Aida script
Saturday, June 4, 2005
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(MAGICAL GLISS AND UNDER...)

Karan Casey: Look—

Garrison Keillor: Yes?

KC: The Hollywood sign. On the mountain.

GK: Yes.

KC: Everytime I look at it, I remember when you and I first met—

GK: Yes.

KC: Schwab's Drugstore. At the counter. You were having a cherry phosphate and I had a Jell-O salad with tomato aspic.

GK: Right.

KC: Such success we've had since then! What a fairytale life! I think back and I almost don't believe it.

GK: Right.

(AIDA DUET)

We came to Hollywood
In '82 when we were young and broke
We met in Schwab's Drugstore
At the lunch counter drinking chocolate malts.
Of course we fell in love right away
And then we were discovered by Fox.
Starred in a couple dozen pictures
And now we are multi-billionaires.

KC: And now they're making a movie of our life. Us. You and me, Duke.

GK: Right.

KC: Quite a story. A young redhead from County Cork and a tall lonesome cowboy from Montana.

GK: Minnesota.

KC: You told me you came from Montana. Bozeman, Montana. You grew up on a ranch and — Minnesota?

GK: Right.

KC: The state where they raise turkeys and hockey players. The big flat place up north where the state bird is the loon?

GK: That's the place.

KC: Why? Why have you let me go for twenty years believing something that's not true about you? Why did you lie?

GK: I thought you'd like me better as a cowboy.

KC: But to base our life together on a fiction? Do you realize how terrible that is? What lack of respect that shows? Do you?

GK: I guess so.

(AIDA DUET)

Our marriage hit the rocks
In '98 when he met Amber Lee
And had a big affair
And she started hitting the gin.
We went to Betty Ford and got clean
And wrote a book about the Twelve Steps
And now we are in reality TV
Where we go around being ourselves.

KC: I'd give anything to get back into feature pictures and make another romantic comedy but here we are, I'm 32 and you're almost 40, it's getting tough for people our age.

GK: Right.

KC: I got a letter from the American Film Institute — they want to honor us with a retrospective. I called our lawyer.

GK: Good.

KC: You know what we need? A cause! Philanthropy. Literacy, or world hunger, or leprosy or something like that.

GK: How about winter?

KC: Perfect. Children in northern tier states risking frostbite to get to school in the morning. Children who've put their tongues on frozen pump handles and as a result of it suffered speech defects, such as the inability to talk except in monosyllables.

GK: Right.

KC: The Tongues of the Young Foundation. Kids in rural Minnesota — forty-below zero and they're waiting for the bus and it's dark out and they accidentally put their tongue on a lamppost and it scars them for the rest of their lives.

GK: How'd you know?

KC: I'm from St. Paul.

GK: I thought you were from Ireland!

KC: Nope.

GK: But your accent--

KC: Practice.

GK: Then Fox gave us a call We did a remake of The Quiet Man

KC: Which critics all despised
And it died in about the second week.

DUET: But she and I we came out okay
We settled down in Malibu

GK: We got into vitamins and enzymes

KC: And walking on a treadmill every day.

GK: And thank you for attending our benefit

DUET: And helping save children from the cold.