Spiders

Valerie Caccia

Description

“A Bonfire in the Vanity!”
-From SPIDERS The Play by VALERIE CACCIA
HOW TO eat A MILLENNIAL .. one byte at a time • SPIDERS The Play • Available at Amazon and other online retailers.

Sujets

• Humorous
• Performing Arts
• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• The Play
• Spiders
• Play
• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 02 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665556774
• Langue: English

Extrait

SPIDERS The Play by VALERIE CACCIA
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
For
My Mom
 
 
© 2022 Valerie Caccia. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse  07/14/2022
 
ISBN: 978-1-6655-5678-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-5679-8 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-5677-4 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022906817
 
 
Cover Graphics/Art Credit:
Don Ed Hardy
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ABOUT VALERIE CACCIA
Valerie Caccia is an author, humorist and real estate agent in the Napa Valley. She is the author of Comedienne-a-pause and the book How To eat A Millennial . . one byte at a time . This is Valerie Caccia’s first play. The author lives in Sonoma, Califo rnia.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
With humble gratitud e to
Don Ed Hardy & Francesca Passala cqua
“Hi Val erie,
I’m so glad you’ll be using my spider i mage,
and I hope it adds a web of success to your
crea tion.
Spinnin g on,
Don”
SPIDERS
The Play by
VALERIE CACCIA
Introduction
“A Web in Time”
I was born and raised in San Francisco, California. As a very young girl I attended Notre Dame des Victoires, a private school downtown not far from the Curran Theatre. At six years old, I would hold hands with my fellow kindergarteners and we would stroll single-file down Maiden Lane on field trips, dressed in school uniforms with larger-than-us backpacks and cheerfully singing the French National Anthem. I’m half Italian but it made no difference. Beautiful songs are for all to sing. We would stop and sit around Ruth Asawa’s whimsical San Francisco Fountain located outside the Grand Hyatt and sketch the depicted City landmarks on our sketchpads; 41 individual plaques encircle the bronze sculpture. There was a landmark for each of us to draw and two for some. We strolled with our art work past the designer windows of Neiman Marcus on Geary Street and up Grant Avenue through Dragon Gate to Chinatown. We shared rice candy, a classic Japanese sweet that came in a tiny cardboard box with a prize. The mom-and-pop travel agency would gift us exotic posters curled up in tubes which we didn’t dare bop each other with. Nuns loomed nearby … I would tell the shop owners: “Please gift me one that is larger than life,” which I remember saying so emphatically as if I were making a wish to a genie, and which explains why I grew up with a 24x36 poster of Hilo Hattie on my bedroom wall. My favorite part of the trip was when we wound through the Theater District, between Taylor and Mason Streets, the fresh air filled with the aroma of coffee and deli bagels; serenaded by cable car bells, car horns and pile drivers. It was heaven for me. Even at six.
By the time I was eleven years old, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I decided it decidedly in Ms. Donovan’s sixth grade creative writing class. At my Catholic all-girls high school, I wrote anything and everything I could; from cheers for the cheerleaders to my Class Historian speech. I put trust in my father’s words when he said: “You will have your shot.”
After attending University of San Francisco for one year, I transferred to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Now on my wall was the Time magazine cover from 1986, featuring Neil Simon encircled by his play posters and the caption, “Neil Simon’s Best Play: ‘Broadway Bound’ – Laughter and T ears.”
I studied screenwriting extensively with screenwriter and theatrical composer Bob Mer rill.
During my senior year, I wrote a one-woman sketch as a contest submission to The Late Show starring Joan Rivers that caught the eye of the iconic comedian. The demo tape was less than a minute long of me impersonating Joan Rivers, dressed in a gold lame blazer with black velvet bow tie, and interviewing a Raggedy Ann doll. A couple of days later, the phone began ringing relentlessly in my on-campus housing. A representative from TLS called and said: “Joan wants to meet you.” We met at the television studio known then as Fox Television Center and discussed my future as a comedy writer. One of her stylists asked, “Who’s Valerie?” Joan replied: “She is the author of Comedienne-a-p ause .”
Determined to achieve my goal and remain in Los Angeles after graduation, I interned as a production/producer’s assistant on movie sets for Pompian/Atamian Productions in association with New World Pictures and TriStar Pictures. Read lines as a stand-in with Robert Forster on ABC’s action-adventure television series Once A Hero . I even wore a Pepto-Bismol pink colored dress uniform and worked the front desk at the Brentwood Country Club. One day while working the front desk at the BCC, and after several failed attempts to reach famed producer of the “I Love Lucy” show Jess Oppenheimer in the club, I announced over the tennis court loudspeaker: “Mr. Oppenheimer, your wife would like to know, do you prefer the chicken or the fish for dinner?” Mr. Oppenheimer approached the front desk and asked me if I was the was the one who had made the announcement. I said, “I am.” He chuckled and said: “Tell everyone I’m having the chi cken.”
As fate would have it and at the age of twenty-three, I became the personal assistant to playwright Neil Simon. I studied comedy writing with Danny Simon, Neil’s older brother, a veteran television writer and teacher. He taught me how to write comedy, the due diligence in making people laugh and the cooking method for a beef bri sket.
I began my writing career in radio, writing sketch comedy as a staff writer for Cutler Comedy Networks. When I sold my first sketch Neil hand printed me a sign that read: “Professional Writers Office” and sold me his Adler typewriter for a dollar. He wanted to gift it to me, but I prided myself a businessw oman.
As a female writer in late 1980’s Hollywood, being able to survive working in your craft was not only fulfilling, it was liberating. Powerhouse women did exist. Talent agent Sue Mengers empowered me when she told me: “Valerie, go home and write.” She did not say, “Valerie, go home.”
I performed my material on-stage as a comedian at venues such as The Comedy Store and Carlos ‘N Charlie’s on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, The Ice House in Pasadena, Bimbo’s 365 Club and Holy City Zoo in San Franc isco.
It was an ovarian cyst rupture that stole it all and nearly kille d me.
On a family trip to Maui, at the Kahului Airport, I pulled my suitcase off the conveyor belt and felt like I’d been shot. When the cyst ruptured it burst a major artery. How I made it back from Maui alive only God and Hilo Hattie know. I am listed in the Annals of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a distinction I would have passed on given the op tion.
I needed emergency surgery, a laparoscopy, in which they inflate your abdomen with carbon dioxide gas, you float upwards like a hot air balloon, they attach a small gondola and away you go to the Wine Country! Well, not exa ctly.
When my poor doctor made that first incision it was like the ‘Elevator of Blood’ effect in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining . Someone hollered: “Grab a D yson!!!”
My mother donated blood for my transfusion. By that time everything was either obstructed or in spasm. Nothing would stop her. Her fear of needles aside, she ran down the hospital hall with rolled up sleeves; squeezing a stress ball in one hand and carrying a six pack of orange juice in the other. It is a well-known fact that I have the best parents in the world. We sent my father to Nate ‘n Al’s for a pastrami sandwich. He couldn’t handle it. I was a daddy’s girl.
I stared at the plaid Dolce & Gabbana suit that I bought after a lucky win during a birthday weekend in Las Vegas. It was crumpled after being in a heap at the bottom of a gurney. Domenico & Stefano deserved better! In that moment my spirit broke. I had planned to wear that suit the following week on the Concorde to London. It was what it was. My life had been traveling over twice the speed of sound for quite some time.
Word spread in a New York minute that I was leaving Los Angeles. Or at least taking a hi atus.
My cousin called my mother and screamed: “I can’t believe Valerie died!” A rumor s oon
squashed when I was seen walking recovery laps around the Westfield Century City shopping mall. In a town as tough as Hollywood, the support I received was heartwarming. But as Tony Bennett sings, “I Left My Heart in San Franc isco”.
I moved back home and into my parent’s house. A house they owned in San Francisco for nearly 50 years. I was grateful for that pillar of strength and stability to lean on. My father was an attorney and lived by the motto: “Never give up”. Concerned for my broken spirit and grateful himself that I had survived, he insisted we take a trip to Italy. I had a wonderful father. Soon, I found myself sitting outside the Marco Polo Airport in Venice sketching a vaporetto, a Venetian public waterbus, and channeling that little girl from the French School. Fro