KALEIDOSCOPE
A Novel
Kaleidoscope©
Movie / TV Treatment
Based on the Sunstone Press novel by Elliott B. Oppenheim
Contact: James Clois Smith Jr., Sunstone Press / (505) 988-4418
Length: Full—1:40:00 +/- PG-“lite-R”
General adult demography; some sex; some profanity.
Logline: Intellectual Chaim Goldberg separates from his nuclear family in 1963-64, and sets off interpersonal atom bombs.
ACT I—Swanky Yardley Country Club, Buck County, PA
Entering his senior year in high school, in the summer of 1963, hyper-intellectual CHAIM GOLDBERG, is a lifeguard at Yardley Country Club, a swanky, exclusive, elitist, snobby, no-Jews-allowed institution. A Jew, he can only work there, not play.
On the guard stand, a foxy blonde annoys him. Wearing an itsy-bitsy-teenie-weenie-yellow-polka-dot bikini, she’s been eyeing him all summer and, as a gift, she gives him a kaleidoscope. She signs up for a private swim lesson with him, pretending she does not know how to swim. He is confused but, he just can’t go to college a virgin and perceives Mrs. Boudreaux as a way to cure his self-conscious adolescent defect. After their lesson, she reveals that she was a breaststroker in college.
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He is groveling, cleaning the YCC urinals. JOHNNY “THE SQUID” CALAMARI, East coast mob boss, surprises, and intimidates him. Chaim has been doing backhoe work for mobster CHUBBY GOLONDRINA, Calamari’s henchman, and he likes “da’money.” Sadistically, to drive home his superiority, The Squid, steps on Chaim’s fingers until blood oozes onto the tile floor.
Finally, after an exhausting day, he finds an invitation on his windshield. Mrs. Boudreaux lures him to play ping pong at Manor Boudreaux, her opulent Yardley estate. There, he worries about her husband, a wealthy shipping magnate, HARRY “THE BEE BOUDREAUX,” but she assures him that he is off in Asia. She debauches the boy. She has no ping pong table and they have a sexual tryst. He is ready for college.
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Home the next day his mother, EVA GOLDBERG, a nasty punitive woman, torments him about where he has been, and reminds him of early dinner plans with family friends, AKU AND ILONA RINTALA, Finnish immigrants. His mother requires him to call them Aunt and Uncle, though they are not relatives. Upon his return from band practice, returns, just as dinner is served, he gets a call.
At STEVE ZUBARSKY’s home, Chaim’s best friend, group of his friends are eating pizza. Steve lost his father in a steel mill accident a rear or so in the past. He has invited a flute player who has expressed interest in meeting Chaim. The Zubarsky family is Chaim’s best model of what a family should be and he loves Steve’s mother, ANNA ZUBARSKY. She is Johnny Calamari’s mistress and executive secretary for local United Steelworkers Union 4889. Anna is Chaim’s supporter and he loves her deeply, as a mother surrogate.
STELLA O’SHANNAHAN, his classmate and flutist, is awkward, self-conscious about her conspicuous braces, and she enchants Chaim. Chaim wants both women: Nedda for sex; Stella for love.
Steve tells the group of a race riot taking place in the Dogwood section of Levittown, on Deepgreen Lane. The Meyers family has integrated this white community. Restrictive covenants exclude blacks in the same way that the country club rules exclude Jews.
ACT II—Riot
The group goes to the riot, is shocked by the inhumanity, and the unruly throng attacks and injures them. Needing their wounds dressed and cared for, Chaim and Stella puzzle over where to go. ARTHUR “ARTIE” GOLDBERG does not like to spend money…any money on anything. Chaim is worried about his parents finding out about what he has been doing. The duo winds up at Manor Boudreaux.
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Chaim notices a white Hispano Suiza sedan in the driveway. Mrs. Boudreaux steps out and behind her looms a much older man, a Hemingway figure: Harry “The Bee” Boudreaux, kingpin of Boudreaux Shipping Lines. He is pompous and flirts with Stella. After far too much posturing and booze, Mr. Boudreaux enters a rage, beats Nedda for his perception of a her infidelity with Georgia O’Keefe’s young lover.
Chaim and Stella leave the horrific scene and he takes her home. They are magnetized to each other. On the way home, alone, vibrating with the events over the previous two days, he is distracted, drives too fast, and crashes.
His family arrives at the ER and he is banged up but nothing more. Stella’s family arrives. His mother has a conniption: Stella is conspicuously Catholic, wearing a cross on her necklace. As vehement as is the anti-Negro sentiment in southeast Pennsylvania in the 1960’s, before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Mrs. Goldberg reacts to the potential that her son would marry a catholic. Mrs. Goldberg does not like goyim. Stella’s mother, Mary, tries to befriend Mrs. Goldberg but is met with a chill.
The next morning, Stella arrives at Chaim’s unpretentious Levittown home at 22 Turnhill Lane, in Levittown, to see how he is doing, and Eva, in the most passionately rude terms, tells her that she, a shiksa, is not welcome in her home. Stella, deeply wounded, in tears, unable to understand any of this rejection, leaves, and Artie, the father, waves the Levittown Times at his wife, concerned about the front page picture portraying his son protecting Stella at the riot. Eva becomes hysterical.
Chaim pursues Stella and finds her in a cornfield. Gently, he explains the origins of his mother’s feelings: remnants of the War, the Holocaust. They wrap in a quilt, their loving blanket, hug and kiss, talk about inner family structures, Catholic v. Judaism, decide that they really are similar in many ways.
Following a romantic sunlit walk to the Delaware River, the train rolls over and smashes pennies they placed on the train track. Hungry, they go to Chubby’s Dairy barn, Mafia owned, where they encounter Calamari, his henchmen, who points to the headlines along with the one-half page picture of Chaim protecting Stella. They see some of the students who were at the riot who, anti-Semites, cruelly tease Chaim. He seeks calm with his band friends who, with a sense of social consciousness, return to the ongoing protests.
A helicopter sets down. It is Pennsylvania Governor William Bingham and a woman: Chaim’s mother. Eva is a social activist, replete with vexing inconsistencies. She is racist yet she champions the black cause and simmers down the rioters.
She shares the national front pages with Martin Luther King who gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. that same day.
That night, he confronts his mother about her hypocritical conduct, she smacks him, then incestuously dominates him. She forbids him to marry a shiksa but he points out that whatever is going on, he is only in high school and far from marriage. He dreams of California and must get away from his crazy family. He laments, wondering what it would be like to have friends who wouldn’t taunt or beat him, to have a mother who didn’t smoke and slap him, to have a father who would notice him. Mother intrudes and threatens him if he continues with this forbidden liaison. Tormented, he sleeps
The next day, needing relief, he visits his older lover, Nedda. Insatiable, after he is done with her, he goes to Stella’s home, where she is angry. He’s late. He soothes her and, they go to Rintala’s farm for a picnic where they are ensconced in the barn, atop hay bales.
They smooch, begin lunch, when a sliding door into the bar opens. It is Aku Rintala, the family friend, and his mother. They are lovers. Chaim is devastated but they must not be detected. Aku and Eva leave, Chaim jumps to the floor, picking up a sledge hammer and vandalizes the expensive BMW 503…but, his mother dropped a cigarette as she embraced Aku and the barn goes up in a conflagration. Chaim and Stella escape.
That evening, Eva behaves as if nothing happened, Chaim suffers, is enraged, then confronts her. Denying her role, she molests him, demanding that he declare is love for her.
CUT TO:
Following the barn fire, some days later, Chaim attends dinner at the Zubarsky home. Anna awaits the arrival of her paramour: Johnny Calamari. Stella arrives and the family begins to enjoy Philly cheese steaks but Anna drops dead.
Steve, grief stricken, spends the night at Chaim’s. Both have sustained deep loss. It is Erev Yom Kippur. Anna’s funeral follows.
Chaim wanted to live rich, like the Rintalas or Nedda, but he’s trapped by his humble digs, the post-War development of Levittown, the homes Joan Baez sung about: Little Boxes.
After school he arrives home and finds a gift from Uncle Elijah, his father’s second cousin, not his real uncle. Unlce Elijah has sent him a Scientific American subscription. There is an article about cave diving: underwater spelunking. He is captivated by this image and searches his parents’ room. He finds an old chest with his father’s war memorabilia. There is a 9mm pistol and an hand grenade. Finding his father’s war passports, he has discovered that his mother had lied to him about his father sharing the same birthday. This is yet another lie in her tyranny of lies, deceptions, and misrepresentations. He is so enraged at his mother’s abuse, that he pulls the pin…
His mother surprises him…he drops the grenade…and it rolls beneath the bed. They leave the house…and nothing happens. The grenade is a dud. When they return to the home, he brandishes his father’s service revolver and shoots, missing his mother, shattering a beloved crystal bowl from Rumania, a keepsake from his grandmother. Thus, the score is eve. They make up and he goes to sleep, wondering what it would be like when he loses his mother. The only way to survive is to turn off, to stop feeling.
ACT III
The Kennedy assassination coincided, 22 November 1963, with his mother’s birthday and disrupts the family and the world and both his birthday and his father’s.
Eva bought him a high school letter sweater the year before but it was not the chi-chi kind the “rich kids” had. In reconciliation, she got him the correct style and they play an emotional all-night ping pong game.
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The Goldbergs invite abandoned, orphaned Steve to move in with them. The boys, comforting each other, sleep together, in this tornado of complex disappointments. Chaim worries that he has become “a fag.”
Goldbergs decide to celebrate Christmas to make Steve feel at home. As everyone sat down for dinner Elijah Lubel, Arthur Goldberg’s second cousin, arrives. He is multi-lingual, but his English is sketchy. He is a mysterious, Polish character from the ghetto, a dark yet overtly harmless and sweet man, who brings European delicacies. The family drinks vodka, dances, and Artie and Elijah play instruments. To Chaim, this view into his family heritage is new and novel since he knows very little about his family’s history.
At the end of the weekend, Artie shows his son a Time Magazine article about Culley College in LA and Chaim sees this as his escape route. He and his girlfriend Stella will go there together and leave behind the East. His mother discloses how hard it is for her to live with his father and he puzzles whether his cold and retentive father loves him.
Chaim wants both women but this is impossible. He visits Nedda and discovered that her husband, Harry the Bee, has beaten her. She wants him to help kill him. He refuses but continues to think it over.
Because of the state of mores and of birth control, Chaim and Stella refrain from intercourse. The day after Christmas Chaim and Stella exchange rings, he thinks of sex with Nedda, and they go “too far.”
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He and Stella want to celebrate New Years with Dick Clark on American Bandstand. His mother refuses to let him go with Stella but the father intercedes on his behalf and she relents. Afterwards, with the Rintalas in Europe, they sneak into their mansion, built in 1610. Stella tells him that she is pregnant. They equivocate over what to do…an abortion in Trenton or to keep the baby, the product of their adolescent love. They consider consequences and he reacts in a very loving manner. She’s Catholic; he’s Jewish; both have reverence for life, but weigh the practicalities. They leave the decision up in the air but are devoted to each other.
He returns home on New Year’s Day only to read his mother’s message that a “Mrs. Buddo” wants him to plow her driveway. He recognizes the transcription mistake, goes to Manor Boudreaux, where Nedda is near death from a drug and alcohol overdose. He saves her and, perhaps under the emotions and pressure of the moment, expresses his love for her. She tells him that she is pregnant…but the baby is not his. She hands him banks books which implicate her husband and all he has to do is to give the documents to Johnny. Harry has embezzled from Johnny. Chaim’s disclosure will assure that Johnny will kill Harry.
ACT III:
Chaim is devastated: two women pregnant! When he drives home he realizes that he is in a real mess and considers suicide. Johnny Calamari comes out of the snowy night and pushes his car off the road. Chaim learns that Calamari has been watching him, yet confides in Johnny that he has two women pregnant.
Johnny laughs and demands the womens’ identities: Stella and Nedda. Calamari tells him that he has to tell his parents…and reveals that he has been sleeping with Mrs. Bliss, Chaim’s physics teacher. Johnny has a stash of cash and a human hand falls out of his tow truck. Calamari swears him to secrecy, pays him well, and tells him that he’ll call him when he has a “job.” He tells Chaim that the answer to his problems is Doctor Nick “The Razor” Palumbo, Johnny’s cousin and abortionist to the underworld. Chaim hands over the bank books and has sold his soul to the Devil.
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Chaim is frantic: two women pregnant and he has set in motion a man’s murder. He decides to seek absolution and help. He must confess. He arrives home and there is Uncle Elijah…a wise man who will know what to do and Chaim knows that he will be able to maintain confidence and not tell his parents. He can trust his Uncle, who listens.
In Elijah’s ghetto culture, it is not unusual for boys to marry at Chaim’s age…and he misconstrues Chaim’s story. He believes that Chaim has created twins. He runs into the parents’ bedroom and breaks the good news! His parents explode.
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Chaim goes to Stella’s home and, wounded, curls up with her…and comes clean…but not all the way. Stella’s ultimatum for them staying together is that he must give up Nedda…but, good news, she’s had her period.
When he returns home, his mother ambushes him, they tangle, and she shares her worst fears: him leaving, and marrying a shiksa. He assures her that after the summer he and Stella will be separated: a lie. His mother’s ultimatum is that he gives up Stella. She will not allow him to take her to the prom.
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In an early morning contemplation, he walks along the frozen Delaware River, crashes through the ice, and wind up at Nedda’s. She warms him, then forces him to take her to an appointment at Galzerano Funeral home. It is a mob wake where Johnny Calamari arrives with Stella.
Before Chaim gave him the bankbooks, Johnny knew about Harry the Bee’s embezzlements. Stella runs to Chaim, angry at being involved in this, but, yet, loyal. Stella, before Harry the Bee passes into the crematory oven, gets one last whack at him: a baseball bat across his skull, splattering brains everywhere. Johnny announces a new mob member: Chaim Goldberg. Stella is livid. He feels like a crazy Rumanian juggler with too many plates in the air.
FADE
ACT IV
Chaim tries to smooth things over with Stella but she has already visited Nedda and knows what has been going on…all of it. Nedda reassures Stella that her baby is not Chaim’s. Nedda prepares to leave for her abortion and asks the duo to accompany her. Nedda undergoes an abortion with Nick “The Razor” Palumbo, defrocked physician. The experience is intense for the trio, each for his or her particular reason.
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Chaim has to tell Stella that he can’t take her to the prom and he creates an elaborate plan, something worthy of the deceptions his mother or Elijah would create. Chaim’s mother has arranged his date with an unattractive girl, MARTHA FLAUMENBAUM. Chaim meets Steve and Stella at Nedda’s home and exchange dates.
…but in Nedda’s boozy swirl, Steve and Martha drink too many martini’s and remain at her mansion.
The prom ends in Stella’s hail of jealous rage and disillusionment. She is mad about Chaim’s inability to confront his mother, this dishonest switcheroo, and her conscription into this scheme. She warns him that he must deal with his mother.
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The next morning, Nedda holds a memorial service for her aborted baby: John Fitzgerald.
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Passover arrives and Mrs. Goldberg bars Stella. Chaim boils. Elijah shows up and passes out one-hundred dollar bills, telling everyone that he robbed a bank. Chaim disrupts the seder, Artie screams at him, inadvertently bumping chicken paprikash from Eva’s hands. Elijah slips away and a Pennsylvania State Patrolman arrives looking for him. He did rob a bank…and has vanished.
ACT V
The academic year nears its end and, at the Curtis Institute in Philly, Chaim attends his last trumpet lesson with his hero, Herr Knauss, the Principal trumpeter with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Knauss has been a great supporter of the boy and Chaim sees him as a surrogate father figure. Knauss praises Chaim’s work. Then, on the way home, he meets John Coltrane, who likes the boy and compliments him on his goal to become a physician. As the years winds down, Chaim is sad but looks forward to California. At his high school graduation, his father finally acknowledges and praises the boy.
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The night before departure, August 1974, he and Stella swim in the YCC pool in moonlight, pledging their hearts. The next day, at the Trenton train station, as they sit awaiting the train, they meet two boys his age off to boot camp, destined for South East Asia.
The train arrives, teary goodbye, and Chaim is off to LA, looking forward to his reunion with his love. Once on the train he opens Stella’s card. She is going to Vassar, not LA. He has a tantrum and throws her letter the window along with all East Coast memorabilia, including that from Nedda. He can rely upon nothing and sees his life in complete despair.
During the transcontinental voyage, he gains perspective, and enters the warm California sun, meets his real Uncle Phil, and joins President Johnson’s Great Society.
FADE