New York. The Big Apple. A universe dotted with thousands of stars. And millions more who burned out before they ever got a chance to shine.
Earlier this week a dumb, no-talent cat was fired from a Broadway adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's after it was discovered he couldn't act his way out of a paper bag.
Montie, the black-and-white cat, had been hired as an understudy for star cat performer, Vito Vincent, in the role of "Cat," a cat owned by Tiffany's lead character Holly Golightly.
Unfortunately for Montie, bearing a passing physical resemblance to a black-and-white cookie isn't enough in this town. You've gotta have talent. You've gotta have charisma. And he did not.
Montie's job as Cat: Get out there and act like a cat. Sit on a stack of suitcases. Run offstage. Don't quack at anyone.
Yet the cat, whose job was so simple that even a cat could have done it, could not do it. The New York Post reported yesterday that he was fired for being "unruly."
Headstrong. Impetuous. Recalcitrant. Insubordinate. Just bad. Just a bad, bad cat who saw Silver Linings Playbook and thought "God, I could do that," and packed up his shit (a plastic ball with a bell in it and a little, like, piece of ribbon or something, I don't know where he found it) and moved to New York singin' "New York, you're my lady!"—a little song he made up.
Then, when he got out there onstage under the bright, beaming lights, he was so full of his dreams and himself that there was no room left to remember what a cat does. Does a cat…walk on its hindlegs? Does a cat…sing "Moon River"? Is "stage right" my right or your right? Which—whose mark is that?
So in the end, Montie was chewed up and spit out, a dirty little hairball at the bottom of Broadway's drain.
His old bosses were cordial, if a little cold.
"The production is saddened by Montie's dismissal and wishes him well," a rep told the Post.
His fellow cat actors promised to take him out for dinner. Sometime.
And, then, on Thursday, the final line of the Times' theater review heaped praise upon Vito Vincent for his spirited portrayal of a cat.
"In any case I knew I wanted to go wherever that cat was going."
Could have been you, Montie.
Instead you're just a nobody. Like everybody.
[NY Post // Image of Chessie, one of Montie's back-ups, via Getty]