I'm surprised it's taken them this long
I probably would have had a better shot
At winning a Lifetime achievement award
If I had quit after my third movie
But when you're an actor, you act
You work
And back when I was making movies
That's just what we did
We worked
People talk about how many movies
Actors my age made when they were in their prime
But if you ask me, all we did was treat it like a job
We didn't think we were any better
Or any worse
Than the mailman
Or the construction worker
Or anybody else who punched in at nine
And left at five
And if you made a few bad movies
Well those were your bad days
And your bad days paid you as well
As your good days
So who was going to complain?
Not me, that's for damn sure
But my fourth movie was a real doozy
And the fifth and sixth weren't any better
Pretty soon I started getting used less and less
And this was before the days
When you could just go do television
Television? --Ha!
You were better off
Throwing yourself in a ravine
Hell, I didn't even own a television
Still don't
I'd rather watch burning garbage
...Don't pay any attention to me
I'm just a grumpy old man
But I used to be hot shit
I don't care what anybody tells you
You're not going to be hot shit forever
I look at guys like DeNiro and Redford
And I hear people say they're still handsome
But the truth is
Girls only go to bed dreaming about you
When you're nineteen
And you don't give a shit
That's what ages you
You start caring about things
Worrying about them
You meet a nice girl
A day player, quiet
Sorta plain looking
No Elizabeth Taylor, no Natalie Wood, no Marilyn Monroe
Who, by the way, is doing television now
Can you believe it?
No, you meet the kinda girl
Who could never get the attention
Of somebody like James Dean
And you fall for her
You fall hard
But as soon as you're married
The teen girls turn on you
You've betrayed them
You've betrayed their dreams
Maybe they can't have you
But nobody else should either
And so they move on to some other guy
Who has a girl just like you do
But who's smart enough
To keep quiet about it
Who keeps lettin' 'em dream
Your movies are flopping
Your sex appeal is gone
You're going to be a dad
Which is not sexy
Oh maybe to older women
But young girls see a guy with a baby and forget it
You remind them of their father
And aside from a few of the ones with mental issues
No teenage girl wants that
You start drinking
You start drinking a lot
One night you're out in the hills
Leaving a party
Your pregnant wife beside you
And you're driving too fast
And then--in a split second
You lose control
The car spins out
There's a cliff
And then you're...
..............................
You wake up in a hospital
And it's gone
It's all gone
Your wife
Your kid
Your career
Who the fuck is going to hire you now?
You're just a drunk
Who got mixed up with some poor girl
And got her killed
They want to put you in prison
But you have just enough money left
To hire some scumbag lawyer
To keep you a free man
Later on you think
Why did I bother?
What was the point?
Not to flash forward--I hate that in movies
Flash forwarding is a lazy device
But in this case, it's necessary
Because for decades, nothing happened
And then after awhile, people forgot, as they do
And I started getting mentioned in retrospectives
On channels that show old movies
An offer was made
For me to do a memoir
I took it
The money was good
Up to that point
I'd been living in some shack in Florida
Eating fish I caught myself
Wearing the same clothes for weeks on end
Then all of a sudden
I'm a lost legend
And everybody wants to put me
Back up on my pedestal
So they give me a Lifetime Achievement Award
It feels nice--
Until somebody takes the time
To look up the accident
And what happened
Then the question becomes--
Do we really forgive this guy?
When does the clock run out on being a fuck-up?
There were people who thought--
He should just stay what he was
A has-been
Some guy who used to be a sex symbol
Old now, wrinkles, fat, no hair left
Shoulda died in that car accident
That's what they say
I feel like asking them if they know
How many times I wished that had happen
The best dream I have--to this day
Is when I dream that I'm the one who died in that wreck
And not that girl
You know you haven't had much of a life
When you fantasize about it ending
Sixty years ago
But they did give me the award
The little trophy
And then they sent me back
To my place in Florida
And I went back to reality
Back to being just another old man
With a somewhat interesting past
Waiting to die
For real this time
If I sound like I'm advocating for dying young
You're mistaken
I'm saying don't idolize people when they're young
It's easy to be young and bold
Young and fearless
Young and talented
You don't know how to be anything but perfect when you're young
People think it's the other way around, but it's not
You start perfect and over time
You fuck yourself up
'Scuse my language, but it's true
Best advice I can give you is this--
Quit while you're ahead
Quit while it's still
Easy
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