INTERIOR DAY:
A SMALL CUBICLE AT THE OBSOLETE ROCK ’N’ ROLL WRITERS’ RESIDENCY

DAVID DALTON, a graying, long-haired old hippie somewhat the worse for wear sits anxiously in a featureless white enclosure. He is dressed in the hip tatterdemalion fashion of thirty years ago–crushed velvet pants (with rips), pin-striped velvet jacket from Take Six (too tight), Anello & Davide boots, Afghani necklace and other Berber jewelry. A young supercilious YUPPIE INQUISITOR enters the cubicle with clipboard and pencil. He’s wearing a retro jacket a t-shirt with an ironic logo–in short he looks like TRL’s Carson Daly or a supermarket manager.

INQUISITOR:
Mr. Dalton, according to the minutes of our subcommittee you are eligible for a residency in the Pasadena chapter of the Obsolete Rock Writers’ Infirmary.

DALTON:
Cool!

INQUISITOR:
I just have a few questions.

DALTON:
Shoot!

INQUISITOR:
It says here that you wrote a book about the Beatles in which you deleted various passages at the request of various members of the group and their wives. True or false?

DALTON:
Yeah, well, Ringo said he didn’t want the thing about him chewing gum in it and Yoko objected to the story John told me about masturbating in English class–so what?

INQUISITOR:
So in other words ... you kow-towed to them.

DALTON:
Hey, man, it was their book in their album, what do you want from me?

INQUISITOR:
In other words you were a flack, a sort of hired stenographer.

DALTON:
Hey, watch it, man!

INQUISITOR:
I didn’t want to bring this up but....

DALTON:
Go, baby, I’m cool.

INQUISITOR:
The incident with James Brown in the men’s room of the Macon airport.

DALTON:
What the–?

INQUISITOR:
You did on several occasions go into the men’s room with James Brown, did you not?

DALTON:
Hell, yeah. I went into the men’s room with lots of people: James Brown, Wilson Pickett. The rest rooms in the south had just been integrated. It was a civil rights thing, man, a sign of solidarity.

INQUISITOR:
That was some protest!

DALTON:
I did what I could.

INQUISITOR:
Let’s move on. The incident at Delmonico’s where Otis Redding slapped Ultra Violet’s face with his strip steak.

DALTON:
Whew! That really blew my mind, man.

INQUISITOR:
You condoned that?

DALTON:
Uh–hell, no!

INQUISITOR:
But you didn’t actually do anything did you?

DALTON:
Get real. What was I expected to do?

INQUISITOR:
Do you think that William Miller would have just sat there and let it happen without even saying anything?

DALTON:
Who?

INQUISITOR:
(pointing to a framed photograph of Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous)
Our benefactor.

DALTON:
(Laughs. He thinks it’s a joke.)
Oh, the kid in the movie? Waal, God bless ya, son. Ya got yer story on the cover of the Rolling Stone. I had a few of those in my time, too, ya know.

INQUISITOR:
Let me just address some problems we’re having with your career. To mention just a few items: (1) the humiliating wait in the Stones’ Maddox Street office while Mick Jagger tried on the latest ensemble from Mr. Fish, (2) Janis Joplin’s little scheme to score heroin in Vancouver that summer, (3) Little Richard’s butt-sniffing mania, (4) Brian Wilson asking you to set up a threesome with two "chicks" you used to live with.

DALTON:
I can explain, officer!

INQUISITOR:
But you didn’t write about any of these things in Rolling Stone, did you?

DALTON:
C’mon, man, I’m not an f---ing gossip columnist.

INQUISITOR:
Do you think William Miller would have abdicated his journalistic objectivity in such a craven manner?

DALTON:
I’m getting mighty sick of this little twerp. Anyway, Almost Famous is fiction, you moron. It’s an effing movie, get it?

INQUISITOR:
Don’t get pissy with me, sir. In any case, it’s all been fact-checked by the studio.

DALTON:
Yeah, right. Well, in my day they didn’t have any effing fact checkers, man.

INQUISITOR:
Yes, we know. Would it be correct to characterize your writing for the magazine as epic puff pieces, devoid of objectivity, and written with a fan’s blind infatuation?

DALTON:
Now, wait a goddamn minute! You think Jann Wenner, [owner, editor, emperor of Rolling Stone] wanted objectivity? Man, Jann was the biggest star-f---ker of them all. And proud of it! Anyway, we were all in it together, it was the Children’s Crusade. "Come the Revolution!" and all that great sh-t. Rock stars were the avatars of the coming apocalypse, the leading edge of the Aquarian age....

INQUISITOR:
Yes, Mr. Dalton, we’re only too aware of your dependence on muddle-headed hippie rhetoric. I’d like to close this session with a couple of multiple choice questions.

DALTON:
This is worse than my weekly visit to my parole officer.

INQUISITOR:
Did you ever kick in a rock star’s mini bar, tell him he was a fatuous over-paid phony playing million dollar riffs stolen from impoverished old bluesmen, or remind him of an embarrassing quote from a previous Rolling Stone interview?

DALTON:
Well, not exactly in those words, but, dig it, man, these cats–Hendrix, Keith, Little Richard, Janis, James Brown, Brian Wilson–they were living gods to me. They changed my f---king life! I was just an evangelist bringing the news from...

INQUISITOR:
Final question: Did you ever lecture an entire rock band on their moral obligations to society during an electric storm in a chartered plane?

DALTON:
Are you nuts? This is all from that dopey Cameron Crowe movie, isn’t it? You think that’s what life on the road was really like? Get real! That’s all Hollywood crap.

INQUISITOR:
Mr. Dalton, are you insinuating that Mr. Cameron Crowe, the director and writer of that esteemed movie would ever stoop to inventing material?

DALTON:
Hell, yeah! The little creep would stoop to a lot more than that, kid. I should know. He’d sell his autographed Led Zeppelin albums, his platform shoes, his solid-chocolate Oscar–anything to keep his foot in the movie biz.

INQUISITOR:
I’d like to draw your attention to the fact our institution is entirely underwritten by the generosity of Mr. Crowe. I’m sorry, Mr. Dalton, but I’m afraid we have to deny your application for residency in the Obsolete Rock Writers’ Home.

DALTON:
Oh, I see, just because I didn’t kiss his ass, is that it?

DALTON:
Actually, it had nothing to do with that. It has to do with your record. Despite all your sterling opportunities, you’ve proved yourself to be a gullible stooge of the music business, a naïve and uncritical worshipper of rock stars to whom you never uttered a discouraging word and are therefore unworthy to participate in our program. Good day, Mr. Dalton.

DALTON:
Okay, I was kidding, man. Can’t you guys take an effing joke? Please, man, I’ve been living in a cardboard box on Pico Boulevard for the last three months, I’ve been reduced to writing for Gadflymagazine, I have mental issues, I.....

INQUISITOR:
I’m deeply sorry. Melanie will show you out. If it’s any consolation to you, sir, we turned down Mr. Ben Fong-Torres last week.