two girls.”
“Just shocked.”
“Just two shocked girls. And one of ‘em’s got their phone whipped out recording, cuz she can’t believe it, but she’s not gonna do nothin’ about it.”
“She can’t. She couldn’t. She don’t have the strength.”
“Right. Don’t get too worried, don’t get too invested. They’re actors.”
“Sorry, I guess I’m getting into my role.”
“It’s good. It’s good to get into character. Just focus.”
“So the two girls, they got the bull rings and the colored hair and everything.”
“The outfits.”
“Yeah.”
“And we got our teenage jackoff cashier, then some guy looks like he’s five times your size just giving it to you.”
“That’s about right.”
“And who’s filming?”
“Well like I said in comes in media res.”
“You said mise-en-scene.”
“I said a lot of things, now didn’t I?”
8.
“I’m thinking whoever’s behind the camera just keeps going like, ‘COME ON MAN, BE COOL. BE COOL MAN, COME ON.’ That type of thing.”
“See I was thinking it was an ‘AW SHIT. AW FUCK. OH SHIT.’ type of guy.”
“No we need the concerned citizen to seem sympathetic to some extent, like the reason he was filming was to document the injustice you’re facing rather than wanting to exploit you.”
“You think this pays off better if the below-the-line talent is morally valorous?”
“I’m thinking so. The viewer’s eye should be concerned with your well-being.”
“Well you know if we had an ‘OH FUCK LOOKIT THAT’ cameraman we’d be casting me into an environment of all-encompassing hatred, which might evoke a stronger response.”
“The girls in the back don’t hate you.”
“That’s because they don’t know me. They would.”
***
https://jamesquentindevine.substack.com/p/redeemer-and-provider
