THE CASE OF THE GREATER GATSBY
EPISODE 8 - SHEEP GO TO HEAVEN
TRANSCRIPT

[The Case of the Greater Gatsby opening credits music plays]

Announcer: Now presenting Fig and Ford in The Case of the Greater Gatsby. Episode 8: Sheep Go to Heaven. Written by Sean Persaud and Sinéad Persaud. This episode is brought to you by Hunt A Killer.

Ford Phillips (Voice Over): We settled in for a long night of research at Bixby's. This place really had become my home away from home over the years. Let's be honest, I was here more than I was ever to be found in my dingy one bedroom apartment off Melrose. Sure, there were plenty of watering holes closer to home, but Bixby didn't mind me bringing work to his bar and the entertainment was some of the best around. Plus, Bixby's was far from the soul crushing Sunset Strip. Like that old saying goes, “I don't wanna go to Sunset Strip. I don't wanna feel the emptiness. Old marquees with stupid band names. I don't wanna go to Sunset Strip.”

Fig Wineshine (Voice Over): Of course not! You think you could find a goose ventriloquist act on the strip? Unlikely!

Goose Ventriloquist: The guy at the used car dealership was ruffling my feathers the other day because I said I was just taking a gander!

Fig Wineshine: Love this guy. Say, B, why do you put him in such a late slot?

Bixby Crane: Folks have complained that he's off-putting! Plus if he's any earlier, the feathers cause a safety hazard.

Fig Wineshine: Oh.

Goose Ventriloquist: Also said I needed a discount since I don't need a horn. I got one built in! HONK HONK HONK.

[The ventriloquist devolves into a COUGHING FIT.]

Goose Ventriloquist: Damn, I oughta stop smoking or I'll be ripe for foie gras.

Ford Phillips: Hey, back room. Looks like school's out for the night.

Fig Wineshine (Voice Over): Indeed, the curtains covering the entrance to Bixby's back room slipped open and out scurried the group of industry so and so's we'd been eyeing earlier. Including one Miss Darby Farnsworth: girl of sixteen and person of interest.

Ford Phillips: Listen, Bixby. These people you got slinking out of your backroom. What's going on there?

Bixby Crane: I think they're.... yes. Spider-people.

Fig Wineshine: Spider-people?? The comic books are true?

Bixby Crane: No uh... pest control. For the spiders. I was telling you about the spiders-

Ford Phillips: I think it's time to drop the curtains on this act. You're no goose ventriloquist.

Bixby Crane: And thank goodness for that.

Ford Phillips: Bixby, there's a folder with your name on it down at the police station. You're up to something back there and you've got all the wrong eyes on it.

Fig Wineshine: Cut us in and maybe we can help you out.

Ford Phillips (Voice Over): Bixby seemed to mull it over, with a surprising look of concern on his always serene face.

Bixby Crane: I might be in too deep. I wouldn't want to drag you under with me.

Ford Phillips: Drag us under? Pal, I haven't seen the sun in years.

Bixby Crane: That is deeply unhealthy. I'd recommend you look into some Vitamin D pills to supplement--

Fig Wineshine: I think it was a metaphor. Listen, we can run interference with the cops. Claudette can help.

Ford Phillips: But first, you gotta spill the beans.

Bixby Crane: No can do, I store them up high. For just that reason.

Fig Wineshine: Smart.

Ford Phillips: Fine, just tell us what's going on in the backroom then.

Bixby Crane: Alright. Follow me.

Ford Phillips (Voice Over): We left our notes and research with the sleeping Punchwhistles and followed Bixby to the back. He kept surreptitiously side-eyeing the rest of his establishment, perhaps on the hunt for some ominous onlooker that never appeared. We passed through the curtains and into a luxurious lounge. I was used to the back room being used as primarily a storage area, with a couple of chairs scattered around to use as a makeshift green room when the dressing room was too full. But the place had been transformed - lush red velvet curtains and dark mahogany bookcases covered the walls. Plump leather chairs collected around small tables dotted the room. And in the center was a large, circular hand carved wooden table with twelve chairs surrounding it.

Dorothy Parker: Who're the new bloods, Bix?

Ford Phillips (Voice Over): We turned to see a petite woman in her late 40s, with short, dark, wavy hair, peering at us over glasses with an eyebrow arched. I felt as if I was suddenly under glass.

Bixby Crane: Ah, Dorothy, these are my good friends Ford Phillips and Fig Wineshine. This is Dorothy Parker.

Dorothy Parker: Fig Wineshine? I thought she was blonde.

Bixby Crane: No, that's Rhubarb Johnson.

Fig Wineshine: She's a vegetable, I'm a fruit. Easy to mix us up. Fig Wineshine, former junior ace reporter at the Tinsel Town times and current senior private eye at the firm of Phillips and Wineshine, Detectives to the Stars, and I'm a bigger fan of you than than that bar shaped like a windmill they just put up on Cahuenga.

Dorothy Parker: I like the rind on you, fruit fly. Dorothy Parker -

Ford Phillips: Author, screenwriter, and noted satirist. I gotta say, I was expecting to find someone more nefarious in the backroom of Bixby's. Mind filling us in?

Bixby Crane: It's ok, Miss Parker. Apparently, the fuzz might be onto us and they can help.

Dorothy Parker: Great Northern Beans! But we've been so careful.

Ford Phillips: Not careful enough. Now what's going on here?

Bixby Crane: It's really just, uh, a social club.

Fig Wineshine: You've been dancing around us like Fred and Ginger at a banana peel factory because of a social club?

Ford Phillips:There's gotta be more to it than that. Deal the deets, Dotty.

[Dorothy SIGHS.]

Dorothy Parker: Well darlings, are you familiar with the Algonquin Round Table?

Ford Phillips: I might need to brush up on my Arthurian lore.

Dorothy Parker: When you do, just replace the sword and the stone with a pencil and a martini.

Fig Wineshine: I got this, Dots. I experience a particular type of pleasure when Ford doesn't know something and I get to explain it to him.

Ford Phillips: I just don't understand why they put the waist so low on the dresses
and frankly, I don't think it's weird to be confused about it, that's not where the waist is.

Dorothy Parker: Oh, hun.

Fig Wineshine: The Algonquin Round Table, of which our new friend here was a founding member, was a collective of writers, critics, and actors that got together every day for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. And because they had some big reporters like Frankie Adams in their ranks, they ended up shooting to high class fame for their gossip, jokes, and pranks - all very erudite, of course. Dots here is known for her wordplay and wit, and the Algonquin Round Table followed suit. Their influence on literature and editorial was profound.

Dorothy Parker: As was our cruelty. The incessant gossip and mean spirited jokes. The flippant cynicism. Oh, we thought we were the bee's knees, but looking back on it all makes me want to put my head in a honeycomb. What were we trying to prove?

Ford Phillips: You've got regrets?

Dorothy Parker: What can I say? Being droll took its toll.

Ford Phillips: So what's this supposed to be? A second draft of your high brow clique?

Dorothy Parker: More like a page one rewrite on the sins of the past. Look, there's really nothing scandalous about what's happening back here, it's just that the sort of circles I run in, and the sort of person that F. Scott and I tried to draw into this version of the -

Ford Phillips: Wait - you knew F. Scott Fitzgerald?

Dorothy Parker: Knew? Scotty and I were tighter than a bias cut Hooverette-

Ford Phillips: Oh here we go.

Fig Wineshine: Don't get him started on the bias cut.

Ford Phillips: You're telling me you can just cut a fabric at a different angle and all of a sudden the dresses are just clinging to you like-

Fig Wineshine: Ford, focus!

Ford Phillips: Sorry.

Dorothy Parker: Scotty and I heard the siren call of Hollywood beckoning - what better way to tell our stories and say something about the human experience than with - oh hell, who am I kidding? It's hard to make a buck writing poetry, but they can't stop paying people to write movies out here.

Fig Wineshine: It's a pretty nice system that I assume will always be just as lucrative.

Dorothy Parker: Undoubtedly. Anyways, even as the checks cleared, there was something missing. You can have your palm trees and balmy weather, but Scotty and I missed our back alleys and grey skies. So we decided to bring a little bit of Gotham to the city of Angels. A second stab at the Round Table, a group of peers we could meet with to exchange ideas and enrich our lives in ways writing cookie cutter movies just wasn't able to do. And so we created Bixby's Brigade.

Bixby Crane: I named it. After me. I'm Bixby.

Fig Wineshine: So you invited Leery O'Shaughnessy, Darby Farnsworth, Sheilah Graham? Who else?

Dorothy Parker: Oh Scotty wouldn't hear of not including Sheilah, although personally, I thought her involvement hewed too close to the back biting nature of the original installment. Darby may be 16, but her voice is unmistakeable. The fact that someone of her talent was brought on to rewrite that piece of garbage Grapes of Wrath adaptation is makes my heart ache. Grapes of Wrath? More like Grapes of Wrong! (a beat.) Sorry. They're not all gold.

Bixby Crane: I thought it was wonderful. That said, I need to head back out to the floor. We're about to wrap up for the evening.

Ford Phillips: Thanks Bixby.
[Bixby EXITS.]
Fig Wineshine: So Darby was brought on to rewrite the script? I thought it was hers from the beginning.

Dorothy Parker: No, they bought a script she wrote about Millard Fillmore and then pulled a bait and switch. Put her on rewrite duties for this piece of trash. Anyone involved in that better be prepared not to work for a while. And to be ashamed.

Fig Wineshine: Ok, ok. Calm down. Sometimes things are bad in a fun way. So who wrote the first draft?

Dorothy Parker: Why, Scotty did.

[Music SWELLS.]

Ford Phillips (Voice Over): So F. Scott Fitzgerald co-founded the group that had moved into Bixby's back room and attracted the attention of the LAPD.

Fig Wineshine (Voice Over): And he worked on the movie Willie and I are in. The movie that's been attracting multiple death threats.

Dorothy Parker (Voice Over): Hi darlings, a little voice over? Sounds good to me, my vocal cords are shot.

Fig Wineshine (Voice Over): You can do voice over?

Dorothy Parker (Voice Over): Honey, I practically invented it.

Fig Wineshine (Voice Over): I don't think that's true, but you sure said it with a lot of conviction, so I'll let it slide.

Ford Phillips (Voice Over): As Fig and Dorothy tried to outquip each other, I noticed a newspaper folded up on the table. Only it wasn't the same as the one I had just been reading outside. This one was tomorrow's early edition.

Ford Phillips: Say, you've got the early copy of tomorrow's Nightingale Gazette. Is that a perk of the Brigade?

Dorothy Parker: Why yes, we're afforded access. After all, we may be shaping the news of tomorrow.

Ford Phillips (Voice Over): I picked up the paper and opened the fold, only to see a paparazzi picture of a petite frazzled looking woman dressed in furs, hiding her face while walking out of an airport terminal. The caption read "Ex-socialite Zelda Fitzgerald mysteriously arrives in Los Angeles."

Fig Wineshine: So the Mrs. finally decided to show up, huh?

Dorothy Parker: Her circumstances are what one might call extenuating. Though the two had numerous clashes, their bond was a special one. I'm sure this is an absolute nightmare for Zelda.

Ford Phillips: His death or the sheer number of women he seemed to be involved with?

Dorothy Parker: Here's the thing about Scotty. He was absolutely brilliant. Too brilliant for this town. He tried Hollywood before, you know, in '27. He and Zelda left after two months. It was a shitshow. That man loved four things: Zelda, booze, women, and Zelda. When Scotty was sober, he could manage it all, he was clear headed and charming, our generation's greatest novelist, to put it simply. But when he was on the sauce, he was a horse's ass. I wouldn't say he changed, no... he opened up, to borrow a metaphor from his favorite drink. Like a wine able to breathe, everything turned ever so slightly. His keen observational talent, usually wielded in service of examining the foibles of society, fermented into paranoia and grudge holding. His sadness bubbled to the surface, like a glass of champagne you know is going to do you in in the morning. He just couldn't stop. Until his heart did.

Ford Phillips: What if I told you your friend may have been murdered?

Dorothy Parker: Murdered? By - ha! "By who?" Please Dorothy. Scotty made enemies just as well as he made eyes at every nearby lady. I suppose a number of people had cause to off him.

Fig Wineshine: Anyone topping your list?

Dorothy Parker: I suppose there's no resisting my true nature. What's a little gossip between friends. Are we friends?
Ford Phillips/Fig Wineshine: No./Yes please!
Dorothy Parker: Just kills me to even think it, but here we are. There was another member of the Brigade. A screenwriter named Donald Ogden Stewart. Stewie was one of my recruits, an old friend from the Algonquin days, Scotty never cared for him. Their personal enmity, which began during their days at Yale, bled into a professional one during a credit dispute on... oh, who can even remember.

Ford Phillips: Something tells me F. Scott could if he was alive.

Dorothy Parker: I see you're beginning to understand the stubborn old fool.

Fig Wineshine: So this Donald Ogden guy, was he at the meeting tonight?

Dorothy Parker: No. Stewie hasn't been at the meetings in a while. He found sharing a table with Scott distasteful and bowed out. Broke his heart.

Fig Wineshine: So maybe he wanted back in. Off his rival, get his seat back at the table.

Ford Phillips: You got an address? I promise we'll be discreet.

Fig Wineshine: We'll use what I like to call "No Cop, RoboCop” -

Ford Phillips: No we won't.

[Dorothy scribbles on a note and hands it over.]

Dorothy Parker: Here. I do hope nothing comes of it. Stewie is an excellent man. He's about to open a smashing picture, the buzz is growing with each day.

Fig Wineshine: What's it called?
Dorothy Parker: The Philadelphia Story. Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart.
Ford Phillips: –and Jimmy Stewart.

Dorothy Parker: So even you've heard of it, and you don't strike me as the type to read the trades.

Fig Wineshine: He doesn't much like to read at all.

Ford Phillips: Not since.... The War.

Dorothy Parker: The War? Oh yes, that's where I recognized you from. You're one of those Tiny Terrors all grown up!

Fig Wineshine: Wow, she really made the leap.

Dorothy Parker: Can't imagine an experience that might sour me more on all this Hollywood nonsense than growing up as a child actor.

Ford Phillips: Killed my love for reading too. Getting all those scripts... I could read pretty fast by the end there. I was a speed reading prodigy.

Fig Wineshine: Wow. It's been a year and a half and you're really opening up.

Ford Phillips: Shut up.

Bixby ENTERS.

Bixby Crane: Sorry to interrupt, but we're closed for the night. You don't have to go home...

[He does not finish the saying.]

Fig Wineshine: But we can't stay here?

Bixby Crane: Of course not, I just said we're closed.

Ford Phillips: We'll be right out, Bixby. Miss Parker, thanks for your time. Mind if we drop in if we need anything?

Dorothy Parker: I always love company.

Ford Phillips: I still don't really understand why a social club warrants all this secrecy and police attention.

Fig Wineshine: Especially when your last go-round was incredibly public.

Ford Phillips (Voice Over): Dorothy and Bixby exchanged a glance. It was a good one, I suppose, because Dorothy seemed to decide she could answer.

Dorothy Parker: Like I said, the people the Brigade attracts... espouse a certain set of views. A kindheartedness for all, a desire to give everyone a voice, a push towards compassion and a pull away from systemic power.

Fig Wineshine: And an understanding of the plight of the worker?

Dorothy Parker: You got it, fruit fly.

Ford Phillips: So Mo Beats is out to bust some socialists, huh? Guess his job just got a little harder.

[The Case of the Greater Gatsby closing music plays]

Sinead Persaud: Shipwrecked Comedy presents The Case of the Greater Gatsby

Written and created by Sean Persaud and Sinead Persaud

Directed by William Joseph Stribling

Featuring:
Sean Persaud as Ford Phillips
Sinead Persaud as Fig Wineshine
Ryan W. Garcia as Goose Ventriloquist
Dante Swain as Bixby Crane
And Whitney Avalon as Dorothy Parker

Original music by Dylan Glatthorn

Audio recording by Noah Hunt Audio

Mixing and Sound Design by Lizzie Goldsmith

Executive Producers Paul Komoroski & Michael Walsh

Produced by Sean Persaud, Sinead Persaud, and Mary Kate Wiles

Special thanks to Kickstarter backers Katie Adamczyk, Ally Brown, Zainab Khan, Shao Chih Kuo, Jane Leach, Avalee Long, Lisel Perrine, Halsea Root, The Rude Mechanicals, Heather Tennant, and Justin Waterman.

Please rate and review the show wherever you listen. Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/shipwreckedcomedy to receive early access to new episodes and other bonus content, and to support us making this show.

Visit Shipwrecked Comedy on YouTube to view the prequel film for this series, The Case of the Gilded Lily, or many of our other projects, like our modern adaptation of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Headless: A Sleepy Hollow Story.