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Times are changing, Ben. It's 1956. This kind of show is going to be dead in the water soon. You need to start incorporating modern business practices. Take today, for instance. What are your plans?
I'm going into town -- to pass out posters. Get folks primed for the parade this evening.
See, that's what I mean. Your time is too important for passing out posters. You're a manager. You should delegate a job like that.
College may be teaching you fine things about numbers. But the entertainment business is a people business. There's nothing like personal contact to get town folks interested in seeing the parade -- and the show.
Okay, take the parade. Even Ringling has stopped doing parades! They're too expensive, with no revenue to offset it.
No show of mine is going on without a circus parade! It's a tradition! Start cutting out things like that, and you end up cutting out all the magic that makes it worthwhile!
(at the breaking point) Why can't we follow a tradition that keeps us solvent?! We need magic, all right...to pay the bills! Ben -- you're the sole proprietor of an endangered species. (Music begins)You're running about the last red wagon tent show in the land!
Maybe you're right...and ain't it a shame --
(THEY exchange lines as in a vaudeville routine: BEN as straightman, JEFF more sardonically)
(MIME sweeps with imaginary push-broom, grimacing)
(Instrumental bridge -- BEN imitates a barker)
Hurr-y, hurr-y, the show is about to begin! Step right up to the window at the wagon. See the fabulous Esmerelda!
(MIME hootchy-cootchies, becoming ESMERELDA)
...when she isn't dead drunk, that is...
who will stand...on this platform...holding this cigar in her lovely teeth... (gives imaginary cigar to MIME) ...while the great Colorado Ben Cooper, the wonder of the Rockies, will attempt the near-impossible!
...paying off 500 a week in expenses with only 88 bucks in receipts!
...He will ride, backwards, around the ring, three times! then shoot the cigar out of the lovely Esmerelda's mouth -- (drumroll) -- aiming with the aid of this small hand-mirror!
(BEN pretends to aim with the "mirror". MIME looks nervous. JEFF continues to talk over the drum-roll.)
We can't afford a new mirror, so I had to borrow this one from the clowns' dressing-room...
(BEN begins to lose his concentration and his patience.)
...and we can't afford a new cigar, so we've had to use the same one for the last three weeks...
(MIME makes a horrible face.)
'Course it doesn't matter--he can't hit the broad side of a barn anyway...
(BEN begins to point the gun at JEFF. "Gunshot" as drum rim-shot. MIME, startled, faints.)
Luckily, we can't afford real bullets, either...
Copyright 1986, 1987 Linda Eisenstein & Teddi Davis
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