Painting with John (2021) s01e03 Episode Script
Elephant
1
("AFRICAN SWIM, MAIN TITLES"
BY JOHN LURIE PLAYING) ♪
("I HOPE SHE IS OKAY"
BY MARVIN PONTIAC PLAYING) ♪
Quite a strange thing to do,
to talk into to a camera
like you're talking to a person.
It's hard.
It's so artificial.
Like, I'm a warm
and friendly person
talking into a camera.
It's just wrong.
A-- and people who can actually
do it well?
They're probably sociopaths.
I mean, really.
'Cause it's just
a weird thing to do.
If you're good at it, you can
probably make a lot of money,
but (WINCES)
it's not a good thing,
and I've noticed
as the show has gone on
I've gotten better at it.
And as I got better at it,
I became a worse
and worse person.
I'm not kidding.
(BIRDS SINGING)
JOHN LURIE: Look at that.
It looks like an elephant trunk.
I think I'm gonna take it down
and put it to good use.
(WOOD CREAKING)
Whoa! (EXCLAIMS)
("DRIVING INTO COUNTRY"
BY JOHN LURIE PLAYING) ♪
(FOOTSTEPS)
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
(IMITATES ELEPHANT TRUMPETING)
JOHN: So
When me and Evan were,
like, teenagers
I played the harmonica
and he played the piano,
and we became obsessed
with Little Walter.
And then after a year or two,
I was playing the saxophone
and he was still on the piano.
And we-- w--
we were equally obsessed
about Coltrane
and this record,
Live at Birdland.
And we were mostly
out of the house then,
but we would come back
and Sunday morning,
maybe, my mom
would make breakfast.
And I just presumed she was
still paying the dental bills
'cause Evan had had
this mouth surgery
and he was supposed
to be very, very careful.
He was supposed to not--
not yell or laugh too hard.
He was supposed
to be very careful
'cause the stitches
would come out.
And we're listening
to this music loud,
and my mom was a good sport
about this stuff,
but we were listening
to, um, "Afro Blue"
on Live at Birdland.
And we had this breakfast
of pancakes and
sausages and who knows what.
(CLICKS TONGUE)
And we're sitting there,
and we've got the music blaring.
There's this part
where Elvin and McCoy Tyner
are just going nuts,
and-- and McCoy's getting
to the end of these phrases,
thinking that Coltrane's gonna
come in, you know
(IMITATES PIANO PLAYING)
And you think Coltrane's gonna
come in, but he doesn't.
And they're just so muscular,
and Elvin is, you know
(EXCLAIMS)
And when Coltrane finally
comes in, it's
(IMITATES MUSIC)
And Evan, to mime the music,
goes (IMITATES MUSIC)
(CHUCKLES) And-- and--
the stitches come flying
out of his mouth
and blood spurts
all over the table.
And my mom's like
(GASPS) "Evan!"
And my-- Evan is just laughing,
and he keeps going
(IMITATES MUSIC, LAUGHS)
Kind of a beautiful memory
from my childhood.
'Cause, you know (GROANS)
that-- that's
what the music costs.
Yep. That's what it costs.
(BIRDS SINGING)
(HEAVY FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING)
JOHN: Bum ba-deedle-dee
Bum-ba-dum ♪
Ba-dum ba-deedle-dee
Bum-ba-dum ♪
Ba-dum ba-deedle-dee
Deedle-dee ♪
Bum ba-dum ba-dum ♪
(HEAVY FOOTSTEP)
JOHN: When we finished
the Voice of Chunk record
we were-- it was--
the record was ready to come out
in Germany and Austria
or somewhere,
and-- and we were racing
to get the cover done.
And I was always told,
"John, you gotta put your face
on the cover of these records.
You know, that's how
you're gonna sell records.
People know you
from the movies." And I just--
just don't want anything
like that.
Plus, I really saw the band
as a band, it's like a tribe.
And
Ari Marcopoulos took
a photograph of me,
so I said, "Well, fuck it.
I'll put my face
on the album cover."
And we brought it to this guy.
I'll leave his name out of it.
And he was gonna design
the album cover.
And it's really a rush.
It's coming out
in Germany, you know?
And I go back to him
in a few days.
(LAUGHING) And all he's done
is take my picture
and blown it up
to the size of the album.
You know how-- how big
albums are? They're like that.
You know? So my--
And I said, "I look like
I'm Donald Trump.
You can't do this."
He said, "No, it's good.
It means Lounge Lizards are
not afraid to be big now."
(WHISPERING) I said,
"What the fuck, you idiot."
(IN NORMAL VOICE) So now I gotta
figure out something to do.
I don't know
where this came from,
but I always try to go
with the first thing
with the paintings,
with everything else,
is I wanna put an eel.
An eel in a straight line
under the photograph,
and then Kazu's mouth,
three times.
That's gonna be the cover.
And flowers, maybe, on the side.
And there's an incredible bird
out there.
All right, back to our story.
An eel in a straight line.
Which is not an easy thing
to actually do
'cause it can't be an eel
who's died
in this, you know, bad position,
or a one that's still
alive and slithering around.
So you gotta find an eel
that's kinda on its way out
you know? And, uh
Or freshly dead.
And put it in a straight line
and photograph it.
First, we go
to the Fulton Fish Market,
South Street Seaport.
"No, no, no, we don't--
There's no eels.
You know, maybe go to the docks
where they come in,
maybe you'll get an eel,
but nobody really seems to
catch eels
and bring them into Manhattan.
But you could try the--"
You know, so we go to the docks,
nobody's got an eel,
and then they suggest
going to Chinatown.
And, uh, we see these eels
in a tank, outside a restaurant.
And we go in,
and the guy's dressed
in this beautiful 1940s suit.
He looks like a
you know, a gangster from a--
from a movie or something.
And I go in, and I say,
"I'd like to buy an eel."
And he won't even look at me.
He said, "No."
I don't even think he said no,
he just tried to--
I said, "No, no, I'll give you
100 dollars for a live eel."
"No."
He's-- And it's just like
I don't exist to him.
And-- and it pissed me off.
And then he said--
He takes me by the arm,
and I think he's gonna,
you know,
tell me somewhere
I can get an eel,
and he just says--
He takes me outside, and then
he turns around to walk in.
He says, "Goodbye."
And now I'm fucking pissed.
I say, "I'll give you
200 dollars for an eel."
And he stops,
and he's just looking down,
he won't look at me,
and I say, "You gotta
at least look at me."
And now a crowd starts
to gather, and I'm pissed.
And
Ari's sort of standing there
like, "Uh, John"
And he actually said,
"John," um, but I--
This guy's gonna look at me,
or I'm not gonna leave.
And, uh, a crowd gathers.
(CHUCKLING) And I'm trying
to calm myself down,
but not doing a great job.
And this little woman comes up
behind me and pulls on my sleeve
and says, "You want to find
an eel follow me."
So, okay.
So, I'm sure I'm-- we're gonna
be led around the corner
and have the shit kicked
out of me, but no.
We go down this alley
and into this little, tiny shop,
and she's got these tanks,
these aerated tanks
with carp in 'em.
But as she moves the carp out--
live--
but as she moves the carp
out of the way,
you can see these eels
down at the bottom.
But it's hard
to catch an eel.
And she's got her net,
and she's, you know,
swooping around.
And then she finally gives it,
and we give her--
I think we gave her 200 bucks.
We gave her 200 bucks
for the eel,
and we put it in a bucket,
and it's on its way out,
you know,
the eel's, like, almost gone.
So we drive--
We had a-- (MUMBLES)
I had a rented car,
we drive, and we stop
because I gotta go,
Ari's gotta go somewhere,
and we gotta get this done
and sent off to Germany
before the record comes out,
or else my face
is gonna come out like this
on the cover, and, you know,
we gotta get this done.
So we stop somewhere
in the Lower East Side
and put the eel down
on the sidewalk.
And he's down on the sidewalk,
and he's just barely alive,
you know?
He's just like (MUTTERS)
And, uh, I keep trying
to put him in a straight line,
and then it starts to rain.
So we put the eel in a bucket,
and I say, "We could do it
on the windowsill at my house."
So we drive really fast,
like mad,
we park illegally
in front of the house,
we run up the stairs.
But now the eel's covered
with all the, you know,
sand and dust from the street.
And, um
I gotta wash it off.
He's dead.
Take him out of the bucket.
And I go into my bathroom
to wash off the eel.
Except he--
One speck of water hits this eel
and he springs to life.
And I'm holding him
in the middle,
and he's stronger than you can
fucking imagine.
The eel is so strong,
and he's like (GRUNTS)
He's trying to bite my face.
It's like a horror movie.
And he's so slimy that I can
barely hold on to him.
And I was like, "I'm not letting
go of this thing
in my apartment,
I'll never clean it up."
And he's, like, trying
to bite my face, and it was a--
It's this real battle, you know?
(CHUCKLES) It's like--
And Ari's yelling at me,
"Hey, I gotta go, let's go!"
And he's like,
"You're late for this?"
"I'm fighting death in here."
And the eel's like (GROWLS)
And so I grab the eel by--
by the gills
and I strangle it
to death.
And as I finish killing
the eel
I turn around and I see Ari
standing at the--
at the door of the bathroom.
(LAUGHING)
And you could see the whites
all the way
around his eyes, like
And I said, "I killed the eel."
And he sorts of goes, "Yes."
And I said,
"You think it's bad
that I killed the eel?"
And he says, "Not if
we don't tell anybody."
So, we real quick--
we take the eel,
I finish washing it off,
I put it on the windowsill,
he stands on the--
on the radiator and leans over
and photographs the eel
on the windowsill,
and it's a straight line,
it's gonna work.
And then I go try to wash off
my hands, but I can't,
and I'm about to go
to a photo session.
I sort of put on my suit
without touching anything,
and, um, I rush out.
And then I come back home,
hours later
and the eel is gone.
"Okay, I guess he fell,
and I gotta go back out."
So I get ready to go out
and, um, leave my house.
I look down
underneath the window.
It's like-- it's three flights,
and then there's
a basement apartment,
so it goes down-- it was
four flights, really, down.
The eel's not there.
Maybe he fell off
and somebody found it
and put it in the trash.
And then I walk to get a cab
on Seventh Avenue.
So I walk
down Eighteenth Street,
I live all the way at Sixth,
and I'm about to hail a cab,
and then I see the eel
(CHUCKLES)
on the ground in the curb.
Like, he's fallen four flights,
after being strangled,
he's fallen four flights,
climbed up the stairs
from the basement apartment,
and then gone a block down,
all the way down, um
all the way
down Eighteenth Street,
almost to Seventh Avenue,
to finally come to his death.
It's like Rasputin the Eel.
It was--
I think all the bad luck
I've had since then
is 'cause I strangled that eel.
("THE BEAST"
BY JOHN LURIE PLAYING) ♪
(MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
(MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(HEAVY FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING)
JOHN: Deedle-dee
Bum-ba-dum ♪
Ba-dum ba-deedle-dee
Bum-ba-dum ♪
Ba-doo a-deedle-dee
Bum-ba-doo ♪
Ba-dum ba-deedle-dee
Bum-ba-doo ba-loo ♪
(BIRDS SINGING)
(DEEP TRUMPETING)
(TRUMPETING CONTINUES)
(STOMPING)
(JOHN IMITATES TRUMPETING)
(TRUMPETS)
(TRUMPETING)
(TRUMPETING ECHOES)
(HEAVY FOOTSTEPS)
(CHUCKLING) I'm not really
an elephant, you know.
I'm John.
("THE FIRST AND ROYAL QUEEN"
BY THE LOUNGE LIZARDS PLAYING) ♪
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
("AFRICAN SWIM, MAIN TITLES"
BY JOHN LURIE PLAYING) ♪
("I HOPE SHE IS OKAY"
BY MARVIN PONTIAC PLAYING) ♪
Quite a strange thing to do,
to talk into to a camera
like you're talking to a person.
It's hard.
It's so artificial.
Like, I'm a warm
and friendly person
talking into a camera.
It's just wrong.
A-- and people who can actually
do it well?
They're probably sociopaths.
I mean, really.
'Cause it's just
a weird thing to do.
If you're good at it, you can
probably make a lot of money,
but (WINCES)
it's not a good thing,
and I've noticed
as the show has gone on
I've gotten better at it.
And as I got better at it,
I became a worse
and worse person.
I'm not kidding.
(BIRDS SINGING)
JOHN LURIE: Look at that.
It looks like an elephant trunk.
I think I'm gonna take it down
and put it to good use.
(WOOD CREAKING)
Whoa! (EXCLAIMS)
("DRIVING INTO COUNTRY"
BY JOHN LURIE PLAYING) ♪
(FOOTSTEPS)
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
(IMITATES ELEPHANT TRUMPETING)
JOHN: So
When me and Evan were,
like, teenagers
I played the harmonica
and he played the piano,
and we became obsessed
with Little Walter.
And then after a year or two,
I was playing the saxophone
and he was still on the piano.
And we-- w--
we were equally obsessed
about Coltrane
and this record,
Live at Birdland.
And we were mostly
out of the house then,
but we would come back
and Sunday morning,
maybe, my mom
would make breakfast.
And I just presumed she was
still paying the dental bills
'cause Evan had had
this mouth surgery
and he was supposed
to be very, very careful.
He was supposed to not--
not yell or laugh too hard.
He was supposed
to be very careful
'cause the stitches
would come out.
And we're listening
to this music loud,
and my mom was a good sport
about this stuff,
but we were listening
to, um, "Afro Blue"
on Live at Birdland.
And we had this breakfast
of pancakes and
sausages and who knows what.
(CLICKS TONGUE)
And we're sitting there,
and we've got the music blaring.
There's this part
where Elvin and McCoy Tyner
are just going nuts,
and-- and McCoy's getting
to the end of these phrases,
thinking that Coltrane's gonna
come in, you know
(IMITATES PIANO PLAYING)
And you think Coltrane's gonna
come in, but he doesn't.
And they're just so muscular,
and Elvin is, you know
(EXCLAIMS)
And when Coltrane finally
comes in, it's
(IMITATES MUSIC)
And Evan, to mime the music,
goes (IMITATES MUSIC)
(CHUCKLES) And-- and--
the stitches come flying
out of his mouth
and blood spurts
all over the table.
And my mom's like
(GASPS) "Evan!"
And my-- Evan is just laughing,
and he keeps going
(IMITATES MUSIC, LAUGHS)
Kind of a beautiful memory
from my childhood.
'Cause, you know (GROANS)
that-- that's
what the music costs.
Yep. That's what it costs.
(BIRDS SINGING)
(HEAVY FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING)
JOHN: Bum ba-deedle-dee
Bum-ba-dum ♪
Ba-dum ba-deedle-dee
Bum-ba-dum ♪
Ba-dum ba-deedle-dee
Deedle-dee ♪
Bum ba-dum ba-dum ♪
(HEAVY FOOTSTEP)
JOHN: When we finished
the Voice of Chunk record
we were-- it was--
the record was ready to come out
in Germany and Austria
or somewhere,
and-- and we were racing
to get the cover done.
And I was always told,
"John, you gotta put your face
on the cover of these records.
You know, that's how
you're gonna sell records.
People know you
from the movies." And I just--
just don't want anything
like that.
Plus, I really saw the band
as a band, it's like a tribe.
And
Ari Marcopoulos took
a photograph of me,
so I said, "Well, fuck it.
I'll put my face
on the album cover."
And we brought it to this guy.
I'll leave his name out of it.
And he was gonna design
the album cover.
And it's really a rush.
It's coming out
in Germany, you know?
And I go back to him
in a few days.
(LAUGHING) And all he's done
is take my picture
and blown it up
to the size of the album.
You know how-- how big
albums are? They're like that.
You know? So my--
And I said, "I look like
I'm Donald Trump.
You can't do this."
He said, "No, it's good.
It means Lounge Lizards are
not afraid to be big now."
(WHISPERING) I said,
"What the fuck, you idiot."
(IN NORMAL VOICE) So now I gotta
figure out something to do.
I don't know
where this came from,
but I always try to go
with the first thing
with the paintings,
with everything else,
is I wanna put an eel.
An eel in a straight line
under the photograph,
and then Kazu's mouth,
three times.
That's gonna be the cover.
And flowers, maybe, on the side.
And there's an incredible bird
out there.
All right, back to our story.
An eel in a straight line.
Which is not an easy thing
to actually do
'cause it can't be an eel
who's died
in this, you know, bad position,
or a one that's still
alive and slithering around.
So you gotta find an eel
that's kinda on its way out
you know? And, uh
Or freshly dead.
And put it in a straight line
and photograph it.
First, we go
to the Fulton Fish Market,
South Street Seaport.
"No, no, no, we don't--
There's no eels.
You know, maybe go to the docks
where they come in,
maybe you'll get an eel,
but nobody really seems to
catch eels
and bring them into Manhattan.
But you could try the--"
You know, so we go to the docks,
nobody's got an eel,
and then they suggest
going to Chinatown.
And, uh, we see these eels
in a tank, outside a restaurant.
And we go in,
and the guy's dressed
in this beautiful 1940s suit.
He looks like a
you know, a gangster from a--
from a movie or something.
And I go in, and I say,
"I'd like to buy an eel."
And he won't even look at me.
He said, "No."
I don't even think he said no,
he just tried to--
I said, "No, no, I'll give you
100 dollars for a live eel."
"No."
He's-- And it's just like
I don't exist to him.
And-- and it pissed me off.
And then he said--
He takes me by the arm,
and I think he's gonna,
you know,
tell me somewhere
I can get an eel,
and he just says--
He takes me outside, and then
he turns around to walk in.
He says, "Goodbye."
And now I'm fucking pissed.
I say, "I'll give you
200 dollars for an eel."
And he stops,
and he's just looking down,
he won't look at me,
and I say, "You gotta
at least look at me."
And now a crowd starts
to gather, and I'm pissed.
And
Ari's sort of standing there
like, "Uh, John"
And he actually said,
"John," um, but I--
This guy's gonna look at me,
or I'm not gonna leave.
And, uh, a crowd gathers.
(CHUCKLING) And I'm trying
to calm myself down,
but not doing a great job.
And this little woman comes up
behind me and pulls on my sleeve
and says, "You want to find
an eel follow me."
So, okay.
So, I'm sure I'm-- we're gonna
be led around the corner
and have the shit kicked
out of me, but no.
We go down this alley
and into this little, tiny shop,
and she's got these tanks,
these aerated tanks
with carp in 'em.
But as she moves the carp out--
live--
but as she moves the carp
out of the way,
you can see these eels
down at the bottom.
But it's hard
to catch an eel.
And she's got her net,
and she's, you know,
swooping around.
And then she finally gives it,
and we give her--
I think we gave her 200 bucks.
We gave her 200 bucks
for the eel,
and we put it in a bucket,
and it's on its way out,
you know,
the eel's, like, almost gone.
So we drive--
We had a-- (MUMBLES)
I had a rented car,
we drive, and we stop
because I gotta go,
Ari's gotta go somewhere,
and we gotta get this done
and sent off to Germany
before the record comes out,
or else my face
is gonna come out like this
on the cover, and, you know,
we gotta get this done.
So we stop somewhere
in the Lower East Side
and put the eel down
on the sidewalk.
And he's down on the sidewalk,
and he's just barely alive,
you know?
He's just like (MUTTERS)
And, uh, I keep trying
to put him in a straight line,
and then it starts to rain.
So we put the eel in a bucket,
and I say, "We could do it
on the windowsill at my house."
So we drive really fast,
like mad,
we park illegally
in front of the house,
we run up the stairs.
But now the eel's covered
with all the, you know,
sand and dust from the street.
And, um
I gotta wash it off.
He's dead.
Take him out of the bucket.
And I go into my bathroom
to wash off the eel.
Except he--
One speck of water hits this eel
and he springs to life.
And I'm holding him
in the middle,
and he's stronger than you can
fucking imagine.
The eel is so strong,
and he's like (GRUNTS)
He's trying to bite my face.
It's like a horror movie.
And he's so slimy that I can
barely hold on to him.
And I was like, "I'm not letting
go of this thing
in my apartment,
I'll never clean it up."
And he's, like, trying
to bite my face, and it was a--
It's this real battle, you know?
(CHUCKLES) It's like--
And Ari's yelling at me,
"Hey, I gotta go, let's go!"
And he's like,
"You're late for this?"
"I'm fighting death in here."
And the eel's like (GROWLS)
And so I grab the eel by--
by the gills
and I strangle it
to death.
And as I finish killing
the eel
I turn around and I see Ari
standing at the--
at the door of the bathroom.
(LAUGHING)
And you could see the whites
all the way
around his eyes, like
And I said, "I killed the eel."
And he sorts of goes, "Yes."
And I said,
"You think it's bad
that I killed the eel?"
And he says, "Not if
we don't tell anybody."
So, we real quick--
we take the eel,
I finish washing it off,
I put it on the windowsill,
he stands on the--
on the radiator and leans over
and photographs the eel
on the windowsill,
and it's a straight line,
it's gonna work.
And then I go try to wash off
my hands, but I can't,
and I'm about to go
to a photo session.
I sort of put on my suit
without touching anything,
and, um, I rush out.
And then I come back home,
hours later
and the eel is gone.
"Okay, I guess he fell,
and I gotta go back out."
So I get ready to go out
and, um, leave my house.
I look down
underneath the window.
It's like-- it's three flights,
and then there's
a basement apartment,
so it goes down-- it was
four flights, really, down.
The eel's not there.
Maybe he fell off
and somebody found it
and put it in the trash.
And then I walk to get a cab
on Seventh Avenue.
So I walk
down Eighteenth Street,
I live all the way at Sixth,
and I'm about to hail a cab,
and then I see the eel
(CHUCKLES)
on the ground in the curb.
Like, he's fallen four flights,
after being strangled,
he's fallen four flights,
climbed up the stairs
from the basement apartment,
and then gone a block down,
all the way down, um
all the way
down Eighteenth Street,
almost to Seventh Avenue,
to finally come to his death.
It's like Rasputin the Eel.
It was--
I think all the bad luck
I've had since then
is 'cause I strangled that eel.
("THE BEAST"
BY JOHN LURIE PLAYING) ♪
(MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
(MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(HEAVY FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING)
JOHN: Deedle-dee
Bum-ba-dum ♪
Ba-dum ba-deedle-dee
Bum-ba-dum ♪
Ba-doo a-deedle-dee
Bum-ba-doo ♪
Ba-dum ba-deedle-dee
Bum-ba-doo ba-loo ♪
(BIRDS SINGING)
(DEEP TRUMPETING)
(TRUMPETING CONTINUES)
(STOMPING)
(JOHN IMITATES TRUMPETING)
(TRUMPETS)
(TRUMPETING)
(TRUMPETING ECHOES)
(HEAVY FOOTSTEPS)
(CHUCKLING) I'm not really
an elephant, you know.
I'm John.
("THE FIRST AND ROYAL QUEEN"
BY THE LOUNGE LIZARDS PLAYING) ♪
(MUSIC FADES) ♪