Word: junkyards
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...were only this simple. Wellman's script is a minefield of abstractions, a barrage of heavy-handed symbolism and non-linear (dis) connections. And where else to witness this fragmented and worn schema of juxtapositions than a junkyard? The mire is realized in James Murdoch's artfully ramshackle set. Littered with couches, barrels, tires and a clothesline, the audience is strewn around the playing space, indistinguishable from the wreckage...
...Jones had fun with music. He took a sedate standard like Laura or Chloe, played it straight for a minute and then revved it up double-time and orchestrated it for tuba, kazoo and other instruments that mimic indiscreet bodily functions. Then he set this raucous pastiche to a junkyard syncopation of washboards, cap pistols, Klaxon and bicycle horns, pie pans and garbage cans -- augmented by bird whistles, brays and tag lines from radio ads ("Super Suds!" "Bromo Seltzer!" "Beeeeee Ohhhhhh!") -- until the whole thing sounded the way Fibber McGee's closet clattered, the way a Tex Avery cartoon looks...
...center of Philadelphia's black market is Passyunk Avenue, in the southwestern part of the city. Here lies a sprawling shantytown of 70 salvage yards, and journalists are about as welcome as the rusty mud after a heavy rain. "Is that your car?" barks the manager of one junkyard. "Leave it there a couple of hours, and see what ! happens to it." His sidekick, an unfriendly German shepherd, growls in agreement...
...owners who want to dump their vehicles and collect from their insurance companies can sometimes go directly to a salvage yard for assistance. A Passyunk operator explains how it works: "Say you got a guy who can't keep up the payments on his car. You call me, the junkyard, and I'll tell you to leave it in a parking lot somewhere with the keys, as well as the title for my own protection. I give you a coupla hundred dollars, I sell the parts to a body shop, and they get resold to an insurance company. Meanwhile...
...buried, but they're not talking. "You snitch on people down here and no one will deal with you anymore," says Tom, a young, lanky employee with Patrick's Used Auto Parts, who refuses to divulge his surname. "I'd hate to come in next week and find our junkyard burned to the ground. Some of the people down here are pretty scary...