The First Ten Looks Good, But How Will The Last Ten Read?

This week, Brian Carter outlines a pitch perfect “first ten” pages of a script — assuming anyone would be interested in a script about the dog-eat-dog world of rental agents and the struggle to close the deal:

I’ve gone through dry spells before, and it would be easy enough to chalk this one up to a bad market and a slow time for everyone. But I have the misfortune of sitting next to Stacey, who is currently knocking back deals like shots of tequila on Cinco de Mayo. While I’m in a terrible debate over whether to play another game of solitaire or take a walk, she’s closing her second deal of the day.

. . .

At first, I thought it was merely a coincidence that every time I went cold, Stacey started a hot streak. Part of it may have to do with some weird karmic alignment, but my manager is also pulling some strings in this tiny universe. The hotter one agent gets, the slower everyone else seems to become. Managers take a cut of the overall office profits. That’s a lot of incentive. They steer business away from agents with slippery hands and feed the closers every decent client who calls or walks in the office. Work breeds work and managers rarely encourage slumping agents by wasting potential clients on them, no matter who’s due on the list. She’s working a $3,200 corporate transfer, with the rent and fee paid by the company, and I’m looking all over town for a one bedroom with a terrace large enough to call a porch . . . in a high traffic area no less.

. . .

I don’t harbor any hurtful feelings toward Stacey, but I do hide my client list when she’s in the office. Let’s just say she’s thorough and a really good real estate agent. When I first started, she was one of the few people who went out of her way to teach me about the business. It doesn’t matter that her method of teaching entailed screwing me out of my first deal and using her seniority to justify it. I learned my lesson, and have never forgotten the special attention she showed me. The slacker agents in my office, including myself, could all learn much from her example. She’s a real asset.

It’s all there — complex and morally ambiguous figures, high stakes, conflict — with New York as a character! How about Michel Gondry to direct?

Killed By Alternate-Side Parking Rules

If you were to set Six Feet Under within the five boroughs, this would become an opening sequence:

A newly married Queens woman was killed yesterday when she turned in front of an SUV as she moved her car to avoid an alternate-side parking ticket, police and friends said.

Other shows that same season include.

Hate The Church, Love Its Buildings

It was high-tension back-and-forth drama for St. Brigid’s Church last week, with details straight out of a movie script:

It was an anxious week for East Villagers who have been fighting to save the turn-of-the-century old P.S. 64 and 158-year-old St. Brigid’s Church from demolition. Some neighbors and activists have been involved in both struggles, and probably could have used a scorecard to keep up with the flurry of emergency press conferences outside the two historic Avenue B buildings — located just a block apart — plus a candlelight vigil and court hearing.

Last Friday, State Supreme Court Judge Barbara Kapnick enjoined further demolition of St. Brigid’s Church until Aug. 24, pending a Board of Standards and Appeals hearing on the validity of the demolition permit.

Last Thursday — just two days after demolition workers started hacking historic terracotta off the old P.S. 64 building on E. Ninth St. — a demolition crew a block to the south pounded an ugly hole through the back wall of St. Brigid’s Church, starting the destruction of the historic East Village famine church. The workers shoved antique wooden pews and delicate wainscoting from inside the church through the hole and into a rear yard. Then — as stunned and angry neighbors and former St. Brigid’s parishioners pleaded with him to stop — one of the workers, smiling, spun his bulldozer over the pile, crushing it all to bits.

. . .

Next morning at 7 a.m., to the anguish of about 20 neighbors, activists and former parishioners who showed up hoping to head off further destruction, the workers — this time wielding long crowbars — knocked out the seven, 25-foot-tall, painted, stained-glass windows on the church’s north side. Again, the neighbors and former parishioners begged them to stop.

“When I saw those crowbars destroying those stained-glass windows this morning, I thought about the Taliban destroying those Buddhas in Afghanistan,” said Matt Metzgar, a former East Village squatter who had been among the protesters shouting for the workers not to break the windows.

“We were all yelling ‘Stop!’ We were screaming,” said Beth Sopkow. “We were all calling 311 and E.P.A, saying that there were hazardous conditions and dust.”

Patti Kelly, who has a stained-glass studio on Avenue C and also had sadly watched as the venerable windows depicting Jesus’ life were smashed, estimated they were worth $100,000 apiece.

“That was heartbreaking, because I know exactly what it takes to do those windows. It took them a year to do them,” she said.

Perhaps you assumed that godless New Yorkers were uninterested in churches. That would be untrue:

At a candlelight vigil outside St. Brigid’s the night before, East Villagers accused the archdiocese of planning to cash in by developing the prime property on the eastern edge of Tompkins Square Park.

A large silver crucifix ring on his finger, poet Barry Allen shouted, “Our Lord Jesus went into the temple and threw out the money changers — goddammit!”

“I love the building and the color, that beautiful yellow, right at the park,” said Susi Schropp. Though she never attended the church, she said, “It’s beyond just being a parishioner — it’s about the community being besieged.”

. . .

Jerome O’Connor, who used to own St. Dymphna’s bar on St. Mark’s Pl., originally had the idea to investigate the demolition permit to check if it was valid — which is the only thing currently standing in the way of the building being razed.

“You don’t tear down a 158-year-old church for anything,” O’Connor said. “I’d like to see all the Catholic churches leveled, because of what they do. But not this one.”

No Respect For The Lord

The Post reports that several Times Square-area businesses closed temporarily on Easter Sunday to observe Gang Initiation Day:

Police, unable to contain a Times Square street-gang invasion, advised several restaurants to close down early “for safety reasons” on Easter Sunday, The Post has learned.

A 24-hour McDonald’s on Seventh Avenue between 46th and 47th streets closed “from 8 o’clock at night to 1 o’clock in the morning,” manager Alex Donato told The Post.

“They [police] said, for security reasons, to close it down — cause there were too many gang members.”

A complement of 88 cops — including five on horseback — along with eight sergeants, three lieutenants, a captain and a deputy chief had been deployed to Times Square on April 16 to police an influx of approximately 40,000 pedestrians, including an Easter Parade of gang members, mostly from the notorious Bloods.

But despite the heightened police presence, cops warned at least three restaurants to close as hundreds of crimson-hued hoods swaggered by, police sources said.

. . .

At another Mickey D’s, on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, management hired six private security guards for the Sunday-night shenanigans.

“We were much better prepared than last year” when the McDonald’s closed “all night,” said one employee.

They only shut down for 45 minutes this year at the cops’ suggestion, he said.

“Easter is gang-initiation day. I don’t know why — no respect for the lord, I guess,” the employee added.

“Easily over 200” gang members were strutting up and down Seventh Avenue and Broadway between West 42nd and West 50th streets until about 3 a.m., one police source said.

It’s Cross-Promotion!

An opening sequence for Six Feet Under: New York City:

A 24-year-old Manhattan man was thrown to his death into a parking lot at Long Island City’s Silvercup Studios after crashing into a wall on the Queensborough Bridge early Friday morning, Channel 7 News reported.

Luis Colon was pronounced dead at the scene after his 2003 Honda Pilot struck the left wall of the bridge just before 4 a.m., ejecting him 30 feet, police said. Colon was thrown through the driver’s side window and fell into the parking lot of Silvercup Studios at 42-22 22nd St., Channel 7 reported.

Silvercup, home of The Sopranos (get it?), is under the Queensboro Bridge . . . yeesh, what a way to go.