Death of a Manager -- the script
PDF file -- requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader

"Up until we took the vote, I didn't know how it would go," Mayor Calamaras later told me. "I didn't know we would have enough votes to carry it, but we got 4 votes and that's all we needed."

That was front page news. Maxine Barritt and her petition drive had won the day, right? Maybe. Maxine is wisely keeping the heat on and now appears to be shifting gears towards getting the proposal onto the ballot in the next election.

And that's about all the news covered. Oh, and there was that little deal with Sharky's restaurant, but Mike Pachota, owner of Sharky's, withdrew the plans after a minor squabble between City Manager George Hunt and city council.

Well, that was no little deal. It was a major deal. That little squabble was a knockdown drag-out brawl. George Hunt walked away mortally wounded, a dead man walking. Vice-Mayor Rick Tacy and newly-elected Councilman John Moore tore into Hunt in a way that nobody has ever done and gotten away with. The last time Hunt was attacked with such vigor, Herb Levine was arrested for it (the case was later dropped due to false arrest considerations).

Even Councilwoman Virginia Warren, normally brassy and dominant, was trampled unnoticed as she offered some weak support of Hunt and his latest shenanigans. Earlier in the council meeting, she had voiced concerns that council was beginning to appear divided, that the unified front that council normally puts out to opposition was in danger. That was during the debate over the beachfront water treatment plant resolution, and her concerns then were ignored. During the later skewering of Hunt, she attempted to try to save him and ended up with tire tracks on her back for the effort.

Those who were in attendance at the second half of the city council meeting were floored by the event. It was wild, it was strange, it was great, fantastic and fabulous, even.

I laughed, I cried, it changed my life.

Even Herb Levine was impressed: "We're finally getting some independent thinking, council is not eating everything that Hunt sets on the table for them."

True, Herb, very true.

And in this case, council cooked and ate the chef.

Now, how to write this up for the web was the dilemma. The papers skipped over it for good reason -- the details are more than a little convoluted. To explain the story would require more page space than is available for local politics. In order to sum up the political execution that we witnessed in a form that is understandable to the reader, a large amount of background info needs to be pumped into the story.

"It would almost be better if I just took the exact dialogue as it happened and worked it into a script," I offhandedly commented to Levine. "This whole thing looked like a David Mamet toss-off piece."

"There ya go," was Levine's response.

And thus, Death Of A Manager, in play form.

The script you are about to read is NOT fiction. It happened. Word for word, swear on a stack of Bibles as high as the city water tower, it happened. The dialogue was dutifully transcribed by yours truly from the official city council audio recording as provided by the city clerk's office. The stage directions are my own, based on what I observed during the actual event.

There are some small dramatic licenses that I took. Bits and pieces of some dialogue were removed due to the participants repeating things that they had already stated. I also removed about six minutes of unrelated material at the end between the final vote and Sharky's owner Mike Pachota's subsequent response to council's discussion and vote. In the play form, the dialogue moves straight from the vote to the public speaking portion of the council meeting, which is not what really happened. The excised portion included Councilman Brown praising the fire department for a quick emergency response to his house recently, etc., etc. What was excised is totally unrelated to the main story.

So a very few things were removed in order to make it a better flowing read, all the while making sure that the context of what was left remained absolutely accurate. No dialogue was added, none, nada -- if you read it, they said it, and they said it in the same context.

Oh, and you will need the free Acrobat Reader for this. Most computers come from the store with it already installed, but if for some reason you don't have it, you can get it free here.

And now, Venice Florida! dot com presents the one act dark comedy, Death Of A Manager. Just click on the title, it'll download and open up, and you can even print it out to share with friends, neighbors and Virginia Warren.

Enjoy.