The Love Game

Scene: the balcony of the Brattle Theatre. Characters: Gardner, Sokolov, Auspitz, and Hiss.)

Gardner: Looks like a loser.

Sokolov: I want to go home.

Auspitz: Ah. After all those dreary British comedies and Hollywood laff riots, the real thing is here at last: Gaelic Wit. Ho. ho: Victor fell out of bed again.

Sokolov: Please, fellahs, let me go home.

Miss: I'm beginning to get it. She wants him to marry her so she can have a baby (though of course I don't see how that necessarily follows, or why it should).

Gardner: It's getting worse.

Sokolov: Lemme, lemme, lemme.

Auspitz: How Parisian, Victor just said salaud.

Hiss: Brendan Gill of the New Yorker says: "The girl wants the young man to marry her, so she can start having a family... Philippe de Broca stops at nothing in the way of gags and tricks to make us laugh."

Gardner: If only we could.

Auspitz: Hey, Voila, they're back in bed again.

Gardner: Wow.

Sokolov: Please, already.

Auspitz: How's that for a line full of Gallic insight: "Victor's like a butterfly: you must take him as he is."

Hiss: Keep it clean, you guys.

Auspitz: Quiet, Hiss. victor is picking his nose. Transalpine realism.

Hiss: Where's Sokolov?

Gardner: Sokolov? There! He's getting away.

Auspitz: Stop! Stop that reviewer! Stop him!

Sokolov: (repentant) Sorry, guys. But jeezus, I gotta leave.

Auspitz: One can appreciate true Continental spontaneity without in dulging in it oneself, Sokolov. Look, the encyclopedia salesman has just knocked over the glass for the fourth time.

Skolov: But it wasn't funny the first time.

Auspitz: Ce n'est pas drole, eh?

Hiss: We seem to be the only ones in the theatre laughing.

Gardner: Actually, we're the only ones in the theatre.

Sokolov: Look. It's over! It's over already!

Gardner: (sortant) Did you ever see a worse movie, Tony?

Hiss: (glibly) "King of Kings."

Auspitz: Chauvinist.

(Exeunt).