Dead Movie Stars - Wayne Kramer

She’d been lost on sunset and found in a dumpster

On western avenue

Dead in the manner that the living would never envy

One red shoe missing and the gold dress all ripped up and something weird

Written across her stomach with her own lipstick

She’d been toxic drunk

When she met the guy

With the soft woody harrelson smile

And the homicide eyes

Only beat coke and bike queen amphetamine

Were keeping her vertical

When she accepted

His offer of a hundred

And stepped into his van

Word on the street was the cops had him for two hours

Later the same night on a traffic beef

But they let him go

She’d done a walk-on in married with children

And «900 heat» commercial

So maybe you stretch things

And call her a movie star

But isn’t everyone a dead movie star at sunset and western

He couldn’t handle the voices in his head no more

The ones who sounded like shelly winters and e.

emmett walsh

And all the desperate things they wanted him to do

And on saturday nights,

He would call the tv shrink on the eerie

Late night

Call-in show

He couldn’t tell the tv shrink about the voices

And all the dark and terrible things they said

Or even that he was an officer

In the los angeles police department

The tv shrink

Seemed to think

It was something to do

With his wanting to fuck his mother

Bu that wasn’t the case at all

And even the fifth of scotch and the forty seconal

Didn’t stop the voices

In fact

The sons of bitches kept right on

Talking at him

And talking at him

And talking at him

And talking at him

All the ay to the final fade

Talking at him

About the woman in the gold dress

And the things that he had done to her

E. emmett walsh had wanted him

To blow his brains out in his car

On the freeway

In the rush hour

«you get on tv that way

You’ll be a godamned movie star».

But isn’t everyone a dead movie star

In a black and white

At sunset and western

At 12th and alvarado

At hollywood and argyle

At selma and ivar

Everyone’s a dead movie star