Saturday, December 27, 2008

Bit 03 - Instructions to Male Employees




Date of Scene

Saturday, August 10, 1963

At dusk


Scene Description

Baby alone leaves the Houseman family's suite, which is a separate cabin in a hill. She yells that she is "going up to the main house to look around".

She is dressed in the party dress that she will be wearing later in the evening at the family's dinner in the restaurant and at the ballroom dance. Over that party dress she is wearing a long sweater.

Baby walks quickly across a large lawn that separates her family's suite from the main building. The yard is empty of people.

Baby comes onto a back porch of the main building and peeks through a back door into the restaurant.

Baby sees that Max Kellerman is talking to a group of young men who work in the restaurant. The restaurant soon will open for dinner guests, but no hotel guests are in the restaurant yet.

Max is lecturing to the young men -- who are "college guys" -- to romance the guests' adolescent daughters.

During Max's lecture, Johnny Castle and his musicians enter the restaurant, passing through to some other place. Johnny mocks Max's lecture, remarking "Got that, guys?"

Max tells Johnny and the musicians -- the so-called "Entertainment Staff" -- that they are governed by different rules related to the female guests. The Entertainment Staff is prohibited to socialize with the female guests.

 Johnny and Robbie Gould, one of the waiters, taunt each other.



Dialogue

Baby Houseman
Mom, Dad, I'm going up to the main house to look around.

(Baby rushes across a large yard and goes to an obscure, back door of the hotel's main building.)

Max Kellerman
(Addressing a group of young men who work in the hotel's restaurant)
There are two kinds of help here. You waiters are all college guys, and I went to Harvard and Yale to hire you.. And why did I do that? Why? I shouldn't have to remind you. This is a family place. That means you keep your fingers out of the water, hair out of the soup, and show the goddamn daughters a good time. All the daughters. Even the dogs. Schlepp them out to the terrace, show them the stars. Romance them any way you want.

Johnny Castle
(Entering the restaurant with his musicians and addressing the restaurant workers listening to Max's lecture) 
Got that, guys?

Max Kellerman
Hey, hold it! Hold it.

(Addressing Johnny and the musicians)

Well, if it isn't the entertainment staff. Listen, wise ass, you got your own rules. Dance with the daughters. Teach 'em the mambo, the cha-cha, anything they pay for.That's it. That's where it ends. No funny business, no conversations, and keep you hands off!

A musician named Rodriguez
It's the same at all these places. Some ass in the woods, maybe, but no conversation.

Max Kellerman
Watch it, Rodriguez.

Robbie Gould
Do you think you can you keep that straight, Johnny? What you can and can't lay your hands on?

Johnny Castle
Just put your pickle on everybody's plate, and leave the hard stuff to me.



Song Lyrics

No lyrics, but a piano plays the "Time of My Life" melody as Baby is walking across the yard and onto the main building's porch.



Remarks

The preceding scene has been deleted. In that deleted scene, Lisa and Baby Houseman are dressing in their hotel bedroom.

Unknown to her family, Baby has accepted Billy Kostecki's offer to earn some money by working as the magician's stooge at the magic show that will be performed in the ballroom later that evening. Billy has instructed Baby to meet the Entertainment Staff at a set time in the main building to practice the magic show.

Baby goes to the main building at the set time to meet the Entertainment Staff secretly. She peeks through a back door to await the Entertainment Staff's arrival.

While doing so, Baby overhears Max lecturing to the restaurant's male employees that they should romance the resort's adolescent guests.

During Max's lecture, Johnny and his fellow musicians -- the Entertainment Staff -- enter the restaurant.

The ensuing dialogue reveals that there are a status difference and a personal hostility between the restaurant staff and the Entertainment staff.

The status difference never is explained by the movie, but the difference is that the restaurant workers have been recruited by Max because they are Jewish young men attending prestigious universities. Practically all the resort's guests are Jewish families, and the parents will be pleased if their adolescent daughters become engaged with such Jewish young men.

In his lecture to the young Jewish men, Max uses a Yiddish verb, to shlepp which in English means to drag. He tells the Jewish young men to shlepp even the ugly Jewish girls out to the terrace.

One of the musicians is called Rodriguez. He probably is a Cuban immigrant, because many Cubans fled to the United States at the beginning of the 1950s.

Johnny's remark that Robbie should "put your pickle on everybody's plate and leave the hard stuff to me" is a sexual joke. The idea is that Robbie's genital erection would not be hard enough to accomplish sexual intercourse.

1 comment:

  1. Those were actually fellow dancers with Johnny, not musicians.

    ReplyDelete