STRIPPER Oh, baby! That was to the end of the world and back again.

Steve rummages in a sack and emerges with a hamburger, which he attacks urgently.

CUT TO:

EXT. GLASS DOORWAY IN HALLWAY

The doorway is frosted glass. Shining through it is a neon sign, in red and green (just like the Indian restaurant signs in Soho): GRAPEVINE, LTD. And hanging beneath it a small bunch of purple grapes with a few green leaves, also in neon.

CUT TO:

INT. GRAPEVINE, LTD. - PROBY'S OFFICE

He is, as mentioned before, the total eclectic - so much so that no two things in the entire office seem to match. Each item of furniture, each possession, everything hanging on the walls or standing on the floor or on a shelf or a table, seems to have been collected with absolutely no thought for anything else in the office. There might be for example, an antique desk - but the chair with it is nylon space-age furniture. A tubular steel chair with a leather seat is next to a coffee table made from a large, empty ammunition crate. The artwork ranges from Bosch to Warhol to Sex Pistols posters. Overstuffed sofas are flanked by aluminum and plastic lawn furniture. Cheek by jowl: Classic and kitsch, as if everything in the office had been vacuumed at random from jumble sales, Portobello Road, an auction at Sotheby's and a Woolworth's store. Prominently displayed, an object of great pride to Proby, is a photograph of the queen, autographed "To Proby - I'll never forget that great time we had at Windsor - Elizabeth R."

On Proby's desk is a random sampling of Punk Rock debris: An assortment including a tattered sex Pistols poster, a bit of torn shirt with a slogan on it, chains, leather straps, hundreds of safety pins, Nazi armbands, leather bondage gear - the sorts of things one might pick up from the floor of a music club after an especially chaotic Sex Pistols concert. Furtively looking over the debris, picking up items and then dropping them, is M.J. - Proby's number one client and the world's top rock star. He is dressed in a satin blouse-shirt, unbuttoned to the waist; he has pounds of gold body jewelry around his neck; he wears very tight-fitting tailored pants, possibly leather, and platform boots

Proby enters unexpectedly. He is dressed as Sherlock Holmes might dress for a contemplative evening at home: A flowing combination of robe and smoking-jacket; velvet pants; slippers, and a Holmesian pipe. The only item of apparel that doesn't fit is his T-shirt, which bears the legend: SEX PISTOLS - CASH FROM CHAOS. Proby is the boss and only personnel in this frantic office (where we now hear two or three telephones RINGING at once). This is a true rock and roll habitat, where all trends converge. He is receptionist, typist, secretary, telephonist - a bundle of limitless energy, well preserved, energetic, and yet somehow giving off the sense of being the quintessential crooked producer (there's a suggestion here of Zero Mostel in "The Producers"). In a negative sense, he's a destroyer, a consumer, of youth, taking their genuine street culture with one hand and selling it back to them with the other. A sign on his desk reads: ALL TRUTH IS IN ACTION. Another one, true of the Ultimate Trend-Setter: NOW IS THEN. Although he's always totally positive in a socko manner, none of his clients is indispensable (M.J. comes the closest). They're here today and gone tomorrow, and there are a hundred more to take their places. Implicitly, he stands for all the corporate bull-shitters who have crossed the Sex Pistols' path in the past: EMI, A&M, etc. Nevertheless, we somehow tend to like him. Being the ultimate opportunist, he is in fact as anarchistic as the Pistols themselves: