Casablanca: The Covid Years

With the whole world spiking a fever, they choose this time to fall in love.

For Academy Awards weekend, a beloved classic from the Wadler archives.

EARLY MARCH, 2020, CASABLANCA.

Ext. Day — The picturesque streets are crowded with tour operators begging in the streets, donkeys overladen with 12-packs of toilet paper, and refugees fleeing COVID wracked Europe.

UGARTE, a sickly-looking petty criminal, is being chased by A HALF DOZEN OF CASABLANCA’S CORRUPT SECRET POLICE.

Ugarte loses the police and runs into Rick’s Café, seizing owner RICK BLAINE by the lapels of his impeccably tailored white dinner jacket.

UGARTE : Hide me, Rick! (Cough, hack, cough!) Hide me!

RICK : (Lifting one impeccably tailored eyebrow.) For Christ’s sake, Ugarte, cough in your elbow. And maintain some social distance.

UGARTE: I’m sorry, Rick. I know you despise me, but I have something which will impress even you — the secret formula for a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus. Twenty-four hour recovery, no side effects and it can be manufactured for mere pennies. Hide it for me, Rick!

RICK: A COVID vaccine? You’re right, Ugarte. I am impressed. But why come to me?

UGARTE : It will drive the plot. By the way, do you have any aspirin? I have a splitting headache.

CUT TO

Rick’s Café, Evening.

A sign on the wall reads. “Wash hands. Betray someone. Wash them again”.

The joint is jumping with CHINESE PPE MANUFACTURERS, SWISS VENTILLATOR REPS, GERMANS arguing loudly about how to jump start their economy and DESPERATE COVID-19 REFUGEES FROM ACROSS EUROPE, some of whom are coughing loudly.

CAPT. RENAULT, the suave Prefect of Police who gives exit visas to underage women in exchange for sex but is otherwise a terrific guy, is seated with a wan, 16- year-old northern Italian girl, murmuring seductively of Envy Foaming Disinfectant Cleanser.

Rick is with SAM, the piano player, who is trying unsuccessfully to tune his piano.

SAM: I don’t know what’s wrong with it, boss. It sounds like a fat envelope with a breakthrough medical formula is stuffed between the strings. Somethin’ with such obvious curative effect that no long-term trials are needed, from what’s happened to the middle C.

Sam reaches into the piano, Rick swats his hand away.

RICK: You’re imagining it, Sam. Everybody knows we’re 18 months away from a vaccine. You weren’t about to play that song, were you?

SAM: What song, boss?

RICK: The song that makes me think about Her. That woman who dumped me back in Paris before COVID-19 hit town. Because otherwise, I never think about her at all. Except when I get up in the morning. Sometimes when I’m shaving. Eating cereal — I guess that happens to everybody…No, no, don’t make me say her name out loud. Ilsa! Ilsa, Ilsa, Ilsa!

CUT TO:

ILSA LUND, a gorgeous blond in a cream suit and matching medical gloves, arrives at the club with her husband, VICTOR LASZLO, the world-renowned epidemiologist and bore.

ILSA: (Whispering) Victor, I’m afraid. Those tables are less than six feet apart. I don’t think it’s safe for us to be here.

VICTOR: Don’t be silly, Ilsa. There is no COVID in Casablanca, that’s all deep media fear mongering by those who wish to drive down prices for the spas with the healing waters.

CUT TO:

Sam, playing his out of tune piano. Ilsa walks over and sits down on a quiet spot on top of the piano.

SAM: Hello, Miss Ilsa. Goodbye, Miss Ilsa.

ILSA: Play it, Sam. Play the song you were playing the day COVID-19 came to Paris. You remember that terrible day. I wore blue, the Parisians were turning grey.

Sam reluctantly begins playing the poignant melody, “Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye.”

CUT TO

Rick at the bar with a Martini in his hand and several empty Martini glasses in front of him, talking to himself.

RICK: Ilsa! Ilsa, Ilsa, Ilsa, Ilsa….Maybe I should block her on Facebook. Then I won’t have the pain of seeing her and that moron husband. But I would also never see Ilsa. I wonder if she was thinking of me in that post from St. Tropez where she had her hand in his trunks…wait, is that, “Toot, Toot, Tootsie?”

Rick strides angrily over to the piano and sees Ilsa.

RICK: I don’t believe it. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, you walk into mine. Maybe there was something to building a little shrine to you in my bedroom and chanting your name for two hours every night.

Rick reaches out to embrace Ilsa.

ILSA: (Pushing Rick away) Rick, darling, no! Not like this, not without an alcohol rinse with at least 60% volume! By the way, I was married when we were messing around in Paris but I thought my husband, the world-famous epidemiologist and bore, had been lost in a Herpes recurrence in Dubrovnik. Then, just when I was just about to leave town with you —

Rick puts his hand on Ilsa’s mouth to silence her and climbs onto the piano. The two make out passionately.

Victor walks over.

VICTOR: Ilsa, when you were in Paris by yourself were you very lonely? Did anything happen? Is there something you wish to tell me?

ILSA: (Having difficulty speaking with Rick’s tongue in her mouth) Uh,uh. Nope. Nuffing.

VICTOR:Good to know. Now I must talk business with Rick.

Victor gently tries to pull Rick and Ilsa apart. Failing, he gestures to CAPT. RENAULT and TWO SOUTH KOREAN MEDICAL MIDDLE-MEN who have been haggling with TWO CHINESE MANUFACTURING REPS over the price of M-95 Masks. With three people on either side of Ilsa and Rick and the help of a crowbar Sam keeps under the piano, they manage to separate the pair.

VICTOR: Rick, rumor has it that petty criminal Ugarte has a COVID vaccine formula which he has hidden here and plans to sell to the highest bidder. I don’t have to tell you how valuable that vaccine would be to all of human kind, particularly my Ilsa, who is frankly not looking so good.

ILSA: (Breathing laboriously, grabbing Rick’s shoulder, whispering into his ear.) No, Rick, no! That vaccine will get us the money to get out of Casablanca and go somewhere safe, like New York!

RICK: Sorry, Victor, no can do. That stolen formula will make me rich.

CAPT. RENAULT: Aaah, Rick, you never fail to surprise me. You are corrupt after all. Want me to see if the 16-year old I’m seducing has a younger sister? They’ll do anything when family’s involved.

RICK: (Ignoring Renault). As for human kind, Victor, I stick out my head for no man.

VICTOR: So you say, but I happen to know differently. When you were living in New York City you walked up five flights of stairs in the East Village to bring a struggling college student Extra Strength Tylenol. What was that young lady’s name? Theresa Saint Marie?

RICK: That was her stripper name. Her real name was Flaming Bush. Nice kid. I guess she’d be 26, 27, by now.I was sweet on her for a while….

ILSA: (Gasping dramatically). Rick, my darling, Rick!!!!

Ilsa rolls off the piano onto the floor with a heavy thunk. Victor, Rick and Capt. Renault kneel at her side. It is obvious the beautiful Ilsa has taken her last laborious breath.

Capt. Renault pats Rick on the shoulder and goes back to his table, leaving Rick, heartbroken but stoic, alone with Victor.

RICK: You’ll find the formula for the vaccine between the piano strings. Middle C.

CUT TO

Rick at the bar, Martini glass in hand, muttering obsessively.

RICK: Oh, Flaming Bush, Flaming Bush, Flaming Bush…..