Category Archives: irony

Hollywood, irony, old age

OLD MODELS

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[A handsome, twenty-something-year-old man with the perfect 5 o’clock shadow. He gives off an air of aloofness while seeming overly concerned with himself.]

“I’m an actor…  but I make my living as a valet in a fancy Hollywood restaurant.

I know… I’m a walking cliché. 

Anyway, we get all types pulling up to the curb… the ones who always complain, the ones who never tip, the trophy wives in their SUVs, the  midlife crisis douches in their flashy cars.

But there’s one group in particular that I find very interesting. It’s always an older person, not terribly old… late fifties, early sixties… and they never look their age… tall, lean, elegant; you can tell they were very attractive when they were younger, a lot of them still are.

The weird part is they all drive cars from the seventies and eighties, and mostly Mercedes-Benz. But no normal Mercedes; they’ve got limited editions or high-end models with all the bells and whistles from the time, vanity plates, custom paint jobs… the works.

I could never put my finger on why they drove around what were practically collector’s cars or how they got them in the first place. 

Until the other day this older woman came to the restaurant in her ’79 Mercedes convertible. A beauty, her and the car. 

When I got behind the wheel to park it, I noticed a leather folder on the passenger seat. I couldn’t help but to take a peek.

It was the lady’s modeling portfolio from when she was younger. I wasn’t surprised… she had the look.

But then I realized the photos were the answer to the mystery.

All those attractive grandparents were models or actors back in the day. They must have hit it big in their early twenties and burned through their paychecks buying luxurious cars, thinking success would last forever.

I felt bad for the pretty old lady, for all of them… obsolete. Out of place and time, chewed up and spit out by Hollywood.

That thought scared the shit out of me…

So much so I’m no longer buying that Porsche when I get my big break.“

Are you an actor or director interested in using this monologue? Contact us in ABOUT MONOLOGY!

 Copyright Abel Gonzalez 2016

irony, politics

GET OUT OF LINE

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[A thirty-year-old man with a hip hairstyle and clothes. He looks timid, but speaks with firmness despite his strong accent.]

“In my country you have to stand in line for everything…  for bread, for gas, to see a doctor.

It’s a way of life… people stand in line and gossip or play games, they flirt, or even get drunk.

But I never got used to it. I hated feeling like a number, one more letter in a long sentence and with no other function but to wait, and wait, and wait…

To be clear, I’m not against order or civility, but I had the feeling those lines were not really necessary, that they were there just to give us something to do, to keep us controlled and away from any subversive tendencies.

Of course, I didn’t say that out loud. They would have laughed at me… Or worse.

In the end, it was the lines that made me realize immigrating was the only way I could live with dignity. And so I ended up in this country… don’t ask me how.

I was so happy, I felt so free… for the first time. Free to walk down the street hand-in-hand with my boyfriend.

And yes, there were lines here too, but these were different. Optional. Like when you go to a place for brunch and the line is too long, so you just decide to go somewhere else.

But, the other day, my boyfriend insisted on going to see one of those summer blockbusters. You know, the kind of movies that are so hyped it’s almost a social imperative to watch them.

And we went on opening day.

We got to the multiplex roughly two hours early. We’d planned to buy the tickets and then have some dinner.

But the line to the ticket window wrapped around the block.

I asked my boyfriend if we could try again another day but he wasn’t budging.

And I didn’t complain.

As we took our place, a familiar sadness soon engulfed me; the sadness of standing in a line…  but this felt even worse, because I wasn’t waiting for bread or a doctor, I was waiting to see some movie.

I realized we were being duped by a system not much different from my country’s…

We were free to watch another movie (or have lunch in another restaurant), but we were in that file forced by the artificial necessity of being part of the hype, of experiencing, first-hand, what everyone else was talking about. Oh, and being seen while doing it. We craved to belong to something bigger than ourselves; a movie, a sports event, a concert… even voting. Something we could contribute to with very little effort.

We just had to get in line and become a number.

That’s what we did that Friday when we waited for an hour to contribute to the highest grossing opening of all time…until now.

Truth to be said… the movie sucked balls.”

Are you an actor or director interested in using this monologue? Contact us in ABOUT MONOLOGY!

 Copyright Abel Gonzalez 2016

history, Hollywood, irony, memory, politics

REAL FICTION

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[A man in his late thirties. The liberal type, dressed casually and with messy hair. Something about him screams intellectual.]

“My grandfather was an old Hollywood screenwriter back in the forties. He only has two or three credits to his name on obscure films… To be honest, I used to think he had had a mediocre career and that he had retired early.

Later on, I learned he was also a member of the communist party, and that his political views had landed him on Hollywood’s blacklist…

Unable to get work as a screenwriter, he took any film-related job to make ends meet; production assistant, gaffer, grip… even as an extra.

According to my father, he once got a background gig in a big Hollywood production, a romantic drama, set in the Russian Revolution.  Anti-communist propaganda of that time…

My grandfather had no idea what the scene was about but, still, he put on his proletarian costume and showed up on a set that looked like a muscovite street, along another hundred extras.

There, this assistant to the director instructs them to parade down the fake street singing The International, you know, the United Worker’s hymn.

The song was banned in the US back then, so instead of teaching them the lyrics, the assistant just hummed the melody a couple of times for the extras to memorize it.

And so, when the director called “action”, all the extras began to hum the song, more or less successfully… All of them except my grandfather. He shouted it from the top of his lungs, enunciating every single word.

I like to picture him with a Cheshire grin, tickled by the irony of getting paid for something he had been banned from doing and being in real life.

It probably was the biggest victory of his life…

I’m sure he’d tell the story better himself.

Are you an actor or director interested in using this monologue? Contact us in ABOUT MONOLOGY!

 Copyright Abel Gonzalez 2016