Spiders: The Play

By Valerie Caccia

“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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665556774

Valerie Caccia

Valerie Caccia is an American playwright, author, humorist and real estate agent in the Napa Valley. Her famous mentors include playwright Neil Simon and theatrical composer Bob Merrill. Talent agent Sue Mengers once instructed her: “Valerie, go home and write.” While attending Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, comedian Joan Rivers summoned Valerie to meet with her at the television studio known then as Fox Television Center after receiving a contest submission showcasing Valerie’s comedy writing. It is a startup that has taken 30 years.

Book preview

SPIDERS The Play by VALERIE CACCIA

39694.png

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, California.

With humble gratitude to

Don Ed Hardy & Francesca Passalacqua

"Hi Valerie,

I’m so glad you’ll be using my spider image,

and I hope it adds a web of success to your

creation.

Spinning 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 Tears.

I studied screenwriting extensively with screenwriter and theatrical composer Bob Merrill.

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-pause."

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 chicken.

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 brisket.

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 businesswoman.

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 Francisco.

It was an ovarian cyst rupture that stole it all and nearly killed 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 option.

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 exactly.

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 Dyson!!!

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 hiatus.

My cousin called my mother and screamed: I can’t believe Valerie died! A rumor soon

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 Francisco.

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. From deep within me, I hollered out: Marco! There was silence. I hollered again: Marco! To my pleasant surprise this time someone heard me and hollered back: Polo! It was proof I was still alive. Basta! It was time to re-invent.

While in Italy, we visited relatives living in Milan. I used some savings and bought myself a pair of Prada shoes. Not for the label but for my belief in Miuccia Prada’s message: I’m trying to make women stronger.

What do you do when your career crashes and burns? When the life literally gets vacuumed out of you and you can no longer live your bliss? I did what any rational person would do. I became a real estate agent.

While preparing to take the real estate exam and studying a chapter on California Real Estate Appraisal Principles and Procedures, I fell asleep. Perhaps it was too soon to re-invent.

In 1993, I brought my mother with me to meet with award-winning actor Danny Aiello who was performing at the Curran Theatre in David Mamet’s comedy Breaking Legs. I had seen the play on Broadway but not with Danny in the cast. A producer friend was kind enough to arrange the meeting. I wanted to talk to Danny about a play I was writing, with him in mind, and ask him if he would please read it when I was done. We had a delightful meeting and Danny agreed to read the play. He was surprisingly enthusiastic and excited. I was over the moon. That is, until he asked me where it was. The image I had in my mind for years was of Danny Aiello, standing in front of me and my poor mother, with outstretched arms and that twinkle in his eye, asking, Where’s the play?!

That play was not meant to be, and the story of Spiders did not crawl into my life until years later. If only …

In 1994, my father suffered a stroke. I was there for him just as he had been there for me. My mother and I became a two-woman relay team and his primary caregivers for twelve years. Helen Reddy had it right: I am woman, hear me roar! I would have roared only my voice was shot from stand-up and crowd work. I had the nodules on my vocal chords removed, retired my artificial larynx, stepped into my block-heeled pumps and onto the real estate stage.

With a raspy new voice that became my signature and a shiny new real estate license from the State of California, it was Show Time. I remember my interview with the high-end broker at the top real estate agency in San Francisco at the time. The broker asked me what it was like to work for Neil Simon and then broke into a chorus of Neil Diamond’s, Sweet Caroline.

It is a startup career that has taken 30 years. A blended career of comedy and agency.

In 2019, I wrote the book How To eat A Millennial .. one byte at a time that launched at theSan Francisco Ferry Building and re-claimed my place in this world as a writer. I had not written for many years and I wasn’t sure if I would ever write again. Life happens. One sunny morning it became